Saul Williams Sells More Than Shitty Tee Shirts

Politics and music have had and continue to positively affect one another.  Musical culture has been the unifying base of many movements that have created political change.  Conversely, politics has created the motivation for many musical movements.  In addition, as race plays a central role in the current Presidential campaigns Political Grind is happy to present you with an article focusing on race and music.  We believe that the following article written by Aaron of Enough Cowbell is an interesting break from our normal posts that will spur discussion and debate.  Enjoy.
Via Enough Cowbell

We must become the change we want to see in the world. - Mohandas Gandhi

The song  Niggy Tardust features a call and response portion where  Saul Williams calls out, “when I say Niggy, you say nothing. Niggy…Niggy, (nothing!) Shut up.” This particular portion of the song is rather effective during his live performance because he plays to the idea that the crowd should say nothing even though it is necessary for everyone to shout, “nothing!” in order for Saul to tell everyone to, “shut up.” However, after the song was a particularly poignant moment when Saul said, “When I say nigger, you say?” and then the crowd went silent. Everyone stopped – talking, shuffling, drinking, and pissing. The  Paradise became as silent as one would ever hear during a concert – there was a stunning lack of sound.

He had sounded a call that there is no response to.  No response could be appropriate, especially in a crowd dominated by white folk in a city with a prominent history of racial tension. “Shit, you guys even killed Crispus Attucks,” said Saul earlier. We may have killed Crispus, but even Saul admitted we had JFK. But, if Yoko was right in saying that “woman is the nigger of the world” and the Kennedy clan were and (in Ted’s case) continue to be  merciless womanizers; then our shining light is covered with coal. And we, as a city, are left with even less. Or, nothing.

Lester Bangs wrote in his 1979 essay,  White Noise Supremacists, “if there’s nothing more poisonous than bigotry, there’s nothing more pathetic than liberal guilt.” Was our non-response to Saul’s call the manifestation of liberal guilt in part created by our interaction with a city so steeped in shaky racial history?

Luckily, Saul was there to pick us up and with fire in his voice and humor never far behind. He freed us from our liberal guilt stupor. He assured us that we are one another.

He launched into his theory on racism and race in general. He claimed that by brushing a word out of mind, even the dirtiest of words, gives power to that word and subsequently gives power to race as a social construct. In his view evolutionarily, genetically, and by principle we are one, but social constructs have crippled us into a world view that prevents unity. Whereas Lester Bangs began to conclude in his essay on racism in the punk scene that racism must be made taboo, Saul Williams has concluded that race as a whole must be made taboo. Rather than spout the word ad nauseam Lenny Bruce style just to desensitize the masses Saul aims to defuse the meaning and idea behind the word in order to lessen its vile effects.

Racial, gender, and class divisions allow us to focus on the differences rather than focusing on the similarities and celebrating the differences as one. Saul pointed to Carnivale as a celebration of how diversity can create unity and the 4th of July as its antithesis. If Carnivale promotes the idea that we are each other, then the 4th of July’s purpose is to celebrate a nation that touts equality by proclaiming everyone else is not me.

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But, by using a racial epithet throughout his lyrics does Saul Williams really accomplish? Rappers and hip hop have been doing it since its inception and the word is just as vile and race lines even more divided. How many times have you heard a white person refer to someone as, “one of those rappers,” or gasp at the idea of a son, daughter, relative, or friend because they listen to, “that rap music”? The racial divide is still present but the terms have been redefined. And really, what is different about another black man making hip hop music?

Sure, Saul’s lyrics are particularly well written, pose interesting questions, play on racial and other social themes while questioning his peers in songs such as Penny For a Thought. In the end, his music must be listened to closely to understand the points he strives to make – a task many choose to leave undone.

What sets Saul apart is his attempt to blur the lines of what a hip hop artist, a musician, and even a black man should look and sound like. By doing so he begins to challenge the social constructs of race. His look defies logic and social norms of clothing styles. He sports multi-colored feathers in his hair and glittering sea foam mascara that stretches across his temples. His boots are covered in long white hair/fur similar to the Uggs worn by many an affluent Jersey girl – except he wraps the tops in caution tape. Imagine Ziggy Stardust combined with Public Enemy (but not Flava Flav), a tame George Clinton and a fashionable Brooklynite and you’ll start to get an idea of Saul Williams’ “look.”

Saul Williams has successfully created a persona that defies one single identity. Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen wrote in his 2006 essay,  Identity and Violence, that bigotry and hatred are spurned from people’s desire to attach a person to one single group when no individual is that simple. He writes:

A person’s citizenship, residence, geographic origin, gender, class, politics, profession, employment, food habits, sports interests, taste in music, social commitments, etc., make us members of a variety of groups. Each of these collectives, to all of which this person simultaneously belongs, gives her a particular identity.

Of course, people may be quick to attach him to a singular identity – perhaps, to the wild characters in the funk movement. But Saul separates himself from those terms with music that uses Black Sabbath influenced guitar, heavy distortion, and cacophonous drum loops. The tight stringed ska riffs of Black Stacey quickly transitioned into the loose stringed heaviness of Banged and Blown Through is a powerful, unavoidable, and entirely uncommon sound during his set. His last album was produced by Trent Reznor and his sound should appeal to people who may have never associated hip hop with guitar and noise rock - oh, and U2 fans too. When his music is matched with his look he creates and image that refuses to be brushed aside as, “just a funk thing.” He has drawn in too many different identities to allow himself to be forced into a single one.

He defies the standard in many ways, furthering his idea that the idea of race is largely a social construct that only aims to limit others potential. By recognizing it as such Saul has allowed himself the ability to create music and a performance that is unlike any other.

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On December 13th 1980 U2 played Boston for the first time. Four years before that was the Boston busing crisis and the infamous  Soiling of Old Glory. Three years after their first Boston show U2 would release  Sunday Bloody Sunday. Twenty-four years after the single’s release Saul Williams would cover the song. A few months later he would create a powerful image as he sang Sunday Bloody Sunday, a song of unfound racial (albeit religious race) bigotry and hatred to the same city that has had such a tumultuous racial history and to the same city that U2 calls their home away from home. There was a cyclical and complete feeling to the performance and the feeling that although there are countless unseen obstacles to overcome in the field of racial acceptance that we, as a community, are allowing ourselves to make progress.

On April 8th Saul was a musician, poet, black man, entertainer, band member, friend, leader, unifier, but what stood out most was when he brought his daughter on stage and watched as she embraced the spot light – he was a proud father first and foremost. His role of proud father was just another example of how society’s racial constructs often force us to quickly latch on to its pretenses rather than seeing the important aspects and distinctions of human nature. Brown is a shade, but values and ethics are a way of life.

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