Baba Yetu, Brutus?

Posted by Danny on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 12:48 pm

It’s possible at this point that I’ve grown a couple of semi-regular readers, so I’m going to try using this space in an exciting, active, Web 2.0 way. Your participation will require that you download a 5 megabyte mp3 (legally, even, it turns out) and be willing to post a comment. Participation will be enhanced by a familiarity with Sid Meier’s Civilization series of games, and/or atheism, but neither is necessary.

First, please download Baba Yetu by Christopher Tin and give it a listen. For those who aren’t immediately transported back to their Civilization IV memories and addiction,[1] while listening try to imagine a beautifully-rendered model of Earth as viewed from space, complete with roving cloud systems, reflective oceans, and city lights visible in the dynamic darkness as the sun flares into view and sets. I think this is a really groovy theme and remember finding it a good fit when I first heard it; earlier games in the series generally had fanfare-y arrangements or more stereotypical and bland tribal percussion tracks. This song, given the gorgeous, animate world that fills the screen evokes (or evoked then, for me) Africa as the cradle of the human species, whence civilization of course, but as well, the soaring, consonant theme and call-and-answer between the male and female choruses suggests a grander unity—Tin’s work is the overture of a game whose thesis is that human-wide patterns of behavior and psychology, discovery, and need, are far more important and universal than the specific (though celebrated) features and stories of distinct peoples.

So, it turns out it’s the Catholic version of Lord’s Prayer in Swahili. When I found out a couple of days ago, this annoyed me in a sort of pseudo-postcolonial way: why couldn’t it be an “actual” or “traditional” African song? (A genuine postcolonialist may jump in here and unpack the contents of all those problematic quotation-mark-bounded terms, as well as my sweeping and descriptively worthless conflation of a continent and its constituent cultures, but lets the rest of us move on—this reaction was visceral and I’m not interested in standing by it.) What continues to bug me, though, and what I’d be more interested to discuss in this space, is whether at any stage it is valid (or ethically necessary) to renounce one’s love for a particular piece of art as one’s understanding of it increases to incorporate facts which are in isolation unpalatable, disturbing, or eventually abhorrant.

I know at least one person who refused to listen to Wagner after discovering his anti-Semitism and the appropriation of his compositions and essays for the purposes of Nazi propaganda; when I was younger I refused to enter churches or cathedrals except when politeness or practicality demanded because I deemed that a pall of historical oppression and present opposition to independent thought hung too thick for me be able to enjoy the beauty of the architecture and artistry. I’ve since concluded that we—the anti-Wagnerite and my severe younger self—were idiots, and that a thing can be appreciated aesthetically but also condemned for less pleasing associations. Nonetheless, while Baba Yetu pleases me very much on an aesthetic level, I now can’t help but incorporate more information into my evaluation of it, and the pleasure is adulterated. This makes me grumpy.

Is such compartmentalisation a valid policy when dealing with art, or anything else? Propaganda and advertising work better when in phase with our aesthetic wavelength, yet for any responsible individual, I think both must be subject to constant analysis and vigilance (and I would need to be convinced that a useful definition of art is reliably distinct from propaganda and advertising). What if the lyrical content of the song were something more broadly detestable: an elegant litany of racial hatred and call to violent action, but in a language or code that we couldn’t parse (as Swahili is for most of us at the time of this writing)? Is there any moral or active position one should take upon discovering that the lyrics contain, for example:

Kick the bunnies, gouge out their eyes and
Shove a whirling auger into them…

[...with substitutions for “bunnies” to taste and personal outrage. I find “puppies” works pretty well for me and still scans with Baba Yetu.]

Beyond “is it right to still enjoy something…,” which is tricky for boring reasons, “is it right to still use something despite your enhanced understanding of it?” If you were leading the students of your school choir in learning this song and eventually discovered that the lyrics were those above, but in a language you were certain no one in the choir, audience, nor anywhere else would understand, and only you knew the content, would you be under any moral obligations?

(Lyrics can be found here. Try saying “uliye” in one syllable comfortably.)