Rai myths: Khaled (repeat) and Cheikha Rimitti

My post about Khaled's selection as one of NPR's 50 Great Voices has now appeared, in a shorter and much sharper version, on Foreign Policy's Middle East Channel, here. A thousand thanks, alf shukran, to Marc Lynch for his fine editing. (As of this moment, it has 103 'like's. Read it, and if you like, click that 'like' button!) It's great when one's blog postings get some attention, and it reminds me that I need to devote more attention to this blog than I have over the past few months.

In the interests of that project, let me add to the theme I have been developing, on the myths of rai. The Khaled post of course deals with this issue, as does a much longer post on this issue last December 12. Here's another fragment from this on ongoing argument, this one about the late Cheikha Rimitti, about whom I posted an obit in May 2006.

Cheikha Rimitti

It is probably due to the fact that rai publicity is so focused on the genre's purported oppositionality, that the cheikhat origins of rai are usually emphasized in accounts of rai history, while the bedoui and wahrani strands are mostly ignored. Bedoui was brought to Oran in the thirties and forties by rural-to-urban migrants, and was performed by ensembles led by a vocalist, known as a cheikh, who sang poems (usually self-authored) in a genre known as melhun, and was backed by one or more percussionists playing hand-held frame drums (the guellal) and a player of a reed flute (the gasba). (Here's a clip of the respected bedoui artist Cheikh Hamada, probably dating from the late 50s or early 60s, broadcast on Algerian television when it was under French control.) Wahrani ("Oranais") was an urban genre that developed at the same time, and was heavily influenced by the modern Egyptian neoclassical music of the likes of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab, Umm Kalthoum, and Farid al-Atrash. It also incorporated influences from bedoui, classical Andalusian music, the French chansons of Edith Piaf and Tino Rossi, the jazz imported by US troops stationed in Oran during World War II, and the pasodoble and flamenco favored by Oran’s substantial Spanish population. (Here's a clip of one of the great stars of wahrani, Blaoui Houari. It's possible that this clip also dates from the colonial era.)

Rai publicity, however, generally stresses the cheikha origins of rai music. Unlike the respected bedoui cheikhs, the cheikhat were considered rather disreputable due to the fact that they typically performed in mixed-gender settings, where alcohol might be consumed, at weddings (in front of males), at parties organized for men, and at religious festivals. Due to her disreputable reputation, the cheikha was considered something akin to a prostitute, and in fact cheikhat often performed sexual favors in return for monetary compensation. Like the cheikhs, the cheikhat also sang to the accompaniment of gasba and guellal, but their lyrics were more colloquial and often improvised. The typical picture of old-school rai presented in world music publicity, therefore, is of women singing about scandalous subjects, in bars and bordellos, in front of mixed audiences who are consuming alcohol. While this is a more-or-less accurate image of the cheikhat milieu, it is only one of the strands of rai.

The singer most closely associated with this bawdy image, and the most renowned of the cheikhat, was Cheikha Rimitti (alternative spelling: Remitti), who was born in 1923, started performing in the early 1940s and continued up until her death, at age 83, in May 2006. Her very name and the story surrounding it would seem to instantiate the scandalous character of the rai cheikhat. According to Virolle (1996: 115), the most reliable source on Rimitti, during the 1940s rai music (known then, according to Virolle, as elklâm elhezal or parole leger) was performed at both cabarets and at religious festivals, known as wa‘da-s. It was at the wa'da of Sidi Abed, one of the most well-known festivals, held near Relizane (where she lived at the time) that Saida al-Ghelizania reportedly picked up her performance name Rimitti, while drinking at a cantina. She ordered another round, saying, "Rimitti (francarabe for remettez) la tournée." Someone overheard and remarked on what she had said, and so she became known as Cheikha Rimitti, or, “Give me another [drink].” The story is told in a variety of versions, but symptomatically, the fact that Rimitti was performing at a religious festival where drinking was also going on, is almost never recounted, for that would seem to undercut Rimitti's reputed outlaw status and also problematize the purported contradiction between Islam and alcohol/rai, one of the key oppositions upon which the rai publicity depends.

The other key part of the legend surrounding Rimitti's oppositionality concerns the song, “Charrak, Gatta'” (tear, cut), Rimitti's first hit, recorded in 1954, released on Pathé. (Halasa [2002: 46], otherwise a reliable source, writes that Rimitti started recording in 1936, but this is incorrect. Rimitti only started to perform in public in the early 1940s. Her first recording was released in 1952. Several other sources also claim that Rimitti's first recordings date from the thirties.) Rai commentators typically proclaim that the song's lyrics invited women to lose their virginity. It is not clear when this account of “Charrak, Gatta'” came into currency or who is responsible for it, but it is repeated and spread incessantly in all the publicity about rai and its rebelliousness. Let us pause for a moment, however, to consider this reading of the lyrics. Why would the French recording company Pathé, which released Rimitti's record, put out a song that called on women to give up their virginity, in such a crude way? And wouldn't the colonial authorities have been hyper-sensitive about such an incendiary lyric? Surely if its “meaning” were so apparent, the French colonial authorities would have censored the recording, rather than to allow it to be sold freely and to be broadcast on state-sponsored radio?

Fara C, writing in L'Humanité (2000), offers a more plausible story. One night, while Rimitti was performing in a cabaret, a dispute broke out between a jealous woman and her male companion. The woman grabbed her date, pulling on his shirt. Rimitti sang, spontaneously, “Tear, tear, and give it to Rimitti to sew up.” Then she went and hugged the couple. This, asserts Fara C., is the origin of the lyrics of the song, which Rimitti later recorded. Some listeners, according to Fara C., did consider the song an assault on the values of virginity and were highly scandalized. Such an interpretation is therefore possible—but it is not the only one. In any case, it is highly doubtful that Rimitti originally intended the song in this way or that this was how the song's meanings were generally understood at the time. With the exception of a few academics, however, almost no one who writes in English about rai bothers to consult sources like Fara C.'s article, especially, it seems, if the sources are published in French. Rai publicists prefer instead to repeat stories that embellish the image of the rai rebel, and so "Charrak, Gatta" has come to be represented as having a perfectly clear meaning: an attack on virginity.

References:

Fara C. 2000. "Cheikha Rimitti, diva du blues oranais." L'Humanité, December 9. http://www.humanite.fr/2000-12-09_Cultures_-Cheikha-Rimitti-diva-du-blues-oranais.

Halasa, Malu. 2002. "Songs for a Civil War: Algerian Raï, Rap and Berber Folksong." In Els van der Plas et al, eds. Creating Spaces of Freedom, 45-58. London: Saqi Books.

Virolle, Marie. 1996. “Raï, norme sociale et référence religieuse.” Anthropologie et Sociétés 20(2):111-128.

The song "Charrak Gatta" can be found on the CD, Aux sources du raï. Les Cheikhat: Chants de femmes de l'ouest algérien, Club Du Disque Arab, 1995. I am trying to find a translation of the lyrics.

Good ethnographic sources on cheikhat are Willy Jensen's Women without Men: Gender and Marginality in an Algerian Town (Brill: 1985) and, for Morocco, Deborah Kapchan's Gender on the Market: Moroccan Women and the Revoicing of Tradition (Pennsylvania: 1996). (Kapchan uses the spelling shikhat.)

More to follow. Can't promise you when.

pardon my french, pardon my halal, pardon my burqa

Michael Kimmelman published an interesting piece in the New York Times' Arts & Leisure section back on April 25, 2010, about the globalization of the French language. I'm just now getting back to this article, as I sort the heaps of paper in the home office. And finding that the article still relevant. Check out this report on MSNBC about the new controversy in France, replacing (perhaps, or perhaps only for the moment), the issue of the burqa: halal fast-food burgers.

On Wednesday, "popular French fast food chain Quick, the No. 2 burger chain in France after McDonald's, started serving halal-only food in 22 of its French outlets, targeting France's large Muslim population, an underexploited market that has long been ignored by big business...[among other things this means...no more bacon burgers at these outlets.]

Politicians left and right have attacked the move from every conceivable angle. Some ask why halal food should be foisted on the general population, while others worry the Quicks in question will promote segregation of the Muslim community instead of acceptance. France argues that integration is the only option for minorities, and the only way to preserve social cohesion."

Meanwhile, here are some excerpts from Kimmelman's piece:

Didier Billion is a political scientist with an interest in francophone culture...“A multipolar world has emerged,” he said... I am very proud of being French, but 40 years ago the French language was a way to maintain influence in the former colonies, and now French people are going to have to learn to think about francophone culture differently, because having a common language doesn’t assure you a common political or cultural point of view.”

...In a country where pop radio stations broadcast a percentage of songs in French, and a socialist mayor in the northern, largely Muslim town of Roubaix lately won kudos for protesting that outlets of the fast-food chain Quick turned halal, cultural exceptionalism reflects fears of the multicultural sort that Mr. Zemmour’s book [the controversial, pro-assimilationist French Melancholy] touches on.

It happens that Mr. Zemmour traces his own roots to Sephardic Jews from Spain who became French citizens while living in Algeria in the 19th century, then moved to France before the Algerian war. He belongs to the melting pot, in other words, which for centuries, he said, absorbed immigrants into its republican culture...

Yasmina Khadra, the best-selling Algerian novelist, whose real name is Mohammed Moulessehoul [is a] 55-year-old former Algerian Army officer who now lives in Paris heading the center, [who] writes novels critical of the Algerian government under his wife’s name, which he first borrowed while in Algeria because the military there had banned his literary work...

“Paris is still fearful of a French writer who becomes known around the world without its blessing,” Mr. Moulessehoul said. “And at the same time in certain Arab-speaking circles I am considered a traitor because I write in French. I am caught between two cultures, two worlds.

“Culture is always about politics in the end. I am a French writer and an Algerian writer. But the larger truth is that I am both.”

A footnote on Yasmina Khadra: I've read his first novel, a policier called Morituri, and it was terrific. But friends who stay abreast of such things say that his subsequent novels have focused more and more on the problem of Islamist fanaticism, in such a manner that makes his work very palatable to French Islamophobic tastes. Moreover, check out The Toby Press, which publishes Yasmina Khadra's translated work. Strange, isn't it, that most of the authors are Jewish, many of them Israelis (the likes of Amos Oz and S. Yizhar), and that Khadra is the only Arab name listed. What sort of politics does this represent, one wonders.

Another note: I tend to think that halal-only menus for a burger joint discriminate against members of the community who might want bacon on their cheeseburger. I guess Beurs who want to eat bacon-cheese can go to MacDonald's. But still.

Here's a graphic example of the predictable, and over-heated, reaction from French rightist circles.

Sandra Bullock in kufiya: "Hangmen" (1987)

Hangmen, according to the sources I have read (mainly wikipedia), is the first feature film in which Sandra Bullock appears, at the age of 23. Hunt just a bit and you can find it on youtube. It's virtually unwatchable, perhaps one of the worst films of the 1980s? Bullock plays Lisa, the girlfriend of Danny Greene, whose dad is a CIA agent who has gotten into some trouble because he is about to "out" a rogue unit within the agency. The bad guys, in order to get to Danny, and through him, his dad, kidnap Lisa.

Lisa is reading a newspaper, walking near the subway in New York City.

One of the rogue CIA agents shoots a dart into her neck, to dope her up and immobilize her.

Once Lisa is doped up and woozy, it is easy for the rogue agents to grab her and take her away.

The fact that the Lisa character wears a kufiya in this scene indicates nothing except that she is a fairly normal college student in New York City in the mid-1980s, when the kufiya was fairly mainstream wear for youth living there. The Lisa character is not depicted as particularly hip or as politically progressive. All it "means" then is that the kufiya was typical street gear, at this time and in this space.

Previous 1980s kufiya sightings: Madonna, Bambaata, Delta 5, Nico, Born in Flames. If you know of any others, please let me know.

podcast & playlist for august 31st's interzone radio show

the podcast for the August 31 interzone radio show is here

listen to Buraka Som Sistema, Merle Haggard, Lloyd Miller & the Heliocentrics,

Charanjit Singh, Googoosh, Zeid and the Wings...and more!!!!

playlist here

kufiyas: "Green Zone" & MIA's /\/\/\Y/\

I've commented previously on what I am provisionally calling the "tough guy" kufiya. (Re: From Paris with Love, Green Zone, The Hurt Locker, The Book of Eli, Reign of Fire, and The Three Kings.)

I recently watched Green Zone, which I found to be, on the whole, not bad. Better than I had expected, based on some of the reviews I had read. Matt Damon, as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, is shown wearing a kufiya (khaki, regulation US military issue) from the beginning of the film, the first time you see him, and throughout. Always neatly arranged, as a conventional scarf should be worn. Always like this, as in the first view we get of Miller.

You can see more shots here (from publicity stills) of Miller/Damon, who is always sharp and professional in his dress. His style of dress seems also to reflect his generally upright conduct throughout the film. [Added August 30: one or two of Miller's men are also shown wearing kufiyas, in the same manner as Miller.]

By contrast, there is Maj. Briggs (played by Jason Isaacs), who is Miller's chief on-the-ground antagonist in the US military, and is the main operative for Clark Poundstone (the Paul Bremer character, played by Greg Kinnear). Briggs is hunting down Iraqi "high value targets," Saddam's men who appear on the "deck of cards." Without necessarily knowing it, Briggs' mission is to eliminate (on behalf of Poundstone) Gen. al-Rawi and thereby kill the potential for scandal. Miller by contrast decides to try to capture al-Rawi alive, in order to expose the fact that the WMD's, the pretext for the invasion of Iraq, were a mirage.

From the perspective of the film, therefore, Briggs is somewhat out of control. The fact that he wears what I take to be a non-regulation colored blue kufiya, and that much more of his kufiya is exposed than is Miller/Damon's, would appear to index Briggs' roguish behavior. Note the marked difference between Briggs and Miller: the contrasting colors of their kufiyas and the different ways in which they wear their scarves. Briggs' dark glasses, messy hear and mustache also contribute to his "dangerous" look. From the film's perspective, this is not a positive "bad boy" image. In the end, and somewhat predictably, Briggs meets a violent end, while both he and Miller are chasing down al-Rawi.


Probably the most interesting political moment of Green Zone occurs toward the end. Miller finally has Gen. al-Rawi in his clutches, when suddenly his Iraqi translator "Freddy"shows up and shoots the Ba'athist general. "Freddy" then tells Miller, "It is not for you to decide what happens here." Reminding us that al-Rawi was in fact a vicious oppressor, guilty of many crimes against the Iraqi people. Miller's desire to capture him alive in order to blow the cover on the WMD myth does not trump the desire of Iraqis for justice.

[Added August 30: At one point Miller, or maybe another US soldier, calls an Iraqi a "hajji." Was this appellation in currency at the beginning of the invasion? I don't know.]

As for MIA and her new album /\/\ /\ Y /\ -- there has been lots of discussion about its politics and whether or not MIA is politically sophisticated, authentic, has sold out, is merely a silly provocateur, and so on...Check out Jeff Chang's post on MIA and MAYA is a particularly good take on these questions.

What I haven't noticed in all the discussion is the fact that the cover of the album, looks, at face value, like this:

The cover is 3-D, however, so if you buy the actual CD (get the Deluxe Edition) and look at its cover from a certain angle, the "veiling" over MIA's face is revealed, and you see...yes, MIA wearing a kufiya, of sorts.

MIA remains the provocateur, and even though she is married to the son of a millionaire and even though her politics are not "coherent" (are yours?), I appreciate the gesture. Kufiyas of course also show up in her controversial "Born Free" video, the first single released from the album, which I discussed here.

interzone radio podcast, playlist, august 24

Nuru Kane

podcast -> ici

playlist -> ici

All-Pakistan Interzone Radio Show, August 17: playlist & podcast, plus info on how you can help Pakistan flood victims

here's the podcast, and here, the playlist

Pakistanis desperately need our support. This is especially imperative in the US, where a shockingly high percentage of the populace consider Pakistanis unworthy of any help whatsoever. Check out this Washington Post poll, where an appalling 68% say they plan not, ever to donate money to Pakistani relief. The comments are even more loathsome than the raw numbers.

Here is a typical comment: The reason I won't donate is simple. "I don't give a damn about those miserable, flea-infested hordes of walking crap. You can thank the terrorists for my lousy attitude. POSTED BY: ADRIENNE_NAJJAR | AUGUST 16, 2010 3:55 PM"

If you are someone who is open to listening to music from Pakistan, which means you can imagine that Pakistanis are not all "terrorists," then it is really incumbent upon you to send some cash, even a small amount, to your fellow humans who are in such great need.

Here are some recommended avenues for making donations:

Relief4Pakistan

Via the US government, if you are so inclined. It's easy, text "SWAT" to 50555 and make a $10 contribution that will help provide tents, clothing, food, clean drinking water, and medicine to people displaced by floods.

The Nation magazine, of course, offers an array of ways to help, in this article by Pete Rothberg.

And here are a couple of important articles about the flood:

Ahmed Rashid, "Pakistan floods: an emergency for the West"

Middle East Report Online, Disaster Strikes the Indus River Valley, From the Editors

interzone radio, podcast & playlist for 8/10/10

the podcast for the show...ici (here)


playlist...right here

interzone radio podcast & playlist, august 3 show

podcast is: here

playlist here

peace!

Khaled: One of NPR's 50 Great Voices

I was very pleased to learn on July 26 that the great Algerian rai singer Khaled had made it into the list of NPR's 50 Great Voices--the series that lasts all year long. It's pretty remarkable, in fact, amazingly remarkable, considering that it's only month seven, and that three of the voices we've heard so far have been Arabs (the other two: Fairuz and Umm Kalthum). Plus one Afghani (the second in the series, Ahmad Zahir) and one Pakistani (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan).

I have a quibble, however, with some of the ways in which Banning Eyre narrated Khaled's career. (Let me be clear that I greatly admire the work that Eyre has done in promoting World Music over the last couple decades, particularly with Afropop Worldwide. For instance, check out all the "Features" on North Africa on Afropop Worldwide's website.)

Eyre says that Khaled, born in 1960, came of age between the War of Liberation for Algerian Independence and the "religiously-fueled" Algerian civil war, which started in 1991. "In a land torn apart by intolerance and violence, Khaled stood out as an artist who embraced openness and peace," reads the text. Eyre actually says, "In a land riven by intolerance and violence, here was an artist [missing word, perhaps?] openness and peace."

Khaled did not, in fact, stand out at all, he was part of a very large and vibrant rai scene in Oran. The lyrics of the songs he sang came, mostly, from a collective pool, and were not, with perhaps a couple of exceptions, distinguishable from those sung by the rest of the rai crew, which included many other equally talented singers, such as Chaba Fadela, Cheb Sahraoui, Chaba Zahouania, Cheikha Rimitti, Cheb Mami, Houari Benchenet, Cheb Hamid, and Messaoud Bellemou, to name just a few. Moreover, the song which plays after Eyre makes this claim, one of Khaled's hits, "La Camel," from the 1987 album Kutché, is a cover of a song originally recorded and made famous by Cheikha Rimitti. (Here's Rimitti's original version. Rimitti later complained that Khaled had "stolen" this song, i.e., recorded without giving her credit. She even referred to him, in an interview with El Watan, as "Cheb Khayen" or "Cheb Traitor" for doing so!)

Moreover, the representation of Algeria as a "land riven by intolerance and violence" is quite simplistic a formulation, given that the two periods of conflict were very different in their causes and their nature. But the use of the term "intolerance" seems to foreshadow what comes next: a positioning of Khaled in opposition to Muslim "fundamentalism."

The transcript of Eyre's account reads: "Khaled's directness [about women and drinking alcohol] and his force-of-nature voice...didn't sit so well with the growing number of Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria, though, and his songs were consequently banned from state radio."

This is quite incorrect. The fact that rai music (not just Khaled's) was not played on state radio was not due to the opposition of "Islamic fundamentalists."

It's not so much that rai was "banned," it's rather that the Algerian regime had imposed an Arab/Muslim cultural politics that denied Algeria's multi-cultural nature, and so expressive culture in Arab dialect and in Berber were denied a space on state-controlled media. Rai is sung in the distinctive dialect of Wahran (Oran). This dialect is not merely not "classical" or literary Arabic, but it is also full of borrowings from Spanish, French and Berber. This brand of official puritanism was particularly characteristic of the regime of Houari Boumediene (1965-1978), but began to break down during the Chadly regime (1979-1992).

The standard story told about rai is that the music didn't make it onto state radio until 1985, but it appears that the restrictions against rai were not iron-clad. For instance, Cheb Mami became known nationally in 1982 due to the fact that he performed on a very popular television show, Alhan wa chabab ("Melodies and youth"), a program devoted to discovering new talent. He also performed in a national song competition, singing "El Marsam." When it was announced that Cheb Mami had come in second, the crowd booed, believing that he should have come in first (Daoud and Miliani 1996: 102).

And Khaled, in his autobiography (1998: 94-95), tells us a story about how he managed to push past the media embargo on rai in the early 1980s, shortly after he had begun to divide his time between his home town of Oran and the capital, Algiers. He was invited to appear on a t.v. show, which, he says, couldn't be censored, because it was broadcast live. Cheb Khaled (as he was known until 1992, when he dropped the Cheb) was warned ahead of time: no vulgarities, no sex. So he sang three songs: the first, about the Prophet Muhammad; the second, a "poetic" song, i.e., one that was artistically acceptable; and the third, about alcohol and women. (In fact, this mixture of songs about religion, songs of a more refined character, and songs of a more risqué character, was typical of the mix of songs Khaled typically performed at concerts, weddings, and in cabarets.)

Daoudi and Miliani (1996: 20) also write that the despite the official media's general embargo on rai, it did get played on radio on occasion in the early eighties, chiefly via the rare broadcast on Chaine III.

Eyre: "After he [Khaled] performed for 20,000 people in Algiers in 1985, his became the voice of a generation."

It's true that Cheb Khaled had become a national, as opposed to a regional, star, by the mid-1980s. His performance at the state-sponsored Festival de la Jeunesse pour la Fête Nationale, held in Algiers in July 1985, was certainly a key moment. But how was it that Khaled, and other rai stars, came to play at this festival? (And at another key festival, the first official rai festival, organized in Oran in August 1985?)

It was due in fact to the efforts of the "liberal" wing of the Algerian regime, le pouvoir as they are known colloquially, and particularly the efforts of Lieutenant-Colonel Hosni Snoussi, director of the state-supported arts and culture organization, Office Riadh el Feth in Algiers, who by this time had taken Cheb Khaled under his wing. According to Daoudi and Miliani, the interest of the regime's liberal wing in promoting rai occurred in the wake of a spate of unrest in Algeria: riots in Tizi Ouzou, Kabylia, in 1980 (the "Berber Spring"); in Oran in 1982 (I can find no details on this); in Algiers in 1985, following rumors that housing being built for the poor would be allocated instead to state bureaucrats; student riots Constantine in 1986 that resulted in the deaths of four protesters, and which spread to other cities. Young Algerians played a leading role in all these protests. The liberal wing of the regime therefore determined that it was necessary to focus its efforts on promoting and catering to the interests of youth and on developing the market economy, in order to deter further unrest (1996: 28-29). Rai, which was very popular with young people, was therefore embraced by liberal elements in the regime. It was due to changes in state policy toward rai, pushed by Snoussi, that got Khaled onto the stage at the officially-sponsored Festival de la Jeunesse pour la Fête Nationale.

Then, Eyre asserts, "In 1989, it became dangerous for Khaled to stay in Algeria, where artists and intellectuals were being killed by fundamentalists. He fled to safety in France."

First of all, the civil war in Algeria did not break out until 1992. No rai stars or intellectuals were fleeing to France until after the civil war broke out, and the Islamist militants of the GIA (the Armed Islamic Groups) began to target artists. (I want to acknowledge that I bear some responsibility for having helped spread of this sort of misinformation. In the article I co-authored with Joan Gross and David McMurray, "Rai, Rap, and Ramadan Nights: Franco-Maghribi Cultural Identities" [Middle East Report 178, Sept.-Oct. 1992, p. 13], we write: "by 1990, Islamist campaigns against rai caused several of its stars [Cheb Khaled, Cheb Marni, Chaba Fadela and Cheb Sahraoui] to relocate in France." This is incorrect. In the longer version of this article that appears in Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity [ed. Smadar Lavie & Ted Swedenburg, Duke UP, 1996], "Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap and Franco-Maghrebi Identities," on p. 138, we modify the claim just a bit: "By 1990, when Islamist campaigns against rai, as well as the lure of higher earnings and global exposure, prompted several of its leading figures...to relocate from Algeria to France...")

Secondly, and more importantly, Khaled did not "flee" to France, he went there to try to expand his market and his fame, and he went with the backing of liberal elements of the Algerian regime and liberal elements in the French government of Socialist President François Miterrand. The move was entirely an entrepreneurial venture, not an act of seeking refuge. (Cheb Mami was the first of the rai stars to make this move, in 1985.)

Khaled performed in France for the first time at the rai festival at Bobigny in January 1986. The event was organized, according to Khaled, by Colonel Snoussi and Martin Meissonnier, a very influential French music producer and former journalist for the liberal-left daily Liberation. During the '70s Meissonnier was known for bringing well-known US jazz musicians to France; in the '80s he began produce a number of African acts for the World Music market. Snoussi and Meissonnier met at the Festival of Youth in Algiers in 1985, and together they were able to convince France's Minister of Culture Jack Lang of the importance of exporting rai from Algeria to France. In order for Khaled to secure a passport to travel to France and perform at Bobigny, Snoussi had to intervene with the Algerian military authorities, because Khaled had been avoiding his military service (Khaled 1998: 37-39).

It is important to note that most of the top rai artists performed at Bobigny in 1986, not just Khaled. (It must have been very expensive to transport all the major stars from Algeria to France and put them up.) It is important to note as well that Khaled opened his set with a religious song (as he usually did in concerts in Algeria as well), "Sallou 'ala al-Nabi" (Blessings on the Prophet). Important to counter the strong tendency in the discourse on rai (and Eyre's account is typical in this regard) to make it seem that there is a kind of inherent antagonism between rai artists and Islam.

The French government was as interested in trying to control and channel the energies of the rai scene in France as the liberal wing of the Algerian regime was to do the same in Algeria. The mid-eighties was a period of grassroots political mobilization by the Beurs, French citizens and residents of Arab background. Culture was an essential component of this mobilization. Rai music was very popular among young Beurs and it was widely aired on the Beur radio stations that sprung up in this period and was performed at rallies and multi-cultural concerts organized by SOS Racisme, France's leading anti-racist group of the time. Rai was a central badge of cultural pride and identity for young Beurs. It was therefore seen as advantageous to the interests of the French state to promote North African Arab culture in France, rather than to appear to be its antagonist.

When Khaled returned to Algeria after his stay in France, he tells us, Snoussi informed him that he was going to record an album in France. Snoussi tells Khaled that he is going there just to sing, and, that he should not talk about the situation in Algeria, about the role of the military or censorship and so on. This is how Khaled's 1988 album Kutché gets made, then, through the intervention of Snoussi, and (apparently) with financial support from the Algerian government (Khaled 1998: 128; Daoudi and Miliani 1996: 30). The album was a collaboration between Khaled and the Algerian jazz musician Safy Boutella (and it is credited to both), produced by Meissonnier, and released on Pomme Music-Sony. Kutché was not a major seller, but it is a terrific album, and it was an important step in Khaled's path of establishing himself as an artist in France. It is during this period as well that Khaled settles in France, in the city of Marseille.

(After the bloody riots that erupt throughout Algeria in October 1988, and the subsequent political opening and moves toward reform and democratization, this brief period of government sponsorship and subsidy for rai ends, for the moment (Daoudi and Miliani 1996: 30). In January 1992, after the Islamic Salvation Front wins the first round of parliamentary elections, the regime suspends the second round. Civil war breaks out. The regime again attempts to deploy rai in its struggle with the Islamists.)

Khaled makes no mention in his autobiography of having to "flee" Algeria for France. He does, however, make it entirely clear that Col. Snoussi, who was an important "cultural" player in the liberal wing of the Algerian regime, was chiefly responsible for initiating Khaled's first performances in France and for funding and organizing the recording of his first album in France.

This story of how Khaled launched his career in France is a much more interesting one than the tale of how he "fled from fundamentalism." The fact that the Algerian state played a major role in initiating and underwriting the process whereby rai music became known around the world, and whereby Khaled became the best-known Arab singer on the planet, deserves to be much more widely known. It is an amazing success story, and very important, both politically and culturally. Snoussi and his associates in the Algerian's liberal wing deserve credit, as do the French actors like Martin Meissonier and Jack Lang. The conventional story, of the West "saving" Khaled from the fundamentalist threat, is the familiar colonial missionary account.

Eyre: "Khaled has never really shaken his mischievous image: He's been to court on more than one occasion for domestic disputes..."

I wonder why Eyre uses such a mild term, "mischief," to characterize Khaled's trips to French court in a paternity suit and in a case involving a dispute with this wife. Khaled's legal troubles are not just the product of boyish innocence. But spun this way, I guess, they add to his "bad boy" image.

Eyre: "he's railed publicly against Muslim fundamentalists."

True. But Khaled still considers himself a Muslim.

Eyre: "His collaborations with Jewish and American artists have irked even moderate Muslims."

As far as I'm aware, the only time Khaled met with such criticism was after he collaborated with the Israeli artist Noa, on a recording of the John Lennon song "Imagine," and in concert. Frankly, the Khaled-Noa duet is quite dreadful, arguably the worst song Khaled ever released. (Second worst is "Love to the People," with Carlos Santana. Ugh.) "Imagine" appeared on the European release of Khaled's album Kenza (1999, Barclay) but not on the US edition (2000, Ark 21). Khaled performed the song with Noa at a "peace" concert in Rome in May 2002, called "Time for Life." The event was associated with a "Glocal Forum," a gathering of mayors, World Bank officials and development experts, aimed at making globalization work better at local levels. Khaled subsequently toured the Middle East, where he encountered organized efforts in Lebanon and Jordan to boycott his concert, on the grounds that he had performed "normalization" with Israel by performing with an Israeli artist at an event where Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was in attendance. Khaled responded that Palestinian singer Nabil Khouri had also performed at the event, and that Yasir Arafat's Mohammed Rashid was also in attendance. His concerts in Lebanon and Jordan, where he performed with Palestinian-American 'ud and violin maestro Simon Shaheen and Egyptian shaabi singer Hakim, were well-attended, despite the protests.

Khaled has also recorded with the Algerian Jewish pianist Maurice El Medioni, on his 2004 album Ya-Rayi. I'm not aware that he was criticized for doing this, although it's possible that he was. I'm aware of no instances of Khaled being criticized for collaborating with American musicians.

And who are the so-called "moderate Muslims" who have criticized Khaled for doing this? The problem with such a formulation is that it tends to make all "politics" in the Arab World seem to be about Islam. The criticism leveled at Khaled for performing with Noa, however, was a political criticism, not based on religious grounds. Those who fight against "normalization" with Israel (whether you agree with them or not) are of all political stripes, and they include the secularists and the religious.

In addition, by asserting that Khaled was criticized by "moderate Muslims" for collaborating with Jews and Americans, Eyre once again reinforces the notion, which is so prevalent and widespread in the discourse about rai, that Islam and rai are antagonistic.

Eyre: "Khaled fiercely adheres to his message of peace, love and personal freedom. But in the combative milieu of North Africa and the Middle East, those too can be fighting words."

It's true that Khaled sings about these subjects, on occasion. But Eyre pitches his description of Khaled and his political significance, so as to make it appear that the entire thrust of Khaled's message is in opposition to "Islamic fundamentalism." This impression, of course, is entirely to the liking of the Western liberal consumer, who can comfortably listen to and purchase Khaled's recordings, under the assumption that s/he and Khaled are involved in the "same" struggle against intolerance and in favor of peace.

Such an impression of course can benefit Khaled's music sales in the West. But the impression is mistaken. Khaled in general avoids making overt political statements, but he has, on occasion, spoken out about Palestine. For instance, in an interview in January 2002 with Sean Barlow of Afrop Worldwide, Khaled stated that "to end [terrorism], we need to fix the problems, the source of the big problem. For me, what is at the base of this whole thing is the history of the Palestinians. George Bush has said we're going to stop terrorism. This is the end. The end? Not yet. There are still people killing children in Algeria, in Asia, in Africa. There are still people killing Palestinian children. Palestinians have lived in war for 40 years. That means there are people who were born and died in war. They have the right to profit from life like me, like you, like everyone."

The kufiya Khaled wears in the photo above, which I believe was taken when he was touring the US in January 2002, registers his sympathy with the Palestinians.

Khaled has also expressed his objections to French racism (I can't locate any sources at the moment). But more importantly, he has worked tirelessly to bring Arab Maghrebi culture into the mainstream of French culture. This has done a great deal to counter the strong anti-Arab racist tendencies and movements in France. In my opinion, it makes more sense to speak of Khaled as a French artist (after all, he has made the country his home since the late 1980s) who has done a great deal to promote Arab culture in France, rather than as an Algerian artist.

Eyre's representation of Khaled as someone who is fighting for peace and love and against fundamentalist Islam is a comfortable image for the cosmopolitan Westerner to consume. As we listen to him, as we buy his recordings, we can imagine that we are somehow "doing good," maybe even striking a blow in favor of peace and against intolerance. A more complicated picture of Khaled, one that situates him in the ongoing struggles of Arabs in France for human rights and against racism and Islamophobia, a picture of Khaled as someone who, like most other Arabs, strongly feels that the Palestinians have been dealt a raw deal--this is not so easy to take on, for the presumptive fair-minded NPR listener who might be interested in World Music. It would be more comfortable for that listener to imagine that he was participating in the "rescue" of Khaled from fundamentalism.

But isn't it the responsibility of experts in World Music like Banning Eyre to educate audiences about the music of the world and the contexts that produces that music, rather than just promote that music, in the conventional ways deployed by the World Music industry?

References

Daoudi, Bouziane and Hadj Miliani. 1996. L'aventure du rai: Musique et société. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

Khaled. 1998. Derrière la sourire. Paris: Michel Lafon.

interzone radio, podcasts & playlists, july 27 & july 20

podcast for july 27 is here, playlist for the same show is here

and july 20 podcast: here....playlist, here

Jack Smith's Orientalism (warning: photos of a sexual nature)

I've recently been indulging of late in some additional Jack Smith investigations. I've recently watched the documentary, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, Smith's film Normal Love (1963, available for viewing at ubuweb), and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves (1944), starring Maria Montez, who was one of Smith's main inspirations. I also recently read two very informative articles about Smith: Dominic Johnson, "The Wound Kept Open: Jack Smith, Queer Performance and Cultural Failure" (Women and Performance 17[1], 2007) and Michael Moon, "Flaming Closets" (October vol. 51, Winter 1989).

I got interested in Jack Smith after I had the good fortune to see his most well-known film, Flaming Creatures (1963) in the early nineties in Seattle. At the time was quite a rarity. Now it's available for viewing at ubuweb, and I own a bootleg copy that I purchased on ebay. What struck me when I watched the documentary recently was how many signs of what I want to call Smith's Orientalism it showed--although the film, alas, did not give these trappings of Orientalism the kind of detailed discussion that they deserve. The film is full of snippets of the words of Smith, some of them relevant to this point, and show how much he had internalized "Orientalist" influences in the ways in which he represented the world. At one point he declares, "Me, I'm Ali Baba. The man without his dreams withers and grows old." At another Smith is asking for volunteers to help out on one of the performance pieces he used to stage for free at his apartment in New York City during the seventies. He says, "I need an exotic volunteer of the desert of cheerfulness." Responding to objections about the fact that audience typically had to wait for hours for the show to go on at his apartment, he states, "I don't want the scum of Baghdad" to be there for the performance. He thought audiences needed to work in order to be deserving of art. They weren't automatically entitled to it.

The documentary also offers abundant visual evidence. Smith is shown in kufiya several times throughout the film. Often the provenance of the shots is not identified. It appears that the shots of Smith in kufiya are from his appearance in films by other experimental filmmakers. He appeared, for instance, in a number of Warhol films, but I don't know whether any of the images below are from a Warhol vehicle.

The first three stills are all from the same film, showing Smith in black-and-white checked kufiya. I don't know what the original source is.

The next two are stills from underground filmmakers Scott B and Beth B's 1980 film, The Trap Door.

This is a fairly late appearance of Jack Smith, probably after he had contracted HIV. (He died in 1989.)

Smith also performed as a "harem girl," but I noticed no shots of him in that role in the documentary. Moon (1989: 41-42) has this to say about Smith in both roles: Smith seems to have performed the roles of the "sheik" or the (presumably male) "vampire" at least as frequently as he did those of the "vamp" or "harem girl" in '60s films. He played all these roles, and directed others to play them, in ways that short-circuit their relations to the heterosexualized representational regimes from which they derive. What is compelling about these figures in Smith's films is not the sheik's enactment of virility or the harem girl's of femininity; nor is it simply the reversal of these roles, as it might be if Smith's were simply another version of traditional transvestite comedy. To underestimate or dismiss the real erotic appeal Smith's "comedies" have had for many gay viewers is to ignore the primary source of their power: his films are incitements to his audience not only to play fast and loose with gender roles but also to push harder against prevailing constraints on sexuality.

As should be obvious, when Smith put on the kufiya, he was not asserting any kind of political identification with Palestinians (the resistance movement and its kufiya symbol did not appear til 1969-70). Rather, the point of reference is the "sheik" movies starring Rudolph Valentino, and their offspring, and in particular, the "Orientalist" films of Maria Montez. And the point, according to Moon, is gender-bending. (I take his word for it, as it is not apparent from the scenes of Smith in kufiya that we see in the documentary that this was about transgressing conventions of gender and sexuality.)

It's perhaps a minor point, but I don't believe that the "sheik" in Hollywood cinema fits so neatly into "heterosexualized representational regimes" as a symbol of virility. Valentino's "virility" is not, I think, so clear-cut. His masculinity was frequently questioned in the media and public discourse during his career, and his sleekness, pomaded hair, dandyish clothing and so on were all pointed to as examples of his effeminacy. Steve Caton has discussed at length the gender ambiguity of T.E. Lawrence, as portrayed by Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)--whose release and widespread popularity preceded the appearance of Smith's Flaming Creatures and Normal Love by just a year. And as we will see below, the Maria Montez vehicle, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, also has its moments of gender ambiguity. The "sheik," therefore, may in fact be an image that is already somewhat ambiguous and therefore readily available for further deconstruction.

We also see evidence of Jack Smith's Orientalism in some of the photos and movie stills shown in the documentary. I learned from the film that prior to getting into film making Smith was an accomplished photographer. In particular he was a pioneer in the field of color photography, playing an important role in helping turn it into an "art" form (previously color photos had mainly been considered tainted by commercialism and therefore degraded.) But Smith also worked in black-and-white, what was considered the "art" form of photography. He used to get people into his photo studio, where he stored all kinds of costumes, and then get them to dress up. It seems that the status of Smith's estate is still not resolved, and so it is difficult to find many examples of Smith's photography. Here is an interview with filmmaker Mary Jordan, which shows a few examples of Jack's stunning photography and provides some background about the film and the fact that Jordan had limited access to the Jack Smith archive.

Here's one of the photos shown in the film, which is from the only book of Jack Smith's photography to appear in print, The Beautiful Book. (It is, alas, out of print.) If you just look at the top half of the photo, with its unveiled women whose breasts are visible through the gauzy, veil material, you would think that it superficially resembles the kind of Orientalist French colonial photography that Malek Alloula so brilliantly analyzes in The Colonial Harem. But then you notice the male lying supinely on the floor below the women, his flaccid penis exposed, his eyebrows and eyelids made up in a manner similar to the women's. This sexual economy is therefore radically other the stereotypical Orientalist/colonial imagery. Not only is it different, it puts that stereotypical Orientalist imagery in the service of an imaginary that is radically and subversively queer, in a manner that remains (I would maintain) still explosive today.

I think this still from the documentary is also one of Smith's photos (and not from a film), an occasion where his subject was invited to dress up in costume (his studio seems to have been full of "Orientalist fancy" props). It resembles more closely than the previous photo the sort of photos we find in the Alloula book. But it is put to different purposes. This woman is not, I would argue, the object of a peeping tom, of the colonial gaze. She is not passively submitting to the gaze, and she seems to be in possession of her own sexuality.

This still may be from one of Smith's films. The woman at right may be a man in drag. It shows the importance of decadence and vivid color in Smith's imagery.

Here is a still of a belly dancer (I'm not sure whether this was from a film, or a photograph--I took photos from the film, and then sent the DVD back to Netflix, so I'm sometimes vague on details).

If you watch Smith's film Normal Love, however, you won't see anyone dressed up in any costume that is overtly Orientalist. But the feel of the film is very much in the vein of Smith's Orientalist fantasy, with its lavish and extravagant color (although one suspects that the version available on ubuweb is somewhat faded from the versions that Smith might have screened), its frolicking and dancing (all of it out-of-doors), its decadence, indolence and desultoriness, its casual and polymorphous, collective and frequently undecipherable sexuality. Smith used the term "moldy" and "swampy" to describe the sorts of scenes we see in Normal Love, what Moon views as the sort of "unconscious processes that have, over the past couple of decades, fueled innumerable small- and large-scale eruptions of queer rebellion against the institutions of the closet" (1989: 53-54; see also Johnson 2007: 8).

(I love the deadpan nature of the film title--this is so far from anything that one would conventionally term either/or normal/+love.)

The soundtrack for Normal Love, however, affirm's the films Orientalist bases. When Jack Smith presented his films, as far as I understand, he would play records on a turntable as the movie screened. (After Flaming Creatures, Smith produced no finished movies, in order that they could not be seized by the authorities, turned into product, or put in the service of a political agenda--all of which happened in the case of Flaming Creatures.) So the soundtrack is not exactly in "synch" with the action onscreen--or rather, it is situated in a kind of wondrous out-of-synchness. For example, when we first see the fearful Mongo figure in Normal Love, stalking one of the women, we hear music that is jumpy and scary. Then, we hear the lush and idyllic sounds of Rimsky-Korsakov's famous Scheherazade, and we next see Mongo pushing the woman on a swing, dressed all in pink. Selections from Scheherazade are heard throughout film, as well as three songs by Mohammed El-Bakkar and his Oriental Ensemble. I've been able to identify only one of the songs: "Ya Habibi," from the album Sultan of Baghdad (originally released in 1958). You can listen to a snippet by going here. (Of course you can hear the entire song if you watch the film -- which you must do. "Ya Habibi" starts roughly at minute 28.)

Muhammad El-Bakkar is somewhat notorious, in retrospect, for his quite risqué album covers. In particular, this one (released in 1958, on Audio Fidelity).

And this one, released in 1960, shortly after El-Bakkar's death, on Audio Fidelity.

It's rather remarkable that El-Bakkar's releases were rather mainstream recordings, marketed to the middle class. It appears that in the 1950s you could get away with showing lots of breast if, and only if, the subject were "exotic." (Check out this gallery of belly dance LP covers.) It's rather like the National Geographic and its nudes back in the day. Note that the Arab (closer to white) dancers have their nipples covered, whereas the more "primitive" black African does not. Moreover, the scene on the cover of the Music of the African Arab LP appears to be that of an African slave girl, up for auction.

The aim of these salacious covers was to sell the albums. And sell they did. According to Saki Knafo, Bakkar's first release, Port Said (which also had a salacious cover, featuring Turkish belly dancer Nejla Ates), may have sold a million copies. The liner notes on the albums, Knafo notes, were also pure Orientalist fantasy, with little reliable information about the music or the culture that produced them. But the music in fact was basically authentic, contemporary popular Arabic music, with the percussion perhaps a bit pumped up in volume. Belly dance music was quite popular at the time in the US, an outgrowth of the earlier interest in "exotica," as well as in Cuban music (cha cha cha, mambo), calypso, and so on. There were lots of clubs in the urban US featuring belly dancers and Middle Eastern music, and these were quite hip places for would-be sophisticated middle class patrons. (You can find lots of examples of El-Bakkar's music to listen to on youtube.)

El-Bakkar was Lebanese, and had worked as an actor and singer in the Egyptian film industry. He arrived in New York City in 1952, and passed away, at the age of 47 and at the height of his career in the US, in 1959. Again, the look of the album covers of his LP's obscures the fact that the music on the vinyl was in fact fairly conventional Arabic music--although somewhat edgy and exotic in the US context. And, on the basis of this photo of El-Bakkar's ensemble (he is front and center, holding an 'ud), his shows were not particularly "wild" either--although they probably featured a belly dancer.

I want to the point that the music Jack Smith used on Normal Love was "real" (more or less) Arabic music. Arabic music, moreover, that would have been familiar, and not entirely foreign, to much of his audience. It's no doubt rather hard to believe that white middle class Americans might have been "familiar" with Arabic music in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but I would argue that we have a distorted view of this period. (There is an excellent accounting of the popularity of belly dance music in Incredibly Strange Music, I think it's volume 1, by V. Vale.)

An essential source of Jack Smith's Orientalism is Maria Montez. Montez was born in the Dominican Republic, and achieved fame in Hollywood in the 1940s when she starred a series of films, usually with "exotic" themes, which were notable for being filmed in Technicolor. Montez was the object of Smith's admiration for a number of reasons. One of the chief reasons, as far as I can understand it, is that he found a level of truth and authenticity that emanated from her despite, or perhaps because, of her legendary "bad" acting. Smith also appreciated Montez for her magic, her beauty, her mystery. He writes in his essay, "The Perfect Film Appositeness of Maria Montez: "Wretch actress - pathetic as actress, why insist upon her being an actress - why limit her? Don't slander her beautiful womanliness that took joy in her own beauty and all beauty - or whatever in her that turned plaster cornball sets to beauty. Her eye saw not just beauty but incredible, delirious, drug-like hallucinatory beauty...To admit of Maria Montez validities would be to turn on to moldiness, Glamorous Rapture, schizophrenic delight, hopeless naivete, and glittering technicolored trash!

It would seem that viewing Montez's films is largely responsible for feeding Smith's brand of Orientalism. As he writes in his Montez essay, "You may not approve of the Orient but it's half of the world and it's where spaghetti came from." (You may think he's crazy, but pasta was introduced to Italy when the Arabs conquered Sicily, by the 9th century.)

Check out these stills from Maria Montez's 1944 film, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (which I have just seen for the first time). Montez plays the character of Amara, the daughter of Prince Cassim, who betrays the caliph, Hassan, and enables the Mongol invader Hulagu Khan to capture Baghdad. As a young girl, Amara pledged herself to Ali, the son of the caliph. Ali is presumed to have drowned shortly after his father was murdered due to Cassim's treachery, and when Amara grows up, she is promised to Hulagu by her father.

How glamorous she is. And steely eyed. The veil is not a sign of disempowerment here.

And gorgeous. Who cares if her acting is wooden?

Here is Amara with her servant, Jamiel, played by Turhan Bey. In some ways, Jamiel is the most audacious and brave of all the male characters in the film. Jamiel saves Ali Baba. He is sent on numerous dangerous missions. His talent with his knives is prodigious. It's Jamiel who hoists the flag of the victorious party of the caliph on top of the tallest tower at the end of the film. Turhan Bey, born in Austria to a Turkish diplomat and a Czech mother, appeared in a number of "exotic" roles in Hollywood during the fourties, often in the company of Maria Montez. It's quite interesting that he, the "exotic," the Arab, is in no way depicted in this film as deviant or fanatical or venal or corrupt or decadent...His "positive" role flies in the face of conventional critiques of "Orientalist" cinema. (How interesting, too, that this Hollywood film stars a Dominican and a Turk.)

Montez's costume, meant to represent thirteenth-century Baghdad, would not have been out of place at a Hollywood party at the time. It in no way marks her as "Other." Here, for instance, is a photo of Greta Garbo, from roughly the same time period. And check out the ravishing, be-turban'd Lana Turner, in a scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Here is Amara (Montez) with Ali Baba (John Hall). When the two meet again as adults they do not recognize each other. Ali believes that Amara betrayed him to Hulagu, when he is captured, but eventually they reconcile. John Hall's acting is as sub-par as Montez's, but he is much less charismatic as a person. Here, even with her face-covering, Montez, as usual, manages to look styling.

Another shot of Amara talking to Jamiel. Another stylish outfit for Montez.

I love this shot of Amara (Montez), her father Prince Cassim (Frank Puglia) in the center, and the Mongol Hulagu Khan, on the right. The colors in this scene are simply spectacular. Too bad I can't quite capture their full impact with my camera. You will have to watch the film.

And a final shot of the fabulous Maria Montez as Amara.

The film ends when Ali's men defeat those of Hulagu, take over Baghdad, and restore the caliphate. The last item is that Hulagu's flag must be taken down and the flag of the Abbasid caliphate put up in its place. It's Jamiel (as noted above) who accomplishes this. When the flag goes up and begins to fly, everyone cheers, and that's the end of the film.

The curious thing is that the flag shown is not that of the Abbasids. The Abbasid flag was pure black, not green, and it had no crescent and no "allahu akbar" written on it . The flag flown in the movie resembles the Saudi flag, which, however, has a sword on it rather than a crescent.

More curious, isn't it, that the characters in the film, with whom we have come to identify, cheer at the sight of a film inscribed with "allahu akbar," as they defeat the Mongol oppressors and usurpers? What kind of "Orientalism" is this, when we are urged to align ourselves with such a moment, with such a scene?

Overall, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is "Orientalist" in that it depicts the Arabs of the medieval as exotic. At the same time, the protagonists (Ali Baba and his men) are presented as romantic characters with whom we can identify, not as ontological Others. And yes, we see scenes of women in the harems, in "belly dance" costumes. But they are not presented as women who need to be liberated, and the Amara (Montez) character in particular is depicted as anything but coy and repressed.

I think Smith drew something additional from this film besides the inspiration provided by Montez, an interest in vivid Technicolors (which was reflected in his photography), and the images of the harem (which inform both Flaming Creatures and Normal Love). There is also gender play.

When the boy Ali escapes from Hulagu and his men, he comes upon a band of thieves, discovers the secret of their hiding place, and so says "Open sesame" and makes his way into their cave The thieves, led by Old Baba, return and find the boy. Abdallah, Old Baba's lieutenant, raises objections to his presence. Ali holds his own in a fight against Abdallah. Old Baba, impressed by Ali's courage, accepts him into the gang, adopts him as his son, and appoints the tough guy Abdallah as Ali's "nanny." When Old Baba dies, Ali Baba takes over leadership of the gang, but keeps 'Abdallah as his lieutenant. At the same time, it continues to be necessary for Abdallah to look after and protect Ali, thus reconfirming his position as both a tough guy and a "nanny."

Interestingly, 'Abdallah is played by the famous Hollywood character actor Andy Devine, who was notable for his wheezy voice and for playing the role of the side-kick who was usually reluctant to get involved in any violent action. Given that he had firmly established himself in such roles during the thirties, prior to the filming of Ali Baba, it must have been difficult for Jack Smith, as it is for us, not to think of Devine's well-established persona as he watched the film. That is, it's hard to take the Abdallah character entirely seriously as a daring and frightening thief, given that he is played by Andy Devine.

The scene where Ali and his men dressing up in disguise in order to enter Baghdad so that they can rescue Amara from the clutches of Hulagu, Abdallah tries on this costume, the dress of an aristocratic woman of Baghdad. After Ali tells Abdallah, good-naturedly, that the outfit looks ridiculous, chiefly because of his beard, 'Abdallah opts for another costume.

Is this one of the sources of Frank Smith's distinctive brand of drag in Flaming Creatures and other films, where men dress up in female costume and makeup, but many retain their facial hair?

Francis Francine (Frank di Giovanni) wears a similar tall hat in the opening scenes of Flaming Creatures. You can't see the full height of Francis' hat in this shot, but you will get the idea if/when you watch the film. (Francis Francine later became, like other Jack Smith regulars, a Warhol superstar, and appeared as the transvestite sheriff in Andy Warhol & Paul Morissey's 1968 film, Lonesome Cowboys.)

When Ali's his men penetrate Baghdad in disguise, in preparation for Ali Baba's entrance and the eventual assault on the Mongolian usurper Hulagu, they spread the word among the denizens of Baghdad, alerting them to be prepared to assist him once the attack is launched. In one scene, 'Abdullah (Andy Devine) is shown in disguise, telling the Baghdadis around him, "Today, Ali Baba comes...Today, Ali Baba comes, today," as the movie's stirring, Eastern-inflected orchestral score plays.

You will recall that this is the bit of the soundtrack from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves that opens Jack Smith's film, Flaming Creatures. (Yes, it is the words of...Andy Devine as Abdullah that open this groundbreaking underground film.) But what we see onscreen in Flaming Creatures is not Ali Baba and his men but some of Smith's fabulous creatures.

As Moon observes, Flaming Creatures was, in a sense, a kind of "Scheherazade party," referring to Diaghilev's revolutionary 1910 Ballet Russes production of Scheherazade, starring Nijinsky and Ida Rubenstein, featuring choreography from Fokine and set design and costume from Bakst. (Recall that we hear Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade throughout Normal Love.) As Peter Wollen shows in his essential article "Fashion/Orientalism/The Body" (New Formations 1, 1987), the Orientalism displayed in Diaghilev's Scheherazade part was a much wider phenomenon, one that had an enormous impact on both high art and popular culture during this period. It all started, I'm fairly certain, with the appearance of Arab dancers (mythologized as the character of Little Egypt) at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. By the first decade of the twentieth century, it was common practice for the more fashionable and sophisticated of the urban middle classes (and especially the women) to dress up in "Oriental" costume for evening soirées. (I write just a bit about this phenomenon in an earlier post; there are some good images there as well.) Moon shows how Smith subversively taps into the (ambiguous) queer tendencies of this trend.

Here's a characteristic still from Flaming Creatures, from the infamous "orgy" scene, which invokes the indolence and decadence of the Orientalist "harem" (gauzy dress, African slave/eunuch with an "Arab headdress," and so on). Except that, with all the extravagant disguises and the cross-dressing and the mingling and entangling of bodies in ways that are often difficult to apprehend and the casualness of the bodily exposure and the touching of sexual organs, one must agree with Moon (42) that erotic charges in a work like Flaming Creatures do not follow hard-wired gender lines, but move powerfully across circuits of gender and sexual identity in not altogether predictable fashions." The scenario is utterly queer, in the most subversive sense, scrambling notions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transvestite and hetero identities in ways that remain deeply provocative today.
I refer you to Moon and Johnson for much more thorough readings of Smith and Montez and Orientalism.

I want to conclude with a brief expression of dissent from what has by now become a convention of critical readings of Orientalist manifestations in Western culture. Starting from Said, the assumption of such critics is that the deployment of Oriental imagery is always oppressive and colonialist in its foundations and in its uses, always mobilized from a position of "flexible positional superiority," to use Said's phrase (Orientalism, p. 7). Orientalist "stereotypes" seem inevitably, in such uses, to have negative impacts upon actual Middle Easterners. No "fantasy" that deploys them would, it seems, be ethically possible.

An investigation of Smith and his sources, I think, opens up different possibilities. In a certain sense, Smith's mobilization of Orientalist imagery is so far removed from a "real" Arab world, given the layers of fantasy and the distance in time, as to be difficult to read in any easy way as having any implications for contemporary US politics regarding the Middle East.

But if we do want to think along those lines, are Smith's uses of the Arabic music of Bekkar in Normal Love "negative" in their implications? And what about his devotion to the films of Maria Montez? What about the fact that the viewer of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is urged to sympathize with the Arabs in their struggle against the Mongols? Are the women of these films presented as Other, in need of liberation (by us)? As objects of colonialist scopophilia and voyeurism? Perhaps not, given that Maria Montez does not play helpless characters in need of liberation or depict women who passively accept the gaze. In addition, her outfits are not, usually, entirely foreign and exotic and symptoms of the oppression and seclusion of Arab women.

And what about the fact that the Orientalist imagery was absolutely essential to what Smith considered the "baroque" character of his art (he describes it as such in the documentary) and that he deployed it in such fundamentally subversive ways?

I am generally in sympathy with the Orientalist critiques. But I think they are often fundamentally limited in their vision, and I am starting to get bored with them. I am more interested in exploring the ways in which the "East" contaminates the "West" and how it messes with its supposedly essential and superior character. Thus my interest in Jack Smith and kufiyas and "Islamic" rap and punk and the writings of Peter Lamborn Wilson.

To be continued.