Massive Attack: Gaza/Palestinians/Syria

I know, I'm not up to date at all. Catching up on items that I saved and didn't post about because I spent 7 weeks or so following the awful events in Gaza and not doing much else.

The great band Massive Attack however did do something.

First, when they headlined at the Longitude Festival late July, they sent messages to their audience about Gaza. 

For more, read this article in The Independent.

Second, also in late July (28), two members of Massive Attack, Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall, toured the Al Naqab Center at Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon. The center offers remedial classes, a meeting place for active youth and other social activities, primarily  for Palestinians recently arrived from Syria. On the 29th, they staged a concert to benefit the Al Naqab Center, organized by the Hoping Foundation. The money also went to fund building a new public library in a camp in the north of Lebanon and to supporting the ambulance service in Gaza. Read more here, also from The Independent.

Massive Attack at Burj al-Barajneh, wearing kufiya scarves. 

Robert Del Naja is in front, Grant Marshall in back

Here's a short AFP report on the concert in Lebanon, and here is some amateur footage.

Finally, here's a post I did back in 2010 on Massive Attack and Palestine.

Massive Attack and the Palestine Connection (of course)

Massive Attack's latest (fifth) album, Heligoland, is out now. I am listening to it right now, because it is now available to listen to in its entirety, thanks to NPR. (This almost, but does not quite, make up for the execrable attack on All Things Considered last week on the late Howard Zinn. Almost.)

Go here for NPR's take on Heligoland. To listen:

I've only listened to a few tracks, so can't give an informed opinion, except to say that so far I like it. I've loved Massive Attack ever since the first one, Blue Lines, back in 1991.

Long after I had become an avid fan, I learned of another reason to admire Massive Attack: for their politics. I noted back in 2007 that the band had played benefits for the Hoping Foundation, which supports projects for children in Palestinian refugee camps.

I want to quote now from a longish article about Massive Attack that was published in New Statesman back in 2007 ("Two-man Army," by Alice O'Keeffe, Feb. 5), that tells us a bit more about the group's notions about Palestine, about the Iraq war, and about the potentiality for development of a Middle Eastern trend in the British music scene. NPR won't be talking about this aspect of Massive Attack. (In the photo above, which is "sampled" from Massive Attack's blog, Grant (Daddy G) Marshall is at left, Robert (3D) Del Naja at right.)

It quickly becomes evident that [Robert] Del Naja is unfashionably political, and not in the woolly way we have come to expect from our pop stars. "When you are travelling around the world on tour, you see all these places that you hear about on the news and you start to actually feel some connection with them," he says. "We've been to Israel, to Bethlehem twice, and to Lebanon, performing in Baalbek, which was heavily bombed in the last [Israeli] attacks. You see these places and you start to feel a connection, and to feel a bit more responsible for what happens there. I wanted to actually do something."

Thus it is that Massive Attack will be playing three benefit concerts this month in Birmingham and London for the HOPING (Hope and Optimism for Palestinians in the Next Generation) Foundation, a charity set up by Jemima Khan, Bella Freud and the academic Karma Nabulsi to support grass-roots organisations in the Palestinian refugee camps across the Middle East. Primal Scream played a similar concert in 2004 (it was Primal Scream's lead singer, Bobby Gillespie, who introduced Massive Attack to Nabulsi), but Del Naja insists this is not simply a case of "sleb" guilt. "It is easy to get cynical about this kind of thing. As much as an event like Live 8 was monumental, it left me cold. It does raise awareness, but then you ask, 'Were any of those ambitions really met? Which targets have been reached?' This charity is a small group of people, with specific aims. You can understand that; you know where you are."

For more on some of the Hoping Foundation benefits, which have involved the likes of Elton John, Jade Jagger, Kate Moss, Hugh Grant, Chrissie Hynde, Nick Cave...go here. I've said this before, but here goes again: our US celebrities are lame on the question of Palestine compared to the Brit stars. Or is it that we have no Karma Nabulsi to mobilize them?

Del Naja has occasionally been sneered at by less earnest music-industry types for his interest in political issues - an indication, perhaps, of how disengaged pop music has become. On the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion, he and Damon Albarn tried to organise a group of similarly prominent musicians into an anti-war campaign, only to be greeted, he says, with a silence bordering on hostility. "We approached people who we knew, people who were our peers or who we respected. But no one was interested. The only ones who got behind it with us were [the British Asian rap group] Fundamental. The majority didn't even respond, and those who did asked us if we supported Saddam Hussein's regime.

"Everyone is happy to get behind a cause like Make Poverty History, or fair-trade and environment issues. But when it comes to politics, they are reluctant."

Comment: props, once again, to Damon Albarn--who, as far as I can tell, is not often credited for being so politicized. The heavy involvement he has had in promoting Arab music in England, through his Honest Jons label, is certainly connected to his politicization around Middle East issues. As for Fun'Da'Mental, well, if you read this blog, you know about Fun'Da'Mental.

I wonder if Asian and Middle Eastern cultures might begin to permeate popular music, in the same way as Massive Attack and their ilk absorbed African-Caribbean influences during the 1990s. "It's interesting - we have done some exciting work with Asian and Arab artists, but I think there is still an unbridgeable gap there in terms of what happens in clubs and bars," he says. "When I was a kid, the Asians got more passive abuse than any other race, just because people are ignorant - they don't understand the culture. And of course, integration is difficult in the current political climate."

Again, Del Naja is pretty clear-eyed on the problems of racism toward Asians and Middle Easterners in England. We can only hope that the work of artists like U-Cef and Natacha Atlas are helping to shift things, at least a bit.

(Wish I knew which Arab artists Massive has worked with.)

I seem to remember that Massive Attack had made some statement in the wake of Israel's assault on Gaza. If they did, I cannot put my hands on it. But check out the group's blog. Almost every one of the 'relevant links' is about Gaza. (And people think I'm obsessed!)

More thoughts on a Palestine Benefit Album

For some reason, my post on a Palestine Benefit Album got a lot of comments, perhaps because Laurie cross-posted in on Zinjabeelah. I also sent queries out to a few friends, and so I've received several suggestions and ideas, which I want to comment on.

First, David reminded me of a song that must be included, and so this is #7 on the imaginary benefit album:

7. Freeman, "P-I (Palestine-Israel)" Mars Eyes (2001).


Freeman, a Frenchman of Algerian heritage, is a member of IAM, one of France's premier hip-hop groups. His role in IAM, where he goes by the name Malek Sultan, is that of dancer, but he is also a great rapper, as is evidenced in his solo album Mars Eyes. "P-I" in fact is not a "soliditary" song but a call for peace between the two sides. Here's the refrain:

Que cet air puisse tenir l’éternité
Que cette air t’parle l’Ange, j’parle de paix
Patries Immortelles, Palestine Israël
T’es l’nombril du monde que la paix s’fonde

There have been many more suggestions, which I discuss below, but I don't think there are any more real candidates. Remember, what I'm looking for are songs by major artists (whose names would "sell" the album) that explicitly deal with Palestine. What I've learned, however, is that there are more musicians who have "come out" for Palestine than I had suspected.

Islamoyankee suggests The Cure's "Killing An Arab" (Boys Don't Cry, 1980). This is an intriguing suggestion, especially since when the single first came out in 1978, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination made a semi-successful effort to keep it from being played on the radio (read Robert Christgau's account of the controversy here). The song in no way advocates "killing an Arab" but rather is drawn from Albert Camus's The Stranger, where the narrator Meursault kills an Algerian Arab for no good reason. I find the novel problematic, and the fact that the casual murder of an Arab is the centerpiece of what became a canonical existentialist text rather nauseating, but I still like the song, especially the "Oriental" surf guitar. Check out this live video on Youtube. Wikipedia reports that The Cure revived the song in 2005, performing at several European festivals but with the lyrics changed to "Kissing an Arab." At the Royal Albert on April 1, 2006, they changed the lyrics to "Killing Another," and added an additional new opening verse. If I were going to expand the imaginary benefit album to include Middle-East themed "peace" material, "Kissing an Arab" might do.

Others mentioned songs by prominent artists that give "shout outs" to Palestine. There's rap artists Mos Def & Talib Kweli's 12", "What's Beef," which includes the lines,

Beef is what George Bush would do in a fight...Beef is oil prices and geopolitics, Beef is Iraq, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip.

Ani DiFranco, on her poem set to music, "Self Evident," inspired by 9/11 (So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter, 2002): "So here's a toast to all the folks who live in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq." djleftover suggests John Trudell, "Rich Man's War" (on AKA Grafitti Man, 1992) gives a shout out to Palestine (in the context of mentioning Harlem, Belfast, El Salvador, Pine Ridge). Thanks to commiecurmudgeon, who reminds us about MIA's PLO referencing on "Sunshowers" (Arular, 2005):

Quit bending all my fingo/Quit beating me like you're Ringo/You wanna go?/You wanna winna war?/Like P.L.O., I don't surrendo/I've got the bombs to make you blow.

(MIA's dad was/is a Tamil Tiger, reportedly trained by the PLO in Lebanon.) Commiecurmudgeon also suggests Natacha Atlas's song "Bastet," from Gedida (1999). I think her "Laysh Nata'rak (Why Are We Fighting)" (Diaspora, 1997) is a better choice, which calls for peace between Arabs and Jews:

Why are we fighting/When we're all together?.../Between me and you there is a long history...Let's return to peace/Let's make peace, we are brothers

(my translation from Arabic).

I just found out an album of the sort I am looking for has already been released, in France (thanks, Moustafa!), called Il y a un Pays... Palestine (Tactikollectif, 2005).
You can read about it here, if you read French). It's a double CD, with great European (mostly French) and Arab (mostly Palestinian) groups. Among the notable European acts: the great Manu Chao (who played at Bonnaroo this year), Fermin Muguruza, the Basque nationalist singer, the (mostly) Beur hip-hop band Zebda, the "raggasalsa" band Sergent Garcia, the French rock band Noir Désir. Notable Palestinian artists include rap groups DAM and MWR (both of whose members are Palestinian citizens of Israel), Palestinian-Israeli singer Rim Banna, and the fabulous Sabreen.

Although no comparable compilation has been issued in England, a number of prominent English bands have come out for Palestinians, doing benefit performances for the Hoping (Hope and Optimism for Palestinians In the Next Generation) Foundation, which funds proects for children in Palestinian refugee camps. Most active has been Massive Attack, but other participants include Basement Jaxx, Nick Cave, Steva Mason (Beta Band), Spiritualized, Primal Scream (read Primal Scream's account of their reasons for participating here), Lulu (!), Bryan Adams, Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), Mick Jones (ex-The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite), and Shane Magowan (ex-The Pogues). This is a true honor role of British bands.

Shame on us that there is nothing comparable going on in the US!