Township jive

So, Bush is pledging for money to aid Africa. For now, he's promising $100 million in the next 15 months to counter terrorism, later $15 billion over five years to fight HIV/AIDS (despite all the moral baggage that the money comes with, read the news). Though it's been a very long time (in deaths and orphans, not months) after HIV/AIDS researchers and activists asked the most powerful and affluent nation in the world to give enough money put a dent in the fight against AIDS in Africa. Help those who need it most (like the 12.1 million children in Africa whose parents have died of AIDS, many of whom inherited HIV), down with isolationism. But then we'll have to quit being imperialists too. Let's see if it happens. \nThe point is, the leaders in the States have long been Eurocentric, and have cast Africa aside as a forgotten continent. Aside from the millions who have died due to unnecessary disease, war and famine, some unaided or struck down by their own corrupt governments, even in modern times (MUGABE @#%^!!), affluent Americans sit by and watch and laugh at jokes about the little Ethiopian boy on "South Park." Avoiding this unabashed ignorance from our political leaders (Oh thank you, Bill Frist, yet again for your honor and unrestrained moralist wisdom), we, of the 20-something persuasion, often also do nothing and look to our substitute heroes for leadership and hope in times of peril. Musicians. Yup, rockstars. Some have not let us down (enter band names with leftist lyrics here). But you're not seeing the truth. \nYou need to hear Afropop. Be it us stupid Americans who group the music from hundreds of different cultures and many different countries under one title, but yeah we did. (Who's the fucking dark continent? Let's let ignorance and tendencies decide that.) So as not to get too confusing, let's just focus on South Africa. \nIn the short form, South Africans have suffered immensely at the hands of their former government (apartheid, death, violence, necklacing, passbooks, forced Afrikaans learning, children killed by cops, etc...) that still has residual effects even though the African National Congress (Mandela's crowd) has taken over. It takes a while to forget 46 years of governmentally sponsored racism, classism and violence. \nDespite or because of all of the tragedies the people have suffered -- this music is so human it's unbelievable. It's polyrhythmic -- like the many thoughts that chase through your head at once. It's about life, it's about dancing. It doesn't matter that you'll never understand the languages, they're more musical than English anyway, you know what they're singing without knowing. It's RESISTANCE, it's fever, fire, beauty, pain, sadness, all of the basic things that make you remember, every once in a while, when you turn the TV off, that there's a reason to living. There's a purpose to you waking up every morning. Ladysmith Black Mambazo never fails to sound like a succession of beautiful hymns, no matter the group's subject matter or if you're religious or not. Miriam Makeba, the already-accepted-by-America musical, political, beauty, while more watered down than the stuff you have to search for, still sings the most beautiful, depression-inducing story in the Hugh Masekela-written "Soweto Blues." It's educational too. \nIf you find the right album to palpate (check out Shanachie's Indestructible Beat of Soweto) you may, embarrassingly enough, admit that you're not the same as before you heard it. At least you won't think of your new Radiohead or Moby or Metallica album in the same way. And these musicians have done it in the face of all adversity, singing songs that were political simply because of the language they were sung in and how they were put across. These musicians didn't lose album sales when they became political enemies either -- they could be exiled, self for safety or otherwise. \nThat's real rock and roll. \nWhen American music of the '80s began to lean toward electronics, coolness factor instead of communication, we began to lose the point. Aside from roots music, be it grassroots, DIY garage bands to indie rock that's more about the message than the haircut to hip hop that began with frustration and a story to get out, the majority of the filler in our chain record stores today is becoming distant and irrelevant. The point is that with music you can say what you want without the cumbersome dullness of words. Without their limitations. When you start to remove yourself from the music, putting as many machines between yourself and the songs as you can, you lose the only thing that will make you a musician. The one thing all people crave -- Intimacy.