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April 9, 2012  

“Everyone I listen to, fake patois. . .”

It may seem a little crazy to take Das Racist seriously. Their songs are deep in the realm of the ridiculous, but I can’t help but feel that “Combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell” is a commentary on how the compression of urban space is shaped by our relationship to consumption. Close-reading of their songs provide repeated evidence for the underlying tenor of seriousness in that absurdity—even if they’re being playful about it. As one of my favorite Das Racist songs says, “we’re not joking / just joking / we are joking / just joking / we’re not joking.” (For those who need help parsing, no, they are in fact, not joking). Take for instance Das Racist’s “Fake Patois” off of their free downloadable “mixtape” Shut Up, Dude! (2010). This satirical and intelligent exploration of the sounds of authenticity and their relationship to the reggae-hip hop dyad uses fake patois itself, working off an ironic tension that is as troubling as it is funny—and it’s also a banging song.

The “patois” used in American hip hop is clearly meant to be Jamaican-sounding, mixing elements of Jamaican creole language with a generous sprinkling of terms specific to Rastafarian English. The sounds of “fake patios” are a stylistic choice, reinforced through a dancehall reggae cadence of rapid-fire clipped words, rapped melodically. “Fake Patois” recalls the role of reggae in identifying an authentic origin for hip-hop. And certainly the connection cannot be denied. That Kool Herc brought Jamaican DJ culture with him to the Bronx is originary, and Run D.M.C brought it up in 1984’s “Roots, Rap, Reggae” (featuring Yellowman). If you want a more detailed mapping of a particular reggae meme’s journey through hip hop, check out Wayne Marshall’s fantastic essay on the subject, which demonstrates that even when contemporary artists think they are paying homage by imitating their rap fore-bearers they are also unknowingly paying homage to the influence of Jamaican music on American rap.

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Das Racist’s “Fake Patois” speaks with a deep awareness of this tradition in rapping, but what may on the surface seem like an indictment of the “fake” nature of the adopted style is actually an example of what George Lipsitz called “strategic anti-essentialism” in Dangerous Crossroads.  While critical of reckless appropriation of various ethnic musics by western whites, Lipstiz nevertheless sees this music as a way for individuals to express their identity through solidarity, sharing a respect for that music’s history as it is embedded in a framework of power. The song shows this respect through its knowledge, but also immediately calling out artists that have used the “fake patois,”—respected ones like KRS-One, but also “My man Snow,” a white Canadian performer of dancehall reggae. Snow is probably the quintessential example of the “fake patois,” as his 1993 break-out hit, “Informer” was for much of white America the first exposure to the sounds of dancehall reggae. Snow withstood attacks on his authenticity throughout his career and tried to shore it up through his incarceration narratives and associations with blacks of Caribbean descent.

Das Racist doesn’t limit their list to musicians, and their choices highlight the different ways patois is put to work. For example, they mention Miss Cleo of psychic phoneline fame, who claimed to be from Jamaica, but is an actress and playwright from Seattle. Through her patois the Miss Cleo character sold the authentic origins of her mystic powers. Das Racist seems to be suggesting that the use of the patois sound in songs is selling something as well, even as they use it to sell their own song.

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Similarly, the lyric, “Even Jim Carrey fuck with the patois,” makes reference to the actor’s parody of Snow’s “Informer.” While “Imposter,” is clearly meant to call out Snow’s lack of ‘blackness,’ Carrey’s mocking “Day-O” and his characterization of dancehall lyrics as “gibberish” also underlines a disdain for the music form itself. While potentially problematic, Snow’s performance is clearly born of an earnest appreciation of dancehall reggae. The parody, on the other hand, despite its comedic intent, does not have the performer’s genuine affect to mitigate its buffoonish mimicry.

"Even Jay-Z did a fake patois" by Flickr User NRK P3

Das Racist’s song also reveals a degree of comedic intent.  The use of autotune highlights the artificiality of the sung patois. Their straight delivery of ridiculous references (“Crunch like Nestle. . .Snipe like Wesley”) and their use of repetition to re-emphasize the absurdity of their performance is funny. They revel in the dumb fun of referencing Half-Baked—when Dave Chappelle, posing as a Jamaican, is asked what part of Jamaica he is from and he replies “right near the beach.” Das Racist’s demonstrated mix of absurdity and awareness destabilizes their position as a means to open up a field of possibilities. It does not set limits by associating authenticity with a singular origin, but rather to establish it as a connection with an ongoing tradition.

The song continues to question the stability of the authentic by calling out two singers with a “real” patois, Shabba Ranks and Cutty Ranks, for their past homophobic songs and comments. Das Racist sings, “Your M.O. Is ‘mo / Me say no thanks.” That “’mo” is short for “homo,” and that “no thanks”serves to distance them from the popular examples of male Jamaican artists whose homophobia has been linked with a hypermasculine ideal played out through violent fantasy—whether it’s Shabba’s defense of Buju Banton’s “Boom Bye Bye” or Cutty’s “Limb By Limb.” Their apologies attempted to connect their bias with their “culture,” trying to excuse their ideas in terms of how they authentically inform their problematic songs. In this lyric, Das Racist is implicitly rejecting homophobia as a litmus for authenticity, while playing with a homophobic term. In other words, for artists like Shabba and Cutty to defend homophobia in reference to a “realness” in their music is suggesting that bias against gays is a precondition for making “real” music.

For me, the broader question that emerges from this interrogation of “fake patois” is: to what degree can a variety of popular music sound choices (singing style, melodic influence, etc that are associated with a particular culture or nationality) be similarly destabilized or revealed as “fake”?  The Beatles sang like fake Americans, imitating their favorite (mostly black) artists, and Green Day have sounded like fake Brits, identifying with some authenticating element found in the sound of English punks. What ground does this destabilization open up? What possibilities for connection does it provide and what framework can we use to discuss it when the results seem problematic?

Lipsitz writes, “In its most utopian moments, popular culture offers a promise of reconciliation to groups divided by power, opportunity and experience,” and Das Racist certainly seems to be doing their best to critically fulfill that promise.  Their self-conscious undermining of their position and their willingness to simultaneously suggest that there may be something problematic with mimicking patois–while highlighting that so-called authentic identities are sutured together into a particular kind of sounded performance–articulates a bond through an identification, not a singular origin. In doing so, Das Racist suggest a network of identities bound by points of solidarity, making room for South Asia in the Black Atlantic by way of the Caribbean.

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Osvaldo Oyola is a regular contributor to Sounding Out! and ABD in English at Binghamton University.

February 27, 2012  

The Plasticity of Listening: Deafness and Sound Studies

“Listening Post” by Flickr User Theory

Editor’s Note: Steph Ceraso‘s post wraps up Sounding Out!’s three-part February forum on the intersection of deafness, Deaf Studies, and sound studies.  However, SO! would like this series to open an ongoing conversation. If  you would like to respond to these posts and/or pursue your own avenue of inquiry, please direct your pitches to jsa@soundingoutblog.com. We’d love to hear from you.  By the way, if you missed (or want to re-read) Liana Silva‘s “Listen to the Word: Deafness and Participation in Spiritual Community” click here and C.L. Cardinale‘s “my mother’s voice, my father’s eye, and my other body: the sound of deaf photographs” click here.

There is no difference in being deaf or hearing—one will always appreciate the subtleties of sound because of the ability to feel things in greater depth to what the ear alone will allow us to hear. -Evelyn Glennie from Shirley Salmon’s Hearing—Feeling—Playing: Music and Movement with Hard-of-Hearing and Deaf Children

I am not deaf, nor am I someone who is affiliated with the scholarly field of disability studies. However, I am someone who is very interested in expanding notions about what it means to listen. For my dissertation research, I have been working on developing a theory of what I call “multimodal listening.” Rather than understanding listening as something that is dependent upon the ears, “multimodal” listening refers to the various ways in which sound is felt throughout the body (via vibration), and to the multiple senses in addition to the auditory sense that are employed during a listening event.

Photo by Flickr User jimmiehomeschoolmom

Because of my interest in moving beyond ear-centric models of listening, I really appreciated Liana M. Silva’s recent post on the Deaf International Community Church (DICC). I was especially struck by how her experience as a hearing individual attending a Deaf church service suddenly defamiliarized her own relationship to sound and voice. The visual nature of this service, which was conducted through the use of American Sign Language (ASL), prompted her to consider listening practices that do not rely on a fully functioning auditory system.

I wonder, though, if swapping the ears for the eyes is still too limiting—too dependent on a single mode. For instance, if a non-signing deaf person was attending a service similar to the one Silva described, visual listening (in a discursive sense) would not be a possibility. My use of “deaf” (with a small “d”) is a strategic choice here. The descriptor “Deaf” (with a capital “D”), as Silva uses it in her discussion of the church, is almost always employed to refer to the Deaf Community as a cultural and linguistic entity, whereas “deaf” refers to an audiological deficiency. Since the use of ASL is most often associated with individuals in the Deaf community, those who do not sign would most likely avoid churches like the DICC. However, depending on the acoustics and the material features of the church, a non-signing deaf person might be able to experience the sound of music through vibration in a more full-bodied kind of listening practice.

Photo by Flickr User curran.kelleher

Listening via vibration is something that Cara Cardinale Fidler writes about in her poetic account of growing up with deaf parents. She remembers,

In high school, I went to a dance at the Fremont School for the Deaf where my parents were chaperones. It was easy to find the dance; you could hear the throbbing bass from across campus.  It was so loud, it hurt. When I walked in, I wasn’t surprised to see a wall full of uncomfortably dressed teenagers holding balloons to feel the sound and bobbing their heads in tempo.

In this passage, Cardinale Fidler amplifies the tactile experience of sound—the ability of all bodies to listen-feel through the force of vibration. Sometimes we feel sound in our guts or throats or teeth, but this is not usually an aspect of listening that most people with a working auditory system meditate on, or try to refine in any way.

I think it is important to acknowledge, as Silva and Cardinale Fidler do by example, that the labels “deaf” and “hearing” are not as clear-cut as they may seem. There is a whole range of auditory function among people who are given these labels, or who fit somewhere between them. Sound scholars might think of deafness, then, not as a uniform lack, but as a range of listening practices in which sensory modes other than the ears are employed. Some people rely more on one mode than others, and some might develop synesthetic listening practices.

Evelyn Glennie, playing the marimba faster than the camera can cope with, Photo by Flickr User Bankside

For instance, in the documentary Touch the Sound, percussionist Evelyn Glennie uses the convergence of sound, sight, and touch in her own listening training. We need to start thinking about listening less in terms of binaries (e.g. you either have the capacity to listen or you do not), and more in terms of possibilities. The fact that bodies can be retrained to experience listening via multiple modes highlights the extremely flexible, plastic nature of listening habits and practices. In considering this diverse range of listening possibilities, I wonder how we might design more listening experiences that are truly multimodal—that require or at least present the possibility of listening with more than one sensory mode. How might we expand the listening capacities of all bodies?

Deaf space and architecture is one area that is beginning to take up such questions. Based on the concept of universal design, which emphasizes the production of products and environments that are accessible to both so-called “disabled” and “able-bodied” individuals, deaf architecture considers the ways in which deaf listening bodies move through and communicate within space. These spaces seem particularly well-designed for visual and tactile listening situations. For example, according to blogger Scott Rains, some key principles of deaf architecture include: the use of partial walls or open concept spaces, no sharp angles and curved corners to increase visual range, no sources of glaring light that might impede vision, and wooden floors for more pronounced vibration. Bodies, spatial and material configurations, and the senses were all taken into account in this kind of design. The visual and tactile elements in these spaces accommodate particular bodies and communication practices, but there would be no need for such spaces without the existence of those particular bodies and communication practices. The design of deaf architecture is based on the reciprocal relationship between cultural and physiological needs, which in turn broadens the listening possibilities of the inhabitants of deaf spaces.

The Myer Music bowl, where the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra accompanies Evelyn Glennie, photo by Flickr User learza.

Deaf studies and deaf scholars have much to contribute to sound studies. Expanding ideas about what it means to listen, coming up with new ways to extend the capacities of all listening bodies, and developing more dynamic and complex theories of listening will require sound studies scholars to think about listening not only in terms of the ears, but in terms of bodies, affects, behaviors, design, space, and aesthetics. In this sense, deafness may be one of the most significant and generative areas of research in the continuing development of sound and listening studies.

Conversely, sound studies can offer deaf studies fresh ways to think about how sound shapes/enhances/disrupts deaf cultural practices. As we have seen from the examples above, sound plays a powerful and sometimes complicated role in deaf contexts. Using sound studies approaches and methodologies, then, could help to augment the ways in which sound figures into deaf culture–a subject that has received very little attention thus far. Collaborations between these seemingly contradictory areas of study have the potential to enliven and enrich each other in mutually beneficial ways. Sound studies and deaf studies have a lot to say to each other. They just need to start listening.

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Steph Ceraso is a 4th year Ph.D. student in English (Cultural/ Critical Studies) at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in rhetoric and composition. Her primary research areas include sound and listening, digital media, and affect. Ceraso is currently writing a dissertation that attempts to revise and expand conventional notions of listening, which tend to emphasize the ears while ignoring the rest of the body. She is most interested in understanding how more fully embodied modes of listening might deepen our knowledge of multimodal engagement and production. Ceraso is also a 2011-12 HASTAC [Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory] Scholar and a DM@P[Digital Media at Pitt] Fellow. She regularly blogs for HASTAC.

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