A Fond Farewell to the 43rd President of the United States
This is truth and reconciliation day I got up to watch the inauguration at eight This morning and felt the tension of eight years of anxious Worry evaporate from my neural matrix storage Eight years of wasted wars, eight years of official Statements distorting the truth, and hastily-awarded Contracts, and secret compacts, and danger-courting And total incompetence, coupled with amazing sources Of confidence, such as the conservative base supporting This is a day for healing and faith-restoring Obama even commissioned an award-winning scholar A poet of great worth, to perform that ancient service Of composing a piece of occasional verse To celebrate his inauguration with ornate words Now there’s an honest day’s work But this? I can’t even say his name – it hurts! I guess now I know my place on this earth Not the herald of great heroes who deserve our respect No, more like the chronicler of regret The reminder of those we’d prefer to forget Is there no alcoholic remedy to erase Recovered alcoholics from your memory banks? No cure for bitterness in a time for giving thanks? Guilty tyrant, thy offense is rank! It stinks to high heaven! And yet this blank Expression on your face betrays no hint of angst Placid incomprehension instead of dripping fangs Or at least contrition for the dead civilian ranks It takes a big man to admit mistakes Well, he still stands on midget legs But at least we saw growth in all fifty states When they picked his replacement on election day Obama’s already been embraced by every nation His inauguration is finished, and the last administration Has nothing left for it but victim impact statements
And rest assured, there’s plenty of eloquent critics Ready and willing to give them hell every minute And never let them settle into a quiet Respectable retirement; certain individuals In the legal profession believe there’s sufficient evidence To see them imprisoned in the federal penal system For deliberate breeches of the Geneva Convention Not to even mention the fact that their people listened In on civilians without judicially seeking permission But hey, that’s strictly a legal decision Nothing to do with me; my specialty is lyricism I would’ve cheered when the impeachment was issued Sure, but I prefer not to give these people attention Unless that attention will get them neatly arrested Or at least convince the electorate to completely reject them I mean, they certainly don’t need me to accept them Besides, I’d rather keep it effervescent The USA has an incredible president A sensible man, conscientious and intelligent A person with principles and effortless eloquence So why am I wasting my intricate syllables Protesting the criminal offenses of a pathetic Ex-president, a Crawford, Texas resident Instead of just adding him to a list of irrelevant Idiots, and forgetting him, period?
Why? Because my benevolent ex-professor requested it Better yet, my friend requested it And when I’m ‘friend requested’ I tend to accept it Even when it leads to endless unsolicited messages Such as the ones you’re presently getting peppered with Not every job is empty of unpleasantness Someone’s job is to collect effluence From the sewer system and test it for potential infections In order to prevent the spread of pestilence My job is to catalogue the thick-headedness Of the former Commander-in-Chief of speech impediments And despite his recent attempts to claim the best intentions My ambition is to ensure that his name is never mentioned Again, at least not in the same breath as Anything inspiring, hopeful, or progressive Only as a cautionary tale, a haunting presence For future generations learning important lessons I can’t imagine a more impressive example Of how oppression leads directly to rebellion Or how to weaken a nation’s defenses And subjugate their safety to political interests And sell out the public good to private business I don’t know how he gets 20% in the census Except to say that some people really are senseless That’s why I called him a ‘symptom’
But I won’t call him evil; even though He caused the unnecessary deaths of a lot of people And his powers of perception were often feeble (Which isn’t a problem unless you happen to be in control Of launching rockets and watching the economy grow) I simply see it as the unchecked growth of the common ego Bad decisions? We’ve all made them before Sometimes responsibilities get laid at your door And there’s even justifications for the waging of war In certain cases, as a last resort When your safety is at stake, and for staying the course And making tough decisions and taking calculated risks Even if your kids may end up paying for it What’s the metaphor I’m searching for? When it comes to personal shortcomings, intelligence Deficits, hubris, etc, he wasn’t just dirt poor He was the perfect storm
And now, with the storm clouds lifted After being pushed to the outer limits by a White House Filled with cowards and nitwits pretending to represent The national interest while devouring endless resources And burning thousands of bridges; after listening To the countless insipid pronouncements issuing From beneath those beady eyes and prominent brow ridges After cringing as they trotted out false witnesses In support of ever more twisted selfishness Their military prowess directed at houses and villages With rushing limbic systems defending their callousness Driven by apocalyptic visions that sound religious When really they were just out for riches Now, with the storm clouds lifted With the hurricane passed and the base of power shifted We have to get up off the ground and shake out the splinters And let go of the anger and the feeling of helplessness It’s time to finally get down to business And deal with this world as it is, without bitterness
This isn’t to say that it wasn’t outrageous We may indeed be at the end of a dark age In a time of salvation, or just an about-face But I’m done with foul language, no sour grapes Let them take him away to pay for his proud ways Or just leave him alone to live out his days Either way, he’s nothing without his job title Except a mascot, a neo-con pop idol As for the rest of us, let’s just feel the buzz Like this is Endor after the Death Star self-destructs Into clouds of dust; give the cowboy his open range Today my attention is focused on hope and change On the present path, and on the future instead of the past Let’s change what we can, and accept what we can’t And direct our energy into the next president’s tasks
For the past year or so I've been working with a company called Flocabulary based in New York, a very creative group of people who produce educational hip-hop content for schools. I've written songs for their teaching projects, and more recently recorded an episode of their weekly hip-hop newscast: "The Week in Rap". If you want to check out Flocabulary, you can find them online at www.flocabulary.com.
New year's resolutions are the personal equivalent of financial projections and business plans for companies, forever subject to the unpredictable crashes and booms of outrageous fortune. I will not succumb to anything as delusional as a resolution, but I will project my year as clearly as I can see it from here, and perhaps the illusion of design will adapt it to the projection, or at least provide some entertainment value in retrospect.
Why would I burden you with a year in preview? Because I would like to solicit input on new projects I am undertaking, and solicit gigs from those of you who are interested in my projects, be they Chaucerian, Orwellian, or Darwinian.
January I will spend here in Vancouver working on my new show, "The Rap Guide to Evolution", which was commissioned recently by the Bioscience Department of the University of Birmingham. One of the professors there, Dr. Mark Pallen (a bacterial geneticist), asked me if I would be willing to "do for Darwin what I did for Chaucer" and I responded that it would be an honour.
So in February I will travel to England for a ten day tour of Darwin-related events and venues organized by Dr. Pallen and his team. February marks the Charles Darwin Bicentennial and universities and natural history museums around the world will be celebrating the patron saint of biology. The show is currently undergoing the murky embryological process by which compositions are formed, so if any of you have any thoughts on the subject of evolution, I'm all ears (for the next three weeks or so). I'm currently trying to make sense of it from as many angles as possible.
March and April will consist of school touring in the USA, mostly with the Rap Canterbury Tales, but also with the North American debut of the Rap Guide at the Fresno Rogue Festival. If any of you know of a college, high school, or any venue at all where I could spin a yarn or two in the States in March or April, my RCT program information is online, just click here. Oh yes, and in late April I will travel to Hong Kong for the Hong Kong Microfest (a theatre festival), my first trip to the far East!
May and early June will about one thing and one thing only: treeplanting. Nuff said.
Then in June I will return to the UK to reunite with Dizraeli for another season of performing "The Rebel Cell" (think 8-Mile meets 1984). A production company from London, SPL Productions, is taking on the show for 2009, re-working it for a larger audience, and orchestrating a tour of UK festivals, a return to the Edinburgh Fringe in August, and finally a West End run at a theatre in London in September/October. The details have yet to be worked out, but the tour is confirmed and we are very excited to be working with these guys to resurrect our Orwellian hip-hop parable.
Since nothing is finalized for the post-August portion of 2009 I will stop there for now, and reveal more only as it is revealed to me.
And what else is new? Aaron Nazrul's song "When the Night" will be featured on the new Beverly Hills 90210 airing on CBS network TV on January 13th. He and the band are currently on tour in Central America, and have been creating video blogs along the way, so if you're curious to see what's up with them check the Myspace page.
Looking forward to hopefully seeing many of you during my travels in 2009, and a happy and prosperous new year to you all,
Aaron Nazrul just released his first video, "When the Night" from the album Butterfly Man, which is out on my Lit Fuse Records label. This is the quintessential East Vancouver block party! Check out the Youtube link:
Friends – how strongly can I possibly urge you to become engaged citizens and strategic voters? I find the current antipathy towards strategic voting completely baffling. Human beings do everything strategically, if it carries risk. Try crossing the street non-strategically, or taking something out of the oven non-strategically, or navigating non-strategically to get to a destination when you’re running late. Work with the world as it is, while continuing to envision the world as it could be.
In two weeks Canada has a chance to strategically say goodbye to Stephen “Neo-con” Harper, and yet the polls say he is heading for another win. Remember that feeling of revulsion and confusion after the 2004 US elections when Bush was re-elected and the entire world had a collective gag reflex like WTF!?! I’m dreading that feeling on October 15th, but I don’t think it’s too late. Stéphane Dion is a very courageous and principled and intelligent politician, and yet Canadians seems to be turning their backs on him, why? Because he looks like a wimp? Are we that shallow and masochistic? I very badly want to have Dion as our next Prime Minister in two weeks, and for those of you who are quibbling between the three parties of the left, you must realize that there are only two choices for Prime Minister. That said, Stéphane Dion has clearly come out in support of electoral reform. That means if he wins, we could soon have a much more fairly representative system for electing MPs in this heavily left-leaning country with its heavily right-leaning current leadership.
And if you are in the Lower Mainland, I can tell you right now that Vancouver Quadra (pretty much everything West of Granville) faces a close race between the Liberal candidate, my mom, and the Conservative candidate, who is a UBC law professor currently salivating at the prospect of putting 14-year-olds in jail for life. If you have free time, my mom’s campaign needs volunteers, people to distribute flyers and knock on doors and make phone calls, and especially people to volunteer on Election Day. If you want to help, please go to her website and follow the links to volunteer: http://www.joycemurray.ca . She won the bi-election in March by only 151 votes, so here is a perfect example of where your individual effort will make the difference between one party and another taking the prize.
Finally, if you haven’t heard it yet, I recently wrote and recorded a rap song about the election, called “Bounce”, which I invite you to listen to now. If nothing else, it’s definitely good for a laugh. Here’s the link to download it: http://www.babasword.com/audio/bounce/Bounce.mp3
Back from Holland, back from Ireland, back from Scotland, back in England with the rain on the cobblestones outside the (free Wi-Fi) pub window, and in a few days back to Canada to count my lucky stars.
How many stars? My stars, so many stars! In the end "The Rebel Cell" was reviewed seven times at the Edinburgh Fringe by various magazines, newspapers, and websites, which resulted in six four-star reviews and one five-star review, as well as two award nominations, one of which we won! The Rebel Cell won a "Spirit of the Fringe Award" for being one of the most ground-breaking shows at the Fringe in 2008, and, as the award presenter put it, for "bridging the rap generation gap". If you want to read up on the critical effusion, the reviews are all posted on my website under the "Rebel Cell" link.
Another interesting development is that we've caught the attention of Andrew Potter, one of the co-authors of "The Rebel Sell", a book of cultural criticism which argues that rebellion (rather than conformity) is one of the main driving forces of modern capitalism. If you're interested in the book, I highly recommend it. Click here to check it out. This book was definitely one of our inspirations when writing "The Rebel Cell", and I contacted Andrew Potter earlier this year to inform him of our plans. Well, in one of his recent blog entries for Maclean's Magazine Online he gave us a shout out, including the disclaimer: "I should emphasize that, apart from being extremely flattered, neither I nor Joe Heath had anything to do with the production — the success is Baba’s and Baba’s alone." The only comment on his blog entry so far is an indignant one from Dizraeli, claiming his due credit as a co-writer of the show. Click here to see it. Although we are flattered by the attention, Dizraeli and I would like to emphasize that neither of us had anything to do with the writing of "The Rebel Sell" (which has been translated into three languages so far) — the success of the book is Andrew Potter's and Andrew Potter's alone.
Other interesting people whose attention we caught in Edinburgh were a film producer intent on making a feature-length movie of "The Rebel Cell", and a theatre producer intent on developing it into a full production in the West End of London next year. But those are only discussions at the moment, and I am not one to pin my hopes on mere words; hence, more of that anon.
And what's next? Well, in a few days I'm heading back to Vancouver for my brother's wedding (he met his beautiful bride at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer), and then in October I'll be back to England again for the Canterbury Festival and the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. And then... USA here I come.
I found out just a few days ago that my application for a performer's visa to the USA has been accepted, so I am once again taking "The Rap Canterbury Tales" on the college campus touring circuit State-side in November and in early 2009. If any of you know of a college, high school, club, community centre, theatre, or other venue in the US that might be interested, you know where to find me (referrals make the world go round).
Greetings from the Edinburgh Fringe! As of today we have performed the Rebel Cell 19 times and we have just 8 shows left before it all packs up. I had planned to write earlier, but you know what Robbie Burns says about the best laid plans (they gang aft agley). Our plans for "The Rebel Cell" on the other hand have been coming to glorious fruition, with strong sales (only one total sell-out crowd so far though) and amazing reviews. So far we haven't gotten a review with less than four stars out of five and we are officially nominated for a Fringe First Award from the Scotsman, one of the major festival awards here for best new writing.
But instead of just trumpeting, I thought I'd turn my critical eye to the reviews being written and the degree to which they “got it”, and if so, managed to communicate it. Check out the highs and lows:
Highlight: "Like listening to a cross between Shakespeare and Mike Skinner...a joyful experience"
Lowlight: Hints at a mysterious alternate version of the review that's written all in rhyme, which we may never get to read! Hard to criticize this one; it's the best of the bunch.
Highlight: “High-octane lyrical content...a cerebral, savvy production that explores our modern social contract with vivacity and zeal.”
Lowlight: It’s also a very cerebral review, which can be a tough one to quote from and use as a selling point when flyering, like: “hey, come see our show; it’s really...cerebral!” Overall this was probably the review that best matched the tone of the show itself though.
Highlight: “[A] brilliant dramatic final coup-de-theatre...it is clear that these performers are masters of their art.”
Lowlight: Mixing up a peace sign with a “V for Victory sign” which led to confusion, and the awkward rhyming lines in the last paragraph of the review, such as: “They compel, they impel, they use words well and they can spell.” We had to be careful not to quote any of these rhymes on our flyers, or else we would have had to accompany each flyer with a disclaimer, like “yeah, the show is in rhyme, but not like that...”
Highlight: “These two astounding lyricists transcend common perceptions of what hip-hop can achieve...Powerfully intelligent and awe-inspiringly eloquent, these guys are the saviors of hip-hop.”
Lowlight: It sounds pretty over-the-top, dubious even, but I have to admit I love the enthusiasm, and all of our flyers now say “Awe-inspiringly eloquent” on them, a very quotable accolade.
Lowlight: Grossly over-simplifies the premise of the show, but not by summarizing or being concise, just by stating baldly that the premise of the show is simple, which it most certainly is not. Also, the only remotely quotable phrase “extraordinary freestyle poetry” isn’t really usable, because the whole script is memorized as opposed to improvised, so it categorically isn’t freestyle. A review full of unfocussed and often mistaken criticism, which nonetheless gave us four stars, so who are we to complain?
Highlight: “The Rebel Cell is a rare and inventive experiment...Both performers contribute great energy and panache...ingenious rhymes and brilliantly subtle delivery”
Lowlight: This is the only review so far to divide up our talents rather than discussing us as a harmonious whole. The “ingenious” quote actually applies only to me, and appears right after the observation that Dizraeli is a much better actor than I am. What is she trying to do, start a fight?
The Guardian: Feature Article (no stars) View Online
Highlight: “Thrilling rap drama”
Lowlight: It actually calls the show a “Scattershot and occasionally thrilling rap drama” but that’s the beauty of strategic quotation. They’ve recently passed a new law here in Scotland that the quotations used for publicity have to be in keeping with the intended meaning of the review, so it is now illegal to take a review like this: "A tedious and clichéd piece of theatre that is played with incredible awkwardness by its cast. If it were well acted, it might have had a chance, but as it stands, this was a turkey.” And then put on your flyers: “Incredible!...Well acted!” What do you think, am I in danger of breaking the law?
Otherwise, we have just been performing the show every day, with additional spoken word gigs and hip-hop gigs at after-hours venues on an almost-daily basis. We have literally been averaging about twelve to fifteen gigs a week for the past two and half weeks, handing out flyers every day and meeting so many people and going to some really amazing shows, comedy, theatre, performances of every kind, as well as staying up until the wee hours most nights, ‘cause that’s what you do here. There is barely a week left to go now and of course I don’t want it to end, although I am completely exhausted. After this we will make our way to Ireland for the Electric Picnic Festival, and from there, well, more places too numerous to mention. The next time I write, it will be an Edinburgh retrospective, and I hope to have exciting news to share. Now to try to generate some...
If you want to set up a gig near you, either of the Rebel Cell or the Rap Canterbury Tales or the live hip-hop experience that is Mud Sun, just ask.
The new music video from the Rebel Cell is on youtube now: View Online
All the best from the greatest festival in the world.
