Saw Mos Def at the Bowl last weekend, and reminded me of Brady's Biggie mention in his last post. Cops is trippin', everyone is trippin'. Mos opened up with a live band (some good cats), and a rambling, syncopated cover of "Stakes is High" that resonated up through the bowl like whispered prophecy. In the middle of the set he got on the piano and rocked a freestyle that culminated in him shouting "Who shot my mans, Suge?" repeating it over and over until the crowd was feelin' it.
So much going on. Just got back from Dallas where stakes is high and you just have to pretend that you're in a foreign country to get through it. However, I thought it would be only fitting to bring along the new Cormac McCarthy novel No Country for Old Men. It's a beautiful, dark little piece of work that polishes pieces of the author's subconscious with his sandpapery border ethos. It feels a bit like Blood Meridian on a noirish Ellroy vibe, but with a belief in some kind of humanity, some kind of hope--especially in its apparent absence--perhaps making you hungry to eat the kind of meals McCarthy describes. Nobody makes you want to eat a biscuit and drink coffee like McCarthy. Perhaps the line that rings in your ears throughout the whole book in various forms is: "I won't tell you you can save yourself because you can't". Ok, so there's alot more to discuss in this book...would love ot hear from anyone who is reading it.
Not to mention re-reading "Leaves of Grass" while I was in Maui...more to come.
2 comments:
As usual, great post Johnee. A couple quick followups:
Unfort have never seen Mos Def live, but I'm near to feeling like I'm over it. His recent output hasn't moved me (granted, I didn't give the recent disc that many spins), but--just within the past year or so--I feel like I'm not connecting with the music, that it's not speaking to me in the way it did.
I keep coming back to Mark Anthony Neal, b/c it does feel like _he_ is speaking to me--for me, really. He wrote at the end of his review of BE: "Common's Like Water for Chocolate was the product of a beautiful moment that gave us Mos Def's Black on Both Sides, Badu's Mama's Gun and D'Angelo's Voodoo and that moment is just gone—no need to reminisce."
Yet I can't resist, I do find myself reminscing about that moment, the last time that the music felt like my music; when Mos was speaking to me with his classic opener:
"We *are* Hip-Hop
Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop
So Hip-Hop is goin where we goin
So the next time you ask yourself where Hip-Hop is goin
ask yourself.. where am I goin? How am I doin?"
Now I fear that hip hop is becoming that giant living in the hillside.
(How insightful was MAN to recognize Fela as a guiding light in that moment--Fear Not of Man, Time Travellin', even D'Angelo shouting out to Africa. Man, I need to pick up his recently published book. Skimmed the last essay last time I was in Modern Times--MAN takes on Ms Fat Booty from his stance as a male feminist hip hop fan.)
Elaborate on the Dallas line.
Unfort, incredibly, never read any Cormac McCarthy--nor "Leaves of Grass"! I'm putting the latter & Blood Meridian near the front of the queue.
My parents live down in the borderlands, la frontera. But so little of that bloody history--the stuff that I imagine McCarthy deals with--is accessible or visible if you were to visit. For most--my parents, us when when we visit them--it's a sprawl of highways, suburban style subdivision, chain restaurants, big box retail.
Had some other vague thoughts on this--how the fascinating and terrible histories of the places where we visit and reside are largely inaccessible--following our visit to another borderland, Ukraine.
One more followup. Been keeping track of Jeff Chang's blog via its RSS feed, thanks to rojo.com. Which is how I learned that Chang was at that Mos Def show as well. Read his entry here: "Mos Def Calls Out Suge Knight In LA"
Leafed through Chang's opus, Can't Stop Won't Stop over the weekend again...
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