The Death of Soul Music

Saying that you're 'a material girl in a material world' is a sign of resignation. Why? Because the world isn't necessarily materialist. There are other options as to how we lead our lives.

Equally money measures how succesful music is. The value in music is not what it does, what is shared through sublime melodies that carry some messages more powerful than any words ever could, but how many units it has sold. That is the 'objective' measurement that we equip ourselves with, in order to measure whether there is a point in even venturing into releasing your music into the general public.

Even worse is when music starts revolving around itself in this respect. When music is not about the message or the meaning or the experience that someone wants to share, but about this evaluation of its own success - in terms of sales and status - things have gone too far.

Soul music came from spirituals, and turned into gospel. It was all highly spiritual. When gospel diversified into also being soul music the spiritual quality of the gospel was applied to all sides of life; sharing different stories and different aspects of life but with the same emphasis and care that was put into the 'spiritual' music. In other words: Soul was not about God, but it was highly spiritual all the same.

So when The-Dream (an artist that I find catchy and moving beyond the point that I'm comfortable with) fills almost three entire albums with stories about how many millions he sold, and how instead of morals he now has money, I can conclude that soul music - in the sense that deserves to be called soulful - has died. I'm thinking of course about a man who sees no problem in cheating on his girl. His sollution is simply to buy a bag for 5000 dollars in order to redeem himself. And this apparently works every time. I give you the death of soul music. I give you The Makeup Bag:

Theology / Music / Cooking

I thought it was about time I made a playlist referring to my blog, sharing some perspectives on the love of food, theology, wine, expressed through music. Here it is:

STEVIE WONDER: RAIN DOWN YOUR LOVE

MADONNA: LIKE A PRAYER

WHITNEY HOUSTON: MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE

LAURYN HILL: TO ZION

SAM SPARRO: BLACK & GOLD

THE NIGHTCRAWLERS: PUSH THE FEELING ON

CRYSTAL WATERS: GYPSY WOMAN

KIRK FRANKLIN: COUL'VE BEEN

R KELLY: RELIGIOUS

THE-DREAM: SWEAT IT OUT

ERNESTO: LOVE COMES ROUND

THE-DREAM: KELLY'S 12 PLAY

LAURYN HILL: THE PASSION

KIRK FRANKLIN: HE WILL SUPPLY

STEVIE WONDER: JESUS CHILDREN OF AMERICA

STEVIE WONDER: JOY INSIDE MY TEARS

LAURYN HILL: MR INTENTIONAL

ERNESTO: SAVE ME

Open with Spotify

Naturally Islam is perceived as The Threat

This sentence could (slightly readjusted) mean totally different things: "Islam is perceived as The Threat, naturally", or "Islam is naturally perceived as The Threat" would mean entirely different things than what I want to address here. I've recently been presenting a paper at a conference on Muslims and Political Participations. Alongside with this, I'm studying Comparative European Politics. I'd like to share a few points that I see emerging from this.

THE STRUGGLE OF EUROPE

Europe is struggeling. And not in a new way. It struggles, in the way it always has, with its identity. What is the European Identity? The EU largely emerges from a post-WWII context, where the primary objective was to stop a third world war from tearing Europe (and the rest of the world) to shreds. As such, the policies introduced were largely soaked in fears of any one "power"-factor overcoming all else. Some (i.e. Hallstein) have argued that Europe is not a (new) invention, but a rediscovery. According to Nugent however, this overstates the way Europe has ever collaborated, and exaggerates the peacefulness of European history (Nugent 2006:12). So the struggle of Europe should not be mistaken for a struggle for Europe, i.e. fighting back an enemy at the gates - but rather one of identity, constantly asking; how much of a European unity (and hence indentity) is there/can there really be?

INSIDE OR OUTSIDE

So what does it mean that Islam is naturally percieved in a certain way. This is to do where Europe is right now. Arguably, Europe in itself is a highly heterogenous territory, where various regions are in conflict with each other, with the nation-state they're located within, or with the EU as a project. These conflicts have curious effects, such as Catalonia in Spain having a direct micro-diplomacy connection to Brussels, and are not only represented through the national voice of Spain (see Karlsson 2006). So within Europe there are plenty of examples of "cultures" that will never be recognized - and refuses to recognize themselves - as being just an aspect of the overall European Identity, but recognized as cultures in their own right. As these cultures are so clearly connected to a territory that has always been percieved to be inside of the European map, no concern is expressed about the worries of Catalan's or Basqian citizens, not being fully "European".

ISLAM, NATURALLY

With Islam another thing is currently going on. The EU is expanding, as we all know. There is a question of what should be thought of as Europe. Never mind, that there is a long-standing presens of muslims within the European countries already (just think of Greece or Cuprys), or former Jugoslavia, but what really gets people to raise their eyebrows is what is on the edge of the EU's current territory. Here Turkey is a perfect example. And curious and multifaceted. Turkey has for a long time advocated a secular state, even though it counts in some historical sense as a "muslim country".

Today Turkey is having talks with the EU about membership. And there is a clear case of moving-the-goalposts here. Every time Turkey is just about to comply with the demands made by the EU, they add new criteria. The mechanism at work here is a case of being sensitive to anything that seems to be out of the norm.

The EU could/ought to be equally nervous about Catalonia, but since it is placed within Spain there's no need to get the EU's panties in a bundle over what is potentially disturbing the desired European unity. My argument here is simply that being overly sensitive to any nation's defining features just because they are currently the neighbor to the EU-project is ... seems little short of plain ridiculous.

To clarify this argument and put it differently: It is no coincidence that Islam is perceived as The Threat, (a) when we are unable to deal with any threats because they are considered domestic, and (b) when the imaginary map of Europe today is drawn right at the intersection between something that feels familiar (the EU) and something that is not as familiar.

It will always be natural for the EU (or any other territorially bound project) to have an outer perimeter. We should, however, not take the fact that the EU has not yet expanded to include all of the world as an inclination for the current border to be "natural" in any sense. As soon as we stop seing the border as natural, and shift to a perspective where we see the outer European border as something evolving and liquid, we need not find a threat-based logic that explains why the borders have not expanded further. YET.

References:

Karlsson, Ingmar. (2006). Regionernas Europa. Stockholm: SNS.

Nugent, Neill. (2006). The Government and Politics of the European Union. 6th ed. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

A Postmodern Sermon

Today it's sunday. So what better than to share a bloggalicious sermon, in a postmodern information-highway-type spirit. Today's sermon is about postmodernity, knowledge and experience. Many people ask what postmodernity actually is. Though I'm a fully fledged postmodernist, I'd like to highlight it at its worst here. The worst thing it can be is trivial. When the old tired "all is relative" in fact means "nothing is new". What postmodernity need is to take the conflict of interpretations seriously. It must allow us new grips on things. It must allow to speak with a new language, that allows new and different experiences to be taken seriously. And allow us to hold these experiences to be a genuine form of knowledge.

We often have a romantic image of Samer (Swedish) or indigenous peoples in general. We attribute "contact with the earth" and a "deeper understanding" of things, to them. We acknowledge their right to be themselves, and understand them to be something (or someones) that is qualitatively (at least to some degree) incompatible with our way of seeing, understanding and leading consumerist, career-centered lives.

This is a curious position. It's interesting because it's not that many steps away from admiting to ourselves that there may be something genuinely human that is incompatible with our way of life. It is also interesting because we acknowledge that their type of knowledge has merits, and is of another type than the knowledge produced (for the most part) in artificial, controlled environments in laboratories in the western world.

I've experienced one too many times (and I do this on occasion myself as well): People appologise for their own experiences, as were they not knowledge enough. In fact, most of us have started to doubt our own experiences as knowledge, when it does not match up perfectly to the standard measures of natural science, and how we are expected to word our understanding of the world with the guidance of this perspective. We make excuses for ourselves and say things like "sorry, I know this is a little out there..." and "we'll you can of course say what you will about this but...". This occurs as soon as our experience proves richer than laboratory wisdom.

My question is simply this: Should we really applogise because we add another dimension to experience and knowledge? Shouldn't we just be happy, astound and amazed by that?

Pinku Vääty: Swedenshire

Rakkaus 08! Pinku Vääty returns with some really deep techno in Swedenshire, with some crunchy but beautiful chords, layered with vinyl cracklings that would make any trip hoper from back in the day blush, and all over a steady grooving beat.

This is followed by Tora Vinter's marvellous remix of Swedenshire. This is yet deeper, with some submarine sounds from deep down in the abyss, topped off with some serious acid action.

The last of the three is Popkonto, which could maybe be described as somewhat of a quirky homage to Milton Jackson's Cycles. It's uplifting, steady going, but has also got that special Pinku Vääty-something!

Enjoy!

Jonatan & Rakkaus

Introducing: PSAUL

My good friend and fellow Gothenburg-Gospel always-rocking-your-socks-off-singer Paul Mac Innes has gone and done it again! The new single, is released 7th of November, but before this he's offering up his single for free download to anyone who wants it!

The project is called Psaul, and it's Paul Mac Innes, together with Gothenburgian Stray, who is soon coming up on the forthcoming Ernesto remix-EP on Rakkaus Records. Check these fine gentlemen out, and listen to the blissful 80ies Terrance Trent D'arby-esque Catch U!

Get it here, now!

A Vision.

I got a vision today. Or a new perspective came to me, is another way of putting it if you want to sound less like a mystic. But I don't mind the term mystic, so let's just say I had a vision.

Travelling inwards, somewhere in the centre of my soul, I felt an empty core (like a seed within the centre of a fruit, if you will) where God could come in. At the same time as this was not-me, it was also me. It didn't mean that I am God. It meant that something that was truly me, however, originated or emanated from outside of me. Something that completes me, but that is not a stable part that is only me. Let me try to explain this is a parable of scientific terms.

At a sub-atomic level, things don't follow the same rules of physics. For instance electrons can move in-synch with other electrons that are kilometers away (meaning billions and billions other electrons in between). This is by no means impossible - as it has been observed by scientists - but it's something that we haven't been able to grasp with the help of a formula (that can also predict similar future events).

This parable hit me as I was experiencing this me-not-me-conjunction, and posed the question: What if the two electrons are not synchronized - what if they are the same electron?

Such a perspective (some call it vision) would explain why two electrons manage to do something that is (in physical and scientific terms) impossible or at the very least unexplainable. Such a perspective would radically counter a definition of "being", that defines something as unique because it is bound to be in one place at one time, and cannot coexist with itself in various places simultaneously. For purely practical reasons, science cannot accept such a definition as something "being one" can also "be two" or present in more than one place at the same time. However, this is a precondition for being able to word things in a scientific language. Put differently: Science cannot admit such a position on matter, be it true or not, as it breaks with one of the elementary ideas of physics: that things are one, then interconnected.

The idea that there is indeed something omnipresent, is an idea much alive in other contexts of this world. Theology, and all forms of belief - systematic, or practical everyday-life - are good examples of this. It is a basic tenet that breaks with scientific language. The idea is that God (in whatever religious context you're in) works in this way; flowing in and out of matter. To co-exist with natural science, we have chosen to view the whole deal as God flowing however he/she wants, but in and out of singular atomic and sub-atomic units. We have chosen to understand that God can defy the ideas of humans, instead of rethinking the possibility that a formula that seems unfit to explain this, may also be unfit to explain the depth of the physics of the universe.

As we have run up against one logical contradiction (this is just one of many on the sub-atomic level, as it has been recognized that this needs a totally new set of laws of physics) it poses the question: What if it's not only God that can flow freely in and out of singular sub-atomic units? What if these units in themselves can be at several places at a time, and therefor we are - in some profound sense - all part of each other, as the stuff that we're built from is existing at the same time with kilometers inbetween?

This was my vision; that we are not omnipotent, but can still be deeply interconnected with each other, because buildingblocks within me, is not only within me, but also within something else simultaneously. We are not God, but maybe we're created more in his/her image than we've imagined?