Guilt by association

I've played English country dance music for years.  It's a lovely repertoire, and playing for dances creates a wonderful synergy of sound and movement.  My previous band, Crooked Sixpence, featured a fiddler who is an exceptionally talented musician.  She hails from England, and is married to an Irishman from west Cork, so she is deeply familiar with the music of both the UK and Ireland.

One day, the dance caller we worked with sent us the set list for the next gig, and on it was a tune called "Lilliburlero."  I played through it, and it's a sprightly little thing, but I didn't know it by that name; I'd heard it as the tune to a bawdy seventeenth-century song called "My Thing is My Own."  I'll leave to your imagination what the "thing" was the singer is laying claim to, but... it's meant to be sung by a woman, and here's one verse as a clue:

A master musician came with intent
To give me a lesson on my instrument;
I thanked him for nothing, and bid him be gone,
For my little fiddle must not be played on.

The tune, I found out, is often attributed to Henry Purcell, but apparently predates him by at least three decades.  (The link is to a lovely performance of the song by Ann and Nancy Wilson, of Heart fame, if you want to hear the whole thing.)

So I was surprised when Kathy, our fiddler, told the caller, "I'm not playing that."

Upon inquiry, it turned out that "Lilliburlero" also goes to a different set of words, lyrics that were written during the invasion of Ireland by the troops of William of Orange and which are meant to ridicule Irish language, culture, and religion.  Read through the lens of history, you can easily see why they're deeply offensive, and remain so to many people 350 years later -- to the point that just playing the tune can raise hackles, even though it existed as a dance tune, and then a (non-bigoted) bawdy song long before the ugly anti-Irish lyrics became attached to it.

Songs and tunes can be powerfully evocative, both positively and negatively.  In fact, the topic comes up because a few days ago was the birthday of late nineteenth, early twentieth century British composer and musician Hubert Parry, most famous for writing a gorgeous musical setting of William Blake's poem "Jerusalem."  I heard a performance of it on the satellite radio classical station on my way home from my volunteer gig (sorting books for the Friends of the Library used book sale), and later that day saw it posted more than once on social media:

The commenters on the posts seemed evenly split between "I love that piece" and "I hate it."  This by itself isn't that unusual, considering how variable musical tastes are, but it got interesting when I read why some of the latter disliked the piece so intensely.  I kind of figured it out when one person wrote, "Yes!  England's second national anthem!" and another responded, "Goddammit no it isn't, it's jingoistic trash, and people need to STOP SAYING THAT."

Parry wrote the music at the height of the British Empire and English colonialism, and for many, it has become associated with that spirit -- "the sun never sets on the Empire," "the White Man's Burden," and the exploitation of indigenous people and their land to serve the power-hungry and the bigoted.  What's interesting is that Blake's poem was written in 1808, and if you read the lyrics, it's not clear -- to me, at least -- that it's at all celebratory of any desire for the English to run out and conquer everything and everyone:

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold,
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold,
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant land.

To my reading, the lyrics are not saying that the English are The Chosen People 2.0, but that they have a long way to go before God would find the place worthy of building a new Jerusalem there.  After all, it's pretty clear that Blake's answer to the four questions in the first two stanzas was a resounding "no."

William Blake, Ancient of Days (1794) [Image is in the Public Domain]

And it bears mention that Blake himself was more of a mystic than a politician.  In fact, he was arrested (later acquitted) of uttering "treasonous and seditious statements against the king," and was notable for being anti-war and critical of the damaging effects of the Industrial Revolution on both the natural environment and public health.  (Thus the line about England's "dark Satanic mills.")  I find a lot of his writing kind of obscure at times, and certainly evocative -- but hardly jingoistic, like much of the work of Rudyard Kipling.

What seems to have happened here is guilt by association.  A mystical poem is set to music, and then becomes famous during a time when that pro-Empire sentiment was at its height.  It became used as a recessional on Saint George's Day.  It's a staple of the choral repertoire, meant to stir the hearts of loyal Brits the world over.  The 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, about the 1924 Olympic Games, got its title from the lyrics, and the song is played at the end of the film.  In fact, it was played at the opening of the London 2012 Summer Olympics -- as well as at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.  In 2019, it was voted "Britain's favorite hymn," although if you read the lyrics, it's debatable whether it even qualifies as a hymn in the traditional sense.

Music has a tremendous capacity to evoke emotion, and when lyrics are attached, even more so.  This causes the music itself to gain an additional layer of meaning that persists even when it's performed as an instrumental.  The interplay between music, words, meaning, and emotional response is complex and highly individual -- as I described in a post a few months ago, creativity is a dialogue, and each person brings to the experience their own background, opinions, worldviews, and tastes.  So it probably shouldn't surprise anyone that the same piece of music can set the heart pounding in one person, anger the absolute hell out of another, and leave a third unmoved either way.

Like with other matters of the creative relationship, chacun à son goût -- and the checkered history of some pieces of music make the matter even more complicated.

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The road to hell

The transition of a culture into fascism is seldom sudden.  It's a slow slide, urged forward by fear and xenophobia, and often catalyzed by the appearance of a charismatic figure who spouts jingoistic talking points, pounding the table and telling everyone that he has the answers, that all will be well if they just vote for him.

And one of the first things that often happens is that his followers, buoyed up by the heady air of finally having a leader who is saying all of the things they've felt for years, begin to shout down the opposition.  Inevitably violence occurs, and a protestor at a rally is beaten up for having the wrong views.  The charismatic leader doesn't chide his followers for their actions; oh, no.   He urges his followers on, suggests that the victim deserved the beating -- which of course fosters further violence and more fear on the part of anyone courageous enough to dissent.

James Luther Adams was one of those victims, and was lucky to get away as more-or-less unscathed as he did:

I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.  Was he going to beat me up because of what I had been saying?...  He shouted at me... "You damn fool, don’t you know that here today you keep your mouth shut or you’ll get your head bashed in... You know what I have done.  I’ve saved you from getting beaten up.  They were not going to continue arguing with you.  You were going to be lying flat on the pavement."

And throughout it all, the moderate rationalists look at each other in amazement, saying, "How can this happen?"  Some deride the leader as a fool, a buffoon with no experience in government and even less credibility.  As if that has any effect on people who are reacting through fear and the sudden thrilling awareness that the leader has just given you carte blanche to beat the shit out of anyone who says the wrong thing.

The fear is fed by a knowledge of there being terrible societal inequities, and the sense that the problems can only be righted by a complete overturning of government.  In the words of an ordinary citizen, "Of course all the little people who had small savings were wiped out.  But the big factories and banking houses and multimillionaires didn’t seem to be affected at all.  They went right on piling up their millions.  Those big holdings were protected somehow from loss.  But the mass of the people were completely broke.  And we asked ourselves, 'How can that happen?'...  But after that, even those people who used to save didn’t trust money anymore, or the government.  We decided to have a high time whenever we had any spare money, which wasn’t often. "

Small wonder that such conditions foster distrust, suspicion, and anger.  And then, along comes someone who says he can fix all that:

We deceive ourselves if we believe that the people want to be governed by majorities.  No, you don't know the people.  This people doesn't want to lose itself in “majorities.”  It doesn't want to be involved in great plans.  It wants a leadership in which it can believe, nothing more.

And still the moderates stand around, shaking their heads in dismay, and doing little else.

Anyone who disagrees is ridiculed or denounced.  Critics are publicly humiliated and made to apologize for their audacity, and sued for defamation if they refuse.

Then the propaganda machine goes into overdrive convincing people that the entire country is going to hell if the election goes the other way:

This man who, because of his extraordinary knowledge and ability in all areas, was able to rise from nothing to his present position as the leader... despite tremendous resistance, is perhaps the only one who has the ability to master the enormous tasks, rescuing the nation at the eleventh hour from its almost hopeless situation.  Led by fate, he followed his path. It would not be the first time in history that [we were] rescued by the right man in our greatest need.

And of course, the final step is turning that anger and fear against a common enemy, someone who can act as a scapegoat.  After all, there has to be a means for directing the rage; the revolution can't be too complete, or it will destroy the very structure to which the leaders are trying to ascend.  So who's to blame?

The poor and powerless, of course.

The more economic difficulties increase, the more immigration will be seen as a burden... In this struggle... there’s only a clear either/or.  Any half measure leads to one’s own destruction.  The world [of these people] must be destroyed if humanity wants to live; there is no other choice than to fight a pitiless battle against [them] in every form.

Amazingly, people fall for it.  Fact-checking, pointing out the lies and half-truths, doesn't alter the trajectory by one millimeter.  In a direct quote that you would think would be enough by itself to wake people up: "Credibility doesn't matter.  The winner will not be asked whether he told the truth."

But still his poll numbers climb, until what looked like a ridiculous bid for attention by a narcissistic troll has become a threat to the founding principles of the entire country.

And at some point, we look around us in horror, and say, "How did we get here?"  There was no single turning point, no sudden overthrow -- just a gentle, smooth slide into being governed by the worst people in the world.

[image courtesy of photograph Robert F. W. Whitlock and the Wikimedia Commons]

Oh, but wait.  All of the quotes and references above were taken directly from primary documents regarding the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in pre-World War II Germany.

Who did you think I was talking about?

Pride in place

Although it's pretty obvious that patriotism can be taken too far, I'm all for making the country you live in the best it can be, and then expressing your pride in it.  There are a lot of things I like about being American, for example; and although there are times I wish I lived elsewhere (mostly after listening to Ann Coulter), all in all I'm pretty happy about being a citizen of the United States.

Of course, there's a couple of ways this perfectly natural predilection for your own culture can go wrong.  One is that it can blind you to its faults.  Consider the column this week from Fox News contributor Dr. Keith Ablow, who said that what the world needs is an American jihad:

An American jihad would turn back and topple the terrible self-loathing in our citizens set in motion by President Obama, beginning with his ‘apology tour’ — a psychological plague... We would not only allow, but teach, Americans — including American children — to internalize and project their justifiable feelings of pride in our democracy as superior to all other forms of government. In grade schools we would teach the truth that the founding of our nation and its survival in the face of communism and fascism weren’t just good luck or good planning, but preordained by our commitment to the truth about the essential nature of man. And we would embrace the certain knowledge that history will eventually spread our values all over the globe. 

We the People of the United States are good and we are right. And we need the spirit of an American jihad to properly invite, intensify and focus our intentions to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution here at home, and to seek to spread its principles abroad.

So yeah.  I can see no way that that could go wrong.

But there's a second, and more insidious, way that unbridled patriotism can go awry, and that's when you come to the conclusion that anything that's good must have come from your culture.  And as if to bookend Dr. Ablow's jingoistic screed, this week we had some baffling observations from the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.

Modi addressed a gathering of doctors and other professionals in Mumbai last Saturday, and presented his opinion that advances in our understanding of genetics and medicine were not due to research done primarily in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe; the West was merely rediscovering what the Indians have known all along:

We can feel proud of what our country achieved in medical science at one point of time.  We all read about Karna in the Mahabharata. If we think a little more, we realise that the Mahabharata says Karna was not born from his mother’s womb.  This means that genetic science was present at that time.  That is why Karna could be born outside his mother’s womb.

But that is far and away not the most bizarre thing that Modi said.  As regards to astronomy, Modi made the following observation:

There must be many areas in which our ancestors made big contributions.  Some of these are well recognized.  If we talk about space science, our ancestors had, at some point, displayed great strengths in space science.  What people like Aryabhata had said centuries ago is being recognized by science today.  What I mean to say is that we are a country which had these capabilities.  We need to regain these.

And lest you think he was just talking about astronomical observations, you should be aware that Modi believes that airplanes were invented by the god Rama.

My favorite comment, though, was about a different god:

We worship Lord Ganesha.  There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.

That's right, folks; the leader of one of the most populous nations on Earth thinks that an elephant-headed mythological figure is evidence that his distant ancestors had discovered how to do plastic surgery.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It's all very well to be proud of your culture, nation, religion, ethnicity, or whatever.  But being willfully blind to the accomplishments of others is hardly a virtue.  "I'm happy I'm an American" can all too easily morph into "I'm happy I'm not from Ruritania," and that into "If anything great is out there, it must be from the United States and not from Ruritania."

Which is not only bigoted, it's also demonstrably false.