Arizona Goddam

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Nina Simone wrote a song entitled "Mississippi Goddam" that listed southern states whose racism and violence had riled up the high priestess-

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Simone described the situation on the ground-

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

But her "show tune" wasn't just a rip on the most egregious bigots, but an indictment of moderates as well-

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

Until finally, Simone makes a simple demand-

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality

I was reminded of "Mississippi Goddam" this week as the news was replete with reports of the new immigration law passed and signed in Arizona. And while "Mississippi Goddamn" was not Nina's best song, or even her best take on civil rights and racism (see "I hold no grudge," "Go Limp," "Brown Baby," or "To be young, gifted, and black."), the song provides an interesting polemic through which to see the present flare-up over immigration policy.

First, some background. The contemporary immigration era began with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which replaced strict quotas on all non-European immigrants with a policy that allowed greater numbers of immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to legally immigrate to the US. The 1965 law paralleled other reforms, on civil rights, voting rights, housing, resulting from the pressure placed on the federal government by the Civil Rights movement to supersede state laws in many southern states officially sanctioning racist behavior and discrimination. The next significant law, the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, provided a carrot and stick approach to immigration policy. Offering amnesty to undocumented residents of the US, it also laid out a policy of strict enforcement that had been bubbling up since the Nixon Administration. IRCA sped up the process of militarization along the US-Mexico border (described in Timothy Dunn's book of the same name), and set the legal stage for the deportation of large numbers of Latinos during the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The next legal step, the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, came in the midst of the debate over welfare reform and the clamor over California's Proposition 187 (hence the "immigrant responsibility" part). IIRIRA beefed up the border security trend, while further criminalizing the act of immigrating to the US without proper papers. It also included a now infamous section, 287(g), which authorized local police to be trained in immigration law enforcement. Since 1996, except for parts of the PATROIT Act, no new federal laws have been passed dealing with immigration policy. Not for trying, for in 2006-7 Congress attempted to but did not pass any of several proposed laws.

Which brings me to Arizona- or rather Arizona is the tip of an iceberg of a growing trend, beginning perhaps with Proposition 187 in California (1994), where states pass laws that address immigration by denying immigrants access to driver's licenses, social services, etc. Many commentators have remarked that states are merely legislating policies in the absence of federal leadership. Obviously, this is true, 14 years is a long time to go without changes in immigration law, especially in the midst of the largest wave of immigration since the "Great Wave" of European immigration from 1880-1920. But the bigger question is what kind of federal immigration law would we see if it occurred- would it provide amnesty and an eased path to citizenship, mirroring some provisions of IRCA? Or would it continue to ratchet up the criminalization of undocumented immigration and harsh enforcement strategies of IRCA and IIRIRA?

What the state laws provide are models, particularly since the bills are often written by the same anti-immigrant groups, of the second option above. In effect, these laws at the state level are attempting to preclude movement toward amnesty, while establishing an already functioning structure of immigration policy to draw from in drafting future federal policy.

Or perhaps no federal immigration law will be passed at all, which could provide an even more frightening result. In the past few days, I've read and viewed the news reports on the Arizona law, and noticed how many compare this moment to the Civil Rights movement, or to 1990s California. I would draw a different historical comparison. Today reminds me of a prior turning point in America, the end of Reconstruction in the South and the beginning of what southerners of the time called "Redemption." In 1876, a federal government weary of the political and armed struggles over the civil rights of freed slaves in the South, effectively abandoned the policies put into effect by Radical Republicans at the end of the Civil War, pulling armed forces out of southern states as part of the Hayes-Tilden compromise determining a highly contested presidential election. While African-American and populist white farmers banded together and attempted to grasp power, ultimately failing in the face of the economic and political power of a new generation of southern elites allied with northern capitalists, by the 1880s, Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation and legitimizing discrimination, racism ,and terror against blacks were passed. The accommodation realized in 1876 precluded any federal legislation that would have mitigated Jim Crow laws, while the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the US Supreme Court showed that in the absence of federal Civil Rights law, the state policies of Jim Crow would work just fine, as long as on paper they didn't violate the 13th and 14th amendments to the US Constitution.

So could the Arizona law and others like it be the beginning of another dark period in American history, this time where non-citizens are treated like second-class human beings ? Will immigrants to Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania live in a state of limbo, like Nina sang, not belonging here, not belonging there?

Will the children of immigrants and immigrants who came here as young children, face dismay when the opportunities of America are unavailable to them? Like Sister Sadie, will they be unable to attend college even though they "washed and cleaned [their] ears?"

And what of moderation? In the face of such a future, should we really take a 'go-slow' approach? Is there a moderate way to live in the shadows? To move to the back of the bus? To be killed when teenagers go "beaner-hopping?"

I'm not sure if a way forward to Nina's equality is presently visible; as she says,

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

The name of this blog is Arizona Goddam
And I mean every word of it.

Tropic Culture

Last Friday, Daliz was in town and I took her to see one of the local bands, Tropic Culture, play at the Visulite in Charlotte. Tropic Culture plays a mix of funk, reggae, ska, and rock. The last time I saw them, they played an acoustic set that had more of a coffeehouse folksy feel, but this time they pulled out all the stops, presenting the full band with horns, drums, electric guitar and voices.
Here are some photos from the concert.

The opening acts paired visual and musical artists. Here a spoken word poet from Atlanta collaborates with a painter on stage.



Another painter works during the show.



Tropic Culture took the stage in retro 80s get-ups.



Get on up!



The audience



An audience member on stage dancing samba



The guitarist wearing short shorts



Singing a song



Daliz was entertained

Bolivian Birthday

Last weekend, Ultimanota were hired to play a birthday party for a Bolivian woman. I attended and observed how the band plays when they are performing for a private party rather than at a restaurant or club. The hosts had requested more upbeat fare and the band responded by playing mostly salsa and cumbia. They added a guest drummer to pep up the sound. The atmosphere was much different, with people dancing constantly, singing along to the songs, and enjoying the night out with family and friends.

An emotional moment occurred when, during a break in the music, a video played with the woman's family members giving their birthday wishes from across the globe, Spain, California, Bolivia. Talk about transnational networks!

Here are some photos of the celebration.

The partygoers dance in a circle



The band gets lively



Gettin' Down



A Collaboration with the son.



Setting up the video birthday greetings



The band out back afterwards

Remembering Sean

April 15, 2008: I can't remember who called me first, my mom or my brother, to tell me the news that local Atlanta blues guitarist Sean Costello had passed away in the night. Found in a hotel in a seedy part of Buckhead in an apparent suicide, dead just before his 29th birthday, his death gave me a shock that still reverbrates two years later.
He was an incredible guitarist, a blues singer just beginning to grow into his voice, a bandleader constantly touring the country playing blues festivals, clubs, and bars, but to me Sean was also just a friend from high school.
I don't have any amazing or funny stories about Sean, but I can say that in the few years that I knew him a few memories stand out. I remember sitting in the back of 10th grade English Lit. class (where we first met) cracking jokes. I remember talking with him about relationships, particularly about his Venezuelan girlfriend that sometimes sat in on my Spanish class. He would pick her up after school in his classic old car from the 60s and they made a beautiful couple. I think a few times we went out dancing with some of her friends to a salsa club. And I remember Sean sitting in the band room (we went to a performing arts magnet school) and practicing guitar riffs, channeling Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, while we sat in awe and tried to pretend like it was no big deal that this 17 year-old white boy had the blues real bad.
After high school, I lost touch with Sean until 5 or 6 years later in New York when I went to see him play at a club. After the first set I went up to say hello and he invited me to hang around afterwards. We talked awhile and promised to stay in touch. I sort of dropped the ball on that one. I saw him perform one more time a few years later, and he had developed in leaps and bounds from earlier. We talked then too, although I was with some friends and they were ready to head home because it was on a weeknight.
I know that my family loved Sean's music too, going to see him play when he performed in Atlanta and buying his albums and those of artists he toured with, such as Susan Tedeschi.
What's interesting about the recordings of Sean's music is that they grow on you. The more I listen, the more I hear little things, in the guitar solos and in the lyrics, that speak to my experience.

For example, the despair and unease of his cover of Otis Rush's "Double Trouble"

"Some of this generation is millionaires
I can't even keep decent clothes to wear."

which I had on repeat all through the fall 2009 financial crisis.

Or the rambling guitar solo on "Feel like I ain't got a home," the perfect accompaniment to an anthropological field study away from home.

And the guttural growls midway through "Can't Let Go" calling out for us to hold on tight to the ones we love.

Sean, you and your music are missed.

If you want to learn more about Sean, here is a website:
http://www.seancostellofund.org/index.html

and some youtube videos:

Rock en Español esta muerto! Viva Rock en Español?

Over the past few weeks I've had several people tell me,
"rock en español in Charlotte is dead"
"no one is coming out to shows"
"there are no new exciting bands coming up" etc. etc....

I'm not sure how to respond to these comments. I have a vested interest in seeing a vibrant Latin rock scene here in Charlotte, since it is one of the musical forms that I'm studying and I've met and come to know and like some of the musicians who play rock. And I wasn't around several years ago during the heyday of La Rua and other rock bands, so I can only speculate and rely on what others say about how then compares to now. Did I sneeze and miss the moment?

While rock en tu idioma seemingly fades into the sunset, the political and economic context in Charlotte intensifies. Unemployment reaches 12 percent, budget cuts and closings are announced for schools and libraries, President Obama stops by for a photo-op but doesn't mention immigration reform while memos from Homeland Security outline a policy of increased deportation and detention of undocumented immigrants.

So if that doesn't depress you, here are some pictures of a concert where almost nobody showed up. Dorian Gris played songs from their new cd and New York-based Kofre showed up. The bands rocked, fans had fun, but it wasn't the best night for live music.

Dorian Gris gets into a song



The minuscule fan base



Chilling before the show



Dorian's rehearsal playlist



Kofre dresses for the part