After months of hanging around Istanbul, waiting in endless lines and worrying about having to return to Iraq, our friends, musicians and stars of the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad have left the building. All four members of Acrassicauda, Baghdad's only heavy metal band, have arrived in metal heaven -- Elizabeth, New Jersey. They received refugee status from the US and will be eligible to apply for green cards in a few years. Here's how we met the band and although we haven't provided many updates lately, this is where they were a year ago.
Since arriving in the US, they've
attended their second heavy metal show (the first was Testament, in Turkey) and met Metallica's guitarist backstage (in the photo), who gave them one of his guitars. That's already a big improvement over playing to Turkish biker gangs and unappreciative drunk yabancis in Kemanci.
There were lots of times when the bureaucratic obstacles seemed insurmountable and the money impossible to find. It's also easy to imagine the problems that lie ahead. But these boys have balls the size of cantaloupes, proven perseverance, charm, wit and despite everything, phenomenal luck. They're gonna do just fine and we admire them tremendously.
Marwan, Faisal, Tony and Firas -- maşallah from İstanbul! We wish you the best and expect you to play Meadowlands someday.
We had always been under the impression that South Africa has a rich native musical tradition. From the recently passed civil rights activist "Mama Afrika" to bubble gum hero Yvonne Chaka Chaka to Kwaito, we sort of thought South Africans had it going on, music-wise.
It turns out that that the domestic music scene was not so rich that it could not be enhanced by the palest, white-bread classic American country.
Our South African driver, Nelson (black South Africans and Zimbabweans often have classically anachronistic names -- we worked with several Nelsons, a Crosby and an Anyway) posessed an encyclopedic knowledge of 1950's country star Jim Reeves.
"Jim Reeves, he died in a plane crash. You know this?" he asked.
"You don't say."
As Reeves crooned the classic "Roly Poly," Nelson tried to help me understand Reeves' appeal to a young South African like himself:
"South Africa music. It is like pepto bismal. It is good for an upset stomach, but it has no soul. American country -- it is real music. It is full of heart."
Generally, we are inclined to agree with this assessment. But we're not sure we agree that Jim Reeves is the best example of the soul of American country music.
(Roly Poly eatin' corn and taters hungry every minute of the day
Roly Poly knowin' all the biscuits long as he can chew it it's okay
He can eat an apple pie and never even bat an eye
He likes everything from a soup to hay
Roly Poly daddy's little fatty bet he's gonna be a man someday)
The how's and, more importantly, the why's of Nelson's familiarity with Jim Reeves remained a mystery until we looked at his wikipedia page. Jim Reeves is something of a South African national hero!
In the early 1960s, Reeves was more popular than Elvis Presley in South Africa. During this period, he recorded several albums in Afrikaans. In 1963 he starred in a South African film, Kimberley Jim,
which was the biggest South African production up to that date. The
film's working title was "Strike It Rich" and was released with a
special prologue and epilogue in South African cinemas after Reeves'
passing, praising Reeves as a true friend of South Africa. The film was
produced, directed and written by Emil Nofal.
Frankly, this entry raises a lot more questions than it answers. Obviously, South Africa in the 1960s was under Apartheid. Reeves recorded in Afrikaans and there's probably not a big difference between the rural experience of white south Africans at the time as the American southern white experience that spawned country music. So what in the world did a young black in 2008 see in him? Well!
Reeves is particularly popular amongst the Zulu population in South
Africa and is known amongst this community by the monikers "King Jim"
and (because of his 6'1" frame) "Big Jim".
While all this illuminates, somewhat, the appeal of white-bread American country crooners in South Africa, it does nothing to help explain Nelson's admiration of the gospel stylings of Jimmy Swaggart, a topic best left unexplored.
Check in at Gridskipper for an exclusive Carpetblog report on the Depeche Mode Baar we visited in Tallinn (every other word in Estonian seems to have a superfluous letter).
Handy link if you want to pick up a tribute album done by Estonian bands.
Via Coming Anarchy, Xinjiang's latest pop sensation go to YouTube to see a video from an unnamed pop group from Xinjiang made of up three Uyghur girls from Uzbekistan.
What they lack in production values, rhythm and, uh, talent, they make up for in musical influences. You can hear Indian, Chinese and maybe even Persian/Turko pop (one of my goals in Azerbaijan was to learn how to distinguish between Iranian and Turkish pop music -- I failed) in their tune.
They aren't Shakira but the key to a satisfying life in Crapistan is to lower your standards.
