revolution (1984)

dennis brown. reggae, jamaica

key: A aeolian
mode: A B C D E F G
melody: l t d r m f s 
form: verse-chorus with intro
meter: duple

English function names: tonic dominant
Tagg (modified):        home  away
Riemann:                t     d
Scale degrees:          i     v
Chords:                 Am    Em

  Em       Am
|:/ / / / |/ / / / :| loop for whole song

I was quite sure when I first heard this song that it was a tonic-subdominant loop in E minor. After all, the E minor chord is first in the loop and, therefore, first in the phrase. Then I started transcribing the melody and when I realized there’s an F natural in there, I thought, “Okay, but this doesn’t sound like E phrygian…” And that’s when I noticed that A ended each melodic phrase and by golly it sure sounds more like a resting tone than the E does. Tagg might argue that there is no tonic, but to my ears, upon closer listening, A is where it’s at. You have to take the melody into account.

Standard Western Music Theory was not focused on the modal folk musics of Europe and beyond; it was focused on establishing the greatness of — or at the very least simply trying to explain the norms and structures of — European Art Music, a.k.a. classical music. Even within classical music, its focus is mainly on Bach (late Baroque) to late Romantic, so about 1700-1900. Why do we keep trying to apply these theoretical concepts to music it was never meant to describe?

In the past, and of course to a large extent still today, people wanted to establish the superiority of aristocratic European art music. Theory can be abused to create in-groups and out-groups. Oh, your music doesn’t fit our norms? Mustn’t be very good, then. That sort of thing sadly still happens today. That is most definitely not my aim.

There has been a faction of theorists who are trying to use these theories as a basis to include more music, more cultures, more peoples. These folks are trying to show the norms, the structures, the greatness of more musics. They are using Standard Western Music Theory, to be sure partly because it’s what we’ve got and what we’re used to, but also because there are enough commonalities that it makes sense to tweak an existing system — after all, classical music is based in European folk musics and those European folk musics are a major ingredient in Afro-diaspora musics as well.¹ Theory is not what makes music great; we don’t actually need theory to help us decide what is great music. But theory can help us understand norms and structures, as mentioned already, and it can also help us understand how those norms and structures create meanings.

One of Philip Tagg’s big projects² was finding ways to discover exactly what meanings and images³ people associate with various musical phenomena, that is, the kinds of things named by music theory. I have attempted with students to combine some of his ideas with some of Lynda Barry’s exercises (namely, “Instant Book Review” and “Basic X-Page” from Making Comics, pages 140 & 144, respectively). The results varied, as they do with students who are required to take courses they wouldn’t necessarily choose for themselves. I decided I wanted to start doing these exercises myself with the songs I’m presenting here.

Here is the exercise:

In my experience, it really makes a difference to space it out over a few days — this is precisely the kind of thing some students really resisted. So much in school is one-and-done and you can’t go back and fix or change anything, so why should this be any different, especially when I already know what music I like and don’t really care about what you have to tell me? Fair, fair. School is a tricky situation. Using a timer makes a big difference, too. It’s about going through the process as stated. Don’t spend forever on it; don’t try to make it go faster.

I have never provided my own example for these exercises because I don’t want to unduly influence the results. It’s not about what I think the images are. When in a position of power as a teacher, things that a teacher says are automatically construed as “the correct answer.” What is interesting is looking at the collection of imagery after everyone has done the exercise. That said, one part of the Tagg-Clarida process is to find what other images people have associated with a particular musical phenomenon, which Tagg has named “museme,” through finding similar sounding material and looking at titles, video if any, criticism if any, and so on.

Should I share my completed exercises here? I don’t know. Part of me says yes, especially because they are not “good art” and I want people to see that the exercise is still valid, even when it’s not “good art.” Lynda Barry has like five books on this, plus a blog, plus a university course, and videos online. And there’s the reasons from the Tagg above about providing comparison material. Then the other part that says no, for the reasons outlined above. Feel free to tell me what you think in the handy-dandy poll and I’ll continue with writing below that.

We have a shuttle, a drum machine, a funky bass line, some back up singers. One of the images that came up for me was the trio of magical, benevolent back-up singers in the video “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” who sweep into the court room to rescue Boy George from being legally persecuted (for being queer, I assume). Is this the quintessential function of back-up singers, their wordless/nonsense syllable intonations lifting us above a terrible fate?

We also have a dance-protest song. The vibe is laid-back reggae club tune, but the lyrics ask us if we are ready to fight like soldiers for justice. We might not even make the cut, Brown suggests. The lyrics also tell us if we want to live forever, then we need to love one another. Is this antithetical to fighting like soldiers? Perhaps not; sometimes we have to protect the ones we love.

Is the dance-protest song a particular post-WWII/rock’n’roll phenomenon? There have always been protest songs. There have always been dance tunes. How often were they put together pre-WWII? Is this a particularly colonialist phenomenon, in which the oppressed peoples have limited ways and venues to communicate their protest, to create solidarity? I think of capoeira, the Brazilian martial art that is, and I mean this lovingly and with a wink, a song-and-dance routine, enabling its practitioners to prepare for battle, hiding in plain view. That tradition is certainly pre-WWII.

When I covered reggae with a group of high school students, using these same exercises, there were mostly associations of people smoking weed under palm trees at the beach, despite my efforts to avoid any mention of illicit substances or partying in the lyrics of the songs I chose for examples. While listening to this song, I thought of how its chill vibe betrays the talk of revolution, of fighting like soldiers, perhaps even of loving each other. But I am not Jamaican. I can imagine that an adult Jamaican in 1984 would have heard this song very differently.

I suppose what I am asking is what in the music says “revolution?” Is loving each other actually the fighting like soldiers? Does revolution have to be violent? Dancers know what a revolutionary act dancing is; could the dance vibes themselves be the revolution? Perhaps Dennis Brown is asking us to consider some radically different ideas from the shared dance floor.

1. The diaspora, specifically, that was created through colonialism. Not to mention how those musics then were spread around the world via economic hegemony.

2. Written about in Fernando the Flute, Music’s Meanings, and Ten Little Tunes.

3. Images, in the expansive Lynda Barry sense, I think, although I have no idea if Tagg ever read her work.