Talking Timbuktu

One to marvel at a culture that prides itself on intolerance, denial and annihilation.  No, this is not another rant on our gridlocked, be-uncooperative-at-any-cost US Senate, though they do a bang-up job on all of the above. It’s about the Taliban infiltrating a large country in Africa called Mali.

Islamic rebels entered Mali a year ago and singled out the north of the country to practice their never evolving tenets of negativity. They kicked off the party by banning music and dance, two of the most deeply ingrained disciplines in the country’s profound history. Music historians will argue that Mali may very well be the true birthplace of Rhythm and Blues.
To show their well roundedness, the Taliban also banned ring tones, replacing them with versus from the Koran (aren’t those technically “sung”?) Then they got to work destroying the tombs of venerated Malian saints, claiming that such shrines are forbidden.

But where is it written that forbidden things have to be destroyed?  That sort of defeats the purpose of labeling them forbidden, does it not? And don’t you need forbidden things to exist so as to know and understand what’s not forbidden?  What we should be collectively aspiring to?

The Taliban’s central priorities are not the promotion of their own culture and beliefs, but the destruction and erasure of everyone else’s. Strangely, their form of Islam forsakes the two elements every other religion in the world holds sacred—forgiveness and tolerance.

I’m not quite up to date on Muhammad-mania, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t venerated because he hated others with such unflinching purity.  And where in the Koran does it say that music and dance, the height of health in every culture, should be met by amputation and death?  I mean of all the targets you can go after, you’re gonna fuck with the musicians?  They’re having a hard enough go of it as it is.  I mean, why not duck fat?  You’d at least make an enemy of something that could cut your life short.

Whenever I come across a movement whose primary directives are to weaken and discredit culture, law and science– the pillars of the Enlightenment– I just have to stop and wonder.  And that’s the central problem with Islamic fundamentalists. They have absolutely no wonderment in their lives. No modesty before the sheer volume of brilliance human talent has produced.

I would love to tell the leadership to try some wonder. It’s more fulfilling than chopping the hand off of a talented local guitarist!

What would be left, exactly, if the Taliban had its way? What would we do all day besides read the Koran and suppress everyone else from expressing any kind of creativity. Maybe that would be it. Those two activities would keep us pretty busy.

Degrading women is full time job in itself.  They keep popping up, wanting to read and drive and not be raped.  You’d think that somewhere along the line, one of these toothless motherfuckers would say, “Wow, this suppression thing never seems to stick. Every time we’re expelled, everything goes back to the way it was.  It’s like listening to a broken record.”

But that would require knowledge of music, which they don’t have, because music is evil.

I’s hard to appreciate just how deeply integrated music is in our culture. Who isn’t bopping around to some kind of personal soundtrack today? 

In banning music, Jihadists not only stop the joy a listener receives, they also stop the collaboration that happens between artists, and for a place like Timbuktu or Bamako, that can be devastating. The art scene there is as diverse as any big city in the world, including New York. Can you imagine Manhattan with a music ban?

My friends, Toubab Krewe— an amazing afro-rock band that has lit up big festivals like Bonnaroo– have studied music in Mali and performed there several times., as Mali is one of the oldest sources of inspiration for any musician. Toubab stands in a long line of highly accomplished artists who choose to visit and collaborate there– everyone from Ry Cooder to the Rolling Stones.

Forget about going to war over oil and minerals.  We can always attack Canada for that.  In Mali, the music alone is worth taking on the Taliban for.  I’m all for another Shock and Awe.  Let’s gather us up some Fundamentalist Rebels, tie them to benches with women’s panties, and blast Ali Farke Toure’s Grammy winning record into their ears until they go deaf.

They won’t have to suffer another note of music after that.