"Babylon Makes the Rules" must be the bounciest song to contain the sentiment, "You've brought fire on my head and now you must pay." (Don't mind if I do!) "Babylon" is a call and response between David Hinds and his bandmates. Hinds is great, but his backup singers and their Pips-ish cheer sell the song. Resisting Babylon is gonna be tough, they seem to say, but what we really want to do is SING! And oh yes, have you tried the Jah herb?
The words of "Babylon" are uncompromising; plenty of reggae's Babylon songs advocate passive protest, but Steel Pulse don't mess around:
And now I say we must create a scene (WAR, WAR, create a scene!) We must recapture our culture by any means (Recapture our culture! Recapture our culture!)
They sound like the Moral Majority, with their belief that direct political action can take back The Culture. (Not so much with their communal pot smoking.) Even so, the song swings wildly back and forth between force and resignation. No matter how fired up Hinds and his mates sound during the verses, they always return to the more subdued, minor-key chorus:
Babylon makes the rules
Babylon makes the rules
Babylon makes the rules
Babylon makes the rules
Where my people suffer ...
The only attempt at resolution comes at the end, when Hinds starts singing "Jah love... will carry I home." Well, sure, but that still doesn't tell us how to deal with Babylon in the meantime. Do we put up with Thatcher until we can vote her out, or do we order her to Stand Down? The sound of "Babylon Makes the Rules" offers an even better option: SING! Preferably with one another.
Sugar Minott worked three different reggae styles in the late '70s/early '80s, and actually originated one of 'em--studio dancehall. After starting a singing career in 1969, he spent about a decade doing roots reggae, like "Mr. Babylon Man" from 1979's Black Roots album. It's a simple plea for the agents of Babylon to leave him and his Rasta brothers (and sisters?) alone:
Around that same time, Minott started innovating. Working as a session instrumentalist at the fabled Studio One in Kingston ("the Motown of Jamaica"), Minott and his boss discovered that Minott had a knack for singing original tunes over the tracks of other songs. Now, before he started singing, Minott had come up through the sound systems of Jamaica, where DJs would spin records and audiences would party. Since 1970, some of the DJs (notably U-Roy) would toast along with the records they played, rhythmically exhorting people to Get Up On It and whatnot. (New York's pioneering hip-hop DJ Kool Herc came out of this scene, so we have these guys to thank for much of today's pop radio.) U-Roy had recorded his toasting act in studios, but Minott was arguably the first to sing new songs over existing riddims. Throw in some very au courant synth drums, and you've got the sound that'd be known as "dancehall." Here's "Rough Ole Life (Babylon)", a 1983-ish (maybe) track based on one of the most popular Jamaican riddims, the "M-16":
These riddims make up a unique oral culture in Jamaican reggae music. (Somebody, probably not me, needs to write a comprehensive study of the relationship between all the songs based on the same riddims.) U-Roy himself used the M-16 in the late '60s, for the song "Scandal"--you can hear the difference between his toasting style and Minott's singing style, over what I BELIEVE is a Sly & Robbie rhythm track.
Minott's third style was the lover's rock reggae of England, where he lived for a bit in the '80s. I don't think any Babylon songs came out of that period, but this Michael Jackson cover sure did!
As you can hear, the guy was smooth whether he was singing love songs or raging gently against the machine. His anti-Babylon stance was one of faithful presence and quiet resistance. At the end of "Rough Ole Life," starvation and jubilation coexist, and Minott seemed to accept that duality as the lot of Jah's follower, working inside Babylon system.
Culture seem like a good entry point into discussing the Babylon symbol as it's used in reggae. After all, they have NINE songs with Babylon in the title, and plenty more that contain Babylon deep within their grooves and words. In reggae, the Babylon symbol is always present, if only between the lines, and its meaning is pretty consistent--it's the system that's opposed to the will of Jah, and that keeps Jah's people (the Rastafari) from fully experiencing the divine life. Reggae is more nuanced when it asks the question, "Given its existence, what do we do about Babylon?" Joseph Hill, Culture's head honcho and chief lyricist, railed against the symbol in various ways, so Culture's stuff can serve as a lens through which to view the rest of reggae's "Babylon" symbology. It's not an exhaustive lens, but a useful one nonetheless.
Their earliest Babylon song (going just by songs with "Babylon" in the title) was 1978's "So Long Babylon a Fool I (and I)", from the album Baldhead Bridge. To my ears, it's also their best--a slow elegy based on the older Nyabinghi drumming style, with some gentle horn and organ lines drifting along. (Nyabinghi drumming is built around three drums: the low Thunder, hitting on one and three; the mid-ranged Funde, sounding like a heartbeat; and the high Repeater, the song's lead instrument, improvising throughout. You can hear 'em all in this song! More familiar reggae beats and instrumentation grew out of this configuration.)
Lyrically, "So Long" has an ambiguous double-meaning. Sometimes Hill uses the title phrase to mean "farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu"; sometimes he means, "MAN, we've been stuck in Babylon a long time!" He'd echo this theme of leaving in 2000's "Nah Stay Inna Babylon," and the "leave Babylon" strategy has been operative since the time of Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line (or since Israel's exile, depending how far back you wanna go). So there's one option.
Another option, also considered by Culture, is to "chant Babylon down." They advocate this move in 1997's not-so-ambiguously-titled "Chant Down Babylon," and also 1979's "Blood Inna Babylon." Note that they never advocate direct violence, and indeed I can't think of any reggae songs that do, though I'm sure they're out there. (Leave your requests and dedications in the comments, please!) Instead, Rastas tend to go for non-violent options. "Chanting down" is popular, and recalls Joshua circling the walled city of Jericho (though of course Joshua also proved to be a non-non-violent genocidal maniac). The chanting can also refer to calling down curses upon Babylon, as in "Blood": "I hail if Babylon kills one more Rastaman, I say / The sun will stop from shining / The grass will stop from growing." So ending Babylon is something we do, but we do it through Jah's hand.
If those don't suit ya, you can always simply MOCK Babylon. This seemed to be Hill's M.O. in the '80s, with 1980's "Babylon Can't Study" (...the Rastaman because he's bigger than Babylon) and 1982's "Babylon's Big Dog." Here's an interview with Hill that explains the inspiration for the latter tune:
“Well 'Babylon Big Dog' is a song created from the unnecessary worries that babylon gives me. It's like I was coming from a place in Jamaica called James Mountain, in a very old car belonging to one of my brethen called brother Honey... Instead of coming in, in peace, there was a murder somewhere down the road. And then we realised that Babylon [THE MAN] and his big dog [A COP] was there. As we pass through, babylon tried to catch us, but this old car was modified, and was too fast for them... So while we was chasing away from babylon, I just start singing the song and brother Honey crouch over the steering wheel and start pushing the old car down," Joe laughs again. "And they never catch us. So it really means it was making me feel more victorious making the song triumph over them."
And then sometimes you can simply ride it out. I'm thinking of '96's "Down In Babylon," which isn't so much about Babylon itself, as it is a lament for any sort of stable resistance to Babylon. Around a plaintive trombone solo, Hill asks, "Where are all the Rastamen who used to teach human rights and stand upright and lead and feed our nation?" [I paraphrase.] This presupposes that we're staying in Babylon, at least for the time being, and are organizing systems of our own to help bring about a society that Jah would like better.
(I'm too lazy to link to all these, but you know how to use Youtube.)
There may be other answers to the question, "What do we do about Babylon?" These four are certainly not mutually exclusive, but they also indicate that reggae answers its fundamental question more symbolically than politically. I may be wrong, but I'm not sure any reggae since Bob Marley has had measurable political effects. But that's not to say the situation's hopeless, that a symbol can't make a difference.
For one thing, the ideas of "leaving Babylon" and "chanting down Babylon" can empower individuals to change their everyday lives, even if it only means getting through the day a little happier. And for another thing, these symbols aren't just PREscriptive, they're also DEscriptive. Trevor McNaughton of the Melodians told me a couple years ago, "Babylon fall every day, man." You see this in every act of justice, whether it's one person sitting down to a meal with a homeless guy, or the SEC fining archenemies-of-the-people Goldman Sachs. God's/Jah's Kingdom breaks in where it will, and we do what we can to hasten it.
And in the meantime, Joseph Hill would advise, we can make fun of Babylon as we ride it out.
The lyrics in verse one have not been equaled. Equaled for what? Not sure, but they're in a class by themselves:
"I would've liked you to have been deep frozen too and waiting still as fresh in your flesh for my return to Earth But your father refused to sign the forms to freeze you Let's see you'd be about 60 now, and long dead by the time I return to Earth My time held dreams were full of you, as you were when I left; still underage Your android replica is playing up again, it's no joke When she comes she moans another's name But that's the spirit of the age"
I'd also like to note that, in the past year, two of Rolling Stone's "legacy" interviews have been with ex-members of Hawkwind--Lemmy and Ginger Baker. (They weren't in the band at the same time, true...) Unfortunately, Hawkwind didn't get a mention in "The Devil and Ginger Baker." The Lemmy interview mentioned Hawkwind, though, and also referred to Lemmy as a "Zelig-like figure." Other "Zelig-like" figures in that same issue were Paul Shaffer and Madonna. Granted, Madonna referred to HERSELF as Zelig, but still! Either the editors need to settle on some new cliches, or Hawkwind and Zelig are the real roots of rock 'n' roll. There are no other options.
Whether you're chauffeuring your little trooper to toddler Pilates, the kiddie salon, or just an everyday anti-vaccination protest, you'll both want some music for the ride. And if Sting and Baby Mendelssohn are getting old, why not try something different--what I like to call ungodly squawl?
My four-year-old, Liege, has recently latched on to "the Silly Lady," a.k.a. Diamanda Galas, a Greek-American avant-garde singer best known for her important, moving AIDS benefit piece The Plague Mass. But we don't listen to that one--instead, we enjoy her song "Skotoseme," a smorgasbord of vocal shrieks, cackles, and foreign tongues. (The word "skotoseme" means "kill me" in Greek, but unless your little one has taken the Language Stars Greek class--NOT recommended--that'll probably fly right over their heads!) The song is from Diamanda's 1994 collaboration with John Paul Jones (the bassist from Led Zeppelin--rock on!), called The Sporting Life, and you can sample a live performance of it here:
Liege demands "the Silly Lady" every time we get in the car. His therapist, Dr. Hoffmeister from the Center for Jung Development, speculates that the aggressive music gives Liege confidence to face the day! (It's similar to how, in my pre-Stay-At-Home days, I used EMF's "Unbelievable" to pump myself up before seeing clients.) Dr. H also suggests that Diamanda's barrage of noises acts as a "vicarious release" for Liege's busy inner life. All in all, he beams, it's "quite a progressive choice for one so young."
If modern American primitivism is more your thing, Liege would like to recommend the 1979 debut album from the band 1/2 Japanese (careful--we're not talking Jon and Kate's kids here!), called 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts. No videos available online, sorry--too obscure! Here's the beautifully instinctive album art:
The band made this album before they could really play their instruments, so it all sounds sort of like the bang and clatter you hear every week at Kindermusik! But it'll give your kids the confidence they need, to turn their God-given noise-making chops into a useful living. (We've been looking for something to supplement Liege's budding modeling career!) Liege is particularly taken with 1/2 J's song "Funky Broadway Melody," which has introduced him to the memorable catchphrase "Papa's got a brand new bag," but in a more artistically complex way than the original James Brown would have done. In addition, Dr. H suggests that "Funky Broadway"'s dissonant-yet-repetitive drone taps into Liege's "emotional comfort place"--it's sort of a substitute for me hugging him.
So remember--your kids' music doesn't have to be same-o lame-o! Put on some ungodly squawl instead. Those other parents won't know what they're missing!
Once again I lodge my complaint that you can't find lyrix for any of these roots tunes online. This one's a little easier to understand, though. After that awesome high "DREAAAAAAAAAD!!!", Mr. Youth sings about a "lion in the jungle, the concrete jungle," which is Rasta code for a dreadlocked fellow--whose hair makes him look like a LION--in Babylon, the "concrete jungle."
Except there's an interesting difference: lions live in the savannah, yes yes Dr. Science, but are commonly known as the "kings of the jungle." Presumably Mr. Youth is playing off that cliche rather than naturalistic fact when he sings about his "lion in the jungle." But if a lion is "king of the jungle," you'd think it'd feel comfortable in the jungle, part and parcel, like it BELONGS. The dreadlocked Rasta, on the other hand, does NOT feel part and parcel of the concrete jungle, Babylon. Instead, he wants to chant it down (and whatnot), and ride the Black Star Liner back to Ethiopia (or whatnot).
Perhaps Mr. Big peers more deeply into the leonine nature than I initially gave him credit for. Maybe he realizes the lion is a reluctant ruler, uncomfortable in his own domain, if not inside his own skin. When the Rasta cultivates his unwashed mane, is it with some reluctance? Does he take up this mantle of rebellion knowing that capitulation to Babylon would be easier? Is the Dread inna Babylon secretly tempted by a metrosexual Chandler Bing haircut, one that would enable him to land a sweet job in the advertising biz and a comfortable middle-class lifestyle in Kingston, rather than this heavy yoke of resistance? That's something to chew on, brother. (Aside from that gazelle you're working on...)
