Splash that spell, Lord please


Published in Malay Mail

Photo taken from last.fm

Nina Simone will always bring back memories of one’s childhood. Sunday mornings waking up to her song, I put a spell on you, filling up our quiet street. Listening as a child, I put a spell on you was a deeply desperate song about unrequited love and betrayal, between a man and woman — or was it? Twenty years later, this song seems to be saying something else.

One would have learnt in twenty years that love and betrayal may not necessarily be just between a man and woman, and that passion can indeed arise in one’s relationship with something bigger: One’s nation.

In that song, Nina Simone sings, “You better stop the things you do, I ain’t lyin’ … I can’t stand it cause you put me down“. This line captures the sentiments felt by many women and youths today. While there is much fixing and healing to do in the country, the nation however continues to be dragged into the ever deep and omnipresent cesspool that is Malaysian politics.

But for a post-2008 people that prides itself of being energised and empowered, we seem quite happy to continue subcontracting thinking and leadership to politicians as opposed to taking ownership and making things happen on our own.

Sadly there are those who have withdrawn, not wanting to participate in movements whose solutions to the country’s varied problems are simply to oust a government or deny a party the opportunity to form one.

And unfortunately, there are not enough of them to send a strong message that as a people we are giving political parties and politicians too much clout. Indeed many of us are angry with some of Malaysia’s shortcomings and we like to blame it on political parties. But perhaps we are losing sight of where our solutions lie and we are channelling that anger in a manner and direction that may perpetuate our problems instead of solving them.

In an interview with the BBC Nina Simone was asked if she sings out of anger. She responded by saying that anger has its place and power, but she sings from intelligence. By that she meant letting people know that she knows who they are and what they have done, or are doing, to her people. As far as she was concerned, her duty as an activist-musician was “to reflect the times”.

Maybe this is something that we need to do honestly, candidly and urgently, as a people who believe we are today more empowered than we have ever been before. Are we really doing things differently?

Nina Simone loved her audience as much as they loved her. But one night at a popular venue she walked up to the front of the stage and said, “Why don’t you people shut up? You’re interested in civil rights and equal rights … take a bath and put on deodorant if you want equal rights”. That was not a mere call to action, but a call for her audience to do things differently. In the context of the Black civil rights movement, it was a call to mobilise.

Some might ask that if change is exasperating and tiring, why bother participating? Why not withdraw and let the wave move as it is, especially if you may be a minority voice in your own constituency?

Because, in the tune of Nina Simone, “I love ya anyhow, and I don’t care of ya don’t want me, I’m yours right now“. I put a spell on you because you’re mine, yessum.



Category : Malay Mail
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