kmazz

There was a social critic, can’t recall the name, who wrote years ago about the canny ability of Western capitalism to mediate and emasculate any confrontational social movement by merchandising it. Co-opt and reward. When Hip Hop leaves mean streets and wins Grammys, it’s something else altogether. Take the blandly cheery “eep-opp” of Italy, for example.

The author meant this in a good way, as he was writing during the tumultuous early 1970s. Don’t worry, he implied. We won’t have a revolution because consumerism will make protests entertaining, not angry, events.

The merits of this argument can be debated. But it came to my mind as I read about the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints and the success of their Internet sales. If Fashion Avenue does embrace the prairie outfit, will that mean we won’t see FLDS as the exploitative and unlawful force it really is? Will 12 year old girls continue to be married off to middle-aged church leaders?

Because it seems the law against polygamy is already pretty toothless when these communities have been allowed to thrive and prosper despite being illegal. And while we’re debating the issue, what does this state of affairs say about what the US electorate supposedly believes about marriage — one man, one woman?

At the end of a day of long light, when the sun shone for the first time in months and its warmth healed sore moods and old aches, the last thing anyone wanted to do was enter a musty, dusty old theater before dark. But tickets had been paid for weeks ago, and how often does Senegal’s Orchestre Baobab play in Portland?

And how could I ever have thought twice about going? The dancing started right at 8pm in what passes for the mosh pit at the Aladdin and didn’t stop for 2.5 hours. The Les Paul Deluxe wa-wa cried and rippled, the tenor sax scatted, the singer wailed and trilled, the three drummers pounded and got us jumping. (Can I say I coveted the band’s brocaded and tie and died damask cloth shirts of indigo and white, azure and chocolate, cranberry and gold, sapphire and pink as things of beauty?) Local Senegalese in wax print shirts shouted in Wolof to the musicians and sang along. Money was balled up in a fist and then passed to the singers in effusive gratitude. Young children and babies, dressed up and with elaborate, decorated hair weaves, were shown off to the players. Twice a skinny and shy young boy joined the group on stage to applause. Everyone was lost in the dance and happiness was on every face. And to think the concert was just the evening’s warm up for the band. You just know their local compatriots had some plans for them.

The music was at turns mesmerizing, wild, strange and familiar. If this was as much part of our lives as it is to West Africans, we’d have no need for aerobic workouts of any other sort. And we’d be happier, IMHO.

Update to my “Who are we?” post: a local blogger coined a new term that relates neatly.

Across Europe, filthy, fetid camps hold African, Albanian, and Asian illegal immigrants. Italy is rounding up gypsies again. In South Africa, Zimbabweans and Mozambicans are hunted by mobs and burned alive. In the U.S. we criminalize and now imprison Latin Americans. These people are being brutally punished for simply trying to live another day. Who among us would behave differently if in their straits? Of course immigration is a political and economic challenge. Of course the idea of immigrants en masse crossing borders requires a response. But did we always hate them so?

It is a sad state of affairs when the passage through adolescence requires the loss of the humanizing ritual of mealtime. Let’s face it, the Slow Food movement, which tries not only to restore that ritual before it is gone for good but connect people to the idea of sustainable agriculture and living, has an uphill battle.

I read about this problem today while still mulling over yesterday’s PNCA + FIVE panel on Portland and sustainability. Susan Szenasy, editor in chief of one of my favorite magazines, Metropolis, moderated the discussion, touching on a few topics that merit much more attention, one of which is social sustainability.

We don’t just want to preserve biological systems so that we live, but so that we live meaningfully. The loss of mealtime as a time to come together is a sign of a degraded social environment.

Biological and social sustainability are tightly interrelated because, simply put, if we don’t have a reason to sit down and enjoy a meal with our kin and clan then we fail to feed our social instincts, which for eons have been the reason for our survival and the occasion for joy in living. Sustainable systems recognize the need for planning, architecture and infrastructure not just to preserve ecosystems but to bring people together in a way that supports our desire to mix and mingle.

Americans already have largely lost touch with the daily custom of coming together over the table, and it is no wonder kids don’t know or care where their food comes from, or if it is really food at all. Our degraded environment is the result.