Radiolab - Songs that Cross Borders

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

Coming off our adventures with Square Dancing, and Jad's dive into the world of Dolly Parton, we look back at one our favorites. About a decade ago, we found out that American country music is surprising popular in places like Zimbabwe, Thailand, and South Africa. Aaron Fox, an anthropologist of music at Columbia University, tells us that quite simply, country music tells a story that a lot of us get. Then, intrepid international reporter Gregory Warner takes us along on one of his very first forays into another country, where he discovers an unexpected taste of home. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.  Aaron Foxes book: Real Country: Music And Language In Working-Class Culture  Gregory Warner's podcast Rough Translation 

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C. See?

Yeah. Hey, I'm Chad. I boomrod. I'm Robert Krellwitch. Radio Lab. And we have been spending a lot of time dancing and singing lately. We just put out a thing about square dancing. Yeah. You have the dolly thing going on in another, another little operation over there.

Yes, sir. And both of those things. have kind of a question at the heart of them, which is, is it mine or yours? Is it mine? Is it yours? Could be everybody's, you know, and there's some music that does sort of break through. Exactly. And the crazy thing is, like, 11 years ago, we did a show called pop music, which I think it was initially, like, about, like, why are certain things catchy? Like, why do certain earworms get stuck in your head? Right. But I think it also ended up being more interestingly about why do certain songs seem to sort of just slip across borders?

From weird places, from Tennessee to Zimbabwe, say, or then from to Afghanistan. So you get a song, and it moves strangely around the world. It's popular for some, not for others. And when we were stumbling about this question way back then, it was a thought that we heard first from, well, from this guy. Aaron A. Fox. He is a professor of musicology at Columbia University in New York. And the damn good country in Western League guitar player.

Country, not that rock and roll. One, two, three, Dan. I hear that train are coming. It's rolling around the bed. Country music is a genre we normally associate with Kentucky and Nashville. West Virginia. A particular part of America. Cowboys pickups.

Yeah. But it has spread, he says, to the most unusual places. So some examples of that, and there are quite a few, include the extreme popularity of American country and Western music over the last 50 or 60 years with Aboriginal Australians. You mean Hank Williams would be recognizable to somebody somewhere in Western Australia? Absolutely.

Really? Dolly Parton being another one. Dolly Parton? Dolly Parton is this international, global star of the world's music, especially in Southern Africa. She's revered like a saint. Yes, it's true as Zimbabweans love Dolly Parton. You can fill a venue with a band playing Dolly Parton song,

and everybody will know all the words. That was fun. You was doing good. You was into that rocky top. And most universally evolved, Don Williams. If Don Williams were to go to Dar es Salaam or to Zan, or Tukina or someplace and book a club. Don Williams has actually gone to Zimbabwe,

where he has filled a soccer stadium with 40,000 people twice in a row. I just wonder, like, what exactly are they hearing? I have asked Grenadians, St. Lucians, Trinidadians, Jamaicans, Germans, Russians, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Thai, Native South American, South American people. Why do you like country music?

And the first answer is virtually always something along the lines of it's the stories. Like as in the stories in the lyrics? I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison and I went to pick her up in the rain. But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck, she got run over

by a damned old train. That doesn't sound very aboriginal to me. You know how many Aborigines are actually run over by trains? Thousands, actually. That's not what Professor Fox is saying. He says, ignore the details and listen for the larger story, which has to do with moving, with migration, and with regret. You're lonesome for something, and the thing

you're missing is, the old hometown. The green, green grass of home. The green grass of home. Aaron Fox says you can boil much of this music down to just this feeling. You look, and look around me, you long for something simpler, something that you left behind. And I realized that I was only dreaming. What would be the best couple of examples you can think of of, I miss the farm, I miss the crickets? Oh, where do you start? The first hit country song was a nostalgic reverie for, quote, The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane, performed by Jimmy Rogers and Fiddlin John Carson. The song was recorded in 1927, and that happens to be the moment.

If you look at the U.S. Census, as he'll tell you, when the United States crosses the threshold from more than 50% agrarian and rural dwellers to more than 50% urban dwellers. In other words, country music really exploded, and this is not an accident, when most people no longer lived in the country. Country music is born when the country becomes a nostalgic idea. And so, in America anyway, suddenly there was this dreamscape of country places that no longer existed except in heads, and the music started just then. So if people in Los Angeles and in Chicago heard country in their minds,

it seems just as logical that people who move from the country to the city in Asia, in Africa, and Australia might have exactly the same experience. Yeah, but these songs are sung in English. If these people in these faraway places don't speak English, what are they hearing? Well, it's important to understand English, and the real enthusiasts around the world are English speakers. However, one explanation for its popularity elsewhere is that even if you don't speak English, The message is literally in the music itself.

There is grammar here. In the vocalization, the singers, this is a very normal country-western thing. They actually make a croaky sound that is very distinctive. One of the principal vocal articulations is what country singers call a crybreak. In my book, I parsed the crybreak into dozens of different specific articulations. And it's not just the voices, by the way, says Fox. It's the instruments. The instruments seem to be crying.

In fact, the steel guitar is the signature sound of country because it's recognized as iconic of a crying human voice. It's called the crying steel. You can hear the lonesomeness. And what seems to come roaring through is things just aren't what they were before. And all over the world where people are leaving, from the country to the city, and they are an enormous number.

This is a story all kinds of people can understand. Country is just as much Grenadian music as it is Kentucky music. It's just as much Hawaiian music as it is West Virginia music. When you fill a football stadium with Dolly Parton listeners, are we saying that they're there in part because the songs she's singing are their stories too? Yep, yep. This is our music. I've written a lot of songs about the Smoky Mountains where I grew up. We had a good life back there in the hills.

We're all going through some version of, you know, a one to two or three hundred year change from being essentially peasants to being moderned. I remember sitting on the front porch on a summer afternoon in a straight back chair on two legs leaned against the wall. Professor Fox has a book on this subject, real country music and language and working class culture. You can find more information about this. that on our website

Radiolab.org. Okay, we're going to take a little break and when we come back we're going to travel east, way, way east to a distant land where we're going to stumble across, interestingly. Very familiar music.

And I got to say this next story, this one, it's one of the more charming and delightful. It's got one of the best moments, I think, of any piece we've ever made. And this is going back again 11 years. So, we're going to play that story in a minute.

Yeah. Hi, my name is Keir Fetler, and I'm calling from Yakima, Washington. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. 3.21. Jed. Robert. Radio Lab. We're back, and we've just heard a story about country music

that traveled across the world in patches. And for this next story we're going to hear from one of the, From a truly international reporter, a radio reporter, Gregory Warner, he was... Long-time NPR, East Africa, correspondent, right? Did a bunch of stuff for us, too. From Kenya, from Russia. He does a podcast about the trials and tribulations of passing from one language in one country and one culture into another. He calls it rough translation.

That's great. But this is, before all that, this is Gregory 11 years ago when, well, he was just as crazy. as easy as he is now, but you'll hear about this in just a second. Gregory Warner, you won a journalism fellowship, and they said to you, you could go anywhere in the whole world. Where did you decide to go? So I went to Afghanistan. Have you ever been to a war zone before by any chance? I mean, I've, no. Have you done any international reporting before? Well, actually, earlier that year, I had been in Estonia covering an accordion festival. So that was a prime piece of... So you play the accordion? I play accordion.

You're like an accomplished accordionist? No. No, no. I'm just an amateur accordionist. So when you go to Afghanistan, do you bring your accordion with you? Yeah, I brought my accordion. How did that work out? Well, I show up in Afghanistan.

I'm carrying my accordion, and I'm thinking, maybe this wasn't the smartest idea. Because... It wasn't an accordion playing crowd. I mean, I was going down the street, and women in Burkas are holding their babies, and little boys will actually sob, sob, begging you to sort of buy a piece of gum. Here I am with my shiny red accordion, and it's just not very appropriate. Does there come a time when you're actually willing to use the accordion? Well, it was a weeknight. It was in my living room. I find Najeeb, who's my fixer and translator,

he's working for me. He's lying on his back, and he's flinging his legs up into the air. A guard is catching his legs and flinging the back down. Why are you doing that? Well, this is a kind of ab crunches. That's what we're listening to now? Yeah, there he's throwing his legs up. Guard pushes him back down Going up Back down

So I figured I'd help him out So I started playing my accordion for him I said And it's going well Najeeb's bopping his head to the tune And then he kind of looks at me He says hey How do you know Afghan music?

I say I'm not playing Afghan music And he says yes you are I said no I'm not Yeah you are I said, no, no, no, that's like folk song from the 60s called Those Were the Days, My Friend. Some song that my mom used to sing. Those were the days, my friend.

Yeah, that's my mom. We thought they'd never end. We'd sing and dance forever and a day. He says, no, no, no, that's an Afghan song. And then he's back to the ab crutches. And I'm like, no, no, no, wait, wait. Please tell me the story of those were the days, my friend. So what's the story of...

Those were the days, my friends. That's what we call it. Tell me about that song. That song is for our singer who is famous for it, I'm being in Casanova. His name is Ahmed Zaheim. Amazaire famous singer in Afghanistan. It's 25 years ago. How does the lyrics go in... Tanha should I am tan ha...

Tanha should I am tan ha. Wait, wait, wait, that's not... There's... Okay, it's true. He did get it wrong, so I forgot about it. I thought he was crazy. Then it kept happening. I would bring my accordion, play it for some people

every time. People would say, hey, isn't that an Amid Zayar song? How do you spell this name? Z-A-H-I-R. Amid Z-A-H-I-R. Who is he? Well, that's what I wanted to find out. So the first thing Najib gave me

was his entire CD collection. And one night, I sit down and listen to it, I'm hearing one Western riff after another. John Lennon, Night King Cole, definitely a lot of Elvis. Like, I realized on this tune, there's an Amadeeer tune, you can actually overlay the Elvis version

right on top of it. Is he stealing these tunes? Is that what you're saying? It's more like he Afghanized them. Like, here's one of his biggest hits. Tan Ha Shedem Tanha. Now you remember this is the song that Najib sung to me, but it did sound familiar. So I emailed this tune to an old friend at St. Louis.

He immediately said, oh yeah, that's that Western disco hit El Bimbo. Oh, that's amazing! So now this is the Western version. It's the same melody as the Amid Zaire version, same key even. Now let's just go back to the Amid Zaire version for a second. Now listen to this violin line. So this is East Meets West, Amid Zaire style. And this is like the mega hit in Kabul in 1973.

And this is the sound of Afghanistan in the 70s. So I beg Najeeb to tell me more about this Amid Zayir guy. And finally he says, okay, I'll take you to meet the old childhood friend of the man himself. So we drive up to this gate. This guy with white hair opens the door. He and Najib chat for a bit. This guy named Sadat Dardar. Sadat Dardar.

He's been friends with Ambitza year since the fourth grade. And he takes us inside. He closes the gate behind us. And the scene changes. Suddenly it's a garden. Birds are chirping. And then Sadat stops, and he points through this old fountain in the courtyard. And he says something to Najib,

and Najeeb starts laughing. and Najeeb says, you know, this is the fountain where Ahmed Zaire used to play his accordion. Ahmed Zaire plays accordion, just like me. He's saying that 40 girls were lying down there and he was playing accordion here, you know? 40 girls? 40 girls? Well, they did call him Casanova for a reason. But was that okay?

Because in Afghanistan, maybe girls and boys aren't supposed to, like, be hanging out? Yes and no, because Afghanistan was a pretty different, country in those days. It's something I didn't even realize until I got there. This is the 70s. The women are wearing skirts and Jane Fonda haircuts. The men are wearing sideburns and they're doing their James Dean. And it's not just what people are wearing. It's that there's this sense of possibility in there. Things are opening up finally. And the poster boy for all this is Amid Zaire. He's a bad boy. When he had a concert, everybody, all the boys and girls would come to his concerts.

wearing new clothes. And not only all the girls of Afghanistan, but the foreign girls, they also were in love with him. Let me just play one little clip from one of his shows, and I want you to hear a little scream that comes right in, right here. For young Afghans at the time, especially young Afghan women,

Ahmed Zayir, he was like a god. No mother would give you. birth a child as good as Ahmad Zahir. And this is where the story gets a lot darker. It's 1973. The Russians start to move it. And the new president that they put in, he doesn't really like Amazadezai at all.

Why? Well, it was really in their interest that Amad Zaire would come out publicly praising the government, and he always refused to do it. Anything political, he wouldn't play the show. And some of his songs, especially the later songs, started to actually have coded anti-

government lyrics in them. And then he would have other lyrics about how freedom is the most important thing. So what did the government do to him? They ban his songs from the radio. They start throwing him in jail kind of regularly. But even when he gets out of jail, he refuses to play any of the Communist Party events.

But he plays plenty of his own shows. In fact, after one concert, he meets this beautiful woman named Fahira. The way she tells the story, he taps her on the shoulder. He says, hey, he says, hi, can I talk to you? I turned my face. I said, yeah? He said, no, never mind.

He tapped you on the shoulder and he said, can I talk to you? And then he said, never mind. And he walked away? And he just walked away. That was a pretty good seduction technique. I guess he was very good in it. He got lots of girls like that. And he got her.

And they got married. And she got pregnant. Meanwhile, the political situation was getting worse and worse. All his friends are fleeing the country. There are murders, tortures. Somebody came to our house, knocked the door. And he said, can I talk to Ahmad Zaire, please? Amazir offered them, can I get you a drink?

He said, no, no, no, I've just come from the Ministry of Interior. There's a plan for you. I don't know what they're going to do to you. That's all I want to tell you to be careful. But Ahmed Zaire and his wife, they don't do anything. They don't? They don't leave. Why?

He says, oh, we'll go after the baby's born. Five days later, it's his birthday. June 14th, 1979. He's actually signing a contract for a concert that day. He went to sign a contract. And as he's driving away, he tells her to make some lunch. When we come back, we'll go shopping, and then I will make lasagna, and then we'll go out. So she makes lasagna, and she waits for him to come back, and she waits, and then she falls asleep.

I had a very weird dream. I'm somewhere very high in the mountains, and I have no shoes, and there's a very strong wind blowing, and my hair is everywhere. and I see him not the way he went in the morning. His beard is out like he hasn't shaved for past two days and he has something white around him and something is pulling him and he's calling me that I don't want to go.

And suddenly I woke up, I ran down. I saw my father-in-law. He wouldn't talk. He was just bending, you know, like shaking himself and bending and just holding my hand. I didn't know anything. What happened? So what happened then?

Well, the government says that Amid Zaire had a traffic accident, but everybody else tells me he was shot in the head, probably by government operatives. And the news spreads through all the neighborhoods in town. So you have Tajik's, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, they're all getting up and not really knowing what else to do. They come walking to Amid Zayir's house. The courtyard starts filling up with people,

50, 100, 200, they're inside the house, they're outside the house, they're on the street. At this point, the body comes, born by six policemen on a stretcher. People start to wail, they start to push. In fact, all the windows break, the doors break. They bring the body through the courtyard into the living room, and Fahira pushes through the police, and she sees her husband's body on the stretcher. So I thought he was hurt or something. And when I pulled the sheet from his face, that's when I fell down on top.

When I fell, they took me to the hospital, and that's how Shavna was born. So does she go into labor? She goes into labor. Right there? Yeah, and she almost dies in childbirth. But her baby's saved, she's saved, and her baby has the same birthday then. Her baby was born on that very day? That very day.

So then what happened? Well, then the music basically stops. It's that winter that the Russians invade. It starts a long period of war. You have the jihad. then the Mujahideen, then the Civil War. When the Taliban come in, they just ban music entirely. I mean, no instruments.

We're talking 20 years where the cultural life of this country basically is frozen. I can't even imagine what that's like. I can barely go a day without hearing some tunes. 2001, the Americans come in. Afghanistan's opened back up. The radios turned back on. And who comes out of them? Amid Zaire.

So, Greg, when you turn on the radio today in Kabul, do you hear Amid Zaire? I'm telling you it's my main way that I connect with taxi drivers. And invariably, they're listening to an Amid Zaire song. Even now? Oh, yeah. Why? Because there's just not been a chance for a new artist to emerge, or it's just, you know, there was a deep freeze.

And also Amid Zaire reminds everybody of what Kabul used to be. I had this experience with my accordion again and again myself. Even when I played people in my music, they'd get this smile on their face as if I was reminding them of something they knew before me. In fact, there was one time I was up north and there was this big music festival and I had brought my accordion and they said, well, why don't you play? And I said, well, I mean, I could play for you, sure. They said, how about right now? And so they kick the band that's on there off. They send them to drink green tea.

They shove me up on stage. I'm standing in front of 300 Afghans. And these guys, they're not from Kabul. Well, they don't speak English. They're not wearing suits and ties. This is a very Afghan crowd. So I figure I should play some Johnny Cash. Of course.

I fell for you like a child. Oh, the fire went wild. I fell into a bird. The big are going crazy. It was the best crowd I've ever had. Greg Warner traveled. He's not a person for it. Greg Warner traveled to Afghanistan

with support from an international reporting project fellowship from the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. And if you visit our website, RadioLab.org, you can see video, actual video footage of that Johnny Cash concert. It's worth checking out. Yeah, he shot it. So there you see them all in their strange non-country Western clothing. Well, we should, we're out of time. When you're on our website, RadioLab.org, you can also send us an email, RadioLab at WNYC.org. I'm Jared Abumrod. I'm Robert Krollwich. Thanks for listening.

Radio Lab is produced by Jod Abramrad, Lulu Miller, Rob Christensen, Ellen Horn, and Tony Field. Production support by Sally Herships, Sarah Pellegrini, Ariel Laski, Heather Radke, Jesse Banco, Anna Borko, Wairo. Linda Everts and Soren Wheeler, thanks to Alan Hall and Falling Tree Productions, Josh Kurtz, and Dan Hershey. Well, okay, that was... That was Gregory. That was Gregory and a very sober jad. outintroducing him 11 years ago.

Are you embarrassed? No, just commenting. I'm just noticing. You now are more relaxed, I think, on the radio than perhaps you were doing. Maybe a little bit. Certainly older.

Older. But anyhow, so, you know... Gregory, too. But what's interesting, what interestingly hasn't changed is that some of the ideas that we were talking about in this episode,

we're still playing around with. You know, I just actually last night released episode three of Dolly Parton's America and episode four coming up next week, very much vibe with these ideas and explore them in their very dolly-specific, very strange context. But the same kind of questions. Where can people find the Dolly Show?

At the bodega. At the bodega. No, they can find it at dolly Barnes America.org and also Apple Podcasts and iTunes and Google Play and all the things. And wherever you get your podcasts. Yes. That's what they say these days. Okay, that's it for us for the moment.

we'll be back. But only for the moment. Only for the moment. We keep returning. And that is our intention. Yes. So wait for us for the next time we're here. And until then, we'll lead a clean, useful, and virtuous life.