Rev Left Radio - Rebel Music, Communal Dancing, and the Class Politics of Movement

Episode Date: January 9, 2018

Born in Beijing and based in Berlin, Leo Zhao (AKA Dj Zhao) is a writer, revolutionary, rhythm ambassador, and musicologist, bringing a poly-cultural understanding of sound to his deeply percussive cross-genre sets. Leo joins Brett to discuss music theory and history from a radical leftist and materialist perspective. Topics include: His families history living under Mao, Laws against social dancing throughout history, music and dance stratification in class societies, the roots of American music, Slavery, Africa's influence on music, the evolutionary and sociological underpinnings of social dance and beat-driven music, Hip Hop, New Orleans culture and history, Trap music, cultural appropriation vs. cultural exchange, the connections between oppression and music, the body and sexuality, and much more! Dj Zhao's soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/djzhao Dj Zhao's Website: https://ngomasound.com/ Follow DJ Zhao on FB: https://www.facebook.com/zhao.ngoma/ The DJ mix of lefist music we discussed in the episode can be found here: https://www.mixcloud.com/djzhao/dance-dance-revolution/ For people who might want to read more on these and related topics: https://medium.com/@leohezhao Music on the show in order of appearance: https://akwaabamusic.bandcamp.com/track/baro Guem & Zaka - Gia from the album Giants of Percussion DJ Dikota - Pitori Streets konono nº1 - Paridiso  http://www.konono.net Les Tambours de Brazza - Brazza https://www.facebook.com/JEBiayenda/     Please support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio  and follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio  Follow us on FB at "Revolutionary Left Radio" Intro Music by The String-Bo String Duo. You can listen and support their music here: https://tsbsd.bandcamp.com/track/red-black This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, and the Omaha GDC. Check out Nebraska IWW's new website here: https://www.nebraskaiww.org  

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Welcome to hit in and turn it up loud. Revolutionary Left Radio starts now. Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host, Ann Comrade, Brett O'Shea. And today we have on Leo Zow, aka DJ Zow, all the way from Berlin, Germany, to talk about music, dance, the historical roots of music,

and the emancipatory power of dance. Leo, would you like to introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background? Hey Brett Yeah My name is Jowl I'm DJ Jow I work at the DJ

I'm in Berlin, Germany at the moment But I live in the U.S. for a long time For 20 years of my life Before that I was born and raised in China I grew up Born and raised in Beijing And a lot of people I mean I'm a communist today

Not because I was born in China, but against that fact. Like, even though I was born and raised in China, I'm still a communist. Would you like to talk a little, before we get into the bulk of this conversation, would you like to talk a little bit about your family history in regards to China and what the experiences of your family were? Yeah, I can touch upon that a little bit. Both my parents were sent to the re-education camps, the labor camps in late Maoist China in the early 70s or late 60s during the Cultural Revolution for things like reading Einstein or listening to vinyl records of, I don't know, Shostakovich or Mozart or something.

So for things like that. So I grew up with thorough liberal kind of hatred of communism. I grew up swallowing that narrative and I felt it because the process, the emotional stars from that process is deep in me. I feel it every day. My family is, to put it lightly, not a normal family. I think because of that, at least partially, but to a great extent, because of that process. I mean, both my parents were scientists, and they were basically psychologically tortured for years in these re-education camps. And so, but why am I still a communist today?

It wasn't until the recent maybe 10 years, in the past 5, 10 years, that I've really sort of reassessed that entire historical process, that entire, you know, the socialist states, the revolutionary left states, and what became of them. And the various factors and forces that shape them, contingent factors, which shaped the, you know, which shaped the USSR and then China and East Germany, blah, blah, blah, all of these things. And so I've really had to do a lot of homework and soul search, you know, and to really sort of look at the bigger picture and to understand the specifics of why things turned out the way they are. But anyway, that's a huge topic. I don't know how long we should go into that. Yeah, you know, it escapes the purview of this conversation, but I do think it's extremely interesting to think about how you came from that history, but still you've reassessed it and you firmly. identify as a communist, seeing neoliberal late capitalism in action and seeing the dark sides of capitalism as well.

I mean, I know firsthand, I mean, basically the nightmare that the socialist states became in many ways. I mean, in other ways not. And there were, you know, very good things about life in China as well. It was a different aspect. But it was notmarish. It was very oppressive in many ways. And so if someone like me can manage to wade through, you know, the history, the things that happen and come to a broader understanding of the core of what happened, of the, or what I see today, my understanding will grow in the days to come for sure.

but I think if someone like me can come to understand you know in a bigger sense of what communism means and its fate in the 20th century and basically to understand that what happened did not necessarily have to happen that way and that it was contingent it was contingent upon a lot of different material political environment, climate, the factors and that what happened

is not necessarily what's going to happen again if, you know, the conditions for revolution approaches again becomes ripe. But anyway, I don't want to digress too much. Definitely. So, I'm going to be. I'm going to be. Let's go ahead and because this is really your expertise and I've read a lot of your articles and they're fascinating in-depth materialist analysis of music and dance. So let's just go ahead and start with some of the history. What have been some of the laws passed against dancing throughout history and what social

fears did those in power have that gave rise to these laws? Well, if we start from contemporaries like now that everybody knows and move backwards, recently in the 90s, there was the anti-rave legislation passed in the UK, which was very famous. A lot of all of these electronic music artists like Apex Twin and Otaker made fun of it by releasing CDs that said this CD contains looped beats or whatever. There was a lot of specific law passed in the UK against events which features looped beats. looped, like, you know, basically electronic dance music. Yeah, it was really, really crazy, really absurd. I'm not sure if it was, I guess it was overturned at some point.

But that's one of them. I mean, they started cracking down on raves and on illegal raves back in the 90s as the phenomenon became really big. I mean, just basically kids going out into the countryside, into the forest with a massive sound system, you know, not hurting anybody, just having a good time and the police would come and shut them down and find the organizers thousands of euros and you know stuff like that and the same happens in the u.s increasingly or like the i mean of course with liberal tolerance culture they you know eventually find a way to work it into the capitalist profit-making model

and you know these big commercial ebm raves or whatever you know of course they occur under the auspices of neoliberal markets, whatever. But anyway, independent gatherings are very much not kosher, not good in the eyes of the establishment. It poses a constant threat to the order of people gathering together voluntarily without consumerism, you know, building an energy in a community. And in New York, I mean, I think it was just repealed last year, the cabaret license law. It was in effect for 80 years or something like that. In New York, one of the world's biggest metropolis, you know, the culture centers of the world, New York City.

If you don't buy a license for your establishment, for your bar or club, which costs like thousands of dollars, you cannot have bodies moving in motion bodies moving with the music that was the definition of dancing and I've witnessed them myself in New York City in the 90s concerts being shut down

because a couple was swaying in the audience. The police would just come in to the club and unplug the system just everybody go home. Amazing. So anyway So those are some contemporary things, but they're not new. I mean, if we go back to all the way in history, the Romans, you know, had laws against dancing, against gathering, against these neo-pagan, like sort of at that time, already a revival of ancient spiritual practices of, you know, of dancing, of celebration, celebrating the solstice and stuff like that. And so the Romans, like every empire, had either explicit laws or a general attitude, cultural attitude towards social dancing, which is very much frowned upon and looked down upon.

Yeah, there's very much a connection between social dancing and the lower classes. So why is dancing specifically and music a recurring staple? of marginalized communities throughout history all the way up until today? Well, for many, many different reasons. It's the realm of the lower classes because they are the inheritors of this tradition of celebrating ourselves,

the community, our bodies, and eroticism in public, like the sort of egalitarian dance floor, like spiritual tradition, which in my analysis is the core of homo sapien sapien cultural forms. It's the core. It's the essence of our species, basically. It's the main cultural center that we have.

And the states, the hierarchical power structure, always wants to suppress this because it's a threat to hegemony, to power when people gather together outside of their control and they've

developed classical music all of the states from Egypt to China to India you know and so and so the the folk

music, the poor people have kept that tradition of communal social dancing. If you look at Europe, it's the purveyors of social dance culture

are always the poorest people, or the most oppressed communities. Today, dance, social dancing, I mean, it's really sort of almost non-existent in Europe, the culture of social dance is looked upon as something that poor

people do. Only uneducated fools get drunk and dance in public. It's something that if you're a respectable, you know, upstanding bourgeois citizen, you just don't do that. That's not self-respect, you know. And so the purveyors of social dancing traditions, the most rich traditions are the Irish with their rich Celtic dance culture and like the Polish and you know the poor communities and ancient cultures so yeah yeah one way I think about it is I know it's kind of a silly reference but the the pop cultural reference that pops into my head is the movie the Titanic when Jack and Rose would go down to the to the lower levels of the ship where all the the poor immigrants were and their dancing was drinking beer and

they're flying around, but you go up to the upper decks where the rich upper class was and it's all very stuffy. It's all very deep, like long dress gowns and like strict movements. So that's kind of the class basis of the class differences there that exist. Absolutely. I forgot about that scene. It's perfect. I completely forgot about that scene. Yeah, it's perfect. Perfect illustration of what I'm talking about. I mean, the culture of the upper classes, the classical music tradition. If you look at India, Indian classical music, it's very divorced from the body. You sit and you listen and you have this air of almost going to church, this kind of grandiose intellectual kind of music, you know, dancing is reduced to spectacle. You watch ballet dancers on stage

Or you watch classical Indian dancers You sit quietly and absorb and consume And it's very divorced from the body Yeah, if you look at everywhere in India Like the ethnic minorities in India Or the smaller, the poor people And the minorities all have rich social dancing culture and their music is much more relatable to the body

and it's much more interactive like the street music from India funky, really funky and it makes you move and if you listen to the classical Indian music is very intellectual, very abstract and I mean I don't want to make any kind of value claims here because classical music obviously is amazing as well that's the nature of human beings

that whatever box were put into we make amazing stuff out of it and but you know I'm not saying that one is necessarily better or whatever but just to you know make it clear the distinction of these various cultural forms as shaped by

the power structure and the economics and the class realities of Susnesia the state's music is very grandiose like beautiful complex and and it's fascinating. But the smaller ensembles that play the Sondonnesia

have much more funky, you know, danceable music. And this is true everywhere. China, the same. The ethnic minorities have funky music, funky dances that are very, very vibrant. And the state, the Han majority, I'm Han. So I'm the original colonial asshole of East Asia or come from that, come from that history. But the Han, the state, the Chinese

emperors and the kings, they have their state music, which is very somber, very quiet and very sort of, you know, meditative. And I love it as well. It's beautiful. But it's very much not the same as social dancing music, which is championed by the ethnic minorities, like the hundreds and hundreds of ethnic minorities in China that have been pushed to the margins of their former habitats. But anyway, yeah, and thinking about that in the context of the U.S., from the 1960s countercultural movement of the hippies, a big part of that was a sort of letting go. You can go back and watch videos of hippies dancing around with flowers in their hair, naked, hip hop arose in New York, Harlem out of the oppression of black folks, the Southern Baptist

this church music and the sort of difference of going into a black church in the south compared to maybe a Catholic church in the Midwest, the difference between the use of music and dance is really noticeable. So all over the world in every context where there are oppressed people, where there is a lower class or a countercultural movement, there's a hinge there of music and dance that it seems to pivot on continuously over and over again all throughout history. I find that utterly fascinating. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And there's a concerted effort of making us not see these continuities and not see these basic kind of laws or rules of society and culture that, you know, the sort of anti-Marxist, you know, intellectual tradition in the West has been pushing, you know, that this sort of understanding, this sort of bigger picture, this sort of understanding, this sort of understanding of our culture and of ourselves is really buried systematically. But yeah, you're absolutely right. The Southern Baptist ring shouts, the traditions of the slaves. And, I mean, it's very, very rich in social dance. One thing you mentioned earlier that I found interesting is this notion of how fluid body movements are kind of sexual and erotic in nature.

So especially thinking about, you know, the Judeo-Christian West and that context, how does shame surrounding the body and shame surrounding sexuality play into some of the taboos against dancing? Well, that's a very important part, right, in social control, is divorcing people from their bodies and making people feel ashamed for their sexuality. I think, yeah, I mean, that's just the central part of, I mean, it's a very, very complex. history of, I mean, your last podcast with the author of Caliban and the witch touched upon some of this, very, very complex, dynamic, but basically I think it plays a central role in social control in the subjugation of entire populations is by making feel ashamed

of their sexuality. That is something bad and ties in with the original sin and all of this. I mean, Europe itself was the victim of colonization, right? A long, long time ago, and Christianity was only the latest wave because waves of empires have, you know, rolled through these parts of the world, killing indigenous people by the millions and destroying their culture, erasing their identity. The shamanic culture of the Sami people as just an example of all these indigenous populations that have been. marginalized in Europe and the empires rolled through and Christianity as just the latest or not the latest but one of the latest cases of that built these social norms or you know imposed these social norms on the population I mean and

this takes a variety of different forms for instance the introduction of alcohol and replacing the psychedelic, original ingested piece of the divine, which used to be magic mushrooms in the pagan spiritual traditions, like in the Sami. Like the Amanita Muscaria, the mushroom with the white polka dots on red. Yeah. You know, that's the traditional. spiritual agent that people that was a part of that was a central part of their spiritual practices and that was replaced with the alcohol and so we drink the

blood of Christ which is wine that becomes the holy you know imbibing agent it was replaced the psychedelic mushroom and so that's only one but you know and the dancing and the shame and the the forbidding of social dance and the body shame and all of that is just another aspect. It's all sort of like a very complex process of subjugation. And so colonization, fast forward to the 1500s, when Europeans who come from this larger historical process who are shaped by Christianity and blah blah, when they first met Africans. So you can imagine, I mean, African cultures have been many, many African cultures, not all of them.

There were, of course, also empires in Africa, like the Malian Empire or the Ghanaian Empire. And, you know, and those, they have much the same. They have their classical music as well. If you listen to Malian classical music, it's very, very intellectual. It's very, very removed, sort of removed from the body, but it's still more connected than the West. But anyway, compared to like the tribal music or not tribal, that's the wrong word, many, many other cultures that are not infected with power and hierarchy and states and empires, the music is much more strong in terms of rhythm, in terms of drumming, in terms of getting funky. And so I think Africa is a situation where many, many cultures were were you know not infected with with power and domination and so they were able to retain much of the original culture of the older cultures and so when Europeans first met you know met Africans they you know the Africans had to be dehumanized because their celebration of the body and of sexuality without shame without guilt is very much a threat

to the European establishment and to this culture of the elites that has taken over in Europe. Yeah, and there's the dehumanizing of Africans and there's also, I think, a parallel to the dehumanization of Native Americans when the colonizers from Europe came over to the Americas. When I think of Native Americans

and I lived off the Crow Reservation of Montana for a while so I saw some of this firsthand, But the beautiful dancing and the exotic array of feathers and clothing that they wear and they dance around in circles often. I want to move on from the historical to the evolutionary underpinnings of music and dance. And to transition there, there's a recurring theme from soul train to break dancing to freestyle cyphers to Native American indigenous music. There's this feature of like almost forming a circle around people and letting them take turns like jumping in the middle. to showcase their talents, and it seems to reappear again and again in a multitude of different cultural contexts. I think that's interesting. So maybe you could touch on that as you ease

into the question about what the evolutionary and sociological underpinnings of beat-driven music and social dance are. Well, specifically, the circle thing, the cipher thing, I can only speak from conjecture because I am not clear on the specific cultural, roots of that practice. I mean, I'm in my, basically a guess, you know, that they, that it has ancient roots. I mean, I'm convinced of that, but I have no evidence at the moment. But what is important about the, these social dancing traditions is egalitarianism. And I think the cipher, the circle is an expression of that. Everyone is the same on the dance floor. In fact, the Romans cracked down on the cults of the pagan cults that celebrated in this way with ingestion of psychedelics and orgiastic practices in the forest and dancing, lots of heavy rhythm dancing.

the egalitarianism inherent in these spiritual traditions is very much a threat to the power. And the cyphers is definitely, everyone's the same. It doesn't matter how much money you have. When you go to the club, everybody's the same on the dance floor. It doesn't matter, you know, what your social standing is. The only thing matters is your moves, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, I think the cipher is definitely.

an expression of that. And also the community that it builds, right? That's the central, one of the central things in our evolutionary reality. I mean, our species is relatively weak and slow and our babies need years before they can fend for themselves and find food for themselves and compared to other mammals. And so one of the most important adaptive traits that we developed in our evolution that ensured our survival is community, is cooperation, is a tightly knit society of members that trust and cooperate and empathize and work with each other. than take care of each other. It is, you know, I take care of you, you take care of me, we all take care of each other,

and this political understanding of what is good for me is good for you, what is good for you is good for everybody, what's good for everybody is good for me. And this collectivity, right, of a cohesive society that is connected. This is very much made possible by dance and music of the drums. because dancing together and drumming together and singing together,

this is one of the best ways to create empathy and to create trust and builds community. Yeah, the social bonding mechanism, as you mentioned, the cooperative mechanism. In a lot of more ancient cultures, it was dance was used as a coming-of-age ritual or religious rituals. So in every context, the dancing and the social nature of dance, dancing seems to reassert itself over and over again. Dancing, as we understand it, it wasn't just dancing in the spiritual traditions of the past. Dancing is not divorceable. You cannot separate it from orgiastic practices.

This communal dance together, what is now only dancing together, it used to be orgiastic. People would get down and get freaky on the dance floor. like not in a metaphorical sense but actually and and this builds community I mean this is you know builds love and trust among members of the society like nothing else and also the imbibing of psychedelic agents and you know various herbs and stuff like that but I mean that's why we have these you know like I mean we reproduce these forms in terms of like, you know, explicit, like, moves which are erotic, but we don't actually have sex on the dance floor. Correct. And, you know, this practice of using sexuality to build relationships, you can find examples of this everywhere. For instance, I heard recently that Air Force pilots have many, many of them develop these, you know, swinger parties, the trading keys thing. And it's a very popular sort of phenomenon within like Air Force pilots.

The reason is, you know, if I don't, if one of them don't make it back at the end of, you know, on someday, that they want to make sure that their wives are taken care of by the other people in their, in their group. So, so this, the using of sexuality to build trust is everywhere. Absolutely. No, that's great. It takes my mind to bonobos, a form of chimpanzee who use sex rather than vice. violence most of the time. It's a matriarchal society and sex is the way that they do build social bonding and that they often solve problems as opposed to more traditional chimps who often use violence. It also reminds me of as a philosophy person myself, the boy and male relationships

in ancient Greece in the philosophical communities, the sex between sort of a mentor, philosophical mentor and their understudy was prevalent. And then in some warrior cultures and ancient warrior cultures. Homosexual sex was a way of creating bonds between men that went out to fight other groups of men. So in every instance, you see sex reappear as a bonding mechanism and as a trust-building mechanism. I think that's, again, fascinating stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And on warfare, rhythm and drumming have, of course, been adopted by the warlike states as well, been used as a powerful tool to, you know, drum up, you know, excitement and courage in the warriors. And so all of these things can be used by the hierarchies for their ends.

Definitely. All right. So let's move on to talk about the influence that African music specifically has had on the world. I'm going to be able to be. I think it's impossible to exaggerate its influence. It permeates so much of, especially American music, it's at the root of virtually all American music. So could you give some examples of African music's core features

and its global reach? Well, African music hasn't had very much of a global reach, sadly, in the 20th century. What has had a global reach is African-American music, as entangled with empire and cultural imperialism. and the cultural hegemony that the U.S. Empire has sort of imposed on the world, but also from the power of the music itself, it speaks to our modern experience, African-American traditions. It speaks to our modern condition of basically work and a form of slavery,

a form of having our autonomy, as well as community, kind of eroded by the way that we live, by this capitalistic way that our society is structured. African-American tradition is all over. I mean, it's become synonymous with modern music, with modern pop music. When we say modern pop music, we mean African-American music. rock and roll funk you know house house music electronic music it all comes from the African-American experience and and this is a very specific cultural form and it's specific forms it's specific like for instance the beat the African-American beat is very unique you don't find the boom

BAP, the 112 in any other cultures around the world. It's not a feature in the music of any traditional music around the world. It's very specifically African-American. This is where Marxism becomes so crucially important as a set of analytical tools with which to understand our realities today. In this case, the shape of the music that we listen to, the shape of the pop songs that that we hear when we turn on the radio. Why does it have that rhythm?

That rhythm that boom bap is shaped by particular historical process, which is colonialism and transatlantic slavery. Basically to make a very long, very big subject to condense it in a few sentences, basically African-American rhythm evolved in a context of drumlessness. The drums were taken away from the slaves. In the 1740s, I believe, a law was passed, banning drums from the slaves. Any slave caught with drums would have his hands cut off or worse were executed. All the drums were burnt.

And the reason for this is basically there was a, massive uprising all over the plantations in the south, which was very much organized, many, many plantations at the same time. And after it was crushed, the masters realized that the only way it could have been organized, this large-scale uprising, was via the talking drums, the drums which talk, which speak from Africa, these traditions, it's a language. I mean, talking drums is not just drums that sound like people talking, but it's a complex language with which you can recite poetry, you can tell epic stories, you can, I mean, the expressive possibilities of that is just astounding, right?

We cannot even imagine dancing to a beat, which is funky and joyous and fun. But at the same time, the beat is telling you a story. I mean, this is a technology that is largely lost today. Not many people even in Africa remember the art of the talking drums. But anyway, back to the plantations, that's the only way the slaves organized the large-scale uprising is by relaying messages between the plantations, which are very many kilometers apart from each other. And, of course, the slaves are not allowed to communicate in normal ways.

And so they spoke with the drums. When they played drums at night, they would relay these messages of organizing specifics of how to conduct this uprising. And so as a result of that, all of the drums were banned in the north part, of the Americas first and then a hundred years later or so it was banned in South America as well so North American music more than anywhere else has been shaped by this by this fundamental condition of playing music without drums and so many many

different things came to replace the drum for the for the slaves like many many different things are used the body drumming on the body there's a there's a thing there's a practice called juba named named after the slave whose execution caused the uprising that I was just talking about his name was juba and these forms of drumming on the body using the body as a drum that is one of the ways that drums were replaced and also of course the voice. That's the most prominent because the voice you always have. Sometimes you don't even have spoons or other utensils to play drums with, but you always have the voice. And so gospel music, historians have called percussion music done with a voice.

And so long story short, fast forward to today, hip-hop. If you look at the beat of hip-hop, it's a very simple boom-bap. It's very simple one-two-one-two that lays the structure. And then the complex polyrhythms, the complex African polyrhythms, are all expressed with the voice. Scientists have actually mapped out the patterns of rap. And mathematically speaking, it actually identically, replicates African drumming. And so the voice, I mean, good rappers, right?

We're not talking about. Like terrible rappers can't do that. But the really good rappers are polyrhythmic, absolutely. And their rap hits all of those beat the places on the timeline, in the music. Anyhow, it's identical to African drumming. Yeah, I think of Nas, I think of Outcast, I think of M.F. Doom. I think of Kendrick Lamar as far as using the voice to create these polyrhythmic, polysyllabic complex raps. And it's really fascinating. Hip-hop is so rich. But from slavery, from the conditions of slavery, that music started and it went up through folk music, through gospel, through blues, through rock and roll, and then to hip-hop. And then because of the U.S.'s empire and the social imperialism that comes with it, the sort of exporting of our culture to. to the entire world, that music kind of set the terms for the 20th and the 21st century of how other countries sort of think about music or at least influenced by American music.

And, you know, of course, the music of African-American slaves is rooted in the music of Africa itself. So in this indirect way, there's this long historical process of music coming out of Africa and enlightening the entire world in a sense. I just think it's interesting to trace that whole thing back. It's fascinating. It is, absolutely. And it's not only because of cultural imperialism that African American music become so popular all over the world. Another reason is obviously because the music is powerful. It speaks to us. It speaks to the modern experience because we all live in these societies where it's very, our experience of life is very much compartmentalized and separated from each other. We have work and we have leisure

and we have these different spheres of life and we also don't have very much time for music. to practice music, to sing together and dance together. And so this music of alienation, basically, which comes from the process of slavery, which is formed and shaped by slavery, speaks to all of us. I think we all feel this, I mean, this is kind of,

at the core of African and American music, I think, I mean, this is probably a very broad, very broad statement, but it has this core of oppression that is built into the culture. itself and we can all you know we can all feel that and we all do feel it and so it speaks to us absolutely yeah for me personally a lot of my political development was influenced by hip-hop artists like dead prez or goody mob in my late teens early 20s that was those were crucial

albums that helped me not only radicalized politically but it gave me a window into the African American experience, and it really brought in my political outlook and my racial and class outlook. But then also, you know, in oppressed communities all over the world, from Palestine to Greece, to Latin America, to Japan, hip hop continually comes up as the voice of oppressed people in all these different contexts. So I think that speaks to your point about how that oppression is at the root of the music and how there's a liberatory aspect of expressing yourself through hip hop specifically. Absolutely. Oppression and commodification as well. And the two are entangled. I mean, there are stories of the plantations, on the plantations, the slaves being forced to play

music for the entertainment of the masters. After a hard day of grueling work, the master would come home drunk at three in the morning and wake up the slaves and sing, dance, you know, for my amusement and the exhausted slaves would have to pick themselves up and start playing music. And so this dimension of exploitation is also very much a part of the African American cultural experience. I mean, fast forward to someone like Michael Jackson. It's not a coincidence that Michael Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana and grew up in Gary, Indiana, the most impoverished, one of the most impoverished places in the U.S. in the 70s or 60s or whenever he grew up. And also his relationship with his father, his father had a very exploitative relationship

with his children, forced his children to sing and dance and to become famous, blah, blah, blah. And so it's not a coincidence that the most significant. an icon of modern pop music, of 20th century pop music, the king of pop. It's no coincidence that Michael Jackson comes from this personal context, this experience. Absolutely. Well said. So moving on a little bit, but kind of sticking with this same, you know, notion of hip hop especially, and you're deeply insightful and honestly powerfully moving article, life in the trap, you talk about trap music and it's a and specifically it's appropriation by more well-off white kids in the form of edm trap and you also talk about it symmetries and reflections on the on the larger capitalist trap that we all live in

so can you kind of talk about what trap music is and talk about the ways it wasn't appropriate because i think this is really interesting and speaks to a lot of a lot of issues yeah um trap um is the music of the of the of the criminal culture of cocaine and drugs and prostitution and pimping and this segment of society in the south of the United States. So I mean there are different specifically there are different interpretations of what the word trap actually referred to, but we can all agree that it refers to a house where cocaine is sold, or crack cocaine and heroin and other illicit substances are sold. And the music is largely, the subject of the music is largely revolve, largely revolves around this kind of culture, this street culture of drugs and prostitution.

And so, yeah, Southern hip-hop became a world phenomenon with its transition into EDM trap, which is taking the rhythms and the feeling of the music, this very intense, this very aggressive kind of feeling of the music, and then erasing the black voices and using it as just sort of like stimulation. It's very powerful. I mean, infusing it with bass and electronic sounds and erasing the voices. And that became bro-trap, basically. Bro-fied, as, you know, as has happened with a lot of different genres as well. But, yeah, I mean, trap was huge all over the world until at least a couple of years ago.

I mean, it still is, obviously. It permutate, it changes and evolves into other things. But all over the world, I mean, there was an article about Cambodia, how the Cambodian kids were going crazy with trap. Like, the trap parties were huge were going off. in Cambodia and Sweden everywhere I was in Switzerland

recently and there was a party you know the society and over there there's basically no crime I mean very little crime the streets are perfectly clean and everybody's rich

everybody's you know very very well put together and in but there was a party an ongoing party called called trap and the these kids in these very affluent societies just just love it um they in fact there was one party in which the theme was um only songs jays would only play songs about incarceration so so anyway the larger point is that the The kids, the suburban, you know, kids who grow up without any worries in their lives, hunger and thirst for a sense of adventure and for a sense of both adventure as well as community, right? because in this music, in southern trap music, hip-hop,

your relationships are life and death. Who is your friend? I mean, real friends, like friendships are real. Like, it's a matter of life and death. And enemies are real enemies. And it's a matter of life and death. And so this meaning that is in your life is missing from these affluent kids' lives. They move through education, school, and their work, and it's all pretty much sort of safe

and without any sense of danger, without any kind of sense of urgency. And so, of course, this culture that comes from the ghettos, that comes from the experience of life on the mean streets where people kill each other for a hundred bucks. Of course, this appeals to all of these kids that don't experience that. And so it's a form of vicarious consumption that I also partaken. You know, I understand. I understand that. Yeah, I think one of the the big issues with that, I mean, we've all seen it. You go to any suburb, you go to any high school in the best part of your city, you're going to see kids with white kids sagging their pants with the backwards hat, blast and rap music. But so often those very same kids grow into

adults that have, you know, deeply conditioned racist beliefs about the very people who make the music that they relate to and find escapism in. And then you see a lot of these kids starting to try to make that music totally detached from the communities and the conditions from which that music sprang. And then there's this appropriative element that comes into that comes into this where white kids who are totally detached from the realities of the situation begin to use that music and even profit off of that music to a largely white mainstream audience consumer audience and so there's a lot it gets very very tricky and very disheartening like with the with the version of edm trap which is a lot of white artists a lot of white

audiences taking trap music profiting off of it there is there is a goodness to it in the sense that this music touches so many people and has such a far reach, but there's also this really gross underbelly of appropriation that makes this whole discussion tricky and sad in a lot of ways. Yeah, and the connection has been systematically removed.

The connection between these musics, these cultures that we enjoy that speaks to us, that makes us feel invigorated and alive, and that we all enjoy and their roots, this connection between these two things is systematically removed by our dominant neoliberal capitalist culture. And I think to make those connections is crucial, is actually insurrectionary to understand through a Marxist analysis of, you know, the material roots of culture, how it shapes culture. And in fact, you know, what I was talking about earlier, or this, the historical process of slavery and how it shaped African-American music, this story, you know, I've encountered personally

these card-carrying anthropologists and the people who study music for living academics who are absolutely averse to the spreading of this story. Like, perfectly good people, right? That work in music, that love African music, that love hip-hop and juke,

footwork, blah, blah, blah, blah. That have spoken out explicitly against me publishing these essays about this connection between the historical roots in slavery and hip-hop and these modern forms.

I mean, it's really astounding. They literally tell me, like, I don't like this. Don't publish it. Or, like, this should not be told. Like, basically, they don't want the story of African-American music to be one that is revolving around loss and lack, right? This perspective of losing African polyrhythm. in the Americas, that the slaves have lost that.

That just really, like, it rubs them the wrong way. They really don't want that. They don't want to tell that story. Like, it's a part of the neoliberal, like, you know, overall dominant narrative, right? Like, America is the best and things are getting better and this positive, like, this kind of. So, like, the actual historical, you know, process. is counter to that. It's against that. It's, um, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's very much goes against the hegemonic stories that neoliberal capitalism tells. And so I, yeah, it's just

really interesting. I've had like musicologists like explicitly, explicitly directly telling me that these like stories should not be told in that way. Yeah, I think at the, at the center of liberalism broadly is a romanticized mythologized version of the United States and one of its most beautiful creations, which is in some sense its music for the neoliberal mind or the liberal mind to think of that music rooted in the oppression of the very country and the very system that they uphold and that it was actually the underbelly and the gross disgusting oppressive side of that system that they support that gave rise to this music. I mean it puts them back on their toes and it makes them rethink their very liberalism. So instead of having

to rethink your liberalism, you just shut down the conversation before it even gets started because to attack your liberalism is in some sense to attack their sense of self because it's so deeply conditioned into who they think they are and how they view their role and the sort of society they think they live in, that to start to question that is to start to bring uncomfortable questions to the four. That's how I think about it at least. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the only things of cultural value that the United States have given the world, in my analysis,

is jazz and rock and roll and all the various related genres. I mean, this is probably the core of what the United States has offered to the world of some worth of some value. And this is

a tradition that comes from this process of exploitation and oppression. Okay, let's look at specifics. Where does jazz come from and rock and roll largely from the only place in all of the United States where drums were not banned for another 100 years, which is New Orleans. New Orleans had a different economy, not plantation based, not on production, but on trade. It was a port city

that connected to the rest of the world. And so the economy was different. And also it was in control of, it was a colony of France, not England. And so they had, you know, different cultural sort of, you know, attitudes. And so in terms of like race and sex, the laws in New Orleans were very much different from the rest of the United States. And specifically, there's one neighborhood in New Orleans where slaves were allowed to play drums

for 100 years longer than anywhere else in the United States. And it's a neighborhood called Congo Square. And on Sundays, slaves brought their drums and could sing and dance and play music. And Louis Armstrong grew up within blocks of Congo Square. He grew up, you know, going to these Sunday things. And jazz was born in New Orleans from this and also the Europeans and Africans could play music together in New Orleans. unheard of anywhere else in the United States. So they exchanged ideas, and so European harmony,

harmonics, ideas about harmony mixed with African beats and African ideas of how to make music. And this exchange was very much unique in New Orleans. I mean, in the hostels, interracial sex was legal in New Orleans, completely crazy for the day. Like, how is that even possible? Like, completely an aberrant situation in New Orleans. And so from these complex, but very specific cultural conditions, you know, comes jazz. And then 30, 40 years later, the first rock and roll records were pressed within blocks

of Congo Square. So the only, you know, the most important cultural contributions to the world that the United States has given us comes from not only one state, not only one city, but one neighborhood within that city. Wow, wow. It's just crazy to think about. I mean, and the imagination just goes wild from there. I mean, what if drums were not banned in the United States?

what if black musicians and white musicians could collaborate on equal footing all throughout the United States what kinds of like amazing music that we would be listening to today we would never know absolutely yeah that's I mean it just it boggles the mind to think about the historical development tracing and so much of it tracing back to one little area in one little city and then yeah the counterfactuals of history what could have been what would have been I mean, you could sit for years and think about that. I do want to go on to this topic because I think a lot of what we're talking about bumps up against it, and we've sort of hinted at it throughout this conversation.

But there's a lot of discussion these days around issues of cultural appropriation. You know, some deny it exists. Some take it so far as to discourage virtually any form of exploration or embrace of cultures that are not one's own. Yet we've seen throughout this discussion alone how important and enriching respectful cultural exchange can be. So where is the line, in your opinion, between cultural appropriation and meaningful cultural exchange, and how do you think about and wrestle with this issue as somebody who's so

interested in music and bumps up against these issues so often? And make my living with playing African music in a large way. But the line is exploitation for me. I mean, not for me, but I think the actual definition of cultural appropriation is the copiers, the imitators, making bank profiting off of the culture of the oppressed, of the originators of the culture. That is the definition of cultural appropriation, for me at least, and then for many other people. I mean, the conversation, what the identity politicians mistake, you know, is they misunderstand cultural appropriation as any sort of exchange.

I mean, it's very good, it's of course necessary and crucial to be aware of these dynamics and to make that connection that I was talking about earlier between the culture and its roots and its reality of where it comes from is that is very, very important. And so I think with that understanding, and if we make choices based on that understanding

as cultural workers, we, not only should not be discouraged from participating in the culture of others, of other classes or other ethnicities or other cultures, the culture of other people, but we have an obligation. Alan Lomax, back in the I think 30s or something, said something like, we as cultural workers have a responsibility to make the voices of the unheard heard, to represent the voices of the oppressed, of the poor people of the South, the ethnic minorities all over the world, will have a responsibility to spread their culture and to make their voices heard. And so this contemporary, you know, extremist identity politicians just really miss that entire, entire,

like the central point of cultural appropriations. Right. Yeah, and I think there's a there's a certain sort of irony, a sad irony there, is because when you look on the far right, when you look on the fascist, white supremacist right wing, you see this, this urge to purge all forms of diversity out of society. What they want is a completely insulated, almost incestuous, incestuously white society by four and exclusively maintained by white people. And that's sort of, of, of, dystopian horror show of only having white people do everything and no injection of diversity, no cultural exchange, that's sort of the weird, ironic, logical conclusion of saying that any sort of cultural exchange is bad and that, you know, of course they're coming at it from two different angles, but you almost come to the same result. So it's really about parsing out, in my opinion, and what's exploitative and appropriative and disrespectful and harmful and what is meaningful and respectful and enlightening and really gives us all a chance to grow and learn from one another because any any culture where it's just one culture turned inward on itself is is historically proven to be to be a bad society that doesn't end well cultural diversity opens us up to progress in a lot of ways absolutely cultural purity is a myth

It's a fantasy. It doesn't exist. It's just, I mean, from the Greeks, you know, the Greeks borrowed a third of their names, of their language from Egypt, from the African empires, civilizations, a third from the ancient Hasidic cultures, and a third, you know, they came up on their own. And so the cradle of Western civilization, you know, is located in the southern most and the eastern most part of Europe, not by coincidence, because Greece is the place that is closest to Africa and closest to Asia. And so from there, I mean, that's just, I mean, what cultural purity? I mean, the Greek culture was a hodgepodge was a fusion of so many different things. Yeah, I mean, it just doesn't exist. There's an amazing book called Everybody is Kung Fu Fighting by this Marxist historian, Vijay Prashad. He's amazing.

I don't know if you know his work. No, I'm not familiar, no. Yeah, he's an Indian historian Marxist from the Marxist tradition. And this book is about the historical connections between Asia and Africa. Entire historical chapters erased and buried by the dominant ideology of so much connection, like off of the east coast of Africa. It was rich in trade and culture for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the Portuguese. people from Persia, from the Arab countries, from the Middle East, from far east, from China, from basically like off of the coast of East Africa was the vibrant centers of culture. What is now reduced to rubble by neoliberal fucking capitalism and the wars that they are caused by what's happened in the last.

decades. But anyway, this book, everybody was Kung Fu Fighting, is amazing. It talks about things, for instance, like both Gonja, both marijuana and dreadlocks, having arrived in Jamaica from India, like things that we don't know about.

So there's all of these historical connections. And he also talks about the civil rights movement, how that was inspired by by communism and by like he talks about Mao Mao's relationship to the civil rights anti-racist movements and and it's just an amazing book but anyway fascinating yeah I'll check into it so the last question I know we're like well over time here but I have one more question because again a lot of the stuff that we've talked about bumps up against it and this is something that I personally

struggle with you know it's the connections between oppression and equality and injustice on the one hand, and the creation of really interesting and beautiful music and art that comes out of that misery on the other. So how do you think about the connections here? And more importantly, or more specifically, what do you think art and music could or would look like in a fully liberated egalitarian society? What would art detached from brutal oppression and inequality look like in a context of liberation and inequality? First part of your question, I I've heard people, fellow DJs that I've met, say, you know, repeat this shallow understanding. They say, well, yeah, slavery was bad, but at least it gave us good music.

I mean, it's such, in one statement, you know, embodies this whole liberal kind of like, oh my God, it makes me really angry. But like I was saying earlier, people make amazing things, whatever box they're put into, whatever conditions they're put into. And so the beautiful music that has come from oppression, of course, it's not any less beautiful because of it, because of it having arisen from a context of suffering. And like I was saying earlier, this speaks to all of us because we all suffer under capitalism, knowingly or not, consciously or not. And so it's very powerful for all of us in the experience of our lives in the 20th century. The second part of your question, we have very many examples of that of music and culture created by societies that are cohesive, that are untainted by capitalistic commodified relationships between people. So just as one example, African music, like specifically in the Congo,

pop music from the 20th century, Congolese pop music, which is a kind of music that has traveled back and forth between Africa and Haiti and Cuba back and forth very many times. But anyway, this music can only be produced under those conditions of societies with high levels of trust and camaraderie

and love between the communities. And so you have these rhythm that go on for 20 minutes, half an hour, or like hours, like non-stop, music non-stop. Of people building this joyous, you know, getting higher and higher in terms of spiritual states. People, I mean, this music is really, I mean, I mean, the most astounding thing about African music, one of the most astounding things is just the energy is just, so high. It's not about

suffering. It doesn't come from, you know, the history of slavery. And so in these societies, they are, people are connected. You know, and there's a high level of community.

And so they can produce only under those conditions can, can, a music that is joyous and collective. be produced. And an absence of ego as well. I mean, this is, uh, it's one of the qualities where each player, like the guitar player doesn't stand out and do like, you know, solos and like masturbate their egos. And everyone, every instrumentalist is a part of a collective. And there's

this understanding of people working together to build these, these, uh, these songs, these, uh, to build this music. And so I think from, from something like that, we can, have a glimpse of what music could be like in a healthy society. Absolutely. I think one of the most fundamental properties of the cosmos and one of the most fundamental properties of the human being that arises out of the cosmos is creativity. And I think what capitalism does is it puts the lid on 99% of the world's creativity

by forcing them into these horrible, mundane routines of wage slavery, of trying to scrap by every second of every day just to provide food and clothes and a shelter over your head. And so when people are ultimately liberated from that oppressive drudgery, the creativity inherent in so many minds will be unleashed. So many people who died in factories or who died on farms, who were never able to explore their own talents, We're never able to self-actualize in a context where that burden is lifted, I think creativity will be a wellspring and will be one of the most beautiful aspects of civilization. So I completely agree with you that in the absence of oppression and inequality and injustice, not only will music and art not suffer, it will actually be free to express itself on new levels that we haven't even begun to imagine yet. Absolutely. And another characteristic of music in such cohesive societies is that it's not separated from other spheres of life. Like music in many more traditional African cultures, or I mean, these are, it's a very broad statement, but I think there's some truth to it, that it's undifferentiated from other spheres of life.

Like music is spirituality, it's education, it's art, it's storytelling, it's storytelling, it's, it's the thing that holds people together, but it's not even music. You can't even really call it music in the sense that we mean, which is something that you buy and something that you, you know, you consume. Everybody participates in it, and every child grows up learning how to play music. Like, in my travels in Africa, many, many people just like almost everybody knows how to play drums. Everybody knows how to sing, how to play instruments. Like anybody just picks up a guitar and starts jammy. I'm like, wow. So it's just a part of everyday life.

And that's, you know, what Marx talked about, that under a real authentic communist society, art will cease to exist. It would not be, you know, this separate sphere of activity, but just a part of everyday life. And that every moment of our life will be filled with creativity. And so life will become art and art will become life. Beautiful. Beautifully said. I love that. I love that.

Yeah, that's marks. Great marks. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a fascinating discussion. I know my audience is going to love it. I love it. Before I let you go, though,

can you let listeners know where they can find your work and follow you online for anybody interested in this stuff? Yeah, you can find me on SoundCloud, DJ Zhao, Z-H-A-O. That's Z as in Zhu, H-A-O. In Chinese, the Z-H-H is pronounced like a J. Yeah. Oh, also I made recently last year a DJ mix of left revolutionary songs

that spans like many, many decades and many, many continents, from Angolan communist anthems to German, industrial punk. So, yeah, I think your listeners might get a kick out of that. It's like two and a half hours long of the revolutionary left music for making party. That's awesome.

Yeah, we'll link to all that stuff in the show notes. So thank you so much for coming on, Comrade. I really appreciate it, and I really enjoy your insight and your research into these issues. It's fascinating and invaluable. Thank you. Cheers, man. Yeah, thanks for inviting me on.

Absolutely. The struggle continues. That's right. Let's keep in touch. Solidarity. Solidarity. Oyae, oh yae, dillet, a monocala,

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