70s Nostalgia

[pegkerr]

I seem to have been bit by a bug since buying those albums. Now I want to go out and buy Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for Tillerman. Budget, Peg, budget! No matter what's playing on your computer, you still have to play day care!

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You probably don't want to give money to the person Cat Stevens has become, a Muslim fundamentalist who spoke on the BBC in favour of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

I liked Tea For the Tillerman too, but I got rid of it because it made me feel ill after that.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

If you buy used/second-hand recordings the money won't go to him. (And didn't he renounce personal wealth?)

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this all day. Yes, I am aware of the controversy about Yusef Islam's remarks about the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989. I heard an interview he did on NPR years later (can't remember where, was it Fresh Air?) in which he talked about what happened. I have not read a transcript of his actual remarks that caused all the brouhaha, but from what I have gathered, apparently, he characterized the book The Satanic Verses as blasphemous. (I don't know whether he had actually read it or not, or whether he was saying that other people said it was blasphemous, or what). I am not sure what specifically he was asked that lead him to say it, but when prodded by a reporter, he said that the Koran says that the punishment for blasphemy is death. Which is, of course, true. I do not know what else he said during the interview about what he specifically thought Rushdie's fate should be. But when the media went wild with the story, he made a statement acknowledging that he had made a mistake. Here is his 2003 account about the incident, and here was his original press release in 1989.

So what do we make of this? I think that the man made some extremely ill-considered statements. I'm not clear how much he has retracted the actual meanings of his words, and how much it was damage control when he realized how angry he was making people. How then should we regard him and his music? I keep thinking about Jane Fonda and what she has said about about her trip to Hanoi and the moment of supreme stupidity that caused her to sit at the controls of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. She realized almost immediately that it was a mistake, that she was being used for propaganda purposes. She has been spit upon, called a traitor, and no matter how sorry she is, there are people who will never never never forgive her.

It gets right back to that post I wrote just a little while ago about changing hearts and minds. Are people redeemable? Does repentance mean forgiveness? Is it better for us to keep looking for the good in flawed people, or should we reject them unequivocally if their mistake is great? Yusef Islam, in an attempt to follow his own personal code of ethics, said some things that he later regretted. Does that mean that we write him off for the rest of his life? Does it negate all the good work he has done, his efforts to live according to the tenants of his deeply held faith? (He has been recently sued two British tabloids for libel for printing that he was a terrorist, won the lawsuit, and donated the settlement to tsunami relief).

I have made some mighty dumb mistakes in my life. I would hate to be written off forever by people as a result. Personally I think that people can be redeemable, and that they should be judged not by one single act, but by the sum total of their life's work.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

In addition to his own comments, he read a statement on BBC radio from the "Muslim Council" or whatever they're called, calling for the death of Rushdie. Hearing it live in his voice has just tainted his happy bouncy music for me ever after.

I've done some dumb things, yes, certainly, but I think there's a distinction worth preserving between dumb and evil.

I'm not calling for his head, nor would I ban him from the US, (as the US has) but I don't want to support him or see my friends possibly support him in ignorance -- making a different decision on the facts is a different thing, but I thought you might not be aware.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I wish I could read that BBC statement. I have been chasing Internet reports of "what Cat Stevens said," but haven't managed to find any transcript of the actual words he said in 1989.

It reminds me of the problem that Wagner poses, with anti-Semitism. And yet, perhaps, it's a little bit different. Now, I'm not familiar with Wagner's work at all, but as I understand it, at least some of his work directly suggests his hatred of Jews as an inferior race (see, e.g., this, which suggests that views permeated his music in that "The Jew must like Alberich in the Ring cycle be inherently alien and inferior, an insinuating, degenerative force intent on corrupting the world." Another problem: are we required to avoid the works of Patrick O'Brien because he was a liar who abandoned his first family?

This is a little different, however. First of all, I think you'd have to search awful hard to find the sort of hatred espoused by Yusef Islam in Cat Stevens' work. Also, the man who wrote the music abandoned and renounced it when he changed his views. As skylarker says, perhaps the fact that he changed his name is significant. It is interesting that Yusef Islam, in his most virulently immediate post-conversion stage, hated Cat Stevens' music himself (I read one second-hand account of a fan who went to an open house for one of his Islamic schools who asked him to sign a Cat Stevens record, and Yusef Islam said he's rather take it away from her and throw it in the garbage). That raises and interesting dilemma: since he (the twisted hater) hates the music, does that make it okay to like it? How much does the man taint the art? Does it make a difference when the loathsomeness of the character and the art are representative of very different life stages? It is interesting that as Yusef Islam is (apparently) tempering his most virulent views (donating money to 9/11 victims with the proceeds of his latest CD, etc.), he is also admitting that he has started to listen to his old albums again. Perhaps listening to "Peace Train" has made him start thinking about peace again instead of hatred?

Not sure what I think . . . except that I'll probably try to track down Peter Paul and Mary's In Concert and buy that first!

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I think that being an artist of whatever sort is a little like being a parent. Once the work has left the nest it goes out in the world to stand or fall on its own merits.

I don't hold the child to blame for the sins of the parent, and I love Rachmaninoff's music despite his sins, and Wagner's despite his, et cetera, et cetera.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

When Cat Stevens took a new name he was intentionally separating himself from his earlier life, to take a new direction. A wise decision, since the new direction clearly has little to do with the kind of music he had created before. I don't see any reason to discard what I value in that music because of the attitudes or choices of the person he later chose to become.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

See my comment to papersky here.