Censoring Myself for Success
HERE is a story about fame i heard
It first as a fable in Somalia
Before living it out in America
The fox, they say, once had an elegant walk
For
Which the other animals loved him one day
He saw a prophet striding
Along and decided to improve on what
Was already beautiful he set
Out walking but could not match
The prophet's gait worse
He forgot his own so he was left with
The unremarkable way the fox walks today
Right now
The pressures of the music industry encourage
Me to change the walk
Of my songs when I write
From the deepest part of
My heart, my advisers say, I remind
People too much of Somalia
Which I escaped as a boy
My audience is in America
So my songs should reflect the land where
I have chosen to live and work
They have a point a musician's
Songs are not just his own he shares them
With an audience still
Somalia is where my life and poetry began it
Is my walk and I don't want
To lose it or stifle it or censor
It in the name of marketing
I first saw censorship as
A child in Mogadishu
Walking into my home's courtyard one
Day and hearing a radio hushed nearly
To silence the adults hovered around
Listening to a song and I asked
Why one song had to be
Played at a whisper while another
Could blast through the house
A war was going on, I was told
And some songs had meanings the
Government did not want
Deciphered those "anti
Songs" were different from love songs
Or folk songs you had to take care in
Dressing the words in love songs, words could
Preen in bright colors in anti songs
They attacked in
Camouflage and from that, I got a hint of
The power of lyrics to encapsulate magic
Or to spread alarm
Now I have recorded three albums
A few days before I
Was to record the third, which
Was released in October
I received a phone call saying
My record label wanted
A little talk before the songs were written
(I like to write in the moment)
For the first two albums
There were no such talks but
That was before my name
Was familiar so let me start my story there
In 2005 I found cheap recording space and
Sang about the killing ground of Somalia:
"We begin our day by the way of the gun
You don't pay at the roadblock you get
Your throat shot i walk with three kids who
Can't wait to meet God lately, Bucktooth
Mohamed and Crybaby"
In 2008, with a recording budget
I went on my own to
Jamaica, to Bob Marley's old studio
And sang of a lovely, doomed young friend:
"Fatima Fatima, I'm in America
I make rhymes and I make 'em
Delicate, you woulda liked the parks
In Connecticut damn you shooter
Damn you the building, whose walls hid
The blood she was spilling
Damn you country so good at
Killing, damn you feeling, for persevering"
That was my truest voice my continent's angst
In a personal story when I
Sang, my audience wouldn't just hear music
They would see geography and yes
It made me well known
Which brings me to our little
Chat over breakfast in SoHo, we talked about
How to keep my new American audience
Growing my lyrics should change
My label's executives said radio
Programmers avoid subjects
Too far from fun and self-absorption
And for the first time
I felt the affliction of
Success when I walked away from the table
There were bruises on the unheard
Lyrics of my yet-to-be-born
Songs a question had raised it's hand in the
Quiet of my soul: What do you do after
Success? What must you do to keep it?
If this was censorship, I thought
It was a new kind one I had to
Do to myself the label wasn't telling
Me what to do no
It was just giving me choices
And information, about my audience
15-year-old American girls, mostly
Who knew little of Somalia how much better
To sing them songs about Americans
I also learned about the
Difference between Top
40 radio audiences and adult contemporary
Between AC and urban and between those
And no radio play at all
(Which, for a second
Made a voice inside me say
With horror: "Hey, that's me! I am Option C
No radio play at all")
And there I was, trembling between doubt and
Self-awareness i had started at Option C
Striving to make (and please allow room for
Grandiosity here) my
Own "Natty Dread" or my own "The
Times They Are a-Changin' " But now
After breakfast, another voice was there
Whispering how narrow the window
Of opportunity was
I could reach more people, it told me was it
Right to spit in the face of fortune
To not walk in rhythm with my
New audience? Didn't all good
Medicine need a little sugar before
It could be swallowed?
So I began to say yes yes to trying out
Songs with A-list producers yes
To moving production
From Kingston to Los Angeles
Yes to giving the
Characters in my songs names like Mary
So some songs became far
More Top 40 friendly, but infinitely cheaper
On my second album
I had sung about my mother's having
To leave my cousin behind in
Somalia's war "How bitter when she
Had to choose who to
Take with her" Now I was left
In "Is Anybody Out There?" a very
American song about the evils of drugs
With only "His name was Adam
When his mom had 'im"
The first felt to me like
A soul with a paintbrush
The other a body with no soul at all
SO I had not made my Marley or my Dylan
Or even my K'naan I had made
An album in which a
Few genuine songs are all but
Drowned out by the loud
Siren of ambition fatima had
Become Mary, and Mohamed, adam
I now suspect that packaging me as
An idolized star to the pop
Market in America cannot work while one
Can dumb down his lyrics, what one cannot
Do without being found out is hide his
Historical baggage his sense of self
His walk i imagine the 15-year-old girls
Can understand that if not intellectually
Perhaps spiritually
I come with all the baggage of
Somalia of my grandfather's poetry
Of pounding rhythms, of the war, of being an
Immigrant, of being an artist, of
Needing to explain a few things even
In the friendliest of melodies, something
In my voice stirs up a well
Of history of dark history
Of loss's victory
So I am not the easiest sell to Top
40 radio what I am is a fox
Who wanted to walk like a prophet and now
Is trying to rediscover it's own stride
I may never find my old walk again
But I hope someday to see beauty in
The graceless limp back toward it
