Journey to the Southeast

New York, 1978. Literary scholar Edward Said publishes an essay destined to stir debate among English-speaking academics on both sides of the Atlantic: "Orientalism".

The theme is deeply personal for the author, who is of Palestinian origin and American citizenship, since it concerns the influence and indirect control exercised by the West over the East, and the resulting stereotyped image this produces. In his view, this is a direct effect of the culture of colonialism and Eurocentrism, which has always portrayed the peoples of the East as crude, violent and backward.

The issue is undeniably central, but also highly divisive, and has drawn criticism focused on the essay's chronological and geographical limits, which apparently fail to sufficiently account for part of the European bibliography on the subject, and do not adequately stress the differences between the new perception of the Eastern world in the postwar period and that of the entire preceding colonial era.

What is certain is that, in that period, even on a political level, the East (meaning the Middle East) began to be perceived as a powder keg: Khomeini led the popular theocratic revolt in Iran that would bring down the Persian monarchy (with a consequent global energy crisis tied to oil prices), the USSR invaded Afghanistan without realizing it was heading for its own Vietnam, and Israel invaded Lebanon.

Little by little, the East became the symbol of a world in flux, forced to reckon with its past in a rather brutal, unpredictable way — a perfect metaphor for what was also happening in rock music, where the rupture already brought about by punk gave way to a genuine paradigm shift (new wave), in which the most disparate forms of cross-contamination took center stage.

In addition, the East (meaning the Far East) also gained visibility as an opportunity for personal growth, thanks to the wider spread of Hindu, Buddhist and Sufi philosophical doctrines, and the culture of far-off countries like Japan came to represent one of the most fascinating models to draw inspiration from — a way to finally gain control over one's own self and contradictions without being destroyed by them.

The Anglo-Saxon art scene, perhaps still unconsciously grappling with its cumbersome colonial past, absorbed these currents by placing greater emphasis on the aspect of cultural exchange (unlike, for instance, the Beatles' "Indian period", which stemmed from personal curiosity and experience), extending its reach to the African continent and, more broadly, to ethnic music as a whole.

That's how the South and East of the world began to rhyme with counterculture, becoming lenses through which to contemplate alternative visions, far removed from the superficiality of the hedonistic reflection lying in wait, leading musicians (particularly those coming from new wave and post-punk) to experiment with Arabic scales, whose different intervals between notes seemed better able to capture the tension of the moment. On a purely rhythmic level, drummers too found it inevitable to distance themselves from the heavy rock and punk of the Seventies, favoring the use of toms over hi-hat and cymbals, which immediately produced a vaguely "tribal" result, even if at first it wasn't tied to any specific geographic origin.

As always, among the first to sniff the air and sense the shift is David Bowie, who not by chance had already chosen a few years earlier to abandon dissolute California in pursuit of detox in one of the symbolic places of the East, albeit a European one: Berlin.

After the experiment (aided by Brian Eno) of "The Secret Life Of Arabia" and "Abdulmajid", both from the "Heroes" era (1977), the Thin White Duke wove Arabic scales and reggae rhythms into "Yassassin", on "Lodger" (1979), which was even released as a single in Turkey (the title itself is a play on words between the Turkish equivalent of "long live" and the English word assassin).

But the list of examples is a long one regardless:

– having set aside the nickname "Rotten", John Lydon becomes a universal ferryman of souls from punk to post-punk with the newborn Public Image Limited (1978), adopting a vocal style that reveals more than a passing affinity with that of muezzins;

– Siouxsie and the Banshees release one of the most representative snapshots of the fascination exerted by the Far East ("Hong Kong Garden", 1978), marking the start of a career that would play with these sounds throughout the Eighties, from "Israel" to "Arabian Knights", from "Bring Me The Head Of The Preacher Man" to "Cities In Dust". Budgie's drumming and John McGeoch's guitar lines become technical touchstones between 1980 and 1982;

– The Cure debut on the record market with "Killing An Arab" (1978), whose title, inspired by Albert Camus's novel "The Stranger", causes them considerable trouble due to a whole series of associations that misread its meaning, but the impact of Arabic scales on their music is felt just as strongly in several tracks that followed shortly after, such as "A Reflection" (1980) and "Other Voices" (1981). This infatuation with the East would also be quite evident in "Wailing Wall" (1984), "Kyoto Song" (1985), "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep" and "The Snakepit" (both taken from the 1987 album "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me");

– Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow (both under the sway of Malcolm McLaren) build much of their material on a multifaceted, percussive sound often influenced by Burundi rhythms, which in the Ants' case doesn't shy away from the occasional Eastern detour (such as "Ants Invasion" on "Kings Of The Wild Frontier", 1980);

– Talking Heads, that is, the least American band in all of American new wave, handle African polyrhythms with striking ease (again thanks to Brian Eno's contribution) on "Remain In Light" (1980), which quickly becomes a landmark of the genre. Vying for the crown is another work from the celebrated Eno–Byrne partnership, "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" (1981), whose main goal is precisely to achieve a fusion between Western music and archaic ethnic music;

– Japan, who make no secret of their reference points starting with their very name, manage to synthesize with considerable technical mastery a true Westernization of two souls, Eastern and African, on "Tin Drum" (1981);

– Peter Gabriel, on his third solo album (1980), intensifies his attraction to tribal and ethnic elements, later giving life (together with figures from the Bristol post-punk scene) to WOMAD, a major international festival of art and music from all over the world.

And in Italy?

Our country's privileged position, right in the middle of the Mediterranean, has long allowed exotic sounds to spread, as shown by some melodies from the Neapolitan tradition built on Arabic scales ("Tammuriata Nera", "Caravan Petrol").

Thanks to the contribution of Demetrio Stratos, a group like Area also began to voice concerns that blended music and politics (especially tied to the Palestinian cause) on "Arbeit Macht Frei" (1973), arriving at a bold and unforgettable fusion of jazz, rock and Middle Eastern vibrations on tracks like "Luglio, Agosto, Settembre (nero)", "Cometa Rossa" (1974), "L'Elefante Bianco" (1975), "Il Bandito del Deserto" (1978).

After Stratos's death, it is metaphorically Franco Battiato who picks up the baton of contamination on Italian soil, with "L'Era del Cinghiale Bianco" (1979), at once a pop turning point and a gaze toward other worlds, in which the works of the French philosopher-turned-Muslim convert René Guénon and the Armenian mystic Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff provide the coordinates.

Though travelling on different tracks, Battiato's (non) Italian new wave thus turns out to be a perfect homegrown transposition of what was happening across the rest of the Western world, and it takes a few years for it to be conceptually absorbed by his fellow countrymen, almost as if it were a novelty arriving from abroad.

Setting aside the references to the Land of the Rising Sun in Rettore's pop experiment on “Kamikaze Rock'n'Roll Suicide” (1982), it's actually Litfiba who carry out an effective “Mediterraneanization” of what was coming from across the Channel in terms of post-punk, adding elements traceable both to Area (the Arabic-tinged melodies, Piero Pelù's vocal style influenced by Stratos) and to Battiato (the synth lines). The intent becomes more obvious on tracks like “E.F.S. 44” (1982), “Dea del Fujiyama”, “Onda Araba”, “Elettrica Danza” or the cover of “Yassassin” itself (all released in 1984), and later takes on an international scope thanks to the Middle Eastern flavour of “Istanbul”, the Eastern European one of “Tziganata” and the Latin American one of “Desaparecido” (1985).

Once again, and all the more so in the age of Reaganite hedonism, the South and East of the world remain the preferred horizons for imagining a fascinating counterpoint to the mainstream imperialism of politics and of surface-level superficiality altogether.

With Cccp we return to Berlin (where we started, with Bowie), and more precisely to the Kreuzberg district, a symbolic site of Turkish immigration in the city. Ferretti and Zamboni, who had for some time already embodied pro-Sovietism not as mere political allegiance but as an antithesis to the American value system, read the words “Punk Islam” on the wall of a subway station and used it as the title of one of their most famous tracks, released in 1984.

“A Istanbul sono a casa/ Ho un passato e un futuro/ Ho un presente che è Dio/ E fa la cameriera”, Ferretti intones, effectively introducing for the first time Islam as well as an example of resistance to the prevailing materialistic/capitalistic model. The stripped-down musical framework, in line with the rest of early Cccp's output, forms a fitting analogy with a Middle East ravaged by war, for which “Radio Kabul” would also be written, in 1987.

Ferretti and Zamboni would go on telling stories from that part of the world on “La qualità della danza” and “Palestina (15/11/1988)”, both from 1989, on the penultimate official studio release before Cccp's split and their rebirth as Csi (where, instead, they would fall under the spell of Mongolia).

Meanwhile, the fall of the Berlin Wall would mark the end of the Soviet Bloc/NATO standoff, leading to a general redefinition of the entire sphere of influence of the USSR and of the balance of power across Asia. Music from the South and East of the world would be further Westernized in the Nineties (Mano Negra, Asian Dub Foundation, Kula Shaker, Cornershop), ceasing to represent a mere contamination and becoming, instead, a starting point.

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