A World Without Music by L’Orange & Mr. Lif
Off of The Life & Death of Scenery (2016).
The Life & Death of Scenery (2016) teams up veteran MC Mr. Lif with North Carolina producer L’Orange. Both are well known conceptual musicians and I’ve been stoked for this project since I heard about it. Reading Bandcamp Daily I was surprised that L’Orange (with a prolific 7 LPs & 3 EPs in 5 years) has faced serious challenges with his instrumental right ear (pun intended). For several years he’s gone through a series of operations to remove reemerging tumors from that ear, resulting in him progressively all but loosing his ability to hear with that ear. In order to prevent future tumors from appearing, his latest surgery was a nuclear option of essentially giving up on regaining his hearing with that ear. On top of that he suffers from hyperacusis, making him highly sensitive to certain frequencies which makes listening to music often an unpleasant, even painful experience.
But like a true badass he hasn’t let what are often career-ending diseases slow him down. Between each scheduled operation he’s continued to work on an impressive amount of collaboration and solo albums. He’s also started writing more as another way to keep his creativity alive. But what I found most inspiring of all was his relentlessly positive attitude:
Art by Dan Lish (L’Orange left, Mr. Lif right)
The Life & Death of Scenery takes place in the dystopian “last society” where music and culture have been largely eradicated. In fact, possession or expression of art has been criminalized. What could be more bleak than an artless world? Art allows us to find beauty and elation in the creative minds of other humans. A thought provoking book or movie can make us doubt things we previously never would have dared or even thought to question. A song or poem can help us empathize with others even if they have different beliefs or live in very different times and places than we do. As the saying goes earth with art would just be eh.
As a big fan of Orwell’s 1984 and other dystopian literature, the dark poetic concept of an artless world got me intrigued about this LP. But of course dystopian science fiction is more than just a fascinating art form, its an important reflection of our societies. It serves as a reminder of past repressive regimes, warns of perils lying ahead and makes us wonder if we’re currently heading down that path.
How far have we ventured down our own path to tyranny in the USA, 2016?
We live in a time when our government is working with other nations to spy on average civilians both domestically and worldwide. This includes all phone calls, texts, emails and online activity. Not even online games like World of Warcraft are free from surveillance. Essentially, if there’s any private information accessible then intelligence agencies already have it or are actively trying to gain access to it. The alleged purpose of this multimillion dollar violation of privacy is to prevent acts of terrorism. But over several years of spying the National Security Agency (NSA) has failed to thwart a single act of domestic terrorism. On top of that, police departments and the FBI now have massive face-recognition databases that are used without warrant on innocent citizens. It gets worse. This algorithm technology has also been shown to be widely inaccurate, disproportionately target people of color and has virtually no transparency or accountability.
“You can’t use the word liberty when your government watches you 24 hours a day, thats the relationship of a master and a slave.” – Chris Hedges
We inhabit a country where perpetual war and covert drone strikes have become standard procedure. This is not just heinous but full-blown ludicrous when you consider that 54% of our discretionary spending (tax dollars) goes towards expanding our already bloated military. Our military is the largest in the history of the planet, with around 800 military bases around the world (all other nations combined have 30). On top of that we are lavishly financing nations that violate human rights. But rest assured…our imperialism is successfully heightening tensions and earning us enemies around the world. In effect, our military belligerence is helping create the very threat it is supposed to protect us from.
Rather than responsibly doing its job of informing us, the media routinely lies or at best distracts us with trivial nonsense. This is, of course, to be expected since 90% of all US media is in the hands of just six corporations; corporations that are totally ok ignoring real issues like climate change or student loan debt. In fact, these corporations are more than happy to sacrifice all substance in a mission to maximize ratings with entertainment. Instead of questioning our leadership the media manufactures irrational fear of terrorism; fear that is then exploited to galvanize us into more military and surveillance crusades. In fact, leading media organizations have often coalesced with politicians, allowing certain campaigns to plant stories and get cozy. This should also come as no surprise since many of these media conglomerates are big time donors to the same candidates they report on. But who really expects the media to be neutral and objective right?
Trade agreements are shoved down our throats to grease the wheels of gluttonous capitalism, trampling over the rights of the 99% and the future of our planet. As life on the planet approaches a mass extinction our economic system provides subsidies for oil companies and while minimally supporting renewable technology. And transitioning to renewable energy is not only a matter of survival but it would actually help solve a number of other problems. It creates tens of thousands of jobs each year, doesn’t threaten our clean water and would ultimately make our wars for oil obsolete. And that’s all fine and dandy but we have to think of the multibillion CEOs that would loose profits. #BillionaireLuxuryMatters.
Our justice system is broken. Every 25 seconds someone is arrested for possession of a drug, yet not a single Wall Street executive has gone to jail for crashing the economy in 2008. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, a fifth of which are prisoners serving sentences for drug offences. A disproportionate number of prisoners are Black, including thousands of youth. Paradoxically, our “justice” system has harassed and given severe sentences to those who exercise their right to expose injustice. This persecution is true of journalists doing their job, whistleblowers sharing vital information and citizens filming police brutality.
Democracy is dying in the USA. We should just call ourselves an oligarchy at this point. Virtually all our representatives are beholden to wealthy individuals, whether its foreign donators or lobbyists for the firearm, fossil fuel or pharmaceutical industry. By and large, the desires of a handful of oligarchs shapes policy, effectively suppressing the will of millions of people. Research has shown that in 90% of congressional races the better financed candidate wins. The voices of ordinary people are being silenced by the sonorous megaphone of millionaires. This is why its extremely hard to get true representation even for popular, popular positions like raising the minimum wage or instituting universal healthcare. This is also happening at a time when our society has reached historic levels of income and wealth inequality and the minimum wage has failed to keep up with the rate of inflation. It’s class warfare and the uber rich are kicking our butts.
The landscape is daunting and what’s been described here is hardly the full picture of oppression. Still I find hope in the brightest and most human aspects of our species. As much as it is human nature for psychopathic CEOs to take and control as much as they can, it is in our nature to stand together and fight for justice. It is in us to create, inspire, show solidarity and remember that the majority of humans want peace and prosperity for all. We have the resources to feed the world and save the planet from our fossil fuel addiction. We have the internet to connect to each other in ways that social movements of the past could only dream of. Popular support for progressive positions like universal healthcare or campaign finance reform is at an all time high. Green energy is advancing at incredible rates worldwide as their costs continue to go down. The history books show that when we come together radical change can be achieved.
Let’s put dystopian societies back where they belong: in science fiction books and in The Life & Death of Scenery (2016).
*Disclaimer: This post was originally started in late October 2016 but abandoned mostly because it was pretty depressing and followed by a paralyzingly poignant event on November 8, 2016. As a result, much of the writing and links used here do not necessarily reflect the current state of affairs.
Wool Gathering 