Paul Fauvet
2 May 2008
analysis
Maputo — The shadow of censorship has fallen across the Mozambican musical world, with a Mozambican rap artist summoned before prosecutors to explain the allegedly violent lyrics of one of his songs.
The timing could not have been worse. This week Maputo is the capital of world media freedom. The city has been chosen to host UNESCO's annual celebrations of World Press Freedom Day on Saturday. But those celebrations are now overcast with what could easily be interpreted as an attempt to clamp down on artistic freedoms.
According to a report in Friday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax", the rapper, Edson da Luz, who uses the stage name Azagaia, appeared for questioning at the Maputo City attorney's office on Wednesday.
Accompanied by Alice Mabota, chairperson of the Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH), he was grilled for an hour and a half about his song "Povo no Poder" (People in Power). The prosecutor wanted to know: had he written the song? What was the purpose of the song? And did he not think that the lyrics would incite people to violence?
So what is this supposedly dangerous song all about? "Povo no Poder" is a panegyric on the Maputo riots of 5 February, when angry mobs took control of the city streets in protest at a rise of up to 50 per cent in the fares charged by the private minibuses that provide much of the capital's passenger transport.
Azagaia makes no secret of his hostility to the government, and there is no doubt that many people will find the lyrics offensive. The song starts with the words: "We're not falling for the old story any more We're going out to fight against the scum The thieves, The corrupt Shout with me for these people to get out Shout with me because the people are no longer weeping".
So Azagaia believes the Mozambican establishment are scum, thieves and corrupt. Is that opinion, whatever one thinks of it, any reason for prosecutors to waste their time interviewing him?
The song attacks the fare hike and rises in the price of bread. It sneers at the "Green Revolution" promised by the government, and warns "there will be tragedy" if the government does not change its course. The rapper promises "I'm going to struggle, I won't abstain".
No doubt the prosecutors were unhappy about the words: "We're barricading the streets We're stopping these buses.
Here nobody passes.
Even the shops are closed.
If the police are violent, We respond with violence".
The song includes childish insults against President Armando Guebuza, and the final stanza contains what some would doubtless read as a threat:
"Lower the fares or raise the minimum wage That's the least you should so, Unless you want fire in the petrol pumps, Raids on the bakeries and the ministries".
Let me make it quite clear that I don't like this song. In fact, I think it's garbage. Its politics are infantile, and its aesthetic value is zero. But I much prefer it to those American and Caribbean rappers whose lyrics are full of hatred towards women and gays, and who have been accused of inciting the murder of gay people. But nobody is hauling them before prosecutors.
The Mozambican constitution is quite clear. It states that "all citizens have the right to the freedom of scientific, technical, literary and artistic creation", and it specifically outlaws censorship. These freedoms are not just for those who conform - all such freedoms are particularly for those who disagree, those who think differently. Otherwise they would be worthless. The remark attributed to Voltaire, "I don't agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", may be apocryphal, but it is entirely apt for the Azagaia case
As for the argument that Azagaia's song incites violence, the chronology is very clear: it was the riots that inspired the song, not the song that caused the riots.
If the Maputo prosecutors think Azagaia is violent, what, I wonder, would they make of these lyrics:
"Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy 'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
That is the opening of "Street Fighting Man", a smash hit for the Rolling Stones in the distant year of 1968. At about the same time, a popular American band, the Jefferson Airplane, was singing:
"We are all outlaws in the eyes of America In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge hide and deal..
All your private property Is target of your enemy.
And your enemy is We".
Was that incitement? Did anyone fight in the streets because the Rolling Stones sang about it? Did private property in America collapse because the Jefferson Airplane called themselves anarchists?
There is a long and doleful history of attempts to censor popular music, the net result of which has been to make the would-be censors and arbiters of public morality look stupid.
Back in 1957, American television producers ordered their cameramen to film Elvis Presley only from the waist upwards. Showing his swivelling hips was regarded as far too dangerous for the virtue of American women.
Over the years a large number of songs have been banned by the British Broadcasting Cororation (BBC), because they contained references to sex, drugs or violence. Famously, Jane Birkin's "Je t'aime..moi non plus" was banned because of the orgasmic noises it contained. This song won the rare prize of a public denunciation by the Vatican. But despite the combined efforts of the BBC and the Pope, it became a number one hit in Britain.
The BBC banned what is generally regarded as one of the Beatles' finest songs "A Day in the Life", because of the words "I'd love to turn you on", regarded as incitement to drug abuse.
There have also been political bans. Paul McCartney objected to the British occupation of Northern Ireland, and wrote the song "Give Ireland back to the Irish". The BBC promptly slapped a ban on it. When the Sex Pistols sang about Britain's "fascist regime" in the ironically entitled single "God Save the Queen", that too was banned. Which did not prevent it from becoming a huge commercial success.
More sinister were incidents in the United State in 1970. In Kent State University in Ohio, the National Guard shot dead four students who were protesting against the US invasion of Cambodia. The band Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young responded with the angry song "Ohio", which begins with the stanza: "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear their drumming.
Four dead in Ohio".
The Ohio governor ordered radio stations not to play the song, on the grounds that it might incite more violence, though it was certainly not musicians who bombed Cambodia or killed the Kent State students.
That year Nixon himself came out in favour of censorship, telling broadcasters that all rock music should be screened for content.
Do Maputo prosecutors really want to follow in the disreputable footsteps of Richard Nixon? And do they really have nothing better to do with their time than spend 90 minutes interrogating a rapper?
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