Country Singer’s Ballad to Lindh Targeted by Conservatives
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Country music singer Steve Earle. |
WASHINGTON,
July 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A new country song
offering an empathetic view of American Taliban John Walker Lindh is
drawing both praise and ire just days after the 21-year-old American
Muslim pleaded guilty to aiding the former Afghan regime.
Recorded
in Nashville by the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Steve Earle,
"John Walker's Blues" is a stately ballad sung from Lindh's
perspective and makes reference to Lindh's interest in music videos,
boy bands, and religion.
It
features Earle's recitation of an Arabic prayer and ends with a
reading from the Qur’an.
The
song is featured on Earle's forthcoming album "Jerusalem,"
due out in September, which touches on a number of political and
social issues including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, political
conspiracies and legislation Earle regards as reactionary, reports
CNN.
It
offers a rare sympathetic view of Lindh, the Californian dubbed the
"American Taliban" after he was captured fighting alongside
troops of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in November.
In
one verse Earle sings, "I'm just an American boy, raised on MTV,
And I've seen all the kids in the soda pop bands, but none of them
look like me. So I started looking round, and I heard the word of God.
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word of Allah,
Peace be upon him."
In
Nashville, Tennessee, the home of country music, some commentators
quickly labeled the song unpatriotic - par for the course, they say,
for an alternative country singer who has long challenged the
down-home platitudes of mainstream country music, which generally
follows a more conservative line.
"This
puts him in the same category as Jane Fonda and John Walker and all
those people who hate America," says Nashville talk show host
Steve Gill, saying the song "celebrates and glorifies a traitor
to this country."
"We'll
give it airplay once and then it's going into the dustbin of history,
where it belongs. I'm not surprised that Steve's singing about that
traitor. I'm going to play it just once, and then we'll rip the shred
out of it. This is not gonna be a big hit for Steve.
"Most
people have not heard the song yet, so the level of outrage is
diminished by a lack of information."
Earle
has joked that he's thinking about leaving the country once the CD is
released in September, and he told an audience at the Mariposa Folk
Festival in Ontario earlier this month: "This song just may get
me ... deported."
The
ruckus over the Lindh song marks a return to the political spotlight
for Earle, who irritated the Nashville establishment for years,
calling himself a Marxist and joining the movement to abolish the
death penalty as well as the campaign against land mines.
Earle's
supporters say the outspoken singer will welcome controversy.
"He's
a big guy," says Grant Alden, publisher of the magazine No
Depression, which specializes in alternative country music. "He
can take care of himself if anyone confronts him on the issue."
Bill
De Main, a Nashville-based music writer and lead singer for the band
Swan Dive, says Earle's political leanings "probably finished him
off in mainstream country."
Artemis
Records’ outspoken chief Danny Goldberg encouraged the new album’s
political agenda, which comes at a time of corporate conservatism.
Earle
is presently on vacation in Europe and was unavailable for comment. He
has said that the new material serves as his response to the more
reactionary elements of post-Sept. 11 politics.
In
a press statement accompanying "Jerusalem," seemingly
anticipating accusations of being unpatriotic, Earle said, "I'm
trying to make clear that wherever he [Lindh] got to, he didn't arrive
there in a vacuum."
"I
don't condone what [Lindh] did. ... My son Justin is almost exactly
Walker's age. Would I be upset if he suddenly turned up fighting for
the Islamic Jihad? Sure, absolutely. Fundamentalism, as practiced by
the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion, too."
But, he said, "The culture here didn't impress [Lindh], so he
went looking for something to believe in.
"I'm
not trying to get myself deported or something. In a big way this is
the most pro-American record I've ever made. I feel urgently
American," CNN reported.
Some
New Yorkers who heard an advance copy of the Lindh song said they were
enthusiastic, reported news agencies.
"Steve
Earle is standing up against the new patriotism, the 'You're with us
or you're against us' mentality," said Joan Hirsch, manager of
Revolution Bookstore, which stocks anti-war pamphlets and leftist
literature, reported news agencies.
Columnist
David Corn, of the progressive weekly The Nation, in
criticizing Earle’s detractors who call the song sympathetic to
Lindh, says, “The tune is ‘sympathetic’ only in the sense it
seeks to understand how Lindh viewed himself. It praises neither Lindh
nor his choices. It does not recommend that others emulate him. The
anti-Earle criticism shows that those eager to root out traitors often
don't have time to think.”
Of
the song, Corn says, “This is storytelling,” continuing, “But
since the song does not blast Lindh…it's deemed a pro-Taliban
anthem.”
Currently,
American songs dealing with the aftermath of September 11 have been
heavily patriotic. However, other artists may be following Earle’s
lead.
Bruce
Springsteen's upcoming album, "The Rising," contains many
stories about the aftermath of Sept. 11. Yet it also contains a song,
"Paradise," written in part from a “suicide bomber's”
perspective.
And
across the ocean, in the U.K., pop-star George Michael recently caused
controversy with the release of his single “Shoot the Dog,” which
lampoons the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks and the
"special relationship" between the United States and
Britain.
The
video depicts British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a poodle being
petted on the White House lawn by U.S. President George W. Bush.
Click
here for the lyrics of the song.
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