Get Busy – The Sounds of an Upside-Down World

“Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night,” and so begins Hurricane by Bob Dylan. There is no setting of the scene, no it was a dreary day in Patterson, no the sound of barking dogs echoing in the night. Bam! The song explodes in immediacy, at the immediate vortex of violence: bullets exploding, a downed bartender in a pool of blood, Patty Valentine screaming for help. Hurricane may be didactic and un-nuanced – an eight-minute howl, the stacking of injustice upon injustice being the brutal but natural result of institutionalized and systemic racism – but it is also an incredible song, despite or because of its didacticism. 

Hurricane commences as a slap in the face and it does not let up, and that slap is a touchstone to what is essential in most contemporary music – power, insistence, beat. Beat, slap, bam. The first musical instruments invented by man were percussion instruments. They appeared at the beginning of the development of communities, however small, all over the world, from Africa to island communities and in Asia and the Americas, and they were used in an expanse of ceremonies and rituals, and for war and communication. And, they were used because they captured the essence of the human experience, of running at full speed across the landscape, across the savanna and steppe, legs churning, feet pounding on the ground, the heart at full thump. Percussion is the touchstone of our human experience, the driving force of our experience in sound, and the greater the level of turmoil in our society the louder and more primitive the beat.

Turmoil and unrest lead to extremism, whether it be McCarthyism as a product of the Cold War and a country slashing back towards paternalism and parochialism after the horrors of World War II, or the turn on, tune in, and drop out mantra of the hippie movement in the 60s in response to the horrors of another war. We can read about extremism in the newspaper, we can see it on TV newscasts, but we can also hear it in the beat of the music that occupies our life. It might not be every song but it is there, and it is insistent. 

Check out 3:18 into the Zu Asche Zu Staub (to ashes, to dust) scene from Season 1 of Babylon Berlin (German production shown on Netflix). The drums, center stage, take the lead, with the audience lined in front of the stage, row after row like a platoon at bootcamp. On stage, in front of the drummer is the master of ceremonies/singer, an androgyne clad in a black leather coat, hat, and gloves. Babylon Berlin explores the transformation of a post-war social democratic state into a fascist state, and if there’s any question that it might not be a fait accompli that is answered by the decadence evident in this video – an experience replicated in the day to day lives of virtually every character in the series: watch as the singer turns to the side and feeds her mouth, hidden morsels in her black leather gloves. It is a vulgar image and incredibly captivating. What mobilizes everything are the drums, at 3:18 the drummer takes the lead rolling around his kit, high tom, low tom, snare, bass drum, and the crowd roars. Decadence, death, decay, destitution; it is the drums that deliver the message and animate the crowd.

Not far removed from the Babylon Berlin Zu Asche Zu Staub scene is a nearby cousin albeit perhaps a surprising one: the Lot of Livin scene from Bye Bye Birdie. The master of ceremonies/singer is again clad all in leather, and percussion again takes center stage, this time in its most primitive forms – finger snapping, hand clapping, thigh-slapping, and table tapping - and the dynamics are exactly the same. Row after row of young people are embroiled and indoctrinated into a libido-inspired dance-off, driven by a leather-clad Mephistopheles – a Pied Piper at the birth of the sexual revolution. Granted Bye Bye Birdie is reductive, there’s not a person of color seen in the movie. There’s nothing but a sea of pretty white faces; the streets are clean, the skies are cloudless, but the most salient fact animating the entire scene is the pent-up lust of a generation of young people imprisoned by the uptight morality of an older generation of white Americans who by virtue of their efforts in World War II in their minds earned the right to dictate all the rules of engagement in the post-war world.

Percussive rhythm both fuels our creative energies and is emblematic of the drive towards creative re-birth. You need speed and power to break through to a new dimension and percussion gives you both. Drumming is the means by which we tear down the world in which we live so that we can transform it into a new reality. Check out the Zion dance scene from Matrix Reloaded, or Gene Krupka’s drumming on Sing, Sing, Sing. What to make of either of these other than as expressions of the human hunger for re-birth, driven by our most primitive percussive sounds. 

This then is the disjunction: who we are as a people is most clearly expressed in our music and our arts. When the world is upside down, music comes at you hard, with passion and force. To deny the wants, desires, attitudes, and beliefs that are within our music is to deny humans the world to which we are entitled. 

The Savages are an incredibly talented band, with four wonderfully talented musicians, but the glue is the drums: Fay Milton’s drumming. It is literally her bouncing energy and rhythm that allows the other members to blast off, taking the crowd with them. If you have ever been to a Savages concert you know what I am talking about. Savages drummer Fay Milton is also the co-founder of Music Declares Emergency, which is “a group of artists, music industry professionals, and organizations that stand together to declare a climate and ecological emergency and call for an immediate governmental response to protect all life on Earth.” Their tagline is There is No Music on a Dead Planet, and that’s about what is at stake here. 

In an upside-down world, to deny what you hear in the beat is to repress the repressed, and what is left is what we hope will be, but never will be, the inevitable. As written by the Savages that is: “Perhaps having deconstructed everything we should be thinking about putting everything back together.” Drums can be a cry in the wilderness or the percussive beat can excite generations to demand nothing but real change. The choice is ours – get busy people.