Jailing Songbirds

The bins are burning in Barcelona again (remind me to get into the replacement business there) for, what on the surface has been sold as a freedom of speech issue. And while freedom of speech does play a significant role in the case of a rapper sent to prison, his right to an opinion is eclipsed and sullied with the violence he espouses. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at the need for free speech and those that I love listening to who have long demanded it. You can read the originally published piece here in Spanish or the English below. (version en castellano en PDF tambien abajo)

Rap just never did it for me. The ethereal sound of Johnny Hodges soloing over a Duke Ellington melody, the frantic fretboard work of Buddy Guy, the earnest exhortation to 'respect yourself' from Mavis Staples or the slick groove of Nile Rodger's Le Freak are all examples of Black music that I couldn't even conceive of life without. Rap though, just never resonated with me. I can appreciate it from a sociological perspective and recognize the undeniably crucial role that it has played in the black community throughout its ongoing struggle, but it just doesn't hit me the same way as Billie Holiday rasping about strange fruit swinging from the trees in the southern breeze.

But one thing is not to like it and another is to be sent to court for it.

Cities are burning at night in Spain for the words of an artist. An artist who has been sent to prison for praising terrorists and inciting violence, messages that clearly have no place in a modern democracy. What I can't understand though is that he has also been found guilty and fined for insulting a medieval idea, for insulting the 'crown'. It's something straight out of a Monty Python sketch or Mel Brooks movie, and would be as comical, if it wasn't so serious. Apparently it still is good to be the king and heaven forbid that one of his subjects were to question his divine right. If a hereditary job title wasn't atavistic enough, fining someone for the equivalent of scribbling on the bathroom walls is antediluvian. It's as absurd as taking a necromancer to court because they gave you the wrong lottery numbers or your pyromancer because she gave you the wrong job advice. It's a blind leap into a very dark past.

Paraphrasing Salman Rushdie, a man who knows a thing or two about medieval beliefs impinging on his freedoms, he once wrote that creativity not only needs freedom in order to thrive, but the very assumption of freedom. If an artist worries about whether or not they will be thrown in jail for their work in the future, then they are not free today. If there is a climate of fear regarding what you can do, create or say, then their art will not be shaped and determined by their talents but by fear.

Censorship is on the rise, and it's not only coming from fanciful crowns, conservative judiciaries or turbaned islamofascists. Interest groups, faith groups, gender warriors, anti-bull fighting lobbies, and safe-zone universities are all guilty of attempting to sanitize discussion and thought by censoring it completely. And for what? For fear of offending somebody, for fear of saying that Thor's hammer only exists in Marvel movies, for fear of hurting someone's feelings? This self-censorship not only stifles creativity but also drives loonier ideas into fetid, dark corners, allowing them to mutate and multiply rather than be exposed to the blinding light of truth and reason. If what the rapper said was indeed untrue, confront it with facts, not with excessive fines and prison sentences.

Blasphemy, elves, insults to the crown and those that wear them belong in fairy tales and have no place in modern legal codes. I may not like rap, but it's looking like we need to listen to the great man from Jamaica and Get Up and Stand Up, otherwise Sam Cooke's promised change will never come.

Bares, qué lugares

Empty streets with closed bars, Caceres, Spain

The Camino a Ítaca has been circling for weeks now, waiting for the city's plague status to be lifted. Cities and towns across the region, shut off from each other in order to try and stop the spread. One of the measures that has been taken is a complete shutdown of the restaurant and bar industry. You can feel their absence in the streets. Click over to read the original version in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF version en castellano abajo)

I was completely baffled by them. No matter how hard I tried, I simply could not figure out how they were made. These mysterious, round, yellow creations that I had never seen before anywhere else in all my travels. Yet here in Spain, they were everywhere. How was it possible that the rest of the world didn't know about these secrets? There they were. Lined up under the steamy glass next to an entire host of other things that I was also entirely unfamiliar with, but needed to try. I spoke no Spanish at the time and hand gestures didn't help me find out more. What they could do though was get me another caña (little beer) and hopefully another slice of mystifying tortilla that accompanied every beer.

Here in Spain we take them for granted. They are on almost every other street corner, there is always one nearby when you need them and it's a simple fact that the Spanish do them better than anywhere else in the world. There simply is nothing like the Spanish bar in the rest of the world. Sure, you might see the word 'tapas' on the streets of Tel Aviv, Toronto or even Tokyo, but I guarantee that, no matter how hard they try, it just isn't going to be the same experience. That's because, even if the bar's owners are from Badajoz, or have learned from the best in Granada, it's the society around them that can't figure them out. How they intertwine with out daily lives. The word 'bar' might be a cognate in many different languages. It might be spelt the same and even sound similar, but the Spanish bar is in a league of its own.

Where else can you find sleepy red eyes ruminating over the first cup of coffee of the day elbow to elbow with someone with even redder eyes having the last drink before going to bed. Remember those stale, rancid peanuts that you were lucky to get when having a beer in Los Angeles? What about when you stepped off that bus in some small town in Holland and were hungry and the only thing you could find was a soulless vending machine? How about that glass of terrible wine you ordered in Berlin that cost you more than a bottle would here? Where do you turn after a dip in the sea or one of the natural swimming pools around the region? That civilized chiringuito of course.

Now, the streets have turned quiet. I see people shivering, huddled in corners with take out coffees, quickly getting their caffeine fix in silence. These very words, once read and commented on at the bar now glare at you from an omnipresent screen. More and more pensioners no longer bother to get dressed and go for their walk because there is no tertulia at the finish line.

So many lives and so much life has been lost to the pandemic. Those corners are emptying and with them a way of life. Because the bar is something more than just a place to get a drink. Look closely at the streets without them and what do you see? Just another hive of people, on repeat, going from their desks to their screens at home. Next stop: Socks with sandals and warm beer.