The Sonic Architects of a new Tower of Babel

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The Sonic Architects of a new Tower of Babel

• Dr. Francio Guadeloupe
• Department of Cultural Anthropology Development
  Studies
• Radboud University Nijmegen

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Where I am coming from

• Immanuel Kant meeting Bob Marley, C.L.R. James,
  and Wilson Harris and all of these acknowledging
  the five stairsteps
• The Ooh child and the someday are universals
• Categorical Imperative (ethical)the struggle to
  make this real (political)the radical
  democratization of the vanguard (the cultural)
• Creolisation with an explicit political-ethical-cu
  ltural component

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The main theme

• I discuss the way two popular disc jockeys, DJ
  Shadow and DJ Fernando Clarke, create all
  inclusive architectures of Babel within the teeth
  of Capitalism and with the willing consent of the
  slaves of capital

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Questions

• Who are the slaves of capital?
• What role does Capitalism play in Caribbean
  history?
• What does the Tower of Babel have to do with all
  this?
• Why focus on the disc jockeys?
• Let me do these questions one by one

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Slaves of Capital

• Constitutional history
• An island of immigrants
• Mass Tourism
• A different kind of nationalism

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Slaves of Capital

• The transposition of the self-other dichotomy of
  political nationalism
• The Other is s/he who promotes exclusivist
  notions of community
• The Self is s/he who understands that the
  islands prosperity is based upon being open to
  the outside world
• The entire population is enticed to behave as
  actual stakeholders in the capitalist enterprise
  of promoting the island as a place of fun and sun
• This enticement is forwarded through the media

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Why Radio Disc Jockeys?

• The role of media in imagining the community and
  reality
• Ownership
• TV and newspapers are geared towards the outside
• Radio and radio disc jockeys as translators and
  architects of what are considered social facts
• They forward SXM as a modern day Babel that
  works!

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Tower of Babel

• Caribbean Christianity was born of the creolising
  of the Judeo-Christian Word with African and
  Asian religious and rhythmic motifs
• A Christian Meta-language not anchored in any
  specific Christian church
• Its most explicit form one encounters in the
  popular music of the Caribbean
• So Tego Calderon and Etana and R. Kelly are a
  continuum without pure edges
• We need however to recognise the inseparability
  of Capital, popular culture, and popular
  religiosity

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Tower of Babel to Pentecost in the Caribbean

• Pentecost, in its Caribbean form, is the event
  that accepts the tower of Babel as a shifting
  whole of constantly deferred religious and
  cultural differences under a capitalist-Christian
  banner. A banner that proclaims that human
  dignity should be indestructible and
  commensurable with the market

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The Tower of Babel

• The deep structure of Caribbean imaginations of
  community is movement securing the right of
  community members to move to the dance of
  capital.
• And the contradictions of these different
  movements are articulated in Caribbean music
• DJ Shadow and DJ Fernando Clarke tap into this
  deep structure

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How to achieve Babel according to DJ Shadow and
DJ Clarke

• Clarkes two Vitamin C for successful living
  Calypso and Christianity
• The Shadows prescription of Rastafari
  individuality
• Theirs is a continuous attack of ethnic and
  religious exclusivists
• In the end this is an island that follows the
  dictate of
• The Older Shadow

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Thank you