- 1 Some of the events where “Alright” was used in a public setting include: a Black Lives Matter prote (...)
1On a story posted on NPR’s website in 2019, one can hear a 2015 recording released by the Greater Cleveland Authority Regional Transit Police (Limbong). It features the voice of a police officer asking a young boy, who, we learn later, happens to be Black, first his age, then if he is drunk, before dragging him off the bus and handcuffing him inside a bus stop. This would have been a fairly commonplace scene had it not taken place, as the NPR story reveals, on the campus of Cleveland State University at the precise moment when the participants to “The Movement for Black Lives” conference were leaving, at the end of the three-day event. The activists and organizers who had attended the conference worried about what was happening, a mere few days after the suspicious death in a Texas jail of a Black woman, Sandra Bland, the latest in a long list of deaths connected to brutal actions by police forces. They linked arms around the officer who had by then asked for reinforcement. After a few tense moments, during which a police officer pepper sprayed the crowd, the mother of the boy arrived on the scene, and the police escorted them to an ambulance and let them go. This unexpected and unusually happy ending prompted a spontaneous explosion of joy from the crowd. As it happens, the participants had played the song “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar during a break near the end of the conference. Probably because the song was still fresh in their minds, and because it had induced feelings of euphoria earlier, the crowd started to chant the chorus of the song, “We gon’ be alright.” Within a few days, the refrain became the rallying cry of numerous street protests across the United States and beyond, mostly during demonstrations connected to the Black Lives Matter movement (henceforth BLM), but also against Donald Trump’s first election win and for other political events.1
2The song has thus acquired a symbolic aura and a specific status strongly connected to BLM. The purpose of this article is to focus on the reasons (some probably unbeknownst to the protesters themselves) that may have led to the transformation of this song into a rallying cry, and to determine what this can tell us about the nature of some contemporary protest songs. I will first assess to what extent “Alright” can be considered a bona fide protest song, focusing on lyrical, musical, and prosodic criteria, before examining a number of ambiguous elements, such as the importance of partying in the reception of the song, which could lessen its effectiveness as a protest song. In the last section, I will steer the analysis in another direction and consider “Alright” as a song of healing. In addition to historical and musicological tools, I will also draw on Jungian psychoanalysis, first by inscribing the song within what Jungian analysts call “cultural complexes,” a perspective on the various components of a given national culture which seems to parallel Lamar’s analyses of American ills. I will also use the notion of dissociative versus conflict psychology in order to account for the different possibilities of dealing with trauma suggested by the song.
- 2 These songs, listed according to the year of their release, include: J. Cole, “Be Free,” Lauryn Hil (...)
- 3 Eric Garner was an African American man who was arrested in New York on July 17, 2014 on suspicion (...)
- 4 “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a poem written by James Weldon Johnson, at the time a high-school pr (...)
- 5 “We Shall Overcome” was originally an African American hymn written in 1901 under the title “I Will (...)
3Many songs have been written in recent years in direct, or indirect response to police violence resulting in the deaths of African American people, or in tribute to the BLM movement,2 including by the siblings of Eric Garner,3 one of the recent victims of police brutality. Their sheer number prompted Rolling Stone to devote an article to what it called “new protest anthems” (Spanos and Grant). Most of them could have become rallying cries. Particularly striking is “Wake-Up Call (Black Like Me)” (2020) by former Soul Brothers Six frontman, John Ellison, which opens with the enumeration of the violence to which he and his family have been subjected. The chorus, “This is a wake-up call, America, this is a wake-up call,” could very well have become the rallying chant of BLM. But it is the chorus of “Alright” that became what commentators have called the “Soundtrack of the Revolution” (Cobham), suggesting that it could replace “Lift Every Voice and Sing”4 as the new Black national anthem (Harris). Some have even suggested that it could supersede the hymn of the Civil Rights movement, “We Shall Overcome,”5 which John Ellison says he is “tired of singing” in the opening sequence of “Wake-Up Call.”
- 6 A song which “subverts the particular slave iconography and slave/master dichotomy created in Roots(...)
4“Alright” was written by Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, and Mark Spears (aka Sounwave), and produced by Williams and Sounwave. It is the seventh song on Lamar’s third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly (henceforth Butterfly) released in March 2015, and the fourth single (out of five) issued from the album, priority being given to other songs, particularly “King Kuta” (devoted to Kunta Kite, the fictional rebellious slave created by Alex Haley for his novel Roots)6 and the controversial and politically charged “The Blacker the Berry” (of the same title as the novel by the Harlem Renaissance author Wallace Thurman) in which Lamar deals openly with what he calls his own hypocrisy and Black on Black violence. But despite its rather inconspicuous release, “Alright” gained immediate attention, receiving widespread acclaim in the music press, and numerous accolades such as two Grammy Awards for best rap performance and best rap song, two awards at the BET hip-hop Awards, and several nominations for other awards, while the video for the song won the MTV Video Music Award for best direction. In the following years, Lamar continued to draw attention, releasing in 2018 the soundtrack for the movie Black Panther and winning the same year the Pulitzer Prize for his album DAMN. “Alright” thus contradicts Dan Goniprow’s observation that “Everything in the culture is fragmented, and therefore it’s very hard for anything in the culture to be the big voice in the way that songs that came out during the Civil Rights Movement could be in the early 60s” (15). With “Alright,” once again, a song seems capable of becoming the “big voice” that unites the participants and activists of different social movements.
5In the wake of its 1960s precursors, “Alright” has often been described as a “protest song,” a fact acknowledged by one of its producers, Sounwave, who stated: “I didn’t expect ‘Alright’ to be the protest song but I did know it was going to do something because the time we’re living in made it the perfect song” (Hale). Besides the NPR and Rolling Stone articles already mentioned, other publications used the “protest” label. Consequence claimed that “Only a song so brilliant in so many ways could earn the honor of becoming a protest song” (Blackburn). In her history of “Alright,” Jessica McKinney wrote that “since its release in 2015, Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ has become an important protest song in the Black Lives Matter movement,” an opinion shared by Jaime Cobham, who called it “a protest anthem.” In The New Republic, Jennifer Wilson stated that the song “has redefined protest music.” For Sam Gillette, “Alright” has become “the protest song of the Black Lives Matter Movement,” while for Daphne Brooks, it “hails a new, vital era of protest song.” Michael Gorman put it in a broader perspective, writing: “Black protest music is one of the oldest genres we can conceive of. At its core, ‘Alright’ is a spiritual song, much like most Black protest music. Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ is a central track to Black protest music.” This is an important comment to which we shall return. In his book The Butterfly Effect, Marcus Moore describes the song as “an abrasive protest track” not meant to be nice like “We Shall Overcome,” but rather a “fierce middle finger,” making listeners uncomfortable (182). He boldly claims that the rapper has suddenly become “the country’s foremost purveyor of protest music” (190). The Teachrock website which proposes lessons connecting popular music to social issues, offers a session entitled “‘Alright’ and the history of Black protest songs.”
6However, as Noriko Manabe underlines:
Its categorical acceptance as a protest song, at the expense of its complexities, may also be symptomatic of the expectations that the public imposes on entertainers of color […]. There is an inherent conflict between the demands on Black artists to entertain audiences on the one hand and speak to serious issues in their communities on the other.
7And when famed rap producer Rick Rubin, for whom “Alright” has become “our generation’s protest song,” asks Lamar “When you wrote it, did […] you think of it as a protest song?” the latter drops a terse, unequivocal “no” (“Kendrick Lamar Talks”). I would consequently like to explore further what the label “protest song” implies and whether it really is the most appropriate descriptor of the song.
8Most definitions of protest songs and protest music are very broad and vague, and rarely risk suggesting specific functions. Doria Lynskey merely writes that a protest song is “a song which deals with political issues [and] aligns itself with the underdog” (xvii). In his introduction to The Resisting Muse, Ian Peddie states that, “convenient though they are, […] ‘us and them’ arguments bespeak a rather shop-worn stance redolent of youthful rebellion. Instead, a much more fruitful way of approaching the issue […] is to see this relationship as a complex dialectic where musical protest is as fluid as the audiences to which it appeals” (5), a definition which, to say the truth, does not shed much light on the nature these songs.
- 7 The phrase “Folk Revival” describes a period from roughly the early forties to the mid-sixties duri (...)
9Consequently, as a basis for exploring what categorizing “Alright” as a protest song implies, I would like to use a fairly old article written by Serge R. Denisoff entitled “Songs of Persuasion: A Sociological Analysis of Urban Propaganda Songs” which he slightly reworked as a chapter for his 1983 book Sing a Song of Social Significance. Denisoff’s article is relevant in so far as it analyses the impact of protest songs, which is precisely what I will be trying to do with “Alright.” Admittedly, Denisoff’s analysis concerns the protest music of his time, i.e., folk, and it could very well be dismissed as irrelevant when applied to twenty-first century hip-hop. However, I think it can prove meaningful, provided we agree to expand the meaning of “folk” to include hip-hop. Is it too farfetched to hypothesize that at least some, if not all, of the definitional traits of folk—music that is orally transmitted and associated with local, “uncultured” communities— could apply to hip-hop, the oral, often improvised expression of a community, with strong roots in the past and of obvious “social significance”? It is the point also made by Steven Graves in his article “Hip Hop: A Postmodern Folk Music” in which he argues that “viewed through spatial lenses, hip hop can also be effectively understood as perhaps the last folk music” (245), rooted as it is in oral traditions, shared ownership, patterns of diffusion, and use of homemade instruments. Accordingly, Graves argues for a “rethinking of the parameters of what constitutes folk music and popular music” (245). Kendrick Lamar, in this perspective, is a folk artist, speaking from, about, and to his community, though also to a wider audience. Of course, folk is usually contrasted not only with elite (“art”), but also with commercial (“popular”) music, a category to which Lamar belongs. However, since the folk revival of the 1960s,7 the distinction has become blurry. If folklore refers to the various forms of cultural expression of a given group, including ways of talking, oral traditions, common beliefs, and shared values, then Lamar’s hip-hop definitely fits the definition, and we are entitled to use Denisoff’s analysis without being overly anachronistic or irrelevant.
10Denisoff focuses on “folksongs of protest” in the urban milieu (which he calls “songs of persuasion” or “urban propaganda songs”) from a functional perspective (Denisoff, 1966 581). He first ascribes six goals to these songs:
1. The song attempts to solicit and arouse outside support and sympathy for a social or political movement.
2. The song reinforces the value structure of individuals who are active supporters of the social movement or ideology.
3. The song creates and promotes cohesion, solidarity, and high morale in an organization or movement supporting its world view.
4. The song is an attempt to recruit individuals into joining a specific social movement.
5. The song invokes solutions to real or imagined social phenomena in terms of action to achieve a desired goal.
6. The song points to some problem or discontent in the society, usually in emotional terms. (1966 582)
11Denisoff then organizes them into two broad categories, depending on which of these functions are most developed. On the one hand, there are what he calls “magnetic” songs, promoting solidarity, cohesion, and fostering mobilization, including of potential new recruits, thanks to familiar melodies, as is the case with “We Shall Overcome.” Most magnetic songs follow the “situation-remedy” pattern: they first expose a social problem or ill, and then suggest a solution (joining a union, organizing actions, etc.). On the other hand, Denisoff identifies “rhetorical” songs, specifically written by a clearly identified individual in order to raise awareness and alert society to all kinds of problems, and hopefully make people react, such as “Eve of Destruction” written in 1965 by P.F. Sloan and most famously interpreted the same year by Barry McGuire. Denisoff calls such artists, whose production occasionally reach the Top Forty charts, “folk entrepreneurs.” Though he underlines the effectiveness of songs of propaganda within an existing movement, Denisoff expresses doubts regarding their power outside specific contexts (1966 588), a point he made again in his book, saying that “it becomes readily apparent that the mere hearing of protest song x will not turn the listener into being a supporter of x ideology or group” (1983 ix). For Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison however, Denisoff’s belief that “the verbal elements—the singing and the text—are central […] while the music is only secondary, a means to the message” (43) reveals the limits of his functional perspective. They consider that the emphasis should not be so much on the lyrics, but on the tunes of the songs: “It is often the seemingly simplest songs that evoke the strongest emotions, primarily because they are the bearers of musical tradition. Indeed, part of the power of many protest songs stems from their use of familiar tunes, both sacred and secular” (43).
12Whatever definition we retain, “Alright” clearly matches both the criteria and functions of a classic protest song, on lyrical, musical, and prosodic grounds, as well as in terms of its live renderings. Breaking away from “easy-on-the-ears party tunes, club bangers, and songs to blast on the aux during a 1 a.m. drive with friends” (Chowdhury), Butterfly is an intense, complex, and socially committed album. It follows the evolution of the narrator, from a “caterpillar” state to the butterfly of the title. In the first tracks, the “caterpillar” is “pimped” by the music industry, lured by material rewards, sex, the temptation to become the “king” of his community, “misusing [his] influence […], abusing [his] power full of resentment.” He then hides into a cocoon, whether it is the ghetto, the prison, or self-hatred. Follows a phase of depression, with suicidal tendencies triggered by overdrinking. Then comes track #7, “Alright,” which sounds “like a Sunday morning epiphany, perhaps even a church service, after a particularly debauched Saturday night” (Manabe). “Alright” definitely has all the qualities of a political statement. Its lyrics detail the hardships suffered by the African American community, tackling issues connected to race, discrimination, inequality, institutionalized prejudice, and violence, including intra-community violence. To make his point, Lamar resorts to a dense network of intertextual references, from the album title, adapted from Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, to the opening lines of “Alright,” “Alls my life I had to fight,” a quote from The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982). Lamar addresses his community, not just through the “we” of the chorus, but also by means of calls to his “homies,” and the frequent use of the N-word, whose usage, being restricted to African Americans, serves to close ranks. The strongest indictment of the dominant group comes with the oft-repeated pre-chorus section: “We been hurt, been down before, n…/When our pride was low/Lookin’ at the world like, ‘Where do we go, n…?’ And we hate po-po/Wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, n….” The anger directed at the police forces evokes NWA’s “F… Tha Police” (1988), and Body Count/Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” (1992), except that here, rather than adopting the persona of a “cop killer,” the narrator voices the whole community’s rejection of the police forces. Throughout the song, the use of African-American vernacular English (AAVE) such as “Alls,” “you fucked up,” “you was,” etc., is also a powerful contribution to community building. Since most AAVE speakers also master Standard English, using AAVE must be considered as a deliberate choice by Lamar. Obviously, one reason for it must be to inscribe his work within the rap genre, which commonly resorts to AAVE. But since AAVE is mostly used by working and middle-class African-Americans, it also creates bonds with and within these groups. As John Ogbu argues:
The creation of oppositional dialect or language frame of reference is a part of the overall effort of these minorities to solve the status problem caused by forced incorporation into U.S. society. One necessary step in coping with the status problem is to create mutually acceptable criteria for determining who is a bona fide member of the group. The creation of a language/dialect frame of reference […] serves this purpose. The frame of reference becomes an important symbol of their collective identity. (154)
13Most importantly, Lamar’s calls to God (“But if God got us, we gon’ be alright” or “I write ’till I’m right with God”) take “Alright” away from the anger and bitterness of the first songs of the album towards more optimistic perspectives (hence the spiritual dimension Gorman alluded to). The other two most famous anthems of the Black community, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “We Shall Overcome,” strike a similar hopeful chord. The former asks the audience to “sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,” and to “march on till victory is won.” The latter testifies of the singers’ conviction that they will overcome, a statement qualified, however, by the lack of precision regarding when (“someday”), what, or who will be overcome. But both songs lack the swelling, uplifting progression of “Alright” (and of Butterfly as a whole), its progressive surge from statements of despair, and acknowledgment of the community’s entrapment in violence, consumerism, and colorism, to the warm and controlled conviction that whatever the future, they will find strength and comfort within the community.
- 8 On February 26, 2012, a volunteer guard at a Sanford, Fla, gated community shot seventeen-year-old (...)
14Lamar’s self-assurance was particularly striking during two high-profile performances of the song. At the BET Awards in June 2015, he sang “Alright” perched on top of a tagged police car in front of a giant tattered American flag. At the 2016 Grammy Awards ceremony, during his performance of the song, handcuffed and chained, in front of a giant map of Africa on which the word “Compton” was displayed, he delivered an unreleased rap referencing the death of Trayvon Martin8 (“On February 26th I lost my life too, set us back another 400 years. This is modern day slavery”), connecting the song with police brutality.
- 9 Singer is also in charge of a book series devoted to cultural complexes published by Routledge, eac (...)
15Strikingly, the different topics Lamar tackles in “Alright” match the most salient “cultural complexes” of the United States. The notion of cultural complex has been developed by anthropologists, Jungian analysts, and clinical psychologists. Cultural complexes reconfigure the interrelated thoughts, emotions, beliefs, values, objects, practices, and experiences of a given national culture into a series of clusters, each around a central problematic feature, providing a narrative for the social dissatisfactions and claims of the people within that culture, both as individuals, and as a group. These different elements are embedded in the cultural unconscious of the culture where they lay dormant until they are activated by some event and take hold of the collective and individual psyche of the group’s members. Thomas Singer, one of the leading voices in the field of cultural complexes,9 underlines the extent to which such complexes seem to be particularly “awake” today:
Everywhere one turns today, there is a group that seems to be feeling the effects of a cultural complex in its behavior and relationships to other groups, in its feelings about itself and its sense of place in the world. […] To suggest that a group is in the grip of a complex in its behavior or affect—particularly if there is merit to the claim and the group has been discriminated against by a colonial power or a white power or a male power or a Black power or a female power etc., etc.—is to risk being attacked with the full fury of that group’s psychic defenses. Mostly these group complexes have to do with trauma, discrimination, feelings of oppression and inferiority at the hands of another offending group—although the “offending groups” are just as frequently feeling discriminated against and treated unfairly. (Singer and Kimbles 7)
16The list of cultural complexes he identifies for the United States includes:
-
the relationship to money, commerce, and consumer goods and the way the United States has turned material wealth and the accumulation of goods into a measure of personal achievement, at the expense of the well-being of other individuals, and of the whole planet if need be.
-
the relationship to the human community, including family life, social life, and the lifecycle, with the notion of individual freedom taking precedence over another seminal American value, communalism.
-
the relationship to the spiritual realm, where the sense of having been selected for a special relationship to God contradicts a strong tradition of religious dissent, which leads to a questioning of all forms of authority.
-
the relationship to race, ethnicity, gender (all the “others”), according to which white, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual men are destined to dominate the nation.
-
and finally, the relationship to speed, height, youth, progress, and celebrity, notions that have come to prominence as desirable values (Singer xxvii-xxviii).
17Interestingly, all five complexes are part of the narrative, both in “Alright” and Butterfly, as Lamar’s (or his characters’) attitude regarding how to deal with them evolves gradually throughout the album, from mimetically adopting the values of the dominant group, to challenging them, and finding a personal path. Consequently, inasmuch as cultural complexes provide “a useful lens or framework for understanding some of the dynamics that make societies unique” (Singer xx), approaching Lamar’s song through the prism of cultural complexes may, as we shall see, shed light on why I consider it, rather than just a protest anthem, also a song of healing.
18The track’s political commitment can also be heard in the lush and complex musical base concocted by Pharrell Williams and Sounwave for Lamar’s virtuoso rapping. On a backdrop of analog and electronic drums, a tapestry of choir-like voices hum two alternated chords (Abm11/Gm9) evoking genres traditionally associated with the Black community and the Civil Rights movement (namely spirituals, gospel, and soul), while a sinuous alto saxophone creates an unusual jazz atmosphere. As Michael Gorman develops, the saxophone, a potent “nod to the Black creators of the early twentieth century,” functions in the song as “a crucial piece of Black protest,” and Lamar’s use of jazz, including free jazz, earned him the “John Coltrane of Hip-Hop” nickname (Weiner).
19Finally, there are phonetic reasons why “Alright” is a particularly effective protest cry compared to its famous Civil Rights precursor. “We Shall Overcome” is a complex melody based on an awkward, irregular pattern of strong and weak syllables (we-shall-o-ver-come), which requires to be sung (as opposed to chanted) in full to make sense rhythmically and lyrically, whereas Lamar’s song allows BLM protesters to chant on a march-friendly, medium tempo (112 bpm) a simple five-syllable refrain with a regular, eight-beat pattern: three strongly accentuated syllables alternating with two weak ones (we-gon-be-al-right), followed by three wordless beats which allow for call and response interactions. Indeed, occasionally, demonstration leaders interject “say what?” or “I can’t hear you” on the three “empty” beats during street marches or at rallies.
20In terms of purposes, the response “Alright” has elicited since its release clearly shows that the song matches the different functions ascribed to protest songs: generate support and sympathy and attract new members; sustain cohesion and solidarity; point to specific social ills and suggest solutions; provide a form of cathartic release to individuals and groups. Indeed, during scores of BLM events, not just in the United States but also in Great Britain and other countries, demonstrators have used “Alright” to give pace and determination to their marches. As an organizer of a BLM march said: “‘Alright’ was included in a playlist of songs meant to unify the people. Music uplifts our community. Kendrick’s song is something that is a rallying cry” (McKinney). Lamar performed the song for President Obama at the White House, which gave it enhanced visibility and status. At a more intimate level, dozens of testimonies can be found on Reddit and other platforms that testify to the impact the song has on individuals, helping them fight depression or find the strength to stand for their rights. Denouncing past and present violence, motivating and inspiring demonstrators and activists, and giving the BLM movement its sonic identity, “Alright” definitely is a protest song.
21Yet, “Alright” differs in subtle, but unambiguous ways from classic protest songs. “Where do we go, n…?” sings Lamar. Indeed, beyond its overt optimism and confidence, “Alright” reveals a degree of questioning, doubt and ambivalence that contrasts with the strong convictions usually expressed in protest songs.
Fig. 1. Screen capture from the “Alright” music video
Directed by Colin Tilley and The Little Homies, Youtube, Uploaded by Vevo, 30 June 2015.
22I will use three examples, one textual, the other two visual, to make my point. In the middle of the song, the narrator shows up with weak knees “at the preacher’s door.” He is holding a gun that “might blow.” What will he do with it? Will he be a new Martin Luther King, choosing peace and nonviolence, and put the gun down, or will he be a Malcolm X, getting what he wants “by any means necessary” as X put it in his June 28, 1964 speech to launch the Organization of Afro-American Unity? And if he eventually pulls the trigger, who is the gun pointed at? At the police, the preacher, or at himself? A similar degree of ambivalence can be found in a scene from the video’s prologue. Lamar and his homies are singing in a car carried by four middle-aged, exhausted, White police officers (fig. 1). The scene can be interpreted in two ways: a moment of glory in which, by a reversal of fortune, the Black man becomes a king, a dignitary carried by White servants; but the officers could also be pallbearers, carrying the Black man in his coffin, after his execution. Finally, in the video, Lamar is seen falling off a lamp post on two occasions. In the first one, he lands smoothly in the arms of his group of friends. However, in the second, after having been symbolically shot by a white officer who had pointed his fingers at him, he lands brutally (though with a smile and on slow motion) on the hard ground (fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Screen capture from the “Alright” music video
Directed by Colin Tilley and The Little Homies, Youtube, Uploaded by Vevo, 30 June 2015.
23Even the hook, chanted in the streets with so much conviction by both BIPOC and White activists and demonstrators, can express ambivalence. Is it really a chant of hope and confidence, or should it rather be understood as the expression of doubt, questioning, or even irony: is everything really going to be alright? Doesn’t the phrase function more as an incantation, a mantra designed to persuade both the narrator and his listeners that things will get better, a kind of magic formula with the power to bring about that long-awaited “alright” moment? “Alright” could therefore be heard as a self-fulfilling prophecy, the hope and confidence heard in the refrain expressing some kind of wishful thinking rather than a deep-seated conviction based on social progress, and political advances.
24A final form of ambivalence results from the behavior of the demonstrators. In the 1950s and 1960s, “We Shall Overcome” and most other anthems of the Civil Rights movement were sung and listened to with fervor, but in a calm and contemplative manner, even when Joan Baez took the stage at the March on Washington, on August 28, 1963. Her performance (and the reaction of the crowd) had nothing to do with the bouncing bodies in Kendrick Lamar’s video, or those of the demonstrators singing “we gon’ be alright” during marches: dancing, joyful, and festive bodies, despite the pain, despite the anger. Is “Alright” then not just a protest song, but also a party song? This is what the title of the NPR story suggested, “Both Party and Protest” (Limbong). Unfortunately, the idea was not pursued in the article. It is therefore left to us to ask: could not “party and protest” be modalities of social mobilization? Or more precisely “party to protest”?
25This could be seen as a contradiction. How can you protest against police brutality by jumping and dancing in the streets? Isn’t the joyful excitement shown by the crowds at BLM marches and demonstrations inappropriate for the solemn, tragic cause that brings them together? And when the almost all-White audience of a concert given by Kendrick Lamar in 2016 for the Austin City Limits television program start dancing and bouncing as soon as they hear the chorus of the song, can we still talk about protest? Isn’t the party all that is left?
- 10 For instance, “Don’t Call Me N…, Whitey” (whose important second line is: “don’t call me whitey, n… (...)
26There are however many instances of popular songs encouraging partying and dancing as expressions of protest, from the double meaning of the famous 1965 song “Dancing in the Streets” by Martha and the Vandellas to Sly and the Family Stone’s joyful and energetic anthems10 urging people to dance and get “higher” in order to fight racism and establish peaceful relationships between communities. Such songs, and more generally dancing, have often been considered suitable ways to express protest, especially within the African American community.
27However, the point I want to make is slightly different. Indeed, “Alright” is not just about protest, and the bodies that jump and dance happily to its chorus try to achieve something more than denounce police violence. If there is something new and remarkable in this song, it is in the way it combines a spiritual dimension, as mentioned earlier by Michael Gorman, with the energy and protest associated with joyful dancing, and the focus on behavioral and mental health-related issues. The combination of these various elements makes it a particularly interesting case of what can be called songs of healing.
28In a personal interview, dance scholar Takiyah Nur Amin draws an illuminating connection between dance and protest:
The kinds of violence that we might think about that are aimed at Black lives are always pointed at our very bodies, at our fleshiness, at our materiality […]. The minute we use our bodies to communicate our own experience, to interpret our own reality, to make sense of the world around us in some ways, usually, there are some problems. And in the context of protest, globally, often what people put on the line is their body. If you think about protest as a container for temporary communities, and about the way that gestures and movements, which are the building blocks for dance, show up in that space, then it is easier to see that dance is a part of the resistive technology that talks back to oppressive structures […]. The pushback and resistance coming out of our communities are enacted at the level of the body. People are not just writing words, they are speaking back, they are pushing back. Protest exists at the level of our fleshy materiality. I think whatever liberation looks like, it is going to include a reckoning with our bodies, and dance, I think, is one of the tools.
- 11 For more on the connection between dance and protest within the African-American community, see for (...)
29The “liberation” she alludes to at the end of the quote goes beyond the social and political dimensions of the word. It points at the possibility of freeing the people from pain and suffering. At the possibility of healing.11 While Lamar had created different personae in the first songs of the album to embody different facets of his personality, and different periods of his life, he seems to reveal a more personal, intimate self with “Alright.” Not only does he admit once more that he was “drown inside [his] vices,” from sex addiction, to consumerism, and materialism: (“pretty pussy and Benjamin is the highlight,” “I deposit every other zero”), but he tackles issues of mental health, claiming “Painkillers only put me in the twilight,” and “I think I’ve gone crazy.” The mid-section of the final song of the album, “Mortal Man,” is a poem which has been revealed gradually as interludes between songs on six different occasions throughout the album, with increasingly longer excerpts. The part used at the end of “Alright” describes how the narrator tries to cope with his weaknesses, and denounces the structural, systemic causes (embodied by “Lucy”) of the depression he suffered from:
I remembered you was conflicted
Misusing your influence, sometimes I did the same
Abusing my power full of resentment
Resentment that turned into a deep depression
Found myself screamin’ in the hotel room
I didn’t wanna self destruct, the evils of Lucy was all around me
So I went running for answers.
30There are numerous hip-hop songs dealing with depression and other mental health issues. As the NeuroLaunch site states, if “the history of mental health discussions in hip-hop can be traced back to the 1990s,” with artists such as the Geto Boys, Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, A Tribe Called Quest, or DMX, “it wasn’t until the 2000s that more explicit discussions of depression began to emerge in mainstream rap” with songs by Lil’ Wayne, Joe Budden, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Kid Cudi, Jay-Z, Rico Nasty, Drake, Big Sean, Chance the Rapper, and Angel Haze, among others (Exploring the Depths).
31A major study carried out and published in 2020 analyzed the lyrics to 125 popular rap songs from 1998 to 2018. 98 per cent of the songs were by North American artists, of which 78 per cent were Black African American males. The study revealed meaningful trends in the songs’ themes, such as:
significant increases in the proportion of songs with references to suicidal ideation, depression, and metaphors representing a mental health condition […] 35 songs (28%) referenced anxiety; 28 (22%) referenced depression; 8 (6%) referenced suicide; and 26 (21%) used a mental health metaphor. Significant increases were found from 1998 to 2018 in the proportion of songs referencing suicide (0% to 12%), depression (16% to 32%), and mental health metaphors (8% to 44%). (Kresovich et al.)
32The study establishes a parallel between the number of rap songs dealing with these issues and the increase by 60 per cent since 2001 in the suicide rates among Black/African American youths aged 13 to 19 years.
33More broadly, physical and mental health issues afflict the African American community in above-average proportions. In the past, this was mostly attributed to genetic conditions. Today, in the same way as the connection between stress and numerous diseases has been identified, the connection between stress-induced diseases and racism has been established. In 2020, a team of researchers led by
David Williams confirmed “the connection between racism, racial violence and health and behavioral health.” They sum up their findings as follows:
Racism and associated trauma and violence contribute to chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, maternal mortality/infant mortality and morbidity in African Americans. Racism is considered a fundamental cause of adverse health outcomes for racial/ethnic minorities and racial/ethnic inequities in health. The primary domains of racism—structural/institutional racism, cultural racism, and individual-level discrimination—are linked to mental and physical health outcomes. Racism and violence targeting a specific community is increasingly associated with complex trauma and intergenerational trauma, all of which have physical and behavioral health consequences. (Office of Behavioral Health Equity 2020b)
34The report highlights several other key points, such as the fact that the mere anticipation of racism and violence is a major source of stress, or that “at every level of income and education, there is still an effect of race; even wealthy Black Americans are statistically less healthy than affluent White people” (Office of Behavioral Health Equity 2020b).
35Reports by the Office of Minority Health also assert that compared to the White population, African Americans are at higher risk for heart diseases, stroke, cancer, asthma, influenza, pneumonia, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS, and additional health issues related to maternity, obesity, and stress affect Black women (Office of Minority Health).
36The disparity between Black and White Americans is particularly conspicuous regarding diseases related to the use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, as stated in a 2020 report:
synthetic opioids are affecting opioid death rates among non-Hispanic Blacks more severely than other populations. In 2017, non-Hispanic Blacks had the highest percentages of opioid-related overdose deaths and total drug deaths attributed to synthetic opioids when compared to other race/ethnicities and the national population. (Office of Behavioral Health Equity 2020a)
37According to the report, the rate of increase of Black/African American drug overdose-related deaths between 2015 and 2016 was 40 per cent higher compared to the overall population increase at 21 per cent.
38Even more importantly for our discussion, the difference between Black and White Americans also concerns mental health, particularly depression, anxiety, and PTSD. According to a 2018 briefing paper by the Synergi Collaborative Center,
there is a large and growing body of robust evidence demonstrating that racism leads to mental illnesses, especially depression and prolonged periods of adjustment, like prolonged grief or difficulty coping with and adapting to severe events. These experiences impact on mental health and the effects accumulate over the life-course and are transmitted across generations. (Synergi)
39Besides, racism also prevents Black Americans from accessing and benefitting from mental health care. According to a White Paper released by the healthcare and insurance company Cigna, in 2016, Black people were 50 per cent less likely to receive counseling or mental health treatment because of underlying socioeconomic factors (Cigna).
40These findings are corroborated by individual testimonies. At a panel exploring “the healing power of music in communities of color” hosted by Berklee College of Music in October 2022, Reverend Liz Walker stated: “Black people carry generations of personal pain that predate slavery, that moves all the way down through history from the era of Jim Crow into the era of George Floyd” (Pesquera). Fanny Brewster, a professor of clinical psychology, adds: “African Americans carry not only the collective fear of such events held in their Africanist psyche, but also the individual anxiety at the continuous possibility of being physically harmed due to their skin color” (149). Waltrina Midleton, a BLM activist, deplores “the psychological impact and trauma of fighting for your life every single day” (Limbong).
41For Jungian analysts working on cultural complexes, there are two ways of dealing with trauma, including trauma resulting from the activation of cultural complexes (such as the various forms of racism, from stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, and oppression to segregation): one is to adopt a “dissociative psychology,” in which “the daunting complexities of the real world are simplified and reduced to polarized opposites driven by extreme emotions and primitive defenses” (Kalsched 54). In this type of mental construct, people who suffer from trauma build barriers to keep reality out, while their level of anger, and/or anxiety increases, potentially leading to paranoia. According to Kalsched, “dissociative psychology […] thrives in times of great existential anxiety or instability. It thrives on suspicion of others, attributes ill will to one’s opponent, and sees enemies and traitors everywhere” (54-55).
42An opposite strategy is to adopt a “conflict psychology” in which the contradictory thoughts, responses, and emotions of an individual enter into a safe and healthy conversation and are eventually integrated, sometimes easily, sometimes through demanding efforts, into a coherent mindset. Conflict psychology tends to be inclusive, empathic, and democratic, it “encourages differences and opens to vulnerable human feelings” (Kalsched 55), and eventually leads to “greater resilience in the face of life’s inevitable hurts, disappointments, and painful limitations” (Kalsched 67).
43“I remembered you was conflicted, Misusing your influence, sometimes I did the same, Abusing my power full of resentment.” Lamar’s words repeated seven times throughout Butterfly detail his initial response to the trauma and violence generated by various cultural complexes: a strategy of domination, rage, and rejection typical of dissociative psychology. However, as the album unfolds and as we reach its midpoint with “Alright,” truth, repair, and reconciliation gradually take precedence. Lamar’s narrator tries to establish a difficult dialogue between the conflicting facets of his personality, solve his contradictions, get rid of his destructive impulses: the hallmark of conflict psychology. Lamar himself has often insisted on the importance of “healing” and on the role played by music in the process. In an interview with NPR in 2019, he stated: “Four hundred years ago, as slaves, we prayed and sung joyful songs to keep our heads level-headed with what was going on. Four hundred years later, we still need that music to heal” (Limbong). One of the album producers, Terrace Martin, confided: “We had to use art […] to help heal and help love” (Hale). More than simply a form of protest or an expression of anger, “Alright” was intended as a healing force for those who hear it, and sing its “we gon’ be alright” chorus.
44“Heal” has an interesting etymology, which connects it, through the Old English hālig and the Dutch and German heil, to being both whole and holy. To heal is to become whole. To be holy is to be whole. And to be whole, in the Jungian framework, means to adopt a conflict psychology, rather than a dissociative one, in order to deal with the stress and traumas generated by cultural complexes. Both the spiritual and physical connotations revealed by the etymology of the term suggest that “[h]ealing is an integrating and enhancing force, far more fundamental than simple curing or the application of medicine” (Katz and Wexler 23).
45In traditional healing processes, but also in contemporary ones, as Stephen and David Edwards underscore, the very act of breathing plays a fundamental role:
ancient practices of spiritual healing, modern forms of counselling and psychotherapy, art, dance, music and other expressive therapeutic techniques […] and all other forms of caring, healing, illness prevention and health promotion have their ontological foundations in breath-based behaviour patterns and are mediated by various breathing experiences. (312)
46Jung was deeply interested in such practices, often originating in African forms of breath-based healing, and central to most spiritual traditions, from the three monotheist religions to Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and animist rituals. The centrality of breath is poignantly reaffirmed by the phrase “I can’t breathe” used by several victims of police violence prior to dying, notably Eric Garner, Javier Ambler, Manuel Ellis, Elijah McClain, and George Floyd. And when Kendrick Lamar revealed that he meditates at least 30 minutes a day, he added: “I breathe it” (“Kendrick Lamar Talks”).
47Music and dance are in this respect more than instruments of protest, more than the “resistive technology” Amin mentions. Sayeed Joseph claims that “Music, since slavery, is a coping mechanism that Black people have used to release their emotions and manifest healing in their lives. This tool of processing suffering through music and strengthening a spiritual connection developed in the Black experience to form the blues after emancipation.” Indeed, for Angela Davis, “confronting the blues, acknowledging the blues, counting the blues, naming the blues through song, is the aesthetic means of expelling the blues from one’s life” (135). More than just a protest song, or a shout of anger, “Alright” is also a healing force. The physical excitement of White and Black bodies dancing in the streets, chanting “we gon’ be alright,” combined to the explicit mention of trauma and psychological issues help the communities get rid of their “blues,” heal both the deep wounds of the past, and those inflected by the current violent reawakening of certain cultural complexes, and hopefully move from dissociative to conflict psychology. “By working with our complexes, which manifest as symptoms,” asserts Jeffrey Kiehl, “the process of healing takes place—a healing that addresses both inner and outer symptoms” (270). “We gon’ be alright” aims at repairing the tears in the bodies and the souls, and the rifts in society, and potentially becoming whole again. As Michael Gorman put it, “Alright” contains “a key aspect of processing trauma: acknowledging it. The chorus poses the song as a healing factor for all those that have violence done against them.” This is what the “butterfly” of Lamar’s title connotes: the possibility of evolution, of metamorphosis, of becoming something else, something better, of healing.
48“Alright” could thus be heard as an inflection of the numerous musical forms proper to the African American community which combine a spiritual dimension with the joyful energy of dancing to perform various functions, from covert or overt protest to cathartic release. The effectiveness of these “songs of healing” rooted in African American traditions is measured not only in the hypothetical transformation of society, but above all, in the immediate, physical and mental wellbeing of their audience. “Alright” is indeed one of these songs, but of a somewhat different nature as the healing it achieves does not rely only on either cathartic exuberance, or on political and social commitment and militancy, or on the candid exposure of inner turmoil and mental health issues, but on the particularly effective integration of these three components, usually manifested separately, into a seamless whole. For healing the wounds of the African American community requires not only fighting systemic racism, and both economic and police violence, but also addressing psychological issues such as the lack of self-esteem and self-worth stemming from centuries of subjugation. This implies as much a questioning of the foundations of Black masculinity as adopting new perspectives on mental health problems. By admitting not only to his “moral” vices, but to his depression, and turning it into an ebullient and potent tool of social protest, Lamar, the “street poet of mental health” (Sule and Inkster), contributes to changing the perspective on masculinity within hip-hop, and within the African American community at large, and paves the way for heretofore unheard-of possibilities of healing.
Flux RSS
