Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Wednesday 19 March @ 13:11:39 |
 by Celeste Tabora
Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a post-rock instrumental, multimedia collective from Montreal, Canada. The group was founded in 1994 by guitarist Efrim Menuck and bassist Mauro Denzzente. The band’s moniker was taken from the translation of “Buraku Empororu,” which is the first and least successful film by Japanese director Mitsuo Yanagimachi; it’s a vague, black and white film about a Japanese scooter gang. The minimal and patient peaks and valleys of the group’s compositions are a hypnotic listen on record, but when you combine the sound splices and the films of their visual collaborators during their live show, you will know why this band has generated such a buzz.
Album cover
According to the band’s philosophy, the music is far more important than the members of the group. The collective supersedes the individual and the lineup continually changes. This means no posed group photos, preferably no interviews, and no personal questions are permitted. This is all put forth to minimize the distance between listener and music, removing the glorification the media usually makes of the performer. (Of course, these days we have the Internet, and after some searching you’ll find who out of whom the group currently consists.)
I’m taking a chance writing about this strictly-music/privately personal band whose ethics I completely respect. In all honesty, to abide by the band’s wishes for their music, you would have to disregard this entire article. One journalist has already taken this chance, bit the bullet, created his interpretation and made his deadline, only to receive an open letter from Efrim, (who by the way insists that he is not the ringleader in the band and ends this letter by saying it is solely from him and not from GY!BE.) The problem is, though written a couple years ago, he says everything better than anyone could wish to say for the band, about what they stand for. So here it is, straight out of (one of) the horse’s mouth:
“We made a mistake,” the letter starts out, “We did an interview with a liar, and now this whole explosion of righteous opinion, like the cat’s out of the bag = Godspeed’s not a band of earnest monk-like politicos making music, we’re actually self-righteous ideologues, latent fascists, loudmouths, assholes... Point is, we never claimed we were anything we weren’t. Never promoted ourselves as an answer to anything, did our best always to be straight about our own lost-ness and confusion in the face of this whole ridiculous industry which does not bend or compromise, but swallows, appropriates, destroys... Easier to dismiss us as hypocrites than to actually engage us in a debate or a conversation... Hell, we like talking, we love talking; Problem is that most interviews don’t involve any talking at all, more like some sort of standardized test, fill in the blanks, blah blah blah...”
He continues, “Anyone wants to punch holes in our politics, go ahead; You wanna say that we don’t properly address the paradox of a “political” band making money off of compulsive shoppers or victims of fetish capitalism - guess what, YOU’RE RIGHT! We haven’t properly addressed that paradox at all. We know it and we kinda know why too. If you want to talk to us about that, then go ahead, give us a call, we’d love to talk about it. (As long as you can hold up your end of the conversation, as long as you’re willing to talk to us about you’re own failings, confusions, or epiphanies in the face of this cruel cruel world...)”
“Mostly the reaction to this silly little interview has been way more disheartening and angering than the interview itself. All these half-assed opinions and reactions, all highlighting the same old tired chestnut, that politics get in the way of music, that any band with any sort of political awareness, however fuzzy, is either completely naive and clueless or completely full of shit...”
“We’ve done our best to articulate ourselves plainly, honestly and politely. We’ve never lectured or insisted that everyone should believe the same things that we do. Instead we’ve pleaded and pleaded and pleaded, we’ve thrown these records into the ocean like so many hopeless transmissions, praying and hoping that some people would get the point, the simple simple simple point. That the world we live in is lost, violent, and obscene, that the relations we have with each other and ourselves are mostly alienated, that together we need to begin figuring out how to fix ourselves, our communities, our world. Hardly groundbreaking stuff, hey? But still, you start talking like that to most rock journalists and they don’t know how to respond... and when you start criticizing the way that most bands, record labels, rock venues, rock magazines function then not only are you naive, but you’re also arrogant, hypocritical and WRONG...”
He finishes up, “Again, we’re interested in debate, we’re interested in CONVERSATIONS. Instead of anyone actually talking about the merits or shortcomings of our argument, what you get is a whole lot of feigned shock and indignation, like somehow criticizing Radiohead is symptomatic of our own arrogance or hypocrisy... It’s all so silly, it just makes you tired and sleepy even thinking about it... So, maybe from now on we keep our mouths shut some more, yeah? Leave the talking to the talkers, keep our heads down and lips buttoned, yeah? Ok.”
You can read the entire open letter at http://www.brainwashed.com/godspeed/main.html. Godspeed You! Black Emperor plays Wed., March 19 at First Avenue.
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