Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65
“Other/ed” Kinds of Blackness: An Afrodiasporic Versioning of Black Canada
Mark V. Campbell University of Guelph
Dr. Mark V. Campbell, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Guelph [email protected]
Abstract: For centuries Canada has been home to several overlapping diasporas par ally consis ng of African Americans refugees, exiled Maroons, Black Loyalists, and many others migrant groups from various African diasporas. Accordingly, the possibility of ‘a’ Black Canadian iden ty remains illusive, due in part to con nual influxes of members of the African diaspora into Canada. The rigidity of a single unifying iden ty and the seemingly porous nature of na onal boundaries urges us to move towards a conceptual shi that refuses to seek a unifying discursive iden ty posi on. Importantly, black iden ty poli cs in Canada have benefited from the rise of Con nental African voices in Canadian hip hop music. One of the goals of this paper is to expand the conceptual terrain of overlapping African diasporas illuminated by Con nental African hip hoppers in Canada. Thus, both the lyrical innova ons and geopoli cal orienta ons of ar sts like Shad and K’Naan highlight the overlapping nature African diasporas in Canada, opening new ways to think more expansively about Black Canadian iden ty as Afrodiasporic iden ty. Importantly, the main contribu on of this paper is to mobilize versioning as a conceptual tool that remixes our contemporary no ons of Black Canada to highlight some of the ways in which we might trouble (or update) blackness in Canada, par cularly paying a en on to the kinds of iden ty interven ons made possible by newcomer East African popula ons within Canada’s diaspora space.
Order is, at one and the same me, that which is given in things as their inner law the hidden network that determine the way they confront one another, and also which has no existence except in the grid created by a glance, an examina on, a language; and it is only in the blank spaces of this grid that order manifests itself in depth as though already there, wai ng in silence for the moment of its expression. (Foucault 1970: xxi)
Canada exist; yet Black peoples living in Black Canada does not exist, at least Canada fail to satisfy the narrow criteria not in a singular homogenous form. of a ‘nation’. A shared language, culture Black Canadians exist and Blacks in or politic, or even a certain kind of
46 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 ideological stability, are some of the mines the potential of versioning, a criteria by which one defines a nation. soundsystem invention from Jamaica’s From Hayti in 1804 to post-9/11 Canada, early years of indigenous music. The ‘nation’ as an ideological tool has intention of this theoretical move is consistently failed to capture the varied deliberate; it is an attempt to find new experiences of African diasporic tools, begin from unsuspecting spaces to populations. This is to say that a challenge the ways in which European bounded and unified nation/territory systems of thought dominate our cannot account for the heterogeneity of imagination and our intellectual Black histories and contemporary explorations. experiences. Within this limited understanding of nation, Black Canada Furthering how Afrosonic exists most fervently as a mechanism of innovations might be useful, this article ‘order’, a rhetorical and ideological explores the theoretical relevance of two strategy utilized by various camps of relatively new hip hop artists in Canada, scholars, activists and politicians as K’naan and Shad K. These two artists needed. Black Canada acts as a marker were born in Somalia and Kenya (that can only be temporal) that attempts respectively and were either partially or to capture a heterogeneous blackness, for fully raised in Canada. Through their the purposes of conceptualizing, lyrics, videos and interviews K’naan and defending and mobilizing people of Shad’s subjective identifications through African descent in Canada. Significantly, their art encourages us to critically the work Black Canada does is to engage with the potential of ‘order’ the heterogeneities of blackness Afrodiasporic as a conceptual tool and in Canada into a useful package capable allows for our common understandings of navigating a world more comfortable of blackness in Canada to fully engage with sameness rather than difference. its polyphonic reverberations and Black Canada abides by the terms of echoes. Methodologically, this essay’s nation, which necessarily obscures the textual and discursive analysis of both very transnational, multi-local ways in lyrics and images in hip hop culture which Afrodiasporic people live in, gesture at the excesses of diasporic beyond and between nation as a concept blackness and the deterritorialized and nation as lived reality. desires of those for whom the rigidity of a fixed notion like Black Canada is In an attempt to expand the limiting and thus continually disrupted. conceptual terrain of the idea of Black Canada, the first half of this essay takes Importantly, this paper moves up ways in which we might imagine and through two significant theoretical articulate the heterogeneity of Black interventions. First, the term Canadian life. The tools used to begin Afrodiasporic is employed and utilized this conversation are from the sonic as a conceptual tool to capture the innovations located within the African fluidity of identities in the African diaspora; more specifically this essay Diaspora. Secondly, and equally as
47 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 important is the centrality of thinking By combining the prefix ‘Afro’ through Afrosonic life as theoretical with the adjective ‘diasporic’, this term tools to conceptualize our present attempts to push past the new margins discursive and geopolitical moment. and blind spots of Gilroy’s Black The final section of this essay offers a Atlantic (1993). One particular blind contemporary example of how hip-hop spot of Gilroy’s Black Atlantic that culture’s intertextual and hybrid comes to mind is Black Canada. While maneuvers suggests the plausibility of numerous scholars have highlighted the Black Canadas, a temporary version of complexities involved in diasporic Black Canada consisting of overlapping populations, the prefix Afro helps orient African diasporas (Lewis 1995). By our thinking into specific realms that turning to hip hop culture this final highlight the African inheritances that section is able to enter a Black public structure the lived realities of sphere were the slipperiness of flexible contemporary Afrodiasporic populations. ethnoscapes demonstrate the varied For example, we can argue that many velocities and versions by which we diasporic populations express ‘homing might imagine Black Canadas, and the desires’ or specific notions about the polyphonic nature of heterogeneity. nature of home (Zhang 2004). For Afrodiasporic populations such concerns are exacerbated by traumas such as slavery or confinement, both historical Afrodiasporic: A New Star ng and contemporary, and on both sides of Point the Atlantic (Sudbury 2004). Afro The term ‘Afrodiasporic’ is a useful figures deeply into how Black diasporic adjective that attempts to make sense of peoples conduct themselves vis-à-vis the conditions of African populations other diasporic populations. The prefix and their descendants dispersed Afro also heightens our awareness of worldwide. A number of scholars have deep inheritances of African oral taken up the term Afrodiasporic, but the traditions which better highlight some of conditions of its use and what it attempts the cultural expressions (i.e. dub poetry) to signal remain for the most part present in the ‘new world’ but ambiguous and under theorized. For significantly indebted to the old world. example, music and youth are sometimes Afrodiasporic also attempts to capture described as Afrodiasporic, with the experiences of Nigerians in China, emphasis placed on sounds or practices an area not covered in Black Atlantic (to the detriment of thinking about the theorizing. What if the kinds of cultural ideas and conditions that nurture such practices we find amongst Nigerians in Afrodiasporic musics or youth China are not solely ‘indebted’ to the practices). For cultural and diaspora Caribbean for diasporic tools, where theorists the term Afrodiasporic operates then does our Black Atlantic analysis as a mechanism to help them arrive at move? Maybe the trauma of the Black clear understandings of the materiality of Atlantic loses importance while the kind diaspora life. of aesthetic practices and strategies
48 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 expressed by Nigerians in China can thought, is an organizing tool that provide insight into Afrodiasporic life. constructs homogeneity out of social If we move past the trauma, exile or difference. Diasporas continually disrupt confinement and downplay the Black the idea of the nation, importing and Atlantic’s centrality, we may be able to strategically utilizing resources from better grasp patterns of aesthetic elsewhere to inform one’s present practices or strategies that can situation. Black Canada is an idea that substantially illuminate the cultural rests on an imaginary unity, taking its ingenuity and resilience of Afrodiasporic cues from the European conception of life. Afrodiasporic as a conceptual tool nation. The various Black diasporas that can, while certainly acknowledging its call Canada home continually challenge Caribbean content, generously turn to the assumed unity of nation, and the other practices and aesthetics to possibility of unity based on the social highlight some of the strategies these construction of race. It is the most populations take up that may speak to recent east African diasporas in Canada histories of post-literate orality or that have reinserted klanship, lineage yearnings that seek new forms of and the emphasis of ethnic particularity humanity in the future. over blackness and nationality (think Oromos) into the ways we might Given the theoretical flexibility reimagine a discursive and conceptual and yield of Afrodiasporic, it is shift from Black Canada to a more employed throughout this paper the term polyphonic concept. Because Black to describe various Black peoples in Canada encompasses an ideal of unity Canada and the African diaspora inherited from the idea of the nation, the gesturing towards the fracture and other realities of Black diasporas—a dispersal that characterizes much of the diversity of languages, religions and Black populations in Canada and customs continually disrupt and disorder beyond, but does not leave out Africa as the unifying mechanisms attempted by an important sign of inheritance and the idea of Black Canada. It is a powerful stimuli of the imagination relational (and therefore generous) (Tettey 2005). notion of self that diverse Afrodiasporic populations employ to find ways in which to secure blackness as a space of subjecthood. Blackness in Canada and Black Canadas However, although Black Canada Blackness in Canada sits at the as an idea has its short-comings, we intersection of the hegemonic cannot simply throw it out the window. construction of the nation, the reality of Politically, from within, Black Canada as a doubly diasporized peoples and the an idea has served as weaponry in necessity of rhetorical and ideological important battles. Importantly though, to mechanisms of mobilization. The idea arrive at a more clear understanding of of nation, as constructed by European Afrodiasporic populations in Canada a
49 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 lexical shift is demanded. This shift west since the late 1500s; it is not solely might take the form of a flexible and a response to racism. The lexical and plural notion of Black Canadas, an idea conceptual shift suggested here, from that encompasses flux that reflects the Black to Afrodiasporic, is interested in lived reality of being Afrodiasporic in capturing the politics of space, the Canada and connects the varieties of continuing terrorism of neocolonialism Black folks to an array of Afrodiasporas. and the innovative routework of Afrodiasporic populations. There is, as While it has been argued that Katherine McKittrick has recently Blacks in Canada are connected through highlighted, a creative tension between the experience of racism (Winks 1971; movement and stasis in Black diaspora Henry 1981), racism does not over discourses (McKittrick 2002). determine, nor can it solely account for Afrodiasporic as a concept perfectly the constitutive differences amongst captures this tension. The movement, Afrodiasporic peoples in Canada. The the ‘routework’ implied in notions of geopolitics of space, the colonial residue diaspora alongside the root, the of class and the routes of diaspora sedentariness implied in the prefix Afro, fragment diverse Afrodiasporic foster a tension that pushes the populations in Canada, demanding we applicability of ‘place’ and explores the reconcile our reality to better antecedent movement. This tension conceptualize our existence. With this in forces and fosters the innovation of mind I mobilize the language of systems of thought and material diaspora, not only to help us get past mechanisms (think music) that oscillate “the nation thing” (Walcott 2003) but to and adapt to specific circumstances, also capture the tensions of home and much like Baraka’s notion of the elsewhere, stasis and movement and to “changing same” (Baraka 1967). So that utilize the potential interventional work place, which we can understand as the that a diasporic sensibility can foster. present, the apparent, remains in a Importantly, diasporic identities are, as conversation with changing trajectories; Stuart Hall reminds us, “those which are root and route are inextricably tied in constantly producing and reproducing producing meaning. These trajectories themselves anew, through transformation or routes, expressed by Baraka in one and difference” (Hall 1996). A Black example as the Blues, Jazz and R&B, Canada comprised of a variety of expose their sameness in root, their African diasporas then is a site of ‘changing same’ reality (Baraka 1967). identity renewal actively engaged in Gilroy’s notion of roots and routes, various processes of reconstitution and alongside Baraka’s ‘changing same’ revision. notion both work to identify how difference within sameness operates. Afrodiasporic Canadian as a concept captures the geopolitics of The realities of our postmodern space, the terror of colonialism and the present are ones that have been captured movement of Africans to and within the by Arjun Appadurai’s notion of flows
50 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 and scapes (1996). An ethnoscape Similarly, the populations that might be according to Appadurai is a “landscape categorized as part of Black Canada of persons who constitute the shifting exist in no uniformity, nor in isolation world we live”, such as tourists or from the “electro-modernity”(Miller immigrants. Of particular interest is his 2004) that fragments reality. Various notion of ethnoscape as the slippery electronic technologies complicate and “landscape of group identity” that disrupt many of the conventional ways ethnographers must be attentive to the we might think about Afrodiasporic life field (Appardurai 1996). Ethnoscapes particularly within the west, where these are slippery slopes where identities can electronic technologies oversaturate the no longer masquerade as a coherent and marketplace. unchanging entity. The challenge then of thinking For my work, ethnoscape about the fragmented and intersecting highlights the fluctuating identity ethnic particularities amongst politics and ethnic particularities diverse Afrodiasporic populations in Canada is Black populations must maneuver in a to find relationships or spaces of ‘multicultural’ Canada and learn to commonality within the heterogeneity of become Black. Black Canadas, then to these populations. To meet this return to this notion, are the continual challenge this article works through a and temporal intersections of various concept from within the sonic ethnoscapes, of ethnically1 or religiously particularities of Afrodiasporic histories. particular Afrodiasporic groups in Specifically, I turn to Jamaica’s Canada. The collision between digital soundsystem culture for two reasons. media, diasporic desire and the Jamaican soundsystem culture has been imagination produce ethnoscapes that foundational in the development of both stand in contrast to diasporic hip-hop and drum & bass, with hip hop communities whose similarities may be being one of the most popular musics in as extensive as their differences. Digital the western world. Secondly, Jamaican media and technologies facilitate soundsystem culture birthed articulations and utterances of diasporic internationally influential reggae music sentiments and subjectivities, making and contributed to not just various clear linguistic, generational and ethnic technical developments but also the specificities that form the basis of the expanded role of the disc jockey within versions of blackness that constitute nightclub culture such that records Black Canadas. became open source, creative and participatory entities. The intention here The media saturation of today, is not to homogenize nor to Jamaicanize evidenced by the growing popularity of blackness as often happens in Toronto’s media convergences (Jenkins 2004) and Afrodiasporic communities, but rather to oppositional culture jamming (Carducci examine influential Afrosonic cultures 2006) continues to remind us that there for their discursive potentialities. is no homogenous, unfragmented reality.
51 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65
Soundsystems were mobile original version of a song “take on a new discotheques that were inexpensive life and a new meaning in a fresh replacements for bands in late 1950s and context” (Hebdige 1987:14). early 1960s Jamaica (Chude-Sokei 1994; “Versioning” then, is the act of taking an Dalton 2004; Bradley 2000). The instrumental track and providing one’s soundsystem has been understood as unique take on the record. Versioning “one of the Black diaspora’s most occurs when an emcee/toaster alters the enduring and frequently original elements of a song; in essence it unacknowledged cultural is an act of signifyin’ according to Henry institutions” (Chude-Sokei 1994:96 Louis Gates (1986) literary analysis. fn#4). Within soundsystem culture, Usually there are specific elements of a versioning was a technique Selectahs2 song that are kept in the newly signified utilized to garner the participation of creation, such as a melody or key, which dancehall patrons. The technique exist in the new creation alongside involved playing the instrumental altered words tempo or instrumentation. version of a very popular song and having the audience sing the words Jacque Derrida’s notion of directly after the original version was difference is useful in helping us played (Dalton 2004:217). Ruddy understand versioning as he claims Redwood is credited with being one of difference to be a “‘weave’ of the first soundsystems in Jamaica to similarities and differences that refuse to experiment with this creative separate into fixed binary participatory practice, he explains: oppositions” (Hall on Derrida 1972; Hall 2000). Thus, all versions are a mixture I start playin’… I put on “On of similarities and differences, new and the Beach” and I said, I’m old elements in a soundscape. In Ruddy gonna turn this place into a Redwood’s example cited earlier, in the studio’, and I switch over “weave of similarities and differences” from the singing part to the in his sonic innovation, the producer/ version part, cut down the consumer binary is refused and sound and, man, you could reformulated in a participatory fashion. hear the dance floor rail, man So the meaning created in each new – everybody was singing version is inscribed within a system of (Dalton 2004: 217). references, playing upon prior meanings while building its current meaning Versioning is also the process through excessive referencing to prior whereby an original song is reproduced versions. Versioning, as the active in a slightly altered different key, insertion of difference into the original arrangement or wording.3 Cultural or known, is an openly democratic theorist, Dick Hebdige, in his important practice that dislodges the authority of study of Caribbean musics, Cut N’ Mix, the ‘original’ source music and espouses explained versioning as “different kinds an alterity that is enjoyed by dancehall of quotations.” In this process, an patrons. The concept of versioning
52 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 illuminates the foundational antiphonic of ethnic and racial temporalities that nature of Afrodiasporic musics and characterize Afrodiasporic life in extends how we might imagine the Canada. concept of doubleness at the heart of DuBois’ double consciousness (1903). Working from these two usages, I Versioning, when deployed discursively, understand the various layers and helps us think about the ways in which ethnicities of the Afrodiaspora in Canada Afrodiasporic peoples in Canada as various versions of Black Canada. continually refuse, accept, negotiate and/ From Jamaican Maroons to Somali or reject numerous homogenizing calls refugees, Canada has been home to into a Black subjecthood refusing fixed various continuous and discontinuous binaries of homogenized blackness. flows of Afrodiasporic populations. These flows have been subject to Black Canadas as a collection of conflict, friction and collision, allowing versions then is an important starting for no linear or neat conception of point, as explicit and intentional Blackness to emerge in Canada. Thus, insertions of difference into an originary this article is concerned with the and homogenizing narrative of Black overlapping nature of the heterogeneous unity—built on the narrative of nation, Black diasporas in Canada, paying the narrative of the Canadian nation- attention to the populations of state. Afrodiasporic is a b-side Afrodiasporic people who present instrumental version Black Canada, void themselves as ‘already here’. These of a dominant narrative, under utilized or populations, such as Black Nova engaged yet open to a multiplicity of Scotians and Ontario descendants of the diasporic realities. Black Canadas Underground Railway do not get read as versions Black Canada by inserting diasporic subjects, nor do they social difference and ethnic particularity necessarily utilize the language of into the narrative of Black unity, by diaspora, but they do influence the ways inserting a polyphonic chorus of in which incoming Black diasporas in identities and ethnicities indebted to Canada are positioned in the nation and numerous diasporas. Consequently, this assertively position themselves in article contends that Black Canada exists transnational ways. At times, the as a number of fragmented temporalities struggles of the latest wave of immigrant in various ethno and culturescapes, Black populations get articulated without influenced by a “smiling Canadian overt references to those Black racism” and mediated by the populations that faced similar difficulties mediascapes that crisscross our present. in the 1800s and early 1900s. By conceptualizing and reading the overlapping diasporas that comprise In contemporary Canada, an Black Canadas through the language of examination of hip hop music and the version we become attuned to how culture is useful here because it displays Black Canada as a unifying process of the tensions of a diaspora space (Brah, ‘order’ is disrupted by the syncopation 1996) as various artists from Antiguans
53 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 to Somalis articulate their diasporic Canada. Thus, overlapping is utilized as sensibilities in Canada, mindful of the an adjective to identify a range of entanglements of being Afrodiasporic, as diasporas from Afro-Caribbean retirees well as those that claim generations on bent on returning ‘home’ (Nelson 2004; Canadian soil. Hip hop is an apt tool for Plaza 2006) to Francophone youth in this investigation because it moves Ontario (Ibrahim 2004) or continental through a number of spheres and scapes African youth in Alberta who access and embodies a diasporic sensibility what they perceive to be a universal (Walcott, 1997), making it an apt tool to blackness via American media bring together various aspects of imperialism (Kelly 2004). Afrodiasporic life in Canada. Unlike most other locations of blackness worldwide, state-sponsored multicultural ideology in Canada tries to Where You’re from and Where discipline non-dominant identities in this You’re at4: The Overlapping country into neat manageable packages Nature of Black Diasporas in of culture that work to obscure race and Canada its nefarious activities in peoples’ lives. Canada has been home to various This makes the multiple layers that Afrodiasporic populations for more than comprise the Afrodiasporic Canadian four hundred years, yet this centuries-old experience uneven, and rife with presence astonishes most people that call inequities that are accentuated by themselves Canadian. At no point in this disciplinary forms of Canadian racism country’s history have the Afrodiasporic and state-sponsored multiculturalism. populations been homogenous in Two other populations of language, ethnicity or national origin. Afrodiasporic peoples, the exiled Instead, various push factors have Jamaican Maroons and free African catapulted Afro-Caribbean, Continental American populations, entered Canada Africans and African Americans on quite different terms. The Jamaican populations into Canada from various Maroons’ valiant and violent efforts to parts of the world, from as far as protect their freedom in cockpit country Madagascar to as near as New England. differ significantly from the nocturnal The result has been and continues to be, flight of many African Americans on the a multilayered and multiethnic Underground railway or the escape with populations of Afrodiasporic individuals British Loyalists to a country not encompassed under the category Black interested in war. The Loyalists lured Canadian. The notion of “overlapping into Canada by promises of land diaspora,” to borrow a term used by Earl suggests these peoples wanted to stay in Lewis (1995), best describes Black Canada to, at the very least, take Canadas, where a politics of difference advantage of the government’s offer of highlights how various populations are free land. For exiled Jamaican Maroons differently positioned both within and free African Americans fleeing to society and within Black diasporas in
54 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 north of the 49th parallel, Canada was a space, blackness was not the glue that temporary place of exile. The exiled held together vastly different Maroons held a very different spatial Afrodiasporic groups. Racism, however relationship to Canada; this land was real and rabid, did not help unite punishment for rebellious Maroons but Maroons and Black Loyalists (contrary was an opportunity for African to Robin Wink’s analysis). Racism did Americans. Canada as a geographic not make Maroons and African space meant very different things for Americans a homogenous Black Black Loyalist and Jamaican Maroons. community, it did not erase their ethnic For the doubly diasporized Maroons, particularity. The version of Black they were forced into a ‘diaspora space’ Canada we can extrapolate from the in Nova Scotia where they had to Maroons in the Nova Scotia episode is contend with those Black populations not one of a united front against racism already rooted in Canada (Lockett 1999). but rather the collision of two struggling The inability or unwillingness of populations in which the varied Maroons to think of themselves as circumstances of their diasporic routes Canadian was influenced by the cold interrupts a linear unified notion of reception provided by Black Nova blackness. The presence of the Maroons Scotians and evidenced in their opting to shifted the rhythm of blackness in move to Sierra Leone after less than a Canada from an imagined and colonially decade in Canada (Hinds 2001; Walker projected homogeneity to accenting how 1976). the contingencies of space and diasporic routes version the concept of Black Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia Canada to allow thinkable a notion exerted a limited social capital rooted in the idea of multiplicity, an idea embedded in their “already here” status of Black Canadas. over the incoming Maroons within the diaspora space of Maritime Canada (Brah, 1996). Black Loyalists knew the social and geographic terrain of their How Does One Read Black new home, they knew the language and Canadas? had limited networks to obtain work. From varied geographic origins, to The Maroons, as a new Black diaspora diverse mother tongues, to the manner in in Nova Scotia, whose presence which Afrodiasporic peoples entered overlapped with the recently arrived Canada, overlapping and layered are two former African-Americans, could not useful ways to characterize blackness in successfully navigate the social terrain. this nation. The overlapping and But the Jamaican Maroons held a unevenness of blackness in Canada is different kind of influence as the British demonstrated by the flows into and out crown supposedly recognized them as a of inaccurate racialized identities and ‘sovereign nation’, and used this limited nationalities that are at times prescribed power to move themselves to Sierra by the government. For example, as the Leone. In this overlapping diaspora Canadian government refused to
55 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 acknowledge Eritreans entering Canada Born in Mogadishu, K’Naan Warsame as an ethnic national before the victory migrated to New York City at age twelve of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), and eventually settled in Toronto. Ethiopian was an ethnic label forced K’Naan’s live shows have been in onto (but not accepted by) Eritreans by a demand around the world, to the tune of Canadian population unwise or 450 shows in two years (Honigmann unsympathetic to their political struggles 2007). As a member of the Somali (Sorenson 1990). community in Canada, K’Naan was invited by the Canadian Broadcast Today Black Canadas are Corporation to speak on the removal of culturally, linguistically and ethnically the Islamic Courts Union from power in much more complex, encompassing Mogadishu in January 2007. more continental Africans with new sets of concerns. For some, Canada is Although recognized by the radio imagined as a temporary home that is show host as a “Somali rapper” who until one saves enough money for lives in Toronto, K’Naan’s visible and retirement or when the war ends at articulate presence speaks volumes of ‘home’ and new government enters the Black diasporas as he is positioned power. Both the similarities and the by the broadcaster as a spokesperson for differences between Afrodiasporic the Toronto Somali community populations involve rivalries, conflict (Galloway 2007). K’Naan has gained a and pain. For example while Eritreans reputation as an individual concerned and Ethiopians are both from the horn of with Somalia’s geopolitics and Africa, and they may be both fleeing unconcerned with the braggadocio image war, a history of ethnic warfare and branding characteristic of Western hip rivalry counterpoises what Canadians hop markets. K’Naan actively rejects often mistake as sameness (Sorenson African American rapper discourses 2005). Although the multiple erasures of around sampling and bling, instead Black spaces in Canada, such as Nigger defining himself as part of another Rock, Hogan’s Alley or Africville and culture, the Somali diaspora the homogenizing tendencies of popular (Honigmann 2007). In his myspace media make life for Afrodiasporic descriptors he lists himself as playing individuals in Canada particularly folk music, a clear divergence from difficult, counter publics keep alive other hip hop artists’ self-naming pertinent and progressive debates around practices. But K’Naan’s mastery of the nature of Black life in Canada. poetry, emceeing and performance places him at the pinnacle of hip hop A closer look at Somali-Canadian culture, highlighting an inconsistency. hip hop emcee/poet, K’Naan the Dusty His musical accolades span two Foot Philosopher, reveals how we might continents and at least three countries. read Afrodiasporic life and Black K’Naan, in rejecting a North American Canadas as a remix, a paradigm shift in prescribed identity, as a ‘rapper,’ Black Canadian cultural identification. accentuates his Somali background to
56 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 obtain increased media attention to the Black public sphere in North America. plight of his former home and his unique In a classic call and response fashion, artistic career. K’Naan’s transnational K’Naan draws on his resources as first reach ideologically closes down a world hip hop emcee to participate in the narrow and nationalistic Black Canada debates over Somalia’s geopolitics. and Black America in favour of an Rather than simply cataloguing his Afrodiasporic identification that moves displeasure over the situation, K’Naan between national and cultural spaces. called out to warlords, calling on them to stop hiding; his was a call to become Strategically, Black male rapper part of the discourse, rather than simply is an identity utilized for K’Naan’s critiquing the situation from a western political project—to reduce negative and privileged gaze. stereotypical portrayals of Africa in the West. In various interviews and articles “Soobax” exemplified how where attention is focused on K’Naan’s various spheres can and do overlap and various musical achievements, K’Naan intersect, presenting a dis-ordered interjects his views on the geopolitics of version of blackness in Canada where clan-based systems in Mogadishu. At hybridity and diaspora interrupt these moments, K’Naan interlaces three idealistic notions of unity. “Soobax” spheres with his concerns over the demonstrates that the “belonging” and governing of Somalia. As an emcee in “pride” in one’s ancestry that Canadian Canada, K’Naan has mastered many of multiculturalism policy is interested in the nuances of encoded Black popular fostering is not a process that can work culture, and offers no codes or apologies without a transnational framework. when critiquing the music industry when Similarly, neither the English nor French he states “I’m not an entertainer/I’ve languages could convey the meaning never been a clown” (K’Naan 2007). His K’Naan was interested accomplishing. endorsement of the Islamic Courts K’Naan’s rhymes, in both Somali and Union, and his detailing of the clan English, allow him to enter in a based system in Somalia catapulted him transnational dialogue to address into the Somali diasporic sphere, as he concerns such as security and ancestral critiques both traditional clan systems of pride. “Soobax” is an interesting b-side Somalia that are carried to Canada as to some of hip hop’s standard well as the western vilification of conventions, such as hip hop’s Muslim governing systems. hyperlocal identifications and at times overly materialistic concerns. Hip Hop In fact, K’Naan’s first release, culture and music, from the United “Soobax” was a lyrical lash out to the States, to Cuba to France often focuses warlords controlling much of Mogadishu its concerns around local politics, in 2003. Soobax, a Somali word for especially battling oppression and social come out, was a hip hop single, released marginalization. K’Naan’s diasporic and circulated on vinyl and straddled concerns around the corruption of both the Somali diasporic sphere and the Warlords in Somalia get articulated in a
57 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 local context as a North American K’Naan’s heightened awareness released song, versioning the idea of hip of his own diasporic situated blackness hop’s hyperlocal identifications and in Toronto is paralleled by Shadrach inflections. By releasing this song in Kabango (Shad), an emcee raised in Canada, K’Naan’s “Soobax” versions London, Ontario of Rwandan parentage. existing ideas around Black Canada Shad presents us with a very different set allowing for the accentuation and of concerns in his music, with his representation of Somalia’s geopolitical diasporic connections much more situation pushing for further inclusive understated yet importantly utilized to conceptions of blackness in Canada. combat the media’s portrayal of Black identity. In the lead track of his second K’Naan’s CBC radio interview of album “Brother (Watching)” Shad January 11, 2007 can be read as a vividly maps the narrow discursive demonstration of how K’Naan’s terrain young Afrodiasporic Canadian temporal ethnoscape of continental must navigate due to the exploitative African Muslim immigrant transcends a capitalistic media that continually homogenous Black Canada within a damage the self-identity of African diasporic public sphere. K’Naan was youth with over-criminalized portrayals positioned in this interview by Matt of Black youth. In the video, Shad and Galloway as a representative of 200,000 director Ed Gass-Donnelly poignantly Somalis who live in Toronto. In terms of refuse all the conventional clichés of rap identity positions, K’Naan as Rapper, videos, opting instead to force viewers to Black or African took a back seat to look directly at Shad, removing all those identities (Black Canadian, distractions. Shad is encircled by Somali) that can advance his goal. blackness and the viewer is forced to K’Naan actively moves between Black confront the words Shad aptly rhymes. Canadian, Somali and Rapper to produce Shad deconstructs: another kind of discussion: a positive and enlightened discussion of Somalia’s …but after a while, it sort of political unrest. The version of Black starts naggin at you/The Canada K’Naan presents is a deeply crazed infatuation with diasporic one, one that works through blackness/That trash that gets difference (in this case geographic, viewed/And the fact that the ethnic and religious) and is not over tube only showed Blacks determined by racism or idealized as actin’ the fool/And I was unified. The rhythm of blackness in watching... Canada is shifted by K’Naan’s public sphere intervention, which presents us with another version of Afrodiasporic identification that accentuates religious Chorus: and ethnic diversity within Black …saturated with negative Canada. images and a limited range of possibilities is strange...
58 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65
Shad’s local concerns around the So what the new Black activists representation of blackness in western do/For our freedom is just being them/ media are expressed throughout the track Do what you’re passionate to/Not stand in contrast to K’Naan’s very confined by a sense that you have to specific articulations of Mogadishu as disprove/Any stereotypes, so-called facts home. By the end of Shad’s “Brother to refute/Or match any image of (Watching)” the listener is treated to the Blackness/They've established as true… voices of Continental African parents detailing their hopes for their children While hybridity and creolization (presumably in Canada). Shad’s battle are important parts of any diaspora, they with western media’s representation of both fail to capture the ways in which blackness is aided by the perspectives of K’Naan and Shad position themselves Continental African parents (Shad’s (self-defined and externally imposed) to Parents) whose desires for their children achieve their goals; to intelligently shed to become “responsible citizens” or to light on the geopolitics of Somalia’s “grow healthy” stand in start contrast to plight and to illuminate avenues by the idea of a unified Black Canada which Black youth in the Canadian defending itself from racism. This vocal context might reach self-actualization segment is by no means representative, respectively. K’Naan’s refusal to but it does allow us to elaborate the subscribe to a notion of Black unity or a terms by which we might imagine Black Canadian identity are connected to blackness in Canada. the outernational pull factors that characterize diasporic subjectivities. When Shad rhymes “and that These pull factors, such as his concern narrow conception of what’s Black isn’t for family members in Somalia, heighten true”, his London raised, Kenyan born the ways in which diaspora enters into perspective on the reality of blackness in negotiations of one’s social positioning Canada suggests the possibility of Black and identity formation. Thus, K’Naan Canada as an unstable conceptual does not perform the rapper subjectivity reference point, not something entirely to the detriment of Somali geopolitics, centered around racism or unity. The but he does utilize the public sphere parents’ concerns as sampled in “Brother provided to him as ‘rapper’ to articulate (Watching)” are focused on their concerns about clanship politics both in children’s success, not necessarily on Mogadishu and Toronto. Similarly, racial unity or racism. On this track we Shad’s heighten social consciousness are treated to an intergenerational around Black identity formation in layering of social concerns for the well- Canada is not an overt ‘fight the power’ being of Afrodiasporic youth. The message Public Enemy reverberated Elder’s dreams for their children in the throughout the hip hop world in 1989 west appear untainted by forms of (Morgan & Bennett, 2011). Rather, racism, while Shad’s articulation of hope Shad articulates an agenda for the takes the form of a prescription of new emancipation of blackness focused on Black activism; self-empowerment and healthy identity
59 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 choices, not institutional action—quite identification are stressed in certain likely a consequence of the set of situations, bent or localized to deal with relations in London, Ontario that their realties as they change daily as structured the limits of Black activism in Kumsa (2005) notices with Oromo youth the 1980s and 1990s. and Sorenson (1990) recognizes with Eritreans. Similarly, for some Embedded in Black public Afrodiasporic Francophone youth in spheres are alternative worldviews, Canada, imaginative performances of ‘othered’ strategies that help navigate the American hip hop culture allow these racisms and the longings of youth to flexibly enter into a urban Afrodiasporic life. Some of these Black ethnoscape as a strategy of strategies or paradigms, suggestions or belonging (Ibrahim 2004). Like K’Naan models riff, refashion or remix what is and Shad, Afrodiasporic youth learn how “already there,” such as static definitions to negotiate their positioning by drawing of Canadian, or state-sponsored notions on diverse transnational arrangements of of culture. For example, some Eritrean blackness—versions of Afrodiasporic parents rebuke their children who life—to make their lives and futures assimilate into American styles of dress livable in the Canadian context. and vernacular speech patterns. These parents do not want their children to “act Black.” Interestingly some of these children develop a Black pride/ “Con ngencies make us what we consciousness even though Black may are”5 have not been a category taken up in …we live inside a set of their (or their parents’) homeland. relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one Overlapping versions of another and absolutely not Afrodiasporic life from both local and superimposable on one transnational sources present youth with another (Foucault 1986). many avenues and a variety of images from which to self-fashion their Afrodiasporic peoples in Canada identities. They do not follow linear demonstrate flexible ways in which they trajectories that flow from Immigrant to position themselves both within the Canadian; rather they navigate through nation and transnationally. In Canada, subjectivities such as Black, African or discursively rendered as ‘others’ and immigrant. These children learn to non-Canadian, Afrodiasporic maneuver through the shifting populations demonstrate a remarkable temporalities of blackness in Canada’s diversity that exceed the nation’s current public sphere. For example, Oromo “objective mode of truth” (Wynter youth are constantly read as only 1995). As Canada’s excess, overlapping Ethiopian, their ethnic specificity is lost African diasporas disrupt the governing on most non-East African people. The logic of multiculturalism, revealing result is that elements of one’s self- differing versions and conceptualizations
60 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65 of blackness and a unified Black The relationships between the Canada. The innovative ways in which temporal subjectivities, raced and Canada’s governing politics are otherized identities presents us with exceeded allow us to ask important another logic for living our present. The questions such as “What programs, contingencies that comprise shifting paradigms or procedures can we extract identifications and identities of from Afrosonic life to reconceptualize Afrodiasporic life in Canada need not our understanding of the African and do not follow the assumptions of diaspora Canada?” As well, “How can enlightenment, or the fixed and stable examples from Afrosonic innovations language of nation. Throughout this form discursive foundations that can article the suggestion has been that we articulate the various complexities of use vestiges of the Afrosonic diaspora to Afrodiasporic lives in Canada?” rethink our present order. The shifting and temporal identities and subjectivities Analyzing Afrodiasporic life in of Afrodiasporic Canada served as an Canada through the sonic provides us object of my application of thinking with another ‘mode of truth.’ This through the sonic as a starting point of ‘truth’ reveals that Afrodiasporic theoretical exploration. subjectivities, identities, and ethnicities never remain static, we “keep on By conceptually deploying the movin’”, discursively in and out of idea of the version this line of thinking various categories regardless of refuses to discount Afrodiasporic governmental projects and legislation e x p r e s s i v e c u l t u r e a s s o l e l y (Walcott 1997). The versions of Black entertainment designed for capitalist Canadas presented by the diversity of consumption. The ways in which Afrodiasporic populations, and Afrodiasporic youth continually disrupt exemplified in the careers of Shad and a reactionary, unified and homogenous K’Naan, highlight a mode of truth that conception of Black Canada directly contradicts homogenizing productively frustrate any attempts at notions of nation. Black Canadas is the which a specific order of blackness in conceptual intersection of various Canada can be hegemonically deployed flexible ethnoscapes while the idea of or exploited. The works of K’Naan and Black unity solely based on racism is Shad are but two small moments of constantly interrupted by the Afrodiasporic versioning that will syncopation of these flexible hopefully contribute to more expansive Afrodiasporic ethnoscapes. It is the and heterogeneous notions of blackness contingencies and slipperiness of in Canada that challenge contemporary Afrodiasporic identifications that reveal western society’s regimes of truth that how the versioning of a homogenizing fail to accurately capture other/ed notion such as Black Canada produces approaches to living our present other “modes of truth” about our moment. contemporary condition.
61 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65
References Sciences. London: Tavistock Appardurai, Arun. 1996. Modernity at Publications. Large: Cultural Dimensions of ———. 1986. Of Other Spaces. Globalization, Modernity at Large: Diacritics 16 (1): 22-27. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Galloway, Matt. 2007. Here & Now. Press. CBC Radio, Canada.”
Baraka, Amiri. 1967. Black Music. New Gilroy, Paul. 1996. Routework: “The York: W. Morrow. Black Atlantic and the Politics of Exile.” In The Post-Colonial question: Common Brah, Avtar. 1996. Diaspora, Border and Skies, Divided Horizons, edited by L. C. Transnational Identities. In Iain Chambers, 17-29. New York: Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Routledge. Identities. New York: Routledge. Hall, Stuart. 1996. “Signification, Brand, Dionne. 1994. Bread out of Representation, Ideology: Althusser and Stone. Toronto: Coach House Press. the Post-Structuralist Debates.” In Burman, Jenny. 2001. “At the Scene of Cultural Studies and Communications, the Crossroads, ‘Somewhere in this edited by D. Morley. & V. Walkerdine & Silvered City:’ Diasporic Public Spheres James Curran, 11-34. New York: E. in Toronto.” Public 22/23:195-208. Arnold.
Carducci, Vince. 2006. “Culture ———. 2000. “Conclusions: The Multi- Jamming: A Sociological Perspective.” cultural Question.” In Un/settled Journal of Consumer Culture 6 (1): Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, 116-138. Entanglements, Transcriptions, edited by B. Hesse, 209-240 New York: Zed Chang, J. 2005. Can’t Stop Won't Stop: Books. A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: St. Martin's Press. Hebdige, Dick. 1987. Cut ‘N’ Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Musics. Clifford, James. 1994. Diasporas. New York: Routledge. Cultural Anthropology 9 (3): 302-338. Henry, Keith S. 1981. Black Politics in Dalton, Steve Barrow & Peter. 2004. The Toronto Since World War I. Toronto: The Rough Guide to Reggae. 3rd ed. Multicultural History Society of Ontario. Toronto: Penguin Books Canada. Hinds, Allister. 2001. “‘Deportees in Fatona, Andrea. 1994. Hogan's Alley. Nova Scotia’: The Jamaican Maroons [VHS] 1796-1800.” In Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom: Perspectives from the Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Caribbean, Africa and the African Things: An Archaeology of the Human
62 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65
Diaspora, edited by V. Shepherd, Africa.” Journal of Black Studies 30 (1): 206-222. New York: Palgrave. 5-14.
Honigmann, David. 2007. “We are Not McKittrick, Katherine. 2002. “‘Their Owed Guilt.” Financial Times, July 14, Blood Is There and You Can't Throw it 2007. Out’: Honouring Black Canadian Geographies.” Topia (7): 27-37. Ibrahim, Awad. 2004. “Performing Desire: Hip-Hop, Identification, and the ———. 2006. Demonic Grounds: Black Politics of Becoming Black.” In Racism Women and the Cartographies of Eh? A Critical Interdisciplinary Struggle. Minnesota: University of Anthology of Race and Racism in Minnesota Press. Canada, edited by C.Nelson & C. Nelson, 274-293. Concord: Catpus ———. 2006. Heel up, Wheel up, come Publishers. back, rewind: Trojan Records [electronic essay] 2006 [cited June 19 Jenkins, Henry. 2004. The Cultural 2006]. www.djspooky.com/articles/ Logic of Media Convergence. trojan_records.html. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7 (1): 33-43. Morgan, Marcyliena & D. Bennett. 2011. “Hip-Hop & the Global Imprint of K’Naan. Smile. The Dusty Foot a Black Cultural Form.” The American Philosopher. BMG. 2007. CD. Academy of Arts & Sciences, 140 (2): 176-196 Kelly, Jennifer. 2004. Borrowed Identities. New York: P. Lang. Neal, Mark Anthony. 1999. What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Kumsa, Martha K. 2005. “Between Black Public Culture. New York: Home & Exile: Dynamics of Negotiating Routledge. Be-Longing Among Young Oromos Living in Toronto.” In The African Nelson, Camille. 2004. “Adrift in Diaspora in Canada: Negotiating Diaspora.” In Racism Eh? A Critical Identity and Belonging, edited by W. J. Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race Tettey & K. P. Puplampu, 175-204. and Racism in Canada, edited by C. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Nelson & C. Nelson, 175-205. Concord: Captus Press. Lewis, Earl. 1995. “To Turn as on a Pivot: Writing African Americans into a Phillip, M. Nourbese. 1998. “Black W/ History of Overlapping Diasporas.” The Holes.” Fuse 21 (4): 27-36. American Historical Review 100 (3): 765-787. Plaza, D. E. and Henry, F. 2006. Returning to the source: The final stage Lockett, James D. 1999. “The of the Caribbean migration circuit. Deportation of the Maroons of Trelawny Mona, Jamaica: University of West Town to Nova Scotia, then back to Indies Press.
63 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65
Sassen, Saskia. 1998. Globalization and ———. 2002. Black Like Who? Toronto: Its Discontents: Essays on the New Insomnia Press. Mobility of People and Money. New York: The New Press. ———. 2003. “Beyond the ‘Nation Thing’; Black Studies, Cultural Studies, Shad K. 2007. Brother (Watching) ft. K and Diaspora Discourse (or the Post- & B Kabango. The Old Prince. Black Black Studies Moment).” In Box Recordings Decolonizing the Academy, edited by Carole Boyce Davies with Meredith Shohat, Ella. 1999. “By the Bitsream of Gadsby,107-124. Trenton, New Jersey: Babylon: Cyberfrontiers and Diasporic Africa World Press, Inc. Vistas.” In Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media and the Politics of Place, Walker, James W. St. G. 1976. The Black edited by H. Naficy, 213-232. New York: Loyalist: The Search for a Promised Routledge. Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870. Toronto: University of Sorenson, Atsuko Matsuoka and John. Toronto Press. 2005. “Ghosts and Shadows: Memory and Resilience among the Eritrean Werbner, Pnina. 2002. Imagined Diaspora.” In Diaspora, Memory, and Diasporas Among Manchester Muslims. Identity, edited by V. Agnew, 151-170. Edited by W. James & N. J. Allen, World Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Anthropology. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Sorenson, John. 1990. “Opposition, Exile and Identity: The Eritrean Case.” Winks, Robin. 1971. The Blacks in Journal of Refugee Studies 3(4): Canada: A History. Montreal: McGill 298-319. University Press.
Tettey, Korbla P. Puplampu & Wisdom Wynter, Sylvia. 1995. “The Pope Must J. 2005. “Ethnicity and the Identity of have been Drunk the King of Castile a African Canadians: A Theoretical and Madman: Culture as actuality, and the Political Analysis.” In The African Caribbean Rethinking of Modernity.” In Diaspora, edited by K. P. Puplampu. and The Reordering of Culture: Latin W. J. Tettey, 25-48. Calgary: University America, the Caribbean and Canada in of Calgary Press. the 'Hood., edited by C. Taina. & A. Ruprecht, 17-42. Ottawa: Carleton Sudbury, Julia. 2004. “From the Point of University Press. no Return to the Women's Prison: Writing Spaces of Confinement into Zhang, Benzi. 2004. “The Politics of Re- Diaspora Studies.” Canadian Woman homing: Asian Diaspora Poetry in Studies 23(2): 154-163. Canada.” College Literature 31 (1): 103-125. Walcott, Rinaldo. 1997. Black Like Who? Toronto: Insomniac Press.
64 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 46-65
Endnotes 1 Ethnicity is defined here as the shared characteristics of a social group which often include customs, beliefs, traditions and language.
2 The Selectah is the member of the soundsystem responsible for selecting and playing the records. Other members include the soundman, the owner and the DJ or toaster.
3 When recorded versioning is called a dub plate it is usually a promotional material used to support a particular soundsystem.
4 This title is borrowed from Del F. Cowie (2004), who sampled Eric B & Rakim’s “I know you got soul” in the title of his article in “T-Dot Griots: An Anthology of Toronto Story Tellers.”
5 Foucault, 1986, p. 46.
65