Page 152 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Chapter 6

The Sonic Architects of

a New Babel: The Politics of

Belonging of DJ Shadow

and Fernando Clarke

Francio Guadeloupe

Let me tell you a story about an island inhabited by people who knew they
were slaves of capital, but who were nonetheless happy to remain so. I was
at a Calypso extravaganza on the binational Caribbean island of Saint
Martin and Sint Maarten (French and Dutch West Indies), where with a
broad smile on their faces, young and old were shouting “they fool we
again.” They were singing and dancing to commemorate the fact that the
political elites and big business had managed to fool them again. The latter
had banked all the Benjamins, and left them with pennies, but they were
happy to be fooled again. To be fooled required that they fool themselves
time and again. A truth they knew well.
The chorus was being led by the Shadow, a handsome Rasta radio disc

jockey and accomplished music artist, who was elated that the crowd was
in ecstasy. He reminded me of his colleague DJ Fernando Clarke, a Richard
Pryor look-a-like, who enticed Saint Martinoise and Sint Maarteners to see
the inescapability of sin as a blessing that God consented to. There was no
revolutionary subject on this island, no effective organic intellectuals strik-
ing against the system, just men and women of all classes who for different
reasons kept the capitalist machine running. A community of the “per-
fectly emancipated, perfectly servile” (Baudrillard 2001, 28).