"The Woman Killed For Pop Music"

If there's still anyone out there who doubts the power that pop music has to literally change the world, well, I would suggest that they revise their thinking in the light of a rather ironic one-two punch of current events.

First was yesterday's announcement of the winner of the Eurovision contest, which I wrote about below. The other is the murder this week of Shaima Rezayee, a veejay for Tolo TV, the fledgling Afghani version of MTV. According to the Times of London, Ms. Rezayee was shot in her home, presumably by Islamic fundamentalists.

Yesterday's post about Eurovision was pretty much the usual semi-literate rambling that is par for the course here at AlcO-bEAt. Mostly I wanted to write about it because, as a fan of dopey bubblegum pop music, I feel a kind of international solidarity with the millions of European teens (and probably no small amount of parents'-basement-dwelling European men in their late twenties) for whom a beat, a little melody or a song written over a coffee break still can ignite a blast furnace in the brain - keep your LSD, I've got the Daphne & Celeste album!

But what's really cool about Eurovision - above and beyond the fact that it gave the world ABBA - is that it manages to bring all of the religious, cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity that is rather arbitrarily called 'Europe' together under one big umbrella in a celebration of the most banal, most disposable and least useful product of the modern world (bridges geographic diversity, too - I never did understand the logic that counts Israel as a part of 'Europe' for the purposes of the Eurovision contest but, y'know, no harm, no foul). Not only that, but it acts as a sort of mediator between the International Style of bubblegum pop (which, like jokes about sudden, explosive diarrhea, seem to have pretty universal appeal) and more local, indigenous musical forms which would seem to have more narrowly national appeal (every article you read about this always describes how this-or-that country's entry is in some way influenced by some kind of weird native folk tradition). This is what pop music (and pop culture more generally) does: by virtue of its near universal appeal, its ubiquity and its cheapness (in every sense of the term) it inflames imaginations (and desires) all over the world, allowing people to transcend stultifying local traditions and become a part of the Great Big World Out There. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, yadda yadda yadda.

I don't wanna get too Tom Friedman about this - although its a worthy end in itself, unlimited circulation of products is not going to make the world a perfect place. And pop culture isn't always an unstoppable difference-leveller; even my beloved Eurovision was wracked by political anxiety this year:

"Ukraine's entry, Greenjolly's Razom Nas Bahato,' or Together We Are Many, a politically charged anthem from last year's Orange Revolution, did not go down smoothly with its eastern neighbors. Greenjolly earned a stingy two points from Russia and none from Belarus -- a big change from last year, when Russia gave Eurovision winner, Ukraine's Ruslana, 12 points, and Ukraine gave Russia 10 points -- on a night when many countries reaped the rewards of local allegiances."

But that doesn't diminish the ability of pop fans to act as the shock troops of the modern world - the real avant-garde.

Literally. "Police said that they believed the killing was linked to her former job as a 'veejay' — video journalist — on Hop, which was broadcast by Tolo TV, one of a number of private stations set up since the fall of the Taleban.

"Ms Rezayee was the only female presenter on the show, which won as many young urban fans as it did enemies among the mullahs. Her murder raises the stakes in the battle for the soul of Afghanistan’s young people."

The whole "pop-music-as-social-movement" does have the slight whiff of baby-boomer self-regard to it, which, I admit, doesn't sit well with me. You typically hear this kind of thing from some graying dope in between bong hits: "Beatles, Stones and Dylan - they changed the world, maaaaaaaaaaan." Yeah, maybe (but probably not in the way these ninnies (okay, straw men) think - Vaclav Havel was a big Velvet Underground fan, and we should never forget The Plastic People of the Universe). But did any of them risk their lives for their music?

Then again, none of them ever crossed the Religion of Peace. "Tolo quickly became the most watched station in the city with a reported 81 per cent audience share and Hop was its No 1 programme. But it drew the ire of the country’s mullahs and members of the Supreme Court, who were still incensed after losing a battle last year to have women removed from the nation’s television screens.

"In March the national Ulema Council, a government panel of religious scholars, issued a statement accusing the station of 'broadcasting music, naked dance and foreign films, which are against Islam and other national values of Afghanistan'. Hop was at the top of their hitlist.

"The information ministry asked the station to tone down the show, objecting specifically to the raciness of the pop videos and the 'casual' chat between male and female presenters. In Afghanistan even conversation between men and women who are not related is regarded as suspect.

"S.A.H. Sancharaky, the Deputy Minister for Information and Culture, told a foreign interviewer that the Government prided itself on not censoring the show but was compelled to ask for changes. One particularly offensive incident, he noted, was when a male presenter had complimented Ms Rezayee on her shoes. 'He says, "Can you hold up your legs so everybody can see how good your shoes are?"' the official recalled. '"Hold up your legs" has a very bad meaning in our language.'"

"It was to be Ms Rezayee and not the male presenter who would pay for this exchange."