Songhoy Blues is a four-strong “desert blues” band, based in Mali. It is made up of musicians who fled northern Mali after a loose assortment of militant Islamist groups captured the territory and implemented strict sharia law – including the prohibition of secular music – in spring 2012. The musicians first met at a wedding in Bamako, Mali’s capital city, and started playing together to help recreate the rich tradition of northern Malian music for the growing population of refugees in the south.
Musicians had long been important social figures in Mali. They occupied a specific, revered cultural class, called the “griots”, and their role encompassed entertainer, reporter, historian, and political commentator. Their unique power and influence explains why the invading Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, the largest of the fundamental Islamist groups, were particularly keen to block their activities in August 2012.
The official sentence for breaching the music ban was a public whipping, although Songhoy Blues’ founding member and guitarist Garba Touré was threatened with having his hand cut off if he continued playing. Radio stations were burned down, musical instruments were smashed, and there were reports of people being beaten by the occupying militia just for having polyphonic ringtones.
The Malian military stepped in to counteract the Islamist groups’ advance in February 2013, with the help of troops from France and surrounding African countries. But emotional residue from the conflict lingers, and – despite the lifting of sharia law – many musicians continue to self-censor, fearful of the Islamist groups’ return and retribution.
Garba Touré left his hometown of Diré, upstream from Timbuktu along the river Niger, once his safety in northern Mali had become untenable. He settled in Bamako, 1000km away, alongside thousands of other refugees. Here he met two more musicians from the Songhoy tribe (a North Malian ethnic group), Aliou Touré and Oumar Touré, and local drummer Nathanael Dembélé.
As a band the foursome played rough and rowdy blues-rock anthems, the lyrics of which called for an end to the conflict. Their audiences, which packed out Bamako bars and restaurants, were a mix of refugee Songhoys and Tuaregs – long-feuding northern Malian ethnic groups united against the insurgent Islamist groups.
The band joined forces with Africa Express, a group of Western singers and producers led by Damon Albarn, which had come to Bamako to work with local artists in September 2013. Songhoy Blues collaborated with Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner on a song called Soubour (i.e. “patience” – Garba has said, “We’re asking the refugees to have patience. Without patience, nothing is possible”). This became the lead single for Maison des Jeunes, the album made during Africa Express’s Mali trip.
In 2014 Songhoy Blues went on a global tour, and also supported artists such as Damon Albarn and Julian Casablancas in tours across Europe. Mojo magazine has named them one of 10 “new faces of 2015”. Their debut album, Music In Exile, will be released in February, and its lead single – called Al Hassidi Terei and produced by Zinner – has received critical acclaim. The band are also working on a feature film about the music ban in northern Mali.
Writers discuss the representation of refugees in novels and plays. What ethical questions are involved? Is there a responsibility to represent refugees positively? How do you balance reportage with storytelling? What responsibility, if any, does the creative writer have to represent refugees positively or to tackle negative views?
Featured writers:
Nadifa Mohamed, author of Black Mamba Boy (winner of the Betty Trask Prize) and The Orchard Of Lost Souls. (“A haunting and intimate portrait of the lives of women in war-torn Somalia . . . it captures the bleakness of war and the triumph of the human spirit.” —Meenakshi Venkat, New York Journal of Books)
Chris Cleave, author of books including The Other Hand (“A powerful piece of art… shocking, exciting and deeply affecting.” – Independent). His other novels are Incendiary and Gold. He won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award and was short-listed for the Costa Book Prize for The Other Hand.
Zodwa Nyoni, poet and playwright whose play Nine Lives is set to for a UK Tour later this year (“Nyoni’s interweaving of naturalism and poetry is superb, and lifts this show far beyond documentary, into unforgettable solo drama about one of the key experiences of our time.” The Scotsman). Her new play Boi Boi Is Dead also opens in 2015.
Tim Finch, author of The House of Journalists (“A savagely funny broadside aimed at the industry of suffering” Metro “[An] effective mixture of often-light comedy and often-brutal reportage from the front line against tyranny” Daily Mail) and former Director of Communications at the Refugee Council.
Presented by Counterpoints Arts and Platforma Arts & Refugees Network in association with Index on Censorship.
Where: RichMix 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA When: Tue 21 April, 7:30pm Tickets: £5 / Book here
This collection was prepared for the EU NGO Forum that took place on 8-9 December 2005 and revised in 2006.
At the end of the Maastricht summit in l992, the Council of Ministers reported on what they saw as a paradox of history: that racism had increased as democracy had spread through the post-communist world. Not such a paradox really. As Hans Magnus Enzensburger once said:‘With democracy, all the dirt comes out.’
Index believes that free expression is the freedom on which all others are based. Ronald Dworkin famously said in its pages that free speech is what makes people feel human, makes them feel their lives matter. But we also need to be clear about our fierce defence of free expression – that there are prices to be paid for it – and we need to be clear about the cost, and who is paying it.
Hate speech – abusive, dehumanising, inciting discrimination and violence – is an integral part of the ‘dirt’ that goes with democracy, often directed at ethnic minorities, gays or women. It is certainly the most troubling matter for people who believe in free speech, and there has been fierce debate over the years about that difficult borderline between free speech and the demand for equality of respect – not least in the pages of Index on Censorship over its 33 years of existence.
But then, on 11 September 2001, the world changed, and hate speech acquired another, newer relevance. The ‘war on terrorism’ (a war that may never end, according to US Vice President Dick Cheney) put civil liberties under threat worldwide. And since then the right to free expression has too often become a fragile filling, sandwiched between the imperatives of security and fears about acts of terrorism. In these dangerous times, hate speech is centre stage, and the ways in which we respond to it are crucial to our future.
The importance of free expression is as great as ever, as is the need to debate openly difficult issues – ones which may cause pain, offence, anger. Nobody ever said free expression was easy. Index’s purpose is to do its small part in creating a world in which the right to speak for oneself becomes the condition for allowing those who speak antagonistic moral languages to hear each other. We hope Words & Deeds will play its part.
Ursula Owen
former Editor in Chief, Index on Censorship
December 2005
With essays and contributions by:
RONALD DWORKIN A new map of censorship
TOM STOPPARD Is there ever a time & place for censorship?
ARYEH NEIER Clear & present danger
VALERIU NICOLAE Words that kill
REMZI LANI Hate speech & hate silence
OLEG PANFILOV The rebirth of nationalism
HANEEN ZOUBI Follow the tune, relay the message
JONATHAN FREEDLAND Where the lines are drawn
MARTIN ROWSON A classic Stripsearch cartoon from Index on Censorship
SARFRAZ MANZOOR Thou shalt not give offence
KENAN MALIK Are Muslims hated in Britain?
AGNÈS CALLAMARD Striking the right balance
ANTHONY HUDSON Free speech & bad laws – what can be done?
AMIR BUTLER Warning from Australia: don’t legislate against hate
MARY KENNY When speech became treason
PAUL OPPENHEIMER In the name of democracy
DD GUTTENPLAN Should freedom of speech extend to Holocaust denial?
AIDAN WHITE Journalism & intolerance: setting standards for media action
RONALD KOVEN Put your own house in order first
RICHARD SAMBROOK Think what you say
KENAN MALIK Say what you think
Joshua Bonehill is a national socialist, in an almost refreshingly old-fashioned way. When young Joshua speaks out against those who are destroying-our-society, undermining-our-culture, and so on, he does not equivocate with “neo-cons”, “internationalists” “bankers” or “global finance”. No, dear young Joshua comes straight out and says he’s against Jews (sometimes “the Jew”).
Bonehill hit the news this week after he said he would organise a march in Stamford Hill, north-east London on 22 March. Bonehill says his march is against the “Jewification” of Stamford Hill, to which one is tempted to answer “bit late, Joshua”. Stamford Hill is home to roughly 30,000 ultra-Orthodox Jewish people, mostly of the Haredi persuasion.
Bonehill is a keyboard Führer, an online agitator. His most notable “success” so far in his activist life has been spreading a false story about a pub in Leicester refusing to serve people in military uniform. The pub received threats of firebombing. Bonehill was convicted of malicious communications, though he escaped jail. He has a court appearance for similar offences lined up next week, and could quite conceivably go to prison for them, which would be a severe blow to his chances of rallying in Stamford Hill.
This hasn’t stopped a certain level of excitement spreading through social media (and indeed traditional media). Leftist and leftish friends on Facebook and Twitter have been excitedly discussing the prospect of Bonehill turning up on Clapton Common with hundreds of goons ready to make the borough of Hackney Judenfrei. In spite of his non-existent real world base, there is a very, very slight possibility that Bonehill could get more than a half-dozen. The Guardian points out that Bonehill has over 26,000 Twitter followers, “raising fears that even without a genuine political organisation behind him, his plan could draw in other far-right groups …”. To put that in slight perspective, I have a quarter of that number of Twitter followers, and can’t even muster people for an after work drink on a Friday evening, but then, I suppose I’m not trying to make a grab for the leadership of a scene that has been a mess since the collapse of the British National Party’s vote in the last European and local elections.
That is what Bonehill is getting at here. In his promotional YouTube videos for his march, he repeatedly calls for unity among “nationalists”. By targeting a Jewish area, he is hoping to rally the hardcore of British nationalism to his side; fascism’s attempt at populism, under Nick Griffin, had its thunder stolen by Ukip, and the hard core needs the reassurance of conspiracy theory and naked anti-Semitism.
Bonehill also appeals to his fellow racists’ sense of history, invoking the famous Battle of Cable Street, in which Oswald Mosley led the British Union of Fascists into (then Jewish area) Whitechapel and was met by local opposition from Jews, trades unionists and communists. Bonehill describes the 1936 rally as a “glorious victory”, which will come as a surprise to most leftists for whom Cable Street is shorthand for left virtue. (The Times’s Oliver Kamm has an interesting take on this.)
The memory of Cable Street is obviously looming large in the imagination of leftists and anti-fascists steeling themselves to organise against Bonehill. Cable Street is the universal good that everyone on the fractious left can share, and some would probably like to reenact it in some way in Stamford Hill, without necessarily working with the Jewish groups such as the Community Security Trust and the Shomrim, a community group Bonehill wrongly describes as a “Jewish Police Force”.
Cable Street was not the only time Mosley attempted to march in east London. Much later, in 1962, Mosley and his son Max (yes, that Max Mosley) were driven from the streets in Dalston, not far from Stamford Hill (watch this fantastic Pathe News footage).
So what is this then? Cable Street? Dalston? Even Skokie, Illinois, where the American Civil Liberties Union stood for the right of the American Nazi Party to march through a town populated by many Holocaust survivors (that march, in the end, never went ahead, but the position taken by the ACLU is often presented as a paragon of free speech principle, or bloodymindedness, or foolhardiness, depending who you talk to).
Bonehill has appealed to “the free speech community”– I’m guessing that’s you and me, dear reader – to stand with him, because “the Jews want us silenced” and his proposed protest has become “a battleground for free speech”. This is, of course, tosh. It is idiotic to conflate the support of free speech with the support of what people are saying. But that does not mean we could sit back and ignore this.
It would be wrong if Bonehill’s planned demonstration was banned in advance. Wrong because unpleasant though he is, he does have a right to protest and face counter protest (as did say, the EDL in areas with high Muslim populations), and wrong because it may lend a small bit of credibility to a deluded clown who may well be in jail by the time the appointed date comes round.
