|
|
Journal
[May 19, 2008]
La Femme Fetal by digable planets
Hey all,
I know I haven't posted here in a loooong time, but I thought I'd share a short response to a hip hop song that moved me. Felicia Pride, author of THE MESSAGE: 100 Life Lessons from Hip Hop's Greatest Songs, sent out a call for writing about songs that changed your life. I thought of so many and this was one of them. For this and other updates, stayed tuned here and on myspace. Enjoy, Tara.
There are so many hip hop songs that have shaped the landscape of my self that it’s difficult to choose one. I emailed Felicia about at least four songs before I decided on one that was actually a b-side to a hip hop group that yielded one classic on their debut album reachin’ (a new refutation of time and space). Digable Planets was better known subdued yet bass-laden homage to jazz “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)”, but if you got past the jazzy riffs, the Charlie Parker and Coltrane references and even bouncier cuts like “Pacifics” circling its hook “New York is Red Hot” or “Where I’m From,” the second half of what was then a cassette for me in 1993 yielded a more urgent loop undergirded with bass that sounded like hustling to get to a friend’s house. The song “La Femme Fetal” began with Butterfly reminiscing how it was 8:49 a.m. on the ninth day of July (shortly after what America deems Independence Day) when his homegirl Nikki calls him to vent and seek some guidance from a friend like I have done with many friends before this song and long after it. Nikki says:
"You remember my boyfriend Sid that fly kid who I love?
Well our love was often a verb and spontaneity has brought a third
but due to our youth and economic state
we wish to terminate.
About this we don't feel great,
but baby that's how it is.
But the feds have dissed me.
They ignore and dismiss me.
The pro-lifers harrass me outside the clinic
and call me a murderer, now that's hate.
So needless to say we're in a mental state of debate"
Butterfly listens thoughtfully as a friend. He breaks down how the whole issue of abortion should not only be her decision but how the state approaches the subject. To him, it is a matter of controlling bodies, bodies that have been corralled, tortured and exploited by businesses and the government since America’s inception.
“The fascists are some heavy dudes.
They don't really give a damn about life.
They just don't want a woman to control her body
or have the right to choose,
but baby that ain't nothin’.
They just want a male finger on the button
because if you say war,
they will send them to die by the score.
Aborting mission should be your volition
but if [David] Souter and [Clarence] Thomas have their way,
you'll be standing in line unable to get welfare
while they'll be out hunting and fishing.
It has always been around.
It will always have a niche
but they'll make it a privilege, not a right
accessible only to the rich.
Pro-lifers should dig themselves
cause life doesn't stop after birth.
And to a child borne to the unprepared
it might even just get worse.
Supporters of the h-bomb and fire bombing clinics
What type of shit is that? Orwellian, in fact.
If Roe v. Wade was overturned
would not the desire remain intact?
Leaving young girls to risk their healths
and doctors to botch and watch
as they kill themselves?
I don't want to sound macabre
but hey, isn't it my job
to lay it on the masses
and get them off their asses
to fight against these fascists?”
Butterfly’s questions were the types of questions that I was asking myself and my black college classmates while bobbing in a sea of still varied emcee voices. Some blared, screamed, and boasted. Some partied and some were artsy boho and many still wanted to see black people prosper not just financially, but as people with safe healthy communities and full human rights.
In 1993, I voted in my first election, and I supported women who did health clinic defenses. I kept thinking of Mecca, the sole female member of Digable Planets, asking at one point in reachin’ how was she supposed to be comfortable when “the Supreme Court was all up in her uterus”? I laughed when I first heard that line, but I was not forgetful of Becky Bell dying of an illegal abortion in another state because no doctors in her home state offered them. This was before I had heard of the Jane Movement in Chicago that went on to form the Chicago Women’s Health Clinic.
At the same time, I found myself thinking how reproductive health was a much broader issue than pro-choice and pro-life. I was learning about the history of eugenics in the United States that allowed medical facilities to sterilize Black and Puerto Rican women, including the likes of activist Fannie Lou Hamer.
This was also during the time when I began thinking about what it means to raise strong, healthy children of color in a world with racist constructs that has never had our children’s best interests at heart. A mandate for family values coming from politicians still stands false for me when I know they will not come to Black communities or will casually send young Black and Latino people to be mutilated and murdered in a war with no timeline while some young people don’t have to worry about paying for college. In addition, I have always been befuddled (perhaps a better verb is agitated) by pro-lifers who carry themselves like oxy-morons while firebombing clinics to kill doctors, nurses, reception desk workers and female patients and favoring the death penalty in prisons that warehouse the poor and brown. For some of us, reproductive rights have not just been about “aborting mission” or not, it has been about having birth control that doesn’t cause keloids and severe hair loss and not shutting down health care clinics that provide care to women without insurance. In other words, “life don’t stop after birth” and life includes a lot more than just pulling in air. We all have basic needs that have to be provided for, and the world does not make it easy to do so.
Often, because of our religious and familial beliefs, abortion has not been a topic of discussion in many Black households. In “La Femme Fetal”, I heard a male voice as an ally who supported whatever his friend wanted to do, which has been my personal experience with many Black men that I have been fortunate to call homie, friend, cuzzo and bruh. Unfortunately, I feel like these conversations do not get the attention that others do. With one song, Butterfly opened the door for dialogue about choosing our destiny as parents. I also find myself thinking, as a grown woman, how a man addressing this subject adds another weight to this conversation. This is not a woman insisting it’s her body and her prerogative. It is the man who does not necessarily desire her sexually, but hopes for her wellbeing.
There have since been other songs like Common’s “Retrospect for Life” from One Day It’ll All Make Sense with Lauryn Hill singing a loop interpolated from Stevie Wonder. Although this is a thoughtful reflection by a potential father, it is still the man saying to the woman, “yo, let’s go have this boy” with ultrasound unseen. I don’t even have to mention how many songs have so eloquently suggested kicking a pregnant woman in her mid-section. Yet when I hear “La Femme Fetal”, I still think of the brilliantly blonde, perfectly tanned, preppy sweater Republican guy that I worked with in undergrad at the college library who vehemently insisted he was pro-life. Even though we didn’t agree politically on most things, we were friendly and I could cut him to the quick. I did when he shared his views with me. I said “What if your girlfriend who always brings you snacks ended up pregnant and you got to finish school? You going home to tell your parents?” He said no. He’d give her $300 to get an abortion. So, I felt like who was he to judge or decide, which is basically what the song and parenthood is about, right? Right…
|
Past Entries
· 05/19/2008
07/08/2007
06/08/2007
02/03/2007
01/10/2007
01/02/2007
11/12/2006
10/24/2006
09/15/2006
09/03/2006
08/26/2006
08/03/2006
07/22/2006
07/08/2006
06/28/2006
06/01/2006
05/11/2006
04/30/2006
04/07/2006
04/04/2006
03/22/2006
02/18/2006
01/07/2006
12/30/2005
12/16/2005
12/15/2005
11/29/2005
09/29/2005
09/11/2005
08/20/2005
08/10/2005
07/27/2005
07/16/2005
07/11/2005
07/06/2005
06/29/2005
06/25/2005
06/04/2005
05/16/2005
05/03/2005
04/22/2005
03/31/2005
03/25/2005
03/16/2005
03/05/2005
02/23/2005
02/18/2005
01/31/2005
01/29/2005
01/21/2005
01/06/2005
12/07/2004
11/11/2004
11/09/2004
11/08/2004
11/07/2004
10/27/2004
10/17/2004
10/13/2004
10/04/2004
09/27/2004
09/18/2004
09/11/2004
09/08/2004
09/03/2004
08/27/2004
08/25/2004
08/22/2004
08/20/2004
08/17/2004
08/09/2004
08/05/2004
08/04/2004
07/29/2004
07/27/2004
07/26/2004
07/21/2004
07/17/2004
|