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“The Songs that Saved Your Life” seminar was jointly organized by the Department of Sociology, UL and the Irish World Academy and took place in the University of Limerick the afternoon of 23rd April 2008. It was attended by about 150 people. The chair was Colin Coulter, Sociology Lecturer from Maynooth University who steered the conference in Manchester on the Smiths and Morrissey in 2005, and who is about to publish a book on being a fan of same. For those interested, I’ve jotted down a few observations.
Dr Eoin Devereux covered topics of the fans’ experience, especially as it is represented by religious images and themes. The scope of his talk would be fairly familiar to this site’s regular visitors and was expounded comprehensively. If ‘punky’s’ about, he might offer some signposts himself. While the references to temptation, sin, sexual repression, guilt, God, the devil, corruption, apostles, innocence, redemption, another world etc, and hymn title wordplays, as identified by Devereux derive from a Catholic vocabulary (but not uniquely so), The Smiths and Morrissey for the most part at best brought them all into question and more often presented them as oppressive and as targets for lampooning. They even caricatured their own expressions of working class misery. It was noted though that the mystical emotional richness and mesmerising features of Catholism that command attention leaked out of the music just as much. The band, whose career coincided with the second term of Thatcher’s reign, were unsettling in their subtle political agitation. John Peel had discerned a spiritual element in the music, and had felt it to be out of time and out of place, thus hitting upon the themes of both speakers.
The talk by Dr Nabeel Zuberi (originally from Pakistan, widely traveled, now based in New Zealand) was lent extra relevance due to current controversies. He spoke about the impact of The Smiths on his understanding of living in Britain while growing up in the ‘80s as a coloured person during a period of significant social unrest. Zuberi has recently released a book called “Sounds English” which was received to critical acclaim, and includes some mention of these events. His talk proved true to its provocative title, “Guantanamo here we come: Out of Place with The Smiths”, and it was delivered authentically and artfully. He began by pointing out how the photograph on the Strangeways…album disorientates, and that songs like London, Is It Really So Strange, are about uprooting. It was not uncommon for Muslim families to include Western entertainers like The Smiths, Johney Cash and so on in their record collections - ballads of defiance, of a will to move to new locations even if there’s nothing better to be had. There is a Light… was likened to an ode to Allah. Effects travel even while critics try to regionalise compositions and the images and sounds engender space which for him facilitated orientation to the British cultural landscape. This manifestation of identity contact zones in culture through music he called audiotopias (after Josh Kun), and Marr’s riffs infused the lyrics with a corresponding communal feel. These aural maps compiled from diverse codes were nevertheless porous enough to open into a space for making sense of the status of race, belonging and nationalism. Morrissey’s broad repertoire of affective affiliations – Warhol, French film, early British rock music, Hollywood, progressive punk, sociological consciousness – made him a walking ad for what Foucoult called the technology of the self. The specificity of music builds rapport, is inseparable from ethnicity and can invite self-questionning eventually aiding self-acceptance. Zuberi described his own brush with misinterpretation or moreso inaccurate comprehension when feedback on a talk he gave was grossly distorting. Objective comments can be twisted by readers/listeners into the construction of an alternative identity divorced from the actual person who is the messenger or the awakener. Identity is negotiable but likely to spark off confrontation with other identities and when there’s rigid attachment to doctrines, dehumanisation can mean that ‘barbarism begins at home’. The prevalent everyday frightening violence depicted by The Smiths where culpability is submerged was familiar and adaptable semantically to each listener’s lived scene; supportive in meeting existential contradictions, as opposed to the shallow cliché of their Britishness. The Smiths’ plea was for political debate; to mind the gap. Morrissey has carried on offering a de-territorialised template to inhabit as the trait of not belonging, of displacement is transferable everywhere, here and now, and in far-off places. Zuberi ended with a pun on the talk title: that the power of all these aspects in the music shone through in their rendition. Clever clogs!
Some questions were taken, one about the break-up of the band, raising surprisingly simplistic and outdated responses, in particular that Morrissey couldn’t handle the managers being close to Johny with whom he was in love! I find statements like this from intelligent people amazing because (a) they weren’t there and (b) Morrissey’s position is already on record e.g. on the documentary TIOBM, and elsewhere, but it wasn’t cited. Someone requested a one-word summing-up of Morrissey to which Zuberi replied ‘beautiful’. Another speaker proposed the word ‘evasive’. Well, Morrissey admitted himself very recently to this quality yet many times he’s also stressed its opposite, directness, as a guiding force for him. Pehaps his coy moments are a ploy to motivate his audience to bring their own powers of perception and discovery into play!
The tea and sambos were much appreciated at the end and no doubt these devotional assemblies will be repeated to tantalise and to re-member the rebel gang of sacred wunderkinds…
Dr Eoin Devereux covered topics of the fans’ experience, especially as it is represented by religious images and themes. The scope of his talk would be fairly familiar to this site’s regular visitors and was expounded comprehensively. If ‘punky’s’ about, he might offer some signposts himself. While the references to temptation, sin, sexual repression, guilt, God, the devil, corruption, apostles, innocence, redemption, another world etc, and hymn title wordplays, as identified by Devereux derive from a Catholic vocabulary (but not uniquely so), The Smiths and Morrissey for the most part at best brought them all into question and more often presented them as oppressive and as targets for lampooning. They even caricatured their own expressions of working class misery. It was noted though that the mystical emotional richness and mesmerising features of Catholism that command attention leaked out of the music just as much. The band, whose career coincided with the second term of Thatcher’s reign, were unsettling in their subtle political agitation. John Peel had discerned a spiritual element in the music, and had felt it to be out of time and out of place, thus hitting upon the themes of both speakers.
The talk by Dr Nabeel Zuberi (originally from Pakistan, widely traveled, now based in New Zealand) was lent extra relevance due to current controversies. He spoke about the impact of The Smiths on his understanding of living in Britain while growing up in the ‘80s as a coloured person during a period of significant social unrest. Zuberi has recently released a book called “Sounds English” which was received to critical acclaim, and includes some mention of these events. His talk proved true to its provocative title, “Guantanamo here we come: Out of Place with The Smiths”, and it was delivered authentically and artfully. He began by pointing out how the photograph on the Strangeways…album disorientates, and that songs like London, Is It Really So Strange, are about uprooting. It was not uncommon for Muslim families to include Western entertainers like The Smiths, Johney Cash and so on in their record collections - ballads of defiance, of a will to move to new locations even if there’s nothing better to be had. There is a Light… was likened to an ode to Allah. Effects travel even while critics try to regionalise compositions and the images and sounds engender space which for him facilitated orientation to the British cultural landscape. This manifestation of identity contact zones in culture through music he called audiotopias (after Josh Kun), and Marr’s riffs infused the lyrics with a corresponding communal feel. These aural maps compiled from diverse codes were nevertheless porous enough to open into a space for making sense of the status of race, belonging and nationalism. Morrissey’s broad repertoire of affective affiliations – Warhol, French film, early British rock music, Hollywood, progressive punk, sociological consciousness – made him a walking ad for what Foucoult called the technology of the self. The specificity of music builds rapport, is inseparable from ethnicity and can invite self-questionning eventually aiding self-acceptance. Zuberi described his own brush with misinterpretation or moreso inaccurate comprehension when feedback on a talk he gave was grossly distorting. Objective comments can be twisted by readers/listeners into the construction of an alternative identity divorced from the actual person who is the messenger or the awakener. Identity is negotiable but likely to spark off confrontation with other identities and when there’s rigid attachment to doctrines, dehumanisation can mean that ‘barbarism begins at home’. The prevalent everyday frightening violence depicted by The Smiths where culpability is submerged was familiar and adaptable semantically to each listener’s lived scene; supportive in meeting existential contradictions, as opposed to the shallow cliché of their Britishness. The Smiths’ plea was for political debate; to mind the gap. Morrissey has carried on offering a de-territorialised template to inhabit as the trait of not belonging, of displacement is transferable everywhere, here and now, and in far-off places. Zuberi ended with a pun on the talk title: that the power of all these aspects in the music shone through in their rendition. Clever clogs!
Some questions were taken, one about the break-up of the band, raising surprisingly simplistic and outdated responses, in particular that Morrissey couldn’t handle the managers being close to Johny with whom he was in love! I find statements like this from intelligent people amazing because (a) they weren’t there and (b) Morrissey’s position is already on record e.g. on the documentary TIOBM, and elsewhere, but it wasn’t cited. Someone requested a one-word summing-up of Morrissey to which Zuberi replied ‘beautiful’. Another speaker proposed the word ‘evasive’. Well, Morrissey admitted himself very recently to this quality yet many times he’s also stressed its opposite, directness, as a guiding force for him. Pehaps his coy moments are a ploy to motivate his audience to bring their own powers of perception and discovery into play!
The tea and sambos were much appreciated at the end and no doubt these devotional assemblies will be repeated to tantalise and to re-member the rebel gang of sacred wunderkinds…
