UNDERLINED.’S EDIT. VOL. 12
Many joyful things happened since the latest underlined.’s edit. I wrote the article “Hating pop music doesn’t make you deep” which summarizes my thoughts about snobbery in music and it was received so well. Also, underlined. turned two in August which is absolutely wild. Later last month, I decided to open an Instagram page for underlined. and it is called underlined. bureau. For some time, I felt a strong need to post about music more frequently and that’s the main motivation for creating it. I sincerely hope you’ll join me there. Until then, here is twelfth edition of underlined.’s edit.
documentary “ANIMA-kruh europe”
Last year I read the book called “Nejednaki” (eng. “Unequal) by Croatian journalist Ivana Dragičević. In one of her chapters, she was writing about the migrant crisis in 2010s. She is a huge music lover and starts every chapter with lyrics so she mentioned the Syrian band Khebez Dawle. Members of this band had to leave their homeland and moved to Berlin. While travelling from Syria to the capital of Germany, one of their stops was Croatia. Dragičević found out about them and organized concerts in Kutina and Zagreb. In the documentary “Anima” which Dragičević co-created with Dino Cepak, two members of the band opened up about their journey to Europe, why they decided to leave their country and the Syrian civil war. The quote that particularly stayed with me was from Anas Maghrebi: What I can assure to Europeans is that we are not people who are trying to come here and take your food or take your land or take anything, I can assure you. We are just people who are trying to find another land on this big planet called Earth to be able to be active again and to be productive, to act as humans. I want to be engaged in society in Europe and get to the point where I am an active member and I add value to the society. I don’t want to be parasite who just needs food and place to live and sit while waiting for some money. It stayed with me because I’ve read and heard so many horrible comments about people from Asia, Maghreb and the Middle East who chose my country as their new home. Without going too much into politics, many of them live in inhumane conditions and witness discrimination and sometimes even hatred. People who see them as strangers don’t understand they can enrich our culture and that 30 years ago, our people did the same thing.
simon frith’s quote
Sociomusicologist Simon Frith is one of the most important authors of my Master’s thesis. I read many of his articles and fell in love with his way of thinking and approach. This thought I read in the book called “Music and Identity” by editors Stuart Hall and Gay du Paul from 1996. Frith put together my thoughts that have been circling around my head for years. Coming from a place with its own cultural traumas and complex relationship with the politics of memory, it always amazes me how politics is determined to spread hatred through music. Last two years, I’ve spent so much time thinking about what music does to our identity and what tells us about ourselves. I still don’t know all the answers but I know for sure it shows me different facets of me. Anyway, if you are interested in reading about music through the lens of identity and belonging, I wholeheartedly recommend you check out Frith’s work.
How The Tortured Poets Lost 2024
It seems like Taylor Swift is not able to lose anything. She is on the tour that is the biggest in history, she breaks her own records, she became a billionaire, she can do it with a broken heart. Swift’s latest record “The Tortured Poets Department” may be lost 2024 but, as the narrator said, Taylor is so powerful that she doesn’t need pop culture because she is her own entity and culture. While that statement is a fact, there lies the biggest problem. It would be naive to assume Swift is not highly aware of it because she certainly is. The thing she is not fully aware of is how her paranoid perfectionism and willingness to stay relevant look from the outside. She is aware of it in her head and wrote multiple lyrics about it but struggles to control herself to really understand she has built a legacy none can undo. Her obsessive thinking about relevancy and legacy is clear from songs like “Clara Bow”, “Anti-Hero”, “Long Live”, “Mirrorball.” Still, some of her business moves mirror this - constant new remixes (which are really horrible), live versions of songs, making playlists for the sake of playlists. Swift doesn’t show signs of taking some time off and I am eager to see what’s next.
olivia Rodrigo & Alanis Morissette in Conversation
Rolling Stone’s Musicians on Musicians series with Olivia Rodrigo and Alanis Morissette came out three years ago but only now I stumbled upon this video. Musicians on Musicians is a conversation between two artists and one is usually older than the other. The reason why this series is interesting is because you get to hear a geeky party of a musician’s brain. Rodrigo and Morissette talked about songwriting and how it is a crucial way for them to almost get a sense of what’s going on around them. Rodrigo made a wonderful point about vulnerability in songwriting - I think the brave thing that I recognize in your music is how honest you are with yourself. She pointed out one of the most important things about art overall. Artists have to be open enough to let themselves feel and then face those feelings which can be deeply uncomfortable. It made me think about dad’s monologue from “Call Me By Your Name” when he said: But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything — what a waste!
who is next?
I lost count of how many times I’ve heard I'm like a R-A-P-E-R (yeah) / Got so many S-As (S-As), S-As (huh) / Wait, he didn't just spell the word, "Rapper" and leave out a P, did he? (Yep) from Eminem’s song “Fuel.” All I am going to write is I CAN NOT wait to see 50 Cent’s documentary about Diddy.
song i couldn’t stop listening
Ladaniva is a French-Armenian duo which represented Armenia in the latest Eurovision Song Contest. I liked their performance and because of that, I checked out their Instagram. I saw an Instagram reel in which they covered the Armenian song “Here’s to You Ararat.” The song was available on iTunes and I was listening to it on loop for days. A few weeks later, they released an album “Postcards” which is a collection of covers of songs from Europe and one from Lebanon. The song “Dicitencello Vuje” is an old Neapolitan song from 1950 written by Rodolfo Falvo and Enzo Fusco. This song has been covered many times and one more beautiful version comes from Anna Mahnani, an Italian singer and actress. Their record “Postcard” is one of my favourite records of this year and it is just astonishing that Jaklin Baghdasaryan sings in multiple different languages including Lebanese Arabic.
