Susan Daitch has
published two novels, L.C.,
© Dalkey Archive
The
Colorist (Vintage), and a collection of short
stories, Storytown.
© Dalkey Archive
Her short fiction has
appeared in the VLS, Ploughshares, Gobshite,
among others and been anthologized in the Norton
Anthology of Postmodern Fiction, Avant Pop,
and the Pushcart Prize 1998. Her writing was
the subject of a young writers issue of The Review
of Contemporary Fiction.
Jnun in the Age of Metal
Susan Daitch
Latif first heard the heavy
metal version broadcast over the radio when he was driving a cab. He
pulled over, listened closely to the name of the musician, Dirty Spike,
then called his immigration lawyer.
On weekends and at night Latif was a m'allem,
a master musician from Morocco. He played in restaurants, in basement
clubs, on the odd radio program from a college station that might feature
music from North Africa. He'd been playing the sintar, an instrument
carved from a single piece of wood covered with camel skin, since he
was a child. In Marrakech he had worked as a Gnawi, an intermediary
between earth and the spirit world. In New York he was an intermediary
between the airport and Manhattan.
He had found his lawyer through an ad in a Moroccan
newspaper published in New Jersey. He was a good deal, too. Low hourly
rate and no up front retainer fee. Over the phone J.J. Wolf's optimism
and confidence were persuasive and infectious. Green cards, no problem,
he had said, and Latif felt many of his legal troubles would be taken
care of by this Wolf. Another cab driver had heard of him, and said
of J.J. "the man is sharp as a tack."
The first time Latif met J.J. at his office he was
amazed anyone would compare Wolf to a tack. Wolf who favored three piece
suits with wide lapels invited Latif into what he called his "chambers,"
a room above a jewelry store in downtown Brooklyn. His chambers were
cluttered and disorganized, but he spoke with authority, with the voice
of a man in charge and knowledgeable about human nature within his small
fiefdom: Brooklyn court, minor civil and criminal cases. He knew trivia
about FBI investigations of serial killers and the lyrics to Billie
Holliday songs, none of which had a lot of meaning for Latif, but the
lawyer conveyed to him that he had a memory for details, faces, history.
Immigration status, he waved his hand, should not give you sleepless
nights.
"Counselor Wolf," Latif called from
a payphone. " I have a new problem. Someone is ripping me off."
J.J. didn't know his client, Latif Majnoun, was also
a gnawi musician. He didn't know what gnawi music was.
"It's not just music. It's like a religion."
Latif could picture Wolf in his office so full of papers and old coffee
cups that there was barely any space to put one foot in front of another.
How to explain what he did as a Gnawa was a problem, but Latif tried.
He described the ceremonies he participated in to placate disruptive
spirits, to rid a person of spirits whose intentions were destructive
and those he performed to make more ameliorative spirits feel at home.
These ceremonies were called derdeba, and this Spike was mocking
a place he no business in, and he had no map to travel this territory.
Dirty Spike was unleashing evils he had no knowledge of nor could he
control what he summoned.
"No wonder there's a garbage strike,"
Wolf said. For Wolf there were no spirits anywhere. When you were dead,
that was it, kaput. References to the spirit world sounded faintly Kabalistic,
nareshkeit, the stuff of astrologers, palmists, and other quacks.
He didn't know what Latif was talking about but gave him an appointment
for the following day.
When Latif entered his chambers the lawyer had his
feet on his desk. He was reading a newspaper account about a woman who
had had an affair over the Internet with a man she never actually spoke
to or encountered face to face. They finally did meet, and he murdered
her, as prearranged by both of them.
"You call that torrid?" Wolf exclaimed
while loosening his tie. It was one of his stories that was going to
be told with incredulous disbelief but made Latif uncomfortable at the
same time. "So finally she goes to meet him, knowing that their
first rendezvous will also be their last. As previously arranged he
was going to have some kind of erotic encounter which would end with
her death at his hands. The woman leaves a note for her husband telling
him not to look for her, then she disappears to her death. Why she did
this," J.J. said as if to demonstrate that technology broadened
the possibility for perversion in ways that were simultaneously unsatisfactory
and completely idiotic, "no one ever found out. Both she and her
killer appeared to be happily married. He had three children. Their
pictures were in the paper. See?" He turned the paper around so
Latif could view the photographs. "Their e-mail records or whatever
it was the police found didn't reveal very much about what her
desires actually were." He spoke in short telegraphic sentences.
These nutcases were unfathomable to him.
"Sex without exchange of bodily fluids
was like de-caf espresso with non-fat milk. In other words, why bother?"
Latif agreed with him, but he wanted to talk about
Dirty Spike's plagiarism of his music. He presented Wolf with a recording
of his own playing on tape and a CD, Metalage, by this Spike
person. The CD was his most recent, and it was easy to find. It was
all over the place. One track in particular very clearly borrowed certain
rhythms from Latif's gnawi music. It was painful for Latif to listen
to the CD. This ancient music capable of taming lions and scorpions
apparently had no effect on Dirty Spike.
"Where would he have heard you play?"
Wolf asked.
"Anyone could record me from inside a
café, a club."
"OK, I'll give it a listen."
Although J.J. had never heard of Dirty Spike he was
informed by someone in the office next door that Spike could fill Madison
Square Garden. He had no experience in copyright but was dazzled by
the publicity he thought would come his way on taking the Dirty Spike
litigation. He knew Latif couldn't pay him, but he would take a percentage
of the settlement he was certain they would win.
* |
The next time the two met it was at La Pesce Qui
Fuma, a tiny converted storefront restaurant located in a pocket
of houses and apartment buildings mostly occupied by recent immigrants
from South America. La Pesce was full of people. J.J. ordered
a large bowl of soup, fiery orange chilies floating beside scallops,
mussels, chunks of fish. The waitress, a woman in her late fifties with
hair streaked a variety of reds and blacks, held back in a gold hair
clip, was also the owner of La Pesce Qui Fuma. He was busy with
one of his many immigration cases, and so Wolf had wanted to meet during
lunch rather than his chambers. Above the small bar a television was
tuned to CNN which was, for a moment, broadcasting the congressional
hearings on the Chinese pirating of American software.
"Ugh, you call this luke warm garbage
coffee? It's pishartz."
"Luz, come here." He called to a
waitress who dutifully appeared at their table. "Do you call this
coffee?" He held up the cup.
"Yes, what do you call it?" She answered
in total bewilderment.
"Alright, I guess coffee is coffee."
He twisted around to watch the television.
Washington is sending mixed signals to Beijing...
Sanctions were proposed to punish countries continuing piracy of software,
CD's, and other 'intellectual property.' At the same time Washington
chose not to punish China for selling nuclear related equipment to Pakistan.
The Administration has rejected calls from Congress and human rights
organizations to use trade sanctions to retaliate for human rights abuses.
"Latif, listen to this, I'm talking to
you. There's a lesson here, if not a moral." He returned to face
the musician. "The Congressional hearings into China's most favored
nation trading status are both a joke and a formality. The issue of
human rights violations is raised, but only weakly. The issue of the
pirating of 'intellectual property' is also raised, but it is impossible
to halt or deter the duplication of software and smuggling rings which
rake in billions of dollars in profit. Japan won't criticize China because
of the atrocities committed in China by the Japanese army. The U.K.
turns a deaf ear. There is a cover up of the counterfeiting because
the government has just struck a free trade deal with China. If exposed...
there is more at stake than a few videos.
"In other words this kind of thing goes
on, and does so on a huge scale. There isn't much we can do about it.
Everything gets copied somewhere along the line. The question is, recognition
of and payment to the owner of the original materials."
"Material. I don't understand when material
became materials. It's like calling money, monies."
"Do I have your attention or what? Am
I talking to myself here? I suggest, again, Latif that you listen to
me. Who is this Spike person? The Frank Sinatra of heavy metal? I don't
think so. He isn't even the Tom Jones." He paused for a minute,
looking back at the television. "It's not unusual to be loved
by anyone," Wolf sang. Now Latif turned and looked at the booth
behind them. Deep into their drinks or their lunches, no one was paying
any attention to the bellowing lunatic opposite him.
"In a few years," Wolf continued,
"he'll be back in England crying into his beer. No one will remember
him except as some kind of joke, you know, like Tiny Tim. You know that
guy, Jim somebody whose buried in Pere LaChaise Cemetery?"
"Jim Morrison." Latif knew this.
"Yeah, that's right. They want to kick
him out of the graveyard because his fans come and paint graffiti all
over the place, but no one will take him. He's like a floating garbage
barge no one wants. My point is your Spike isn't even a dead Doornail."
"It was the Doors, J.J. And my point is
this: he's loaded. Why should he get away with plagiarism even if he's
a joke?"
"They should put all of these dead musicians
in some kind of theme cemetery in Las Vegas."
Wolf shrugged dismissively. Before the Spike incident
a club owner promised Latif that his music would become as popular and
as understood as Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan's Sufi chanting, for example,
which sold out Radio City Music Hall, and like Nusrat he would make
a fortune. He dreamed of everything from movie soundtracks to sold out
concerts all over the world. Gnawi is handed down within families, the
way Wolf inherited his father's old Jan Peerce records. Imported from
West Africa it's said to have healing powers. Those who listen find
themselves cured of scorpion stings and psychic disturbances. Latif
watched all kinds of people fall happily under the mystical, ecstatic
influence of gnawa trance music and dancing. Spike, even in his perverted
version, was stealing from him.
Latif had thought that by recording his music something
good would happen, people would pay him for concerts. He could quit
driving a cab.
"OK," Wolf said spearing a shrimp.
"If that's what you want. I think we have a case."
* |
Spike denied the charges and litigation was begun.
The English Mr. Spike with his thousand dollar haircut and body tattoos
of barbed wire and bullet holes claimed Latif's charge of copyright
violation was preposterous paranoid nonsense. He'd never heard of Latif
Majnoun or gnawi music. He was making a fortune. Why should he bother
with a cab driver who recorded music on weekends in a basement? After
listening to some Dirty Spike recordings even J.J. who favored Tony
Bennett, "the velvet Fog," Mel Torme, and show tunes recognized
a version of Latif's music rendered jagged and ugly. Mr. Spike claimed,
"It was my creative idea."
The first time Wolf saw Dirty Spike was at the trial,
and he knew was in the presence of a man who thought everyone in the
room recognized him. This made Wolf feel old and stupid. Spike didn't
need to make eye contact with anyone. He was way above everyone else
in the courtroom, and he moved as if in a bubble, as if even here, he
desiredno neededto be shielded from his adoring public.
At the same time there was something pathetic, almost self-deprecating
about him, and J.J. hoped the jury wouldn't be taken in by that air
of studied nonchalance. This was not a self-effacing man. He walked
with a sense of his own power, his ability to get what he wanted within
the predictable but considerable perimeters of what he did want.
Latif was transfixed by the private Spike, the thief, Mr. Screw You,
buddy. His tight T-shirt revealed a carefully designed body created
by a personal trainer despite Spike's professed disdain for gym culture.
From up close Spike was a wrinkled Rock Star with acne scarred cheeks.
He looked like a man who knew people would say of him: not a Mick Jagger,
not a Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, not even David Bowie playing Andy
Warhol. But those secret parts of Spike, hidden behind all kinds of
zippers beckoned to thousands of girls with pierced body parts. He exuded
an air of I've seen a lot in this world, but I'm interested in you
and aren't you lucky to have my attention. There was something untouchable
about him, and Wolf wanted to make him pay. He stayed up nights reading
up on copyright law.
* |
At the trial the similarities between Latif's tape
when played beside Dirty Spike's CD presented difficult evidence to
refute despite the glaring stylistic differences. An ethnomusicologist
was called in to listen and to testify, and she confirmed J.J. and Latif's
claims.
Spike's defense tried to establish his good character.
There was, for example, no fur on the Dirty tour. He was an animal rights
supporter who braked for squirrels. Latif had no idea what this meant.
He thought endangered animals were creatures who threatened humans:
lions, poisonous snakes, sharks. The point about Spike's humanitarian
nature seemed like a joke that would surely backfire.
* |
Spike had a driver/body guard, Chester Louie, who
also attended the trail. With his shaved head tattooed with a crack
down the center, Louie was hard to miss. Like his boss, he exuded an
air of bored oblivion. He pulled at his chain like a leashed animal
you know can hurt you, and you just pray his restraint holds until you
can get as far away as possible.
"How does someone get a job like that?"
Latif whispered. J.J. imagined the bald man being tapped on the shoulder
while obsessively working out at a gym, lifting weights, gold and black
kerchief tied around his head. The rumor was that he had been a personal
trainer who offered a wide variety of services. Though thick set, there
was an element of vanity to Louie, like Spike he was a man used to getting
what he wanted in his own way. There was something delicate in his gestures:
the way he uncapped a fountain pen and appeared to take a few notes
in a little book. Latif was fascinated by the fringe of dark hair he'd
allowed to grow at the base of his skull, and wondered aloud what would
happen if you pulled the fringe of hair.
"He may be the one who passed a bootleg
copy of gnawi to Spike." Latif conjectured. He believed the spirits
owned the music, not himself, and when they made their presence known
it was because the music had summoned them. Dirty Spike's concerts with
hundreds of people going into trances was a terrifying thought.
"He looks like a man on steroids,"
Wolf had said, "How can he do that to his head? This is a guy capable
of anything. Remember that name: Chester Louie."
When called to the stand the man's voice was slightly
high pitched, inquisitive, yet assertive, like Peter Lorre without an
accent or a trace of timidity. J.J. said of him that if accused of a
murder Louie looked like the kind of man whose only defense could have
been: look at all the people I didn't kill. Wolf had been reading about
a German, a loyal Nazi, who saved several thousand Chinese from murder
by the Japanese army. Yet he returned to Europe with no qualms about
murdering certain other people. Called a hero in recent years, J.J.
referred to this as the "look at all the people I didn't kill defense."
Part of Spike's defense was that he played in the
North American rock tradition which borrowed from African music, therefore,
certain similarities between his music and anything coming out of Africa
were inevitable. His imitation of hip-hop talk reminded J.J. of Nixon
making the peace sign with his fingers. Wolf reached for his water glass.
According to copyright law, J.J. had to show that
the two pieces of music were strikingly alike, in other words, their
similarities had to reflect intentional copying not just coincidence.
The court found that the works did share several sequential notes as
well as similarities in structure and rhythms, but the melodies and
harmonies are quite different. In other words the packaging was so different,
the judge failed to hear what was going on, or perhaps he bought Spike's
story that they were so far beneath his consideration and so different
that the notion he would rip Latif off was laughable. For whatever reason,
they lost.
* |
Spike's music could be heard everywhere, on the radio,
in shops; he was a Dracula that couldn't be killed.
* |
Latif picked Wolf up in his cab and they drove over
the bridge and into Chinatown, near East Broadway, an edge of Manhattan,
a far eastern part of Chinatown where tourists never wander. Tenements
perched above noodle makers, herbal doctors, unknown, obscure businesses
and bodegas, all open twenty-four hours a day. Already, though it was
still daylight, dim electric bulbs could be seen in the recesses of
sliver storefronts. The sidewalks were somewhat crowded, but on these
blocks the borders between business transactions and private life might
be very slim. Latif liked this part of the city because everything happened
right out on the street.
"What's hidden: gambling, prostitution,
Tongs, gangs," Wolf said, "you don't want to know about it.
But if you know where and how to look, what you see has a close relationship
with what you don't see. More is visible to the naked eye than you might
imagine. You got opera singers here who spend days as waiters or seamstresses.
"There was a case I read about recently
involving those companies," Wolf said. As if distracted he pointed
across the street to a sliver store, Wu's Video, a shop which sold and
rented martial arts movies. Its windows were covered with posters of
Jackie Chan, bare chested in black trousers, about to strike and other
stars of Hong Kong cinema whose names neither of them knew.
"Ever see one of these videos?" He
pretended to speak idly about unrelated themes.
Latif nodded. He had no idea what J.J. was talking
about.
"So you know the quality of the tapes
is pretty much sub par. You may very well ask me: Who cares?" Wolf
posed a question Latif knew he was going to answer. "Let me tell
you about piracy of 'intellectual property,' an enormous black market
of CD's, video, and software. Counterfeit software is easy to produce,
but the package labels which must be exact in order to pass, are not."
Wolf talked on and on. Finally he ran out of steam.
An awkward silence followed. Wolf believed the law ought to have worked
in Latif's favor. Even he could hear the similarities between the two
pieces. Spike's defense team, though well paid, shouldn't have been
able to win.
"We counted on pie in the sky that may
never happen. Latif, look, as regards certain monies, let's say the
allocation of certain monies. Do really think you/I/we have a claim
on those monies? No. You can't spend monies you haven't won or earned.
Just keep recording and eventually you'll get recognized." Wolf
didn't actually believe this, but felt he had to say something.
* |
Wolf's car was parked in a dark space between streetlights
the city had on a timer system to save money. It was shadowy, but he
wasn't apprehensive in a neighborhood he knew well. Next door to the
jewelry store was a small music shop whose owner Wolf had known for
years, but despite their long friendship he still refused to take the
Dirty Spike poster out of his window when J.J. asked him to. Bizness,
he learned, was bizness.
"What do I know about such dreck?
I compete against the big chains. You know that," he had argued.
He had no choice but to give people what they wanted. Although J.J.
felt a little guilty when he walked past the dusty shop whose inventory
shrunk every week, he couldn't bring hiself to patronize his store again.
At the corner Wolf saw Chester Louie get out of a
car whose license plates read: DIRTY. He had a little girl with him,
and they went into a pizzeria. The little girl was wearing flowered
bell-bottom pants, and she had held the big man's hand as they crossed
the street. J.J. sat in his car and watched the two of them eating slices
at a counter facing a window. He wondered what Chester Louie who didn't
seem like the kind of person who would know Nevins from Flatbush would
be doing in this part of downtown, a man who could afford to take a
child to the Plaza Hotel, Rumplemeyers, FAO Schwartz at least while
the party that was Dirty Spike lasted. What would the bodyguard do when
he was old and there was no more Spike? Perhaps he knew it would be
over soon, and he was starting the pizza regime before it was too late.
At least Latif had his sintar and his ne'er do well jnuns when they
needed routing from their beds, but for the guardians of Metalage
what would he have to retreat to? Wolf turned the key in his ignition
and began the drive home where his neighbors were putting up crèches
and reproductions of Santa's workshops complete with elves and reindeer.
He turned the radio dial up and down, but could find nothing he wanted
to listen to, and he had too many songs in his head.
© Susan Daitch
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