Don’t like the war in Iraq? Don’t like the current foreign policy of the west? Unhappy with limited democratic choices? Well thanks to new sedition laws, all Australians potentially face jail time for publicly playing music that share and evoke these sentiments, even if you don’t agree with each and every premise found in the songs. One such artist is self-proclaimed revolutionary and anti-Imperialist Immortal Technique.
Although he was born in Peru Technique has been a Harlem native of New York since the age of three. After serving a brief stint of jail-time in jail aged 21 for fighting in college, he was released back into society only to find opportunities in employment impossible. So instead of submitting job applications he surmised music was the most flexible avenue open to him. However these assumptions were wrong, just like our assumptions that art is exempt from draconian legislation.
Under section 80.2 of the sedition law a person commits an offence if the person urges another person to overthrow by force or violence:
(a) the Constitution; or
(b) the Government of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory; or
(c) the lawful authority of the Government of the Commonwealth.
As an unknown in the music industry, the only way for Immortal Technique to get his name and his music out was to battle other MCs and to personally distribute his own CD. He pressed copies of his debut album, Revolutionary Volume 1, and made a living by convincing individual record stores to stock his album. The record was well-received within underground circles. In fact there it was like no album before it. There were scathing tracks directed at the US government, interludes penned by Mumia Abu Jamal (a journalist on death-row) and unconventional concepts like ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’ - a six minute monologue that attacked US democracy and promoted socialist principles:
“It’s the business giants and the government officials who make all the real money. We have whatever they kick down to us. My enemy is not the average white man, not the kid down the block or the kids I see on the street, my enemy is the white man I don’t see – the people in the white house, the corporate monopoly owners, fake liberal politicians, those are my enemies. The generals of the armies that are mostly conservative, those are the real mother fuckers I need to bring it to. Not the poor broke country ass soldier that’s too stupid to know shit about the way things are set up.”
“Philosophizing about freedom and socialist democracy is usually unfortunately beyond [the people's] rationale…if we had some sense of who we really are, there’s no way in hell we’d allow this country to push its genocidal consensus on our homelands. This ignorance exists, but it can be destroyed.”
I am not an extremist of any particular political orientation or agenda. 99% of individuals with politically engaged views are not extremists either. My personal problem and motivation is that after looking at the history of humankind, it is blatantly evident that wars and initiatives to kill each other do not provide solutions or progress. That is not politics, it is elementary common sense. But now with these sedition laws, people face a penalty of imprisonment for listening to outspoken music that carries an anti-government voice, even if they are only supporting the broader message and not the specifics of violence or of extreme political positions. The ironic dimension to this (as if persecution for entertainment-based expression wasn’t ironic enough) is that this music is a product and reaction to the very own violence our governments have exported to the world.
Immortal Technique stirred up a hornet’s nest with his first album. Actually, it was more dancing on the queen bee whilst laughing. As a result he was confronted with his biggest hurdles yet when releasing his sophomore album, Revolutionary Volume 2. The content of his previous album, the message in its sequel and the album cover art, which depicted the dead bodies of George Bush, Bin Laden, Dick Cheney and in a bullet-riddled oval office bought unavoidable consequences. In an interview given at The Abbey Pub in Chicago, he detailed his experiences:
“I had the opportunity to be signed to some major labels but they wanted me to stop talking about what I was talking about. I had a distribution deal in the works for Revolutionary Volume 2 but unfortunately…it was the [album artwork] and [various songs]… It was like ‘Yo, take that off and take that song about the war off’ and I was like ‘Nah I can’t do that, that’s me your not gonna change me. I could have been rich but you know I wanted to do it this way so I had more control about what I was really putting out there. I’m dealing with these corporate people who don’t like when I say the stuff like that… I bring them a song and they’ll be like ‘Nah chill.’”
So why is US censorship, in reference to Immortal Technique, relevant to Australian sedition? A lot of anti-governmental sentiment in Australia comes from our alliance with the US. The US is in-part, the origin of the same issues that sedition tries to target, just like it is the origin of Immortal Technique’s discontent. The sedition law does not provide room for discerning between different beliefs – you should be able to play any type of music freely and loud without incurring an assumption that you share the views of each and every lyric and that you will re-enact them like a mindless drone. But critically, it is a matter of principle. If it is evident that anti-political and anti-war messages are being suffocated in the US, the world leader that supposedly prides itself on free speech, then it invariably has a knock-on effect to Australia. If he is not allowed to distribute is work in large volumes, are we then not allowed to listen to it in large capacities? We can be prosecuted under section 80.2 no matter what the nationality or origin of the message you allow others to hear.
Authorities wanted to silence him because of the underlying message within his music, and the fact that sedition laws prevent us from even appreciating that music is a ridiculous double standard. The government wants an educated, well-behaved, and yet there are truths and moral ideals in Immortal Technique’s music which clearly substantiate his music.
“Very few records nowadays…are marketed to adults, they’re marketed to children. The army is marketed to children…because the frontal lobe of the brain don’t stop developing until after you [are] 21.. So there’s a certain age you can stop coming to the army coz you might bring your own ideas about life there, and you might be like ‘Hey well wait a minute, maybe it’s not right to torch this village with these children in it.”
That excerpt, again from the Abbey Pub interview, shows intellect behind a musical form with unconventional content and mechanisms of expressions. Lines like “calling abortion murder in a medical building/but don’t give a fuck about bombing Iraqi children” and “I’m trying to give the truth and I know the price is my life” show an agenda based on preserving life. This sentiment frequently manifests itself in the lyrics, “The media seems to now have a retirement plan for ex-military officials as if their opinion was at all unbiased,” and “They bombed innocent people trying to murder Saddam/when you gave him those chemical weapons to go to war with Iran/This is the information they hold back from Peter Jennings/Because Condoleza Rice is just a new age Sally Hemmings.” More specifically, there is a track on Revolutionary Volume 2 called ‘The Cause of Death’ that explores the relationship between the Iraq war and September 11th:
“It was right after September 11th that I had written [the song and performed it]. Half the audience loved it and half the audience was like ‘How dare you say that’. I said at the end of the show why don’t y’all look it up and you can see for yourself? Eventually I put out Cause of Death on Volume 2 and I was like ‘Yo, you can check the historical facts and you can kick yourself in the head.”
Some of these facts and suspicions in the lyrics are well circulated, even though there have not been major efforts by the mainstream media to investigate the history of US actions in the Middle East:
“My words will expose George Bush and Bin Laden, as two separate parts of the same seven-headed dragon…So here’s the truth about the system that will fuck up your mind, they gave Al-Qaeda six billion dollars in 1989 to 1992 and now the last chapters of revelations are coming true…Jealous of our freedom I can’t believe you bought that excuse, rocking a motherfucking flag don’t make you a hero, word to ground zero. The devil crept into heaven, God overslept on the seventh, the new world order was born on September 11th… And just so conservatives don’t take it to heart, I don’t think Bush did it because he isn’t that smart…The military industry got it popping and locking, looking for a way to justify the Wolfowitz doctrine. And as a matter of a fact Rumsfeld now that I think back, without 9/11 you couldn’t have a war in Iraq, or a defense budget of world conquest proportions… And Dick Cheney you fucking leech, tell them your plans about building your pipe lines through Afghanistan and how Israeli troops trained the Taliban in Pakistan… Colonialism is sponsored by corporations, that’s why Halliburton gets paid to rebuild nations… Read it yourself instead of asking the government why because then The Cause of Death will cause the propaganda to die.”
With a reluctance from the mainstream media to cover these issues, Immortal Technique reveals the only way to express non-conformist views on Divine Forces Radio:
“When you have a situation where people completely control the media and they can say something and do the complete opposite, that’s when you know you have absolutely no political power as a people because you have no economic power as a people. Che Guevara said it himself: in order to have political sovereignty you need economic sovereignty.”
Controversial content aside, even Immortal Technique has said himself that not every single one of his words should be taken so seriously. Have we not learned anything since Eminem was propelled into the mainstream? Hip-hop is part of the entertainment industry; no one forces your participation, it is not a human necessity but just one of many products offered to us for recreation. At The Abbey Pub Immortal Technique said:
“Of course I like to have fun, everything’s not serious…I poke fun at shit like freedom of speech.” Hip-hop is purely an artistic medium, if humorous approaches to art face injunctions we are losing the very cultural foundations the arts are based upon; the historical freedom and ability to express views about anything, let alone political issues. As he pointed out on Uncle Howie Radio, sometimes the arts are the only avenues available:
“I would really like to sit here and speak about [contentious issues] eloquently for an extended period of time but we really don’t [have] that. So I just came out to Harlem and eventually got caught up in hip-hop…”
I wholly agree that listening to music requires a degree of responsibility. So does crossing the road. If I don’t look left or right, or if I cross when it is a little red man instead of a little green man, is that worth prison time..? Of course not, it sounds ludicrous…as does imprisonment for playing politically charged music. What you listen to and what you make of it is your choice. On ‘Speak Your Mind’ he raps, “Improbable that the average intellect could understand/So I encrypted this into hip-hop which is in high demand.” It is also your choice when you cross the road, although I’d recommend waiting until the man is green because you might get run over.
“I never force my opinion on people, I just put out the historical information I [have]… and I let [people] make the choice whether they wanna take that into consideration or whether they just like ‘Alright, well, I don’t agree with that.'”
Which is exactly the point - we need free speech forums and diverse groups of opinions to express emotion, debate issues and advance forwards which is why the internet is so favourable. It is a medium Immortal Technique has no qualms about in terms of its usefulness; it is after all the tool responsible for circulating his music and views. When speaking to Tunnel Vision Radio in 2003 he demonstrated his appreciation and understanding of the web:
“The internet is great, you can put your stuff out there. And as far as people listening to my music or downloading it, I don’t care. All my stuff is on Kazaa - if you want to, you can get it. If you can go ahead, I don’t give a damn. I’m one of those MCs that doesn’t have a stick up his ass…this a big shout out to everybody who’s listening right now: log onto Kazaa, type in www.immortal-technique.com, download everything you can and then burn it on a CD and then do your thing.”
He even encourages this approach in one of his songs - “Burn it off the internet and bump it outside”. I’d recommend this to hear tracks not found on his albums (especially ‘Caught In A Hustle’ which you can download at his website) or to get a taste of his music, but Revolutionary Volumes 1 & 2 are well worth your corporate dollars.
Ultimately, we should not be under law to change ourselves, especially when our views concern the immoral problems that our own law makers have created. A desire to stop the death of innocent people is not socialism, anti-establishmentarianism or any ‘ism’ label you wish to draw - it is a simple respect for human existence. The sedition laws show the Australian government is worried about an internal threat rising from views such as these, and yet ignore the double edged sword they wield – what views do you think Iraqi children will hold in ten years time? Threatening seven years of jail time for listening to something opposed to the needless death of children is just as preposterous as Saddam deploying a nuclear weapon within forty-five minutes. We are cleverer than that, and the government should be too.
Although he was born in Peru Technique has been a Harlem native of New York since the age of three. After serving a brief stint of jail-time in jail aged 21 for fighting in college, he was released back into society only to find opportunities in employment impossible. So instead of submitting job applications he surmised music was the most flexible avenue open to him. However these assumptions were wrong, just like our assumptions that art is exempt from draconian legislation.
Under section 80.2 of the sedition law a person commits an offence if the person urges another person to overthrow by force or violence:
(a) the Constitution; or
(b) the Government of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory; or
(c) the lawful authority of the Government of the Commonwealth.
As an unknown in the music industry, the only way for Immortal Technique to get his name and his music out was to battle other MCs and to personally distribute his own CD. He pressed copies of his debut album, Revolutionary Volume 1, and made a living by convincing individual record stores to stock his album. The record was well-received within underground circles. In fact there it was like no album before it. There were scathing tracks directed at the US government, interludes penned by Mumia Abu Jamal (a journalist on death-row) and unconventional concepts like ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’ - a six minute monologue that attacked US democracy and promoted socialist principles:
“It’s the business giants and the government officials who make all the real money. We have whatever they kick down to us. My enemy is not the average white man, not the kid down the block or the kids I see on the street, my enemy is the white man I don’t see – the people in the white house, the corporate monopoly owners, fake liberal politicians, those are my enemies. The generals of the armies that are mostly conservative, those are the real mother fuckers I need to bring it to. Not the poor broke country ass soldier that’s too stupid to know shit about the way things are set up.”
“Philosophizing about freedom and socialist democracy is usually unfortunately beyond [the people's] rationale…if we had some sense of who we really are, there’s no way in hell we’d allow this country to push its genocidal consensus on our homelands. This ignorance exists, but it can be destroyed.”
I am not an extremist of any particular political orientation or agenda. 99% of individuals with politically engaged views are not extremists either. My personal problem and motivation is that after looking at the history of humankind, it is blatantly evident that wars and initiatives to kill each other do not provide solutions or progress. That is not politics, it is elementary common sense. But now with these sedition laws, people face a penalty of imprisonment for listening to outspoken music that carries an anti-government voice, even if they are only supporting the broader message and not the specifics of violence or of extreme political positions. The ironic dimension to this (as if persecution for entertainment-based expression wasn’t ironic enough) is that this music is a product and reaction to the very own violence our governments have exported to the world.
Immortal Technique stirred up a hornet’s nest with his first album. Actually, it was more dancing on the queen bee whilst laughing. As a result he was confronted with his biggest hurdles yet when releasing his sophomore album, Revolutionary Volume 2. The content of his previous album, the message in its sequel and the album cover art, which depicted the dead bodies of George Bush, Bin Laden, Dick Cheney and in a bullet-riddled oval office bought unavoidable consequences. In an interview given at The Abbey Pub in Chicago, he detailed his experiences:
“I had the opportunity to be signed to some major labels but they wanted me to stop talking about what I was talking about. I had a distribution deal in the works for Revolutionary Volume 2 but unfortunately…it was the [album artwork] and [various songs]… It was like ‘Yo, take that off and take that song about the war off’ and I was like ‘Nah I can’t do that, that’s me your not gonna change me. I could have been rich but you know I wanted to do it this way so I had more control about what I was really putting out there. I’m dealing with these corporate people who don’t like when I say the stuff like that… I bring them a song and they’ll be like ‘Nah chill.’”
So why is US censorship, in reference to Immortal Technique, relevant to Australian sedition? A lot of anti-governmental sentiment in Australia comes from our alliance with the US. The US is in-part, the origin of the same issues that sedition tries to target, just like it is the origin of Immortal Technique’s discontent. The sedition law does not provide room for discerning between different beliefs – you should be able to play any type of music freely and loud without incurring an assumption that you share the views of each and every lyric and that you will re-enact them like a mindless drone. But critically, it is a matter of principle. If it is evident that anti-political and anti-war messages are being suffocated in the US, the world leader that supposedly prides itself on free speech, then it invariably has a knock-on effect to Australia. If he is not allowed to distribute is work in large volumes, are we then not allowed to listen to it in large capacities? We can be prosecuted under section 80.2 no matter what the nationality or origin of the message you allow others to hear.
Authorities wanted to silence him because of the underlying message within his music, and the fact that sedition laws prevent us from even appreciating that music is a ridiculous double standard. The government wants an educated, well-behaved, and yet there are truths and moral ideals in Immortal Technique’s music which clearly substantiate his music.
“Very few records nowadays…are marketed to adults, they’re marketed to children. The army is marketed to children…because the frontal lobe of the brain don’t stop developing until after you [are] 21.. So there’s a certain age you can stop coming to the army coz you might bring your own ideas about life there, and you might be like ‘Hey well wait a minute, maybe it’s not right to torch this village with these children in it.”
That excerpt, again from the Abbey Pub interview, shows intellect behind a musical form with unconventional content and mechanisms of expressions. Lines like “calling abortion murder in a medical building/but don’t give a fuck about bombing Iraqi children” and “I’m trying to give the truth and I know the price is my life” show an agenda based on preserving life. This sentiment frequently manifests itself in the lyrics, “The media seems to now have a retirement plan for ex-military officials as if their opinion was at all unbiased,” and “They bombed innocent people trying to murder Saddam/when you gave him those chemical weapons to go to war with Iran/This is the information they hold back from Peter Jennings/Because Condoleza Rice is just a new age Sally Hemmings.” More specifically, there is a track on Revolutionary Volume 2 called ‘The Cause of Death’ that explores the relationship between the Iraq war and September 11th:
“It was right after September 11th that I had written [the song and performed it]. Half the audience loved it and half the audience was like ‘How dare you say that’. I said at the end of the show why don’t y’all look it up and you can see for yourself? Eventually I put out Cause of Death on Volume 2 and I was like ‘Yo, you can check the historical facts and you can kick yourself in the head.”
Some of these facts and suspicions in the lyrics are well circulated, even though there have not been major efforts by the mainstream media to investigate the history of US actions in the Middle East:
“My words will expose George Bush and Bin Laden, as two separate parts of the same seven-headed dragon…So here’s the truth about the system that will fuck up your mind, they gave Al-Qaeda six billion dollars in 1989 to 1992 and now the last chapters of revelations are coming true…Jealous of our freedom I can’t believe you bought that excuse, rocking a motherfucking flag don’t make you a hero, word to ground zero. The devil crept into heaven, God overslept on the seventh, the new world order was born on September 11th… And just so conservatives don’t take it to heart, I don’t think Bush did it because he isn’t that smart…The military industry got it popping and locking, looking for a way to justify the Wolfowitz doctrine. And as a matter of a fact Rumsfeld now that I think back, without 9/11 you couldn’t have a war in Iraq, or a defense budget of world conquest proportions… And Dick Cheney you fucking leech, tell them your plans about building your pipe lines through Afghanistan and how Israeli troops trained the Taliban in Pakistan… Colonialism is sponsored by corporations, that’s why Halliburton gets paid to rebuild nations… Read it yourself instead of asking the government why because then The Cause of Death will cause the propaganda to die.”
With a reluctance from the mainstream media to cover these issues, Immortal Technique reveals the only way to express non-conformist views on Divine Forces Radio:
“When you have a situation where people completely control the media and they can say something and do the complete opposite, that’s when you know you have absolutely no political power as a people because you have no economic power as a people. Che Guevara said it himself: in order to have political sovereignty you need economic sovereignty.”
Controversial content aside, even Immortal Technique has said himself that not every single one of his words should be taken so seriously. Have we not learned anything since Eminem was propelled into the mainstream? Hip-hop is part of the entertainment industry; no one forces your participation, it is not a human necessity but just one of many products offered to us for recreation. At The Abbey Pub Immortal Technique said:
“Of course I like to have fun, everything’s not serious…I poke fun at shit like freedom of speech.” Hip-hop is purely an artistic medium, if humorous approaches to art face injunctions we are losing the very cultural foundations the arts are based upon; the historical freedom and ability to express views about anything, let alone political issues. As he pointed out on Uncle Howie Radio, sometimes the arts are the only avenues available:
“I would really like to sit here and speak about [contentious issues] eloquently for an extended period of time but we really don’t [have] that. So I just came out to Harlem and eventually got caught up in hip-hop…”
I wholly agree that listening to music requires a degree of responsibility. So does crossing the road. If I don’t look left or right, or if I cross when it is a little red man instead of a little green man, is that worth prison time..? Of course not, it sounds ludicrous…as does imprisonment for playing politically charged music. What you listen to and what you make of it is your choice. On ‘Speak Your Mind’ he raps, “Improbable that the average intellect could understand/So I encrypted this into hip-hop which is in high demand.” It is also your choice when you cross the road, although I’d recommend waiting until the man is green because you might get run over.
“I never force my opinion on people, I just put out the historical information I [have]… and I let [people] make the choice whether they wanna take that into consideration or whether they just like ‘Alright, well, I don’t agree with that.'”
Which is exactly the point - we need free speech forums and diverse groups of opinions to express emotion, debate issues and advance forwards which is why the internet is so favourable. It is a medium Immortal Technique has no qualms about in terms of its usefulness; it is after all the tool responsible for circulating his music and views. When speaking to Tunnel Vision Radio in 2003 he demonstrated his appreciation and understanding of the web:
“The internet is great, you can put your stuff out there. And as far as people listening to my music or downloading it, I don’t care. All my stuff is on Kazaa - if you want to, you can get it. If you can go ahead, I don’t give a damn. I’m one of those MCs that doesn’t have a stick up his ass…this a big shout out to everybody who’s listening right now: log onto Kazaa, type in www.immortal-technique.com, download everything you can and then burn it on a CD and then do your thing.”
He even encourages this approach in one of his songs - “Burn it off the internet and bump it outside”. I’d recommend this to hear tracks not found on his albums (especially ‘Caught In A Hustle’ which you can download at his website) or to get a taste of his music, but Revolutionary Volumes 1 & 2 are well worth your corporate dollars.
Ultimately, we should not be under law to change ourselves, especially when our views concern the immoral problems that our own law makers have created. A desire to stop the death of innocent people is not socialism, anti-establishmentarianism or any ‘ism’ label you wish to draw - it is a simple respect for human existence. The sedition laws show the Australian government is worried about an internal threat rising from views such as these, and yet ignore the double edged sword they wield – what views do you think Iraqi children will hold in ten years time? Threatening seven years of jail time for listening to something opposed to the needless death of children is just as preposterous as Saddam deploying a nuclear weapon within forty-five minutes. We are cleverer than that, and the government should be too.
