Rap and Representations of Trauma

by ninaxu

While reading and discussing Maus, Art Spiegelman’s comic about his father’s experiences as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust and Spiegelman’s own experiences interviewing his father, I thought about the way Spiegelman uses the combination of words and art to “approximate a ‘mental language’ that is closer to actual human thought than either words or pictures alone” (Spiegelman, as quoted by Young 672). I found the idea of words in combination with a different form as nearer to our interiority fascinating, and thought about another medium that does this quite frequently: music, and particularly rap, where a number of artists explore deeply personal, and even traumatic, experiences.

K’naan, a Somali Canadian rapper, is one such artist; his first studio album, Juno Award-winning The Dusty Foot Philosopher, is part autobiographical exploration of his lived experiences (“My Old Home”, “I Was Stabbed By Satan”, “If Rap Gets Jealous”); part furious criticism of those who have power in Somalia (“Soobax”); and part satiric take on and critique of hypermasculine rap and diss tracks (“What’s Hardcore”). Having just barely managed to leave Somalia as the civil war ramped up, K’naan now uses rap to deliver a form of witnessing trauma (McNeill). Like Spiegelman’s father, who feels guilty for surviving when so many did not (Spiegelman, Maus 1:44), K’naan is a survivor; K’naan talks about four cousins who were shot in “If Rap Gets Jealous” and two friends who were killed in “I Was Stabbed by Satan”. In fact, K’naan compares his experience directly to the Holocaust in “My Old Home”, saying it was “like Jews in the sequel”. Perhaps because of this guilt, K’naan seems to feel a very strong need to represent other Somalians; unable to shoot in Somalia for fear of his life, he instead decided to shoot his bilingual critique of Somalian warlords, “Soobax”, in a neighborhood of Kenya full of Somalian refugees. Like Spiegelman, who frets over the fact that he’s representing his father as a Jewish stereotype (Spiegelman, Maus 1:131), K’naan is concerned with the way he’s portraying the refugees, stating, “In my video, Soobax, I wanted to document struggles, of course, but you’ll also see so much love, so much passion. And that’s why I came here… I wanted to document so much love, so much pride in the people, in the eyes of the youth” (bloodmoney). Indeed, the music for “Soobax” is joyful, interjected with ululations, unexpected in a song about such a dark subject matter. But in the context of “Soobax” as a protest song, the upbeat rhythm seems to celebrate the joy and power of the average citizens of Somalia. K’naan uses the combination of a visual medium (the music video), auditory medium (music), and words to explore his deeply traumatic past in a more complete way than words alone might.

bloodmoney. “introducing k’naan.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 1 Aug. 2006. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
McNeill, Laurie. University of British Columbia. Buchanan D218, University of British Columbia, BC. 21 Oct. 2014. Lecture.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus. 2 vols. Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, 1986. Print.
Young, James E. “The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the Afterimages of History.” Critical Inquiry 24.3 (1998): 666-699.