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Riz Ahmed: Redeeming Multiculturalism in the Post-9/11 Era

Riz MC - Post 9/11 Blues

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1. Riz MC - Post 9/11 Blues
Contents of this annotation:
1. Riz MC - Post 9/11 Blues
Contents of this annotation:
1. Riz MC - Post 9/11 Blues

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The Post-9/11 Blues: Subverting the Stereotype    Riz Ahmed, also known by his hip-hop alias Riz MC, precipitated pointed political discourse in the U.K. right out the gate, debuting in 2006 with the satirical single, “The Post 9/11 Blues.” Up until that point, Ahmed’s career in music had been largely invisible to the mainstream, and his film career was just budding with The Road To Guantanamo’s release. As a second-generation Pakistani growing up in north London's Wembley area, his musical inspiration derived primarily from his older brother’s cassettes of Nas and Wu Tang Clan, an equal mix of jungle and hip-hop. He cut his teeth MCing on pirate radio and in many freestyle battles in his mid-teens, then—as a Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) major at Oxford University—started a hip-hop/jungle club night called Hit & Run (Green, “Riz Ahmed”). Although it is difficult to track down press commentary on the track’s specific history, Ahmed’s iTunes bio does divulge that “The Post 9/11 Blues” was inadvertently leaked by his own friends, gaining viral popularity via the Internet, becoming one of the most downloaded videos on MySpace, and establishing early promotional indicators of Ahmed’s star-image.

   The music video directly approaches the furor whipped up by the media and parliament over home-grown Islamic terrorists after 9/11 and 7/7, and the routine state harassment and scapegoating of ethnic minorities that ensued, with a tone of ironic humor. It is the everyday Islamophobia Riz MC encounters—and the community tensions this reflects —and not his own radical alienation from mainstream British life that becomes the subject of his rap. The video essentially walks through a comic inventory of the ridiculous traps and snares set for any British person of Islamic or South Asian appearance, regardless of religious or political outlook, as they attempt to mind their business and go about their ordinary lives in the city.

   Much of the humor in the song and video derives from absurd juxtaposition of Ahmed’s benign innocence and his treatment in the hands of state authorities. In the music video, Riz Ahmed is overtly coded with signifiers of his mainstream British identity. The bedroom wall has a frame with a picture of a young Queen Elizabeth, and when Ahmed sits up into the frame, he clutches a Union Jack comforter to his chest. Subsequent shots depict him in a bathtub with a shower cap, brushing his teeth, and eating breakfast cereal, juxtaposing the mundanity of his morning routine with the “war, Iraq, suicide bombs” encroaching on his lifestyle.

   When incongruous elements creep into his life, they emerge from the “post-9/11 categories” imposed by television, advertising, and magazines. As he raps, “Israeli fighters are soldiers, Irish are paramilitary / And darkie ones are terrorists - how simple can it be?” a magazine spread providing a guide to identifying terrorists lists the following traits on screen: “narrow eyes, shifty demeanor, dark complexion, jacket/trousers/shoes [which] conceal explosives, seditious haircut, beard shaved mimicking western youth, ASIAN, ASIAN, ASIAN” (“Riz MC - Post 9/11 Blues”). However, Riz MC notes the inescapable dissonance between these propagandistic images and his own identity, saying, “But not me, my friends go: ‘Riz is still one of us’ / But if I haven't shaved, they won't sit with me on the bus!” In Orientalism, Edward Said argues that the collective notion “identifying ‘us’ Europeans against all ‘those’ non-Europeans” is a separator that “reiterates European superiority over oriental backwardness,” and emphasizes the new fears that have been constructed simply on how one looks. Riz MC exposes the Orientalist media portrayals and government rhetoric that—despite what he perceives as a rich connection with his community and culture—place him in a terrorist line-up alongside Santa Claus and a small child, fellow menaces to post-9/11 society.

Ahmed subverts political and cultural discourses hailing the “failure of multiculturalism” in the U.K. by placing the onus on British institutions for superficially demonizing unassuming brown citizens. Although “The Post 9/11 Blues” is ultimately as jokey as it is incisive, it establishes an important ideological foundation of Riz Ahmed’s star-image: a diasporic perspective that enables him to bridge the perceived gap between Islamic and Western cultural values.