Days ago, British musician Sting, who in the roaring 80s was one among the trio of songsters known as The Police, revisited an old song of his. Russians is a song about disarmament during nuclear brinkmanship in the days of the Cold War, and he said, he had rarely performed it since it was written because he never thought it would be relevant again. Now, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the sentiments expressed in the haunting lament are painfully alive all over again, prompting the rock superstar to pluck on his guitar strings and sing the song again, retaining only the searing cello from the original.
In Europe and America
There’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threat
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr Khrushchev said we will bury you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians loved their children too
Russians was composed some three decades ago and was featured in his first solo album, Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985). And Sting had actually articulated the question of relevance back when he was practising with his new band _ an assembly of stellar jazz musicians from America _ for a concert featuring songs from the album. Bring On The Night, a Michael Apted-directed rockumentary on their practice sessions in Paris, has Sting saying how it is for the better when an overtly political song is rendered irrelevant over time, alluding to the Cold War that wouldn’t end up until 1991.
The idea that a song can become irrelevant over the passage of time is intriguing enough. But to celebrate such an event demands exploration. When? How so? Surely, no composer would want such a fate to befall his tune. Nor would a writer believe that his lyrics would one day be consigned to the ash heap of history for reasons of altered context. For, the one aim behind serious art pursued honestly, be it a song, painting, or symphony, is always longevity _ the universality in theme guaranteeing a shot at timelessness.
Yet Sting, who seemed quite comfortable to let go of Russians from his set-lists, thought it fit to reimagine the song which in its original version is loaded with symbolism. It acknowledges use of a melody by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, synth-propelled to fit the mood of the song that begins with the sound of a ticking clock and some distant chatter which we are now told was culled from the Soviet news programme, Vremya, and communications from the Apollo-Soyuz space mission conducted jointly by the US and the Soviet Union in 1975 and known for that momentous space handshake to symbolise détente between the two superpowers. Phew!
In his latest performance, already viewed by over 18 million on Instagram, Sting junks all the paraphernalia of symbolism. Instead, he has Ramiro Belgardt playing the cello, its stark, monochromatic tone soulfully punctuating his own singing, his malleable tenor retaining the sandy grain of yore but also acquiring a new authority that comes with elegant ageing. “…in the light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful, unthreatening neighbour, the song is, once again, a plea for our common humanity,” he writes in the post accompanying the video of the performance, also including an address for people to send in help in the form of medicines, clothes and food for the people of Ukraine.
How can I save my little boy
From Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?
There is no monopoly in common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
So, songs don’t become irrelevant do they, however, enchanting the idea that some should end up losing their significance? Who would have thought Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday’s rendition of a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol to document lynching of Black Americans at the turn of the 20th century, would be quoted by a Parliamentarian in India to condemn similar atrocities in the 21st century? Why else does the tragedy of John Brown, as rendered by Bob Dylan, find place in the English literature syllabus of high school students here at a time when chest-thumping and robust nationalism is the world order of discourse? With Ore Baba Dekho Cheye, why did Goopy choose to sing about the futility of war and magically freeze the army of King Halla? The answers are implicit in the posers and the tunes they hark back to. Imagine there’s no country, exhorted another pop icon who would have been about a decade older to Sting if he were alive to sing that song again. Imagine is an anthem today. Yet, try and imagine a time when that song would be irrelevant. Then stop and imagine, again, what it would be like.
