Chris Smith’s blog

Last surf of the year.

My newest piece for Thought Catalog, a meditation on the legacy of Jimi Hendrix, and his use as a catch-all comparison for all sorts of non-Western music.

I’m not sure exactly when I first heard a musician from some far-flung spot on the globe described as the “Jimi Hendrix of [insert place name here].”

…

It’s only natural to reach for some sort of shorthand to translate the esoteric sounds of distant cultures into a language understandable to anyone with a passing knowledge of western culture. People might not know what a kamelengoni is (for the record, it’s a 12-stringed, harp-like instrument), but when you describe Vieux Kante as the Hendrix of the kamelengoni, everyone gets it: the guy’s a badass.

…

Read the whole thing here.

A couple of weeks ago, the Mail & Guardian ran a story of mine on the 1970s Zamrock scene. Sub-Saharan Africa isn’t much known for its rock’n'roll, but for a brief time in the late 1960s and ’70s every young guy from Lagos to Lusaka wanted to be Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. Zambia, which makes few headlines in the west, was the cradle of this scene, hence the name. It was a heady time–these guys were full-on rock stars, with platform boots, groupies, and wild parties–but the economy tanked, the AIDS epidemic hit, and the scene was snuffed out.

I profile Jagari Chanda, probably the most famous Zamrock star of his day, who sang for a band named the Witch. He now ekes out a living as a gemstone miner in the bush. He’s looking for another shot in the music business. I hope he gets it.

It is a Saturday night in Kitwe, a rough mining town in Zambia’s Copperbelt, and the bar is growing louder by the minute. The DJ plays American hip-hop, the beer flows and crowds of young miners, grizzled expatriates and working girls shout over the din.

Once upon a time, every head would have turned when Emmanuel “Jagari” Chanda walked through the door. Tonight, nobody realises that the barrel-chested sexagenarian in the leather jacket was once Zambia’s biggest rock star.

(The photo comes from the cover of a self-released compilation Jagari put together. For years, hard-to-find releases like this were the only way to hear the music. Now-Again records, though, has begun reissuing albums by the Witch and other Zamrock greats.)

This month’s San Francisco magazine runs my piece on a legal challenge that could bring California’s death penalty law crashing down. The decision is expected this fall, but no matter which way the judge goes we can expect appeals stretching to the horizon. Ultimately, though, it’s hard not to see this challenge as yet another step on the road to abolition.

One way or the other, members of the defense community are cautiously optimistic that the death penalty’s days are numbered. “It’s like pushing a boulder uphill,” Zimring says. “But things are changing.”

Yesterday, the Huffington Post ran my initial take on the Occupy SF movement–and Occupy Wall Street in general.

…

The encampment, huddled on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Reserve on Market Street, was a veritable Noah’s Ark of lefty protest. There were dreads in camo pants, Boomers in recycled-rubber sandals, crust punks with Guy Fawkes masks — red meat for Fox news, in other words.

But then a DPW street cleaning truck trundled by on Market Street. The guy in the passenger seat was leaning halfway out the window, high-fiving sign-waving protesters on the sidewalk. And every time the F-line passed the driver leaned on his horn, prompting a cheer from the protesters.

Clearly, this wasn’t just another San Francisco protest.

…

This is a fast-moving story, though. After my piece went up yesterday, word got out that the police were planning another raid on the camp Wednesday night. The call went out, and maybe a thousand came out to protect the encampment, and stayed deep into the night. A few impressions from last night’s gathering:

SF’s Brass Liberation Orchestra played its highly danceable version of protest music. The guy with the tuba was my favorite.

A woman danced while wearing a gas mask.

A new chant (at least to my ears) was born: “Hella, Hella Occupy!”

Rumors flew that some 2,000 Oakland occupiers were marching across the Bay Bridge to reinforce the SF encampment. Alas, they were just rumors.

Word was that hundreds of riot cops were massing in Potrero and headed to Justin Herman. Somewhat puzzlingly, they had piled into Muni buses for the ride up to the encampment. The jokes, of course, told themselves: “Riot police are on their way, but they may be a little late–they’re taking Muni.”

Bart shut down Oakland’s 12th Street station to prevent the Oakland occupiers from coming to San Francisco. Then they closed Embaradero station–due to a “civil disturbance,” as the agency put it. If only Bart could monetize the commuter anger it’s been generating lately, there’d be enough money to fund 24-7 service across the bay.

There was a lot of cigarette smoke. Activism requires lots of standing around and waiting. Hence the cigarettes.

Organizers taught the crowds to link arms and form defensive lines encircling the camp. People scrawled the number for the National Lawyers Guild (415.285.1011) on their arms, and donned vinegar-soaked bandanas in case of tear gas.

And then nothing happened. The cops never showed. Possibly because there were so many people there and the City Family didn’t want to risk an Oakland-style melee. It couldn’t have hurt that a good chunk of the city’s elected officials–including mayoral candidates Avalos, Yee, Adachi, and Chiu–turned up in the plaza last night. (Yes, Occupy SF has become an issue in the mayor’s race.) Today, the police said their maneuvers were just late-night training exercises. Advisory letters sent to businesses near the encampment suggest otherwise.

In any case, the camp’s still there. At least until tonight.

That’s the subject of my new piece for San Francisco magazine. If you believe the polling, it doesn’t look good for Lee’s opponents. But ranked choice voting is a cruel mistress, and the scandals surrounding Lee’s campaign backers are beginning to pile up. If Lee stumbles down the stretch, here’s a (half-serious) look at how his opponents might prevail.

Historical note: I might be the first journalist in San Francisco to name-check Jello Biafra, Barry Zito, and that terrible ’90s band, Train, all in one piece.

This month’s San Francisco magazine (see p.38) runs my piece on broken political promises, from the “no new taxes” pledge that helped make George H.W. Bush a one-term president to Barack Obama’s liberal bait and switch to SF mayors Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, and, most recently, Ed Lee. How pissed should voters be? Sometimes, mendacity is in the eye of the beholder.

When interim Mayor Ed Lee announced his intention to run for a full term this fall, erstwhile allies like Board of Supervisors president and mayoral candidate David Chiu let him have it, and rightfully so. After all, the supes had given Lee the interim post precisely because he said he wouldn’t run. Voters, though, greeted the charges with a shrug: Politics as usual, no? Still, a look at some broken promises by prominent pols, past and present, reveals some interesting middle ground between “unforgivable” and “no big deal” that may help you decide just how charitable to be toward this latest bait and switch.

[ ... ]

Third in an occasional series of found photographs. This is a stereoscope from 1900, depicting a pastoral, pre-Pyramids Road Giza district, a place without sleazy discos, papyrus shops, and choking exhaust.

My exploration of the struggle between supporters of Israel and Palestine on the UC Berkeley campus, in which I trace a decade of passion, protest, and bad behavior, runs in this month’s California magazine.

Every spring since 2001, a group of earnest, impassioned students has gathered near Sather Gate, cordoning part of it off with emergency tape. Some of them don faux uniforms and brandish mock M-16s; others wear keffiyehs and traditional Arab robes. Then the actors set up a military checkpoint, a simulacrum of the hundreds of real checkpoints that pepper the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The “soldiers” allow “Israeli settlers” to pass unmolested while they yell at the “Palestinians.” They bind the wrists of a young man, forcing him to lie face down on the concrete; another they “shoot.” There is fake blood, a makeshift stretcher, the wailing of the wounded and bereaved.

Created by the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the mock checkpoints first appeared at Berkeley, and have spread to schools from Arizona State to Yale. It’s easy to see why.

…

The checkpoints are just one of the most visible elements in a decade-long, tit-for-tat struggle between supporters of Israel and Palestine on campus. It is waged through Palestinian movie nights and Zionist picnics; tables in Sproul stacked with literature quoting Edward Said and Theodor Herzl; and Palestinian “die-ins” and pro-Israel hip-hop shows. Ron Hendel, a professor of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies sums it up: “It’s a PR war.”

And wars are never pretty. Partisans have engaged in online flame wars in the comments sections of local newspapers, disrupted speeches by visiting scholars with shouted obscenities, and scrawled swastikas (aimed at both sides) on campus walls. Students even got into a fight at a 2008 campus concert.

In its dynamics, this local fight often echoes the flesh-and-blood conflict in the Holy Land—minus, thankfully, the body count.

…

Check it out.