“Fernando” (ABBA)

The complications of multinational pop: This song first emerges as a Swedish-language solo recording by Frida. In this trax, she gives comfort to an old man whose sweetheart has passed away. Once it became clear the trax was going to be a big hit, the song fans out into both Spanish and English versions. The Spanish version, with lyrics by RCA-Argentina employee Mary McCluskey, is the weaker of the two: here, ABBA sings to a man who has seen war and has survived because of the “protection” of the stars. The English version, with lyrics by Björn, is far more intriguing and risky: now Fernando and the singer are veterans of a fight for “liberty” across the “Rio Grande” river. Björn eventually will claim that the song is about Zapata during the Mexican Revolution, but this makes no sense: Zapata’s forces never entered U.S. territory. On the other hand, Pancho Villa crossed the border several times, as did General Mariano Arista at the start of the War of North American Invasion (known to the north as the Mexican-American War). It’s finally possible to hear the track as a fantasy Reconquista, through immigration or at the point of gun barrel, with the stars aligned for the future downfall of the white interlopers. Thus, the Spanish version appears to be a sop to Latin American political and market forces. But this still fails to explain how the English language version turn into a Samuel P. Huntington fantasy.

“Are We a Nation?” (Sweet Honey in the Rock)

Since separation is togetherness’ necessary partner—otherwise, why argue?—and togetherness through separation is unacceptable, where are we headed? This boycott-oriented trax in response to Arizona’s SB-1070 is aligned with The Sound Strike collective of artists who encouraged the active marginalization of Arizona from the music marketplace. Come May 2012—a month before the Supreme Court approved of the de facto “driving while Mexican” provision of the law—the boycott transitioned to an embrace of contact, engagement, and a more laissez faire attitude. (Now, it’s pretty much the same as Artist for Action’s stance, without the active pedagogy or artist adulation.) Problem solved? Not quite. Singers invoke the Declaration of Independence, ask rhetorical questions, define “nation” as that which “join[s] heart and hand,” and generally follow MLK’s “constructive, nonviolent tension.” This is a growth narrative. Yet a combative posture is assumed, and a symbolic violence is simultaneously the heart of seeming platitudes, especially when one must “dare” to “stand for justice.” These moments—all moments, really—demand this unity in antagonism, infinitely.

“London” (Nicky Thomas)

Probably most famous for being third in line (but the most successful) to record “Love of the Common People,” Thomas shifts from smarmy community-building to an immigrant’s plaint here. It’s a move from a coercive optimism for the poor to an embodiment of living death in which those of means “don’t care if I freeze to death and die.” The “promised land” is a set of shifting goalposts, each subsequent one narrowing the chances of survival. Salvation, too, is a false panacea, with your preacher soliciting money to go to the “holy land.” We’re implored to “give no money to that lying, cheating man.” But this shouldn’t be mistaken for either a sunny worry about equality (i.e. “we all go or no one does”) or a desire for deeds that match the (national) creeds. “Saturday night” proves formative for the trax’s critical dystopia; parties that are “outside” enjoy the practice of aggressive, excessive exchange. Come Sunday, we institute an economic austerity from the bottom up.

“Immigrant” (Sade)

In a couple of ways, we’re asked here to think about issues of translation. For the trax, the key is a simple—but not simplified—ethics defined as the relation between the least of us (immigrants) and the “toughest among us” (“natives”); the previous phrase is sung in an extreme monotone despite the general lushness of the orchestration. What is the price of being included? What lies beyond—“too much”—the threshold of tolerance when understood in relation to pain? (And perhaps tolerance is predominantly about the experience of pain as much as it is being a pain.) At this level of discourse, things count because of the imposing odds. From an immigrant child’s first lesson in “the fact of blackness” to his “dignified” manner in the face of it to our relative ease in a world where it’s “hard enough/Just to make it through a day,” we’re asked to sympathize while our privilege is idealistically negated by our squeamishness of self-suffering. In a geopolitical vein, things are counted similarly by the United Nations; it’s the vantage point that differs. Noting the “complex interrelationship between migration and development” in their “Declaration of the High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development,” the General Assembly says it’s about “synergies,” though. Things must be square between the rights to movement/livelihood and “development.” (In other words, let there be remittances!) Sade’s allusion to the story of Joseph yokes the two contexts together, with the body and blood of the immigrant wed to the center.