Protest In The Jungle
From I Tell A Fly
Released 2017
Recommended Age Group: Secondary to College
At a certain point in my life I worshiped 1977. The traditional birth year of punk was a holy year. It meant the Clash were running around in London fusing reggae, funk, and American folk into a new hybrid. It meant the Ramones were knocking down walls with their peers at CBGBs. It also meant that Sex Pistols were making waves for “The Filth and the Fury” and “God Save The Queen,” one of the more fiery protest punk songs to come out of that year. “God Save The Queen” is a near perfect protest punk song and that is why it continues to resonate with people. However, it left an indelible mark on how protest is understood and conceived of over the last 40 years. Troubadours like Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger, even crossover artists like Bob Dylan, were no longer considered to be the face of protest. Instead it was three chords and anger, and from there protest music diversified. In the 80s punk went underground and American hardcore from Minor Threat to Blake Flag gave us a new understanding of youthful anger. Alongside we saw protest music weave into the DNA of hip hop with KRS-One and Public Enemy being two of my personal favorites. However, protest music also had moments of subtlety. It did not have to be a bombastic affair with unbridled anger; it could be pretty and angry, not just pretty angry.
Benjamin Clementine’s does not seem like a protest musician at all. Despite being homeless in his early 20s, he cut his teeth at high brow affairs like Cannes and the Montreal Jazz Festival. His piano driven music is more Radiohead and Tori Amos than Henry Rollins. In between the rising pianos and synthesizers, Clementine’s voice is a perfect softly spoken London accent driving his tenor. Just as an illustration, he performed at the Burberry menswear launch in 2016; it goes without saying that it was not held anywhere like CBGBs. However, his music is at its heart, particularly 2017’s I Tell A Fly, protest music at its best.
At nineteen Clementine left his native London and headed to Paris and spent a few years playing music on the streets and being essentially homeless in a foreign land. These issues transform his music, in particularly his song “God Save The Jungle.” Although a Sex Pistols reference would be most people’s first instinct, he, like the Pistols, is referencing “God Save The Queen,” the United Kingdom’s national anthem. A national anthem is a rallying cry for any nation’s people, but for people who dream of being a citizen it is a bitter reminder of what they lack. Over the course of the last ten years, more and more displaced peoples and refugees spread across Europe in search of safety from critical threats to their safety. Most came from places like Syria, Iraq, and North Africa, places with devastating wars and/or hardships. Many people filtered through Turkey, Greece, or Italy to finally arrive in Germany, France, or England, but many were sent back or worse died during their travels. One of the major stopgaps in their journeys was a camp near Calais, France simply called The Jungle.
The Jungle can be best described as a shanty town for refugees trying to get across the last 40 miles of the English Channel to England. One of the best descriptions of the Jungle comes from Hate Thy Neighbor, a Vice show hosted by Jamali Maddix. Jamali visits the Jungle on one of its last days and witnesses two different fires, both allegedly started by locals trying to get the camp to dissolve. The camp at its height drew over 3,000 illegal immigrants, most of which were men under the age of 33. However, many of the immigrants were not happy to just sit and wait for the border to open and receive them; so they took it into their hands to use any means to get into England including hiding in trucks and trains. Many were found and returned to the Jungle to try again, but some died trying to get across. According to an article published by the Guardian, the number of refugees that have died to Europe’s so-called “Fortress” policies is 34,361 as of 2018 (they also published a list of the dead, found here).
Clementine’s “God Save The Jungle” is not so much a direct shot at policy makers, but a dive into this particular section of refugee experience. Lines like,
“Where lorries are chariots, railways are stairways
Stairways to heaven, heaven is brightened”
and
“Where tensions do amount and kids must grow as quick as possible”
show obliquely the refugee experience. “Stairways” and “chariots” showing the almost biblical nature of the refugee crisis and how, for many refugees, getting to London can be the same as getting to heaven. Clementine also recognizes that children have to grow up faster here and some do not even have a childhood. Perhaps the most damning line is in the intro to the song,
“Once you get to England and now you have to give up.”
This one line shows the duality of the refugee crisis: on one hand if you get to England, you can stop and give up worry, but on the other, you have travelled to the border, you need to give up because you will never see the other side. Although “God Save The Jungle” does not capture the entirety of the refugee experience, it can open the doors for conversation about refugees and policy. It gives a human face to an issue that is not in many of our students’ everyday life. Further conversation is needed for students to understand the human cost of the global refugee crisis and how it sometimes hits closer to home that we may realize. That is why the following organizations need to be essential components of our schools:
First and foremost, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are a great starting point for teachers and students to understand different global crises. The #TeachSDGs community and the great resources found by many intrepid, forward thinking teachers on Twitter are also a wonderful resource for how to use the UNSDGs in our classrooms.
Exploring what nonprofits and NGOs like the International Rescue Committee are doing in wartorn areas like Syria and Darfur can be eyeopening for both teachers and students.
Finally, connecting with refugees supporting groups in your area and be extremely beneficial. I had a representative from the Utah Refugee Commission come to my school and speak last year and it was a great experience for my students to understand and activate their own thoughts about refugees.
The sister song to “God Save The Jungle” is a few tracks later, “Jupiter”. After releasing his first album At Least For Now Benjamin Clementine was able to tour the United States. One key moment which inspired I Tell A Fly was seeing “an alien of extraordinary abilities” on his visa. It was a small moment that reminded him that being an alien in a new system could happen to anyone for a myriad of reasons.
