Should musicians be political, if yes, how? Is it good anyway? Not an ordinary, but a human and emotional interview with Mirza Ramic from Arms and Sleepers.
Mirza ON AIR
Mirza Ramic from the American band, Arms and Sleepers was playing in Budapest recently on the latest Fingers Crossed live act. Before the gig, I had a very interesting conversation with him, I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
Releasing a double LP with 18 songs – instead of publishing singles or EPs – is not so common nowadays, but you did it regardless. Why?
Our last album was very short but we tend not to think about stuff like that. When we make music, we just make what we feel is right. So, this album, we have all these songs and ideas and we thought of it as a collection of compositions and it felt right together. We cut a lot of songs out, it could’ve easily been a triple LP. We just focused primarily on the creative process, not on whether people listen to albums or not – which they don’t. We just wanted to make a record that felt good for us and that we liked. And then whatever other people think is what they think, but we wanted to make sure first that we are honest with ourselves.
Listening to your 2LP – ‘Love is Everywhere’, you can see it’s a whole story. There is a beginning and an end. And as you mentioned, you cut out songs, how did you decide which one is in, and which is out?
A lot of it has to do with what certain songs mean to us and to me. Some are written in a certain time period in our lives, maybe a year ago, when we were going through a tough time or had a very life-changing experience. So those ones, we decided to focus on more than some songs which we wrote just before we finished the album. So, we mostly went for songs we had strong personal and emotional attachment to.
I read a review of your latest record. It says the whole work was inspired by your experiences in Chicago, where you worked as a social worker. What happened there?
I worked there for three months in the education field with a lot of really young, poor African-American kids two years ago. I have to say, Chicago is a very divided city, racially segregated and I met with a lot of kids who have no opportunities or hope because they are black or whatever. And seeing their talent and their passion really inspired me to work on this album. The cover artwork was made by one of my students there.
Was involving them a conscious decision? Was it part of your plan all along?
I mean when it’s one of the students or somebody I’m mentoring, if I’m moved by their art and their passion and what they do in life, I’m always open for collaborating and including them in any way we can in our music. I sent them a couple of songs from our album before it was finished and said: ‘This is about you, these songs are about what I’ve heard about you and your life stories, you inspired me. Would you like to also contribute to some artwork?’ And he replied: ‘Yes’. Then we worked together, so he’s a very good friend of mine now and he’s a very talented artist and it’s nice to combine together.
Did you have a gig there since you released the album?
I play in Chicago every now and then but I haven’t played there since the album was released. We’ll play there in September, so we’ll see how that show goes.
Listening ‘Love is Everywhere’ you can hear the critical shape, you can feel that it is political: like a manifesto. There is a never-ending debate (or discussion): is it okay or not to be political as a musician, to talk about social problems or ideological questions, beliefs? What do you think about this?
I’m glad that you asked because I had a lot of arguments about this over the last five months. Because I think we’ve lost quite a number of fans because we were very vocal about the election, about other stuff, like Romania, about their protests, Poland, the rise of the right, immigration in Europe, terrorist stuff, etc. I was born in Bosnia, so my life started with a very political, negative consciousness of what is going on.
So, you were there and fled from Bosnia during the Balkan wars?
Yeah, I was born there and left in ‘92. Lived in a couple of countries and in ’96 we moved to America, as immigrants. So, my background is a background of a refugee, of a place in conflict and my identity was shaped by war. Conflict based on religious belief and ethnic differences, all the bullshit. We’ve been much more political throughout music in the last 6 months to a year, even last year when there was a huge refugee crisis in Europe. You will see that I talk before and during shows and I usually talk about more serious stuff. Personally, I say that anyone who says that music shouldn’t be political is full of shit. Completely. Political doesn’t mean that you have to be involved in politics. It means that you care about what is going on around the world right now. And if you, as an artist, or even just as a human being, whoever you are, are not talking about, discussing or caring about the bad things that are going on in the world right now, then you are not an honest person. Because if you are an artist and you say that you don’t want to mix, what’s going on in the world with your art, it means that you are choosing to ignore a very fundamental part of your society, which is dishonest and is complete bullshit. We live in our society so of course we are involved. I mean you can’t escape it.
How can you, as an artist, do it elegantly?
You have to be honest with yourself. If you think Trump or – for instance – Orbán is a piece of shit, if you really disagree with these politicians or characters or laws in your country or the economic system, the form of capitalism which we have right now, if you disagree with these things, you have to say something about it. You don’t necessarily have to talk about it like I do. I say something and that’s one thing but if you are just conscious of it while you make your art, that’s great. There are people who say that they want to cut it out completely and I really don’t like that. Since January, when the album came out, I posted a bunch of things about my personal experience. Some people said that ‘I really don’t like that, you should keep your music separate from politics, you’re ruining my experience in music because you are standing up for something I don’t believe in’ and I’m like ‘that’s okay, if you want me to be quiet about something, then you are getting fake art.’
If you talk about this kind of stuff, how can you transmit political messages into the language of music?
You have to be clever about it. Not everyone is very clever about it, I mean it’s not an easy thing to do. I think it’s all about connecting to people. Last year in April I was touring around Europe and there was the whole refugee thing going in the Greece and Italy and people would ask questions. ‘What do you think about Muslims in Europe?’ and then I would say ‘Well actually, I’m a Muslim. I’m white, but I’m a Muslim. I mean I’m an atheist, but I have a Muslim background.’ So, people were very shocked, because you would never think a guy with a hat, white, tall, from America, he can’t be a Muslim, right?
It’s because there’s a belief in Europe that Muslims from Bosnia or Albania or even Kosovo are not the same Muslims as the guys from the Middle East?
That was kind of pushing people’s stereotypes a little bit because I want to have people come to my show and say, ‘your music really means a lot to me’ and then we start to talk about things like this. You say, ‘maybe the world is not perfect that Arms & Sleepers has to be an American band by a white guy who is Christian’. And then, ‘maybe he’s a Muslim and that’s kind of strange, but I still like the music and its okay’. And next time you meet somebody from Syria who makes music you like, and you don’t care that they are from Syria, you care about that you like their music. You’re just opening up this discussion, this dialogue, I think it’s very important.
I’m asking because I see that bands – even newcomers, youngsters – are not as political as they should/could be. Okay, I have to add that during the ’70s, ’80s, and maybe after that, there was a process of trying to create an apolitical society. It may be one of the reasons that I haven’t seen these kinds of interests so often amongst the Hungarian youngsters even if they were born after the collapse of the communism.
Music is a form of communication. Just like language. And through music, you connect to a community. And each has things which they discuss. What are the laws of our country? How do we treat each other? Does it matter if someone is black or white or they come from a different religion? It’s just a form of communication to get people together to be able to sort of understand each other. There are music scenes in America that bring together lesbian and gay people together and that’s great because that’s what it’s about! If bands that had lesbian and gay people in themselves would say ‘no, we are not going to talk about this stuff’, then what’s the point? I mean you are trying to communicate a certain identity and way of life.
We’ve seen the music industry and the consumption habits are changing. Fewer people want to buy records in a physical way, more are streaming, torrenting. What do you think about this whole free-downloading phenomena? Do you support or oppose it?
I’m not against it at all but it’s a really complicated topic. The first thing I’d say is that music, in general, is underappreciated. So, people think that music just happens. But somebody might say that a certain band or artist can save their life, similarly to when you go to a medical office to a doctor and you have a broken knee, the doctor is trained to fix your knee. If you are going through a tough time in your life, if you have a mental problem, you rely on someone, on an artist, to spend a lot of hours to make music that would help you. When I was a little kid, I listened to Nirvana all the time! And it helped me feel better. But that music didn’t just happen. Those people sat down, wrote it, went into a studio, recorded it. It took time, it took money. I think today people think music just happens because there is so much of it out there. So, I think music is underappreciated as a skill and as a profession. But I have to tell you, I also perform in a lot of places, poor ones. You know, I play in like Eastern part of Ukraine. I don’t expect someone to spend 20 euros on vinyl there. So, of course, I understand if they go and download the music for free. And those shows are some of the best that I played! So, for me, it kind of balances it out, because those who get the music for free and really enjoyed it will come to the show. They will pay to come and they will continue to listen to your music, and eventually, they will even buy it if they can and that means something. So, I think people who get it for free and are not moved by it, who cares anyway?
There is a huge debate amongst musicians that streaming services, like YouTube, help or capitalise the performers, bands? Thom Yorke, from Radiohead, likened YouTube to Nazis, because – he said – they did nothing just plundering and giving nothing back to the artists. What are your experiences?
I should say that we see more money from streaming than we used to. Like Spotify, you do see some money. It is a little, but if you are active artists, it’s enough to keep you going. So, I think it is definitely improving, like Spotify, which gives a percentage of their income to the artists but it is still very difficult to be an artist.
EDITED by Károly Gergely
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