In 2008, Madonna concluded Hard Candy with a song called, “Voices,” in which she opened with the lyric (somewhat unfortunately harmonized with Justin Timberlake), “Who is the master and who is the slave?” In many senses, it was a dig at her longtime record company, Warner Bros., as she furnished them with one final album per the stipulations of her contract. Like Prince before her (who changed his name to The Artist Formerly Known as Prince to spite, who else, Warner Bros. Records as he, too, compared himself to a slave), she felt imprisoned by their limitations and impositions for a recompense that didn’t seem quite equitable to her labors. In the present landscape, making comparisons of an “over the top” or “hyperbolic” nature such as these to the longstanding strife black people–and black women in particular–have endured is dangerous territory to tread on. Especially for a white woman (as we all know, adding “white” in front of the word “feminism”–and essentially anything else–instantly discredits it).
But Madonna looks to be immune to the societal pressures of what “should” be done when it comes to how white people are supposed to interact with black people (at the top of the list, they are certainly not allowed to put watermelon anywhere near them, least of all create an entire mise en scène with the fruit in question). The risk one takes these days over the accusation of being both culturally insensitive and appropriating (just ask Ariana Grande about that) has grown even more perilous in terms of the monumentalness of the backlash. But Madonna has specifically stated in her recent interviews in promotion of Madame X that she does not see the usage of her many musical styles on the record as appropriation so much as both celebration and a chance to expose listeners to a type of music they would never otherwise have the opportunity to experience. Acknowledging her privilege in being able to travel the world and be exposed to musical styles and cultures that, to be sure, Americans would never dream of dipping their toe in (whether because of simple narrow-mindedness or financial restrictions), Madonna’s aim is to give back to the universe of her good fortune in the subterfuge of imbuing her record with the hodgepodge of sounds carefully obfuscated in pop that force people to listen to something outside of their own comfort zone.
One such style of music is batuque, which incorporates drums, dancing and call and response singing, all elements which appear on Madonna’s appropriately named “Batuka” (also called as such in honor of the all-female Orquestra Batukadeiras she collaborates with both on the song and in her upcoming Madame X Tour). With an origin story that, as the lore goes, involved slaves turning the sound of their shackles together into a musical rhythm, Madonna also points out in the title cards of the video that Cape Verde (where the Batukadeiras hail from) is considered the birthplace of the slave trade.
To that end, the complex relationship Europe has with Africa in its colonial/enslaving past of the behemoth continent is perhaps part of the reason Madonna once more turned again to director Emmanuel Adjei (responsible for bringing us the tragic majesty of “Dark Ballet“), who is both Dutch and Ghanaian, an ironic duality that helps speak to the nature of the video itself as Madonna, on the one hand, wants to highlight a moment in history so often swept under the rug and, on the other, wants to recreate her first encounter with the Batukadeiras, which she described as a near mystical experience that was not “easy to replicate the significance of [in terms of] our first meeting and how it all happened. How they invited me in and gave me a leather drum, sat me down and said ‘Join Us.’ They took turns dancing and embracing me. They invited me into their world and made me feel extremely welcome. When I asked them to record with me it was the exact same experience. They were just as joyful, just as down to earth, just as open, just as loving”).
So it is that the haunting of the past (again, a lyric from “Voices” comes to mind: “Distant echoes from another time start to creep in your brain”) is captured by the ghost-like linens hanging out to dry in front of a modest house on the coastline. A coastline where, if you squint hard enough, you can still see the slave trade ships ominously coming in. In the face of that potential threat, the Batukadeiras and Madonna gird their loins via the protective talisman of singing, dancing and drumming (all of which, as Madonna continues to point out during the promotional blitzkrieg of interviews for the album, harkens back to the activities that made up her early days of struggle in New York). For as usual, Madonna’s–whether in the guise of Madame X or not–message is one of triumph in the face of adversity. Of shimmying your cares away until they seem too far-removed from the bubble of the dance floor to be relevant any longer. The only trouble with that is, well, many are going to see it as “in poor taste” somehow. For a white lady to dance around with black women as though their story of oppression is hers to commodify for the benefit of her own art and credibility as an artist.
Nonetheless, as Madonna stated of the song and video, “It’s all part of the journey of Madame X. Traveling to different places, different worlds, different cultures, experiencing different folk music. Madame X discovers and respects the history of it, of being inspired by it, and ultimately shares it with the world.” The question is whether the world can let it wash over them without interpreting an appropriative scandal out of it. To let Madonna’s disregard for being deemed inherently and irrevocably insensitive as a white woman to the plight of black people fly as freely as the hawk at the end of the video.
Again, it brings up the demand from 2008’s “Voices”: Who is the master and who is the slave? Is it Madonna over the Batukadeiras, the Batukadeiras over Madonna, public opinion over Madonna or Madonna over refusing to tiptoe around the music and visuals she wants to create for the sake of political correctness?
Oddly enough, in a case of reverse parallels, fellow pop icon Michael Jackson threw himself into whiteness in a much more extreme and psychologically fraught way than Madonna has into “blackness” (though there are rumors of her telltale ass implants, it’s still somehow not as extreme as skin bleaching). Even so, he was never accused of anything other than (surprise!) pedophilia, evading the dreaded scarlet A(ppropriation) precisely because there’s nothing “chic” about being white ergo no one cared to make any claims to the “culture” (or absence thereof).
