News: Rock and Rule
As Youssou N'Dour runs for president, we look at other politically-minded musos
Senegalese musician Youssu N’Dour has announced he will run for office in the West African country’s presidential elections, due to take place next month. The singer-songwriter — perhaps best known at home as the Francophone foil for Neneh Cherry on 1994 hit ‘7 Seconds’ — hopes to oust the country’s ruler of 11 years, Abdoulaye Wade, whose spending policy N’Dour has criticised as exorbitant in context of the country’s generally low income rates. In making his bid for political glory, N’Dour follows in the footsteps of a clutch of musicians just chomping at the bit to tell their fellow countrymen what to do. Here’s a few of them — let’s see how they got on, shall we?
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Martha Reeves —The Vandellas frontwoman served for four years on the Detroit City Council, only to be stung by the IRS with a series of tax liens totalling nearly $280,000 in 2009. Reeves responded by quitting her post and booking the band in for a European mini-tour, sharpish. Bet she regrets putting that second moat in her manor grounds now, eh.
Wyclef Jean — After the horror of the 2010 Haitian earthquake, Wyclef posited himself as the saviour of his birth nation, without being able to speak either fluent French or Creole, only to be foiled a month later when he was disqualified from the race for not meeting the residency requirement of having actually lived in the country in recent years. After exhausting every legal avenue to get his own way, Wyclef threw a monster strop where he lashed out at former Fugees bandmate Pras for his lack of support, and accused fellow Haiti cavalry member Sean Penn of doing nothing but coke in his time there. Gracious in defeat!
Dave Rowntree — Having already lived the high and fast life, there was nothing exciting left for Blur’s drummer to do except make the leap from music to knocking on doors as a Labour candidate in the über-safe Tory seat of the Cities of London and Westminster, after previous failed bids to become a local councillor. Alas, poor Dave was roundly whupped: he can now be found plying his trade as a trainee solicitor and looking suitably professional on his LinkedIn profile, where he modestly downplays his time in a quite successful band as “two gap decades spent travelling and hitting things.” Still not quite as smug with that sentence as bandmate Alex ‘check out my cheese’ James, but almost there.
Gilberto Gil — Gil was politely shown the door from his native Brazil in 1969 by the military junta that swept to power five years previous, having established himself as a threat to the man with his involvement in the tropicalía movement. On returning from London in 1972 Gil immersed himself in environmental campaigning along with his music, but it was in 1987 that his big break in politics came as he ascended to the rank of culture secretary for the Salvador region of the country. He later served as Brazil’s minister of culture from 2003-2008 — quite the turnaround for a former establishment scourge, an irony not lost on the man himself: “I’ve gone from being the stone thrower to the glass,” he said.
Jello Biafra — The Dead Kennedys frontman had long since been on intimate terms with controversy — he had already faced obscenity charges with his former band, whose members later sued him for non-payment of royalties — but the musician and provocateur really excelled himself with his presidential candidacy for the US Green Party in 2000, for which he chose death-row prisoner and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. Biafra wound up finishing joint second behind Ralph Nader — someone book that man plane tickets to Cambodia for a well-earned holiday!
