White Guys Just Wanna Have Fun

On May 5, 2006, the lead singer and guitarist of Vampire Weekend,
Ezra Koenig, made the last post on his blog,
Internet Vibes. The
post, “I Hate Blogging,” is about a Harlem hiphop gear shop (it’s near
Marcus Garvey Memorial Park), and offers us a way to understand the
surging popularity of Vampire Weekend. Out of all the baggy and sporty
items in the hiphop store, this is what amazes Koenig: The jackets that
have logos of Ivy League universities. Hanging between two fluted,
Doric pillars are jackets for Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Princeton, and
Columbia (the school attended by the four members of Vampire Weekend).
“What’s going on here?” asks Koenig. “Is this Bill Cosby’s dream come
true? Academic snobbery supplanting ‘bling’ culture as the pinnacle of
prestige for the young hiphop listener? I truly have no idea.”

If Koenig’s mind had made even the slightest effort to penetrate
this mystery in the Harlem store, he would have seen the reflection of
his own ideas turned upside down. The Ivy League jackets were simply
the inverse of the sound and catchy aesthetic of his band. Here in the
Harlem store, low culture is appropriating the codes of high culture;
with Vampire Weekend, high culture (rich kids in the richest country on
earth, America) appropriates low culture (music made by the poor people
in the poorest continent on earth, Africa). And when appropriation is
going both ways—streets kids wearing the symbols of university
prestige; Manhattan’s upper crust playing Soweto
jive—appropriation is not bad. Indeed, it’s strange that Koenig,
who celebrates postcolonial interclass/cultural exchanges as the new
norm, can only recognize such exchanges when those at the top are
taking from those at the bottom and not when those at the bottom are
taking from those at the top.

In general, Vampire Weekend are drawn to the points at which what is
wealthy meets what is indigent, what is respectable meets what is
fallen, what is refined meets what is crude. “I see a mansard roof
through the trees/I see a salty message written in the eves/The ground
beneath my feet/We are garbage and concrete/And all the tops of
buildings, I can see them too.” These opening words for the opening
track on Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album form the verbal
equivalent of a movie-crane shot that moves from the upper floors of
wealth to the streets of poverty. We begin with the elegance of French
architecture and end with “garbage and concrete.”

And so what we have is a fascination with wealth and poverty, and
the entire binary chain that is activated by that class order: high
culture/low culture, expensive/cheap, white/black. It’s not an accident
that Vampire Weekend at once utilize the instrument that’s most
identified with European classical music (the violin) and the
instrument that’s most identified with African music (the conga). This
is the very mechanism by which pleasure is generated in their pop. And
it’s not just African music they are appropriating; it’s impoverished

African music from the ’70s, ’60s, and ’50s. Since the 1980s, Afro
pop has less and less sounded poor. The biggest names in the
business—Papa Wemba, King Sunny Ade, Thomas Mapfumo, Stimela,
Youssou N’Dour—have aspired to and maintained the production
values of the rich and famous. Vampire Weekend are not faithful to this
trend. They instead simulate the sounds of preindependence,
pre-postmodern Africa.

Nor are Vampire Weekend faithful to what is really happening in
Soweto: kwaito music, which is a mix of Chicago house, New York
rapping, and the South African gospel tradition. Koenig describes his
band’s mode and approach as “Upper West Side Soweto,” but a date must
be fixed to this description, because the Soweto he has in mind, once
again, no longer exists. No self-respecting black musician in Soweto
would dare to sound as impoverished as Vampire Weekend’s African pop.
The music that’s currently being produced in Cape Town, Dakar, and
Lagos is recorded with digital equipment and processed by computers.
Africans are not slow to show the world that they are keeping up with
what’s going on in the leading studios of Paris and London.

Yes, Vampire Weekend are fetishizing an Africa that is in the past,
underproduced, and poor in sound quality. An epic encounter with black
Africa is not the meaning of their music. This is why comparing Vampire
Weekend and Paul Simon—just about every music critic in America
has done this—is worthless. For one, Simon’s Graceland was all about a monumental exchange between African and American pop.
Simon’s
musical mission in the mid 1980s had about it the grandeur
of a diplomatic visit: Agreements were made, protocols established,
political issues addressed. We can easily picture Simon sitting at a
table next to Nelson Mandela, facing questions from international news
reporters; replace Simon with Koenig, and that picture instantly falls
apart. Also, Simon used black musicians to authenticate his mission. He
wasn’t appropriating, but actually hiring the best in all of the main
branches of South African popular music.

Finally, there is the matter of a long-term engagement. When I
talked to the bass player of the band, Chris Baio (yes, related to the
Charles in Charge star), late last week, he told me that the
band’s relationship with African pop was not going to end with the
first album. But, really, how far can Vampire Weekend dare to go with
this relationship? And is that what they are about, becoming better at
a dated form of Afro pop? Will they make a trip to Soweto and meet and
perform with the real deal in the dust? Heavens, no! The four must stay
in Manhattan, never get serious, and continue to offer us in the West
simple but fun samples of American boredom and African beats.

charles@thestranger.com