I personally am a huge
fan of classic rock, and The Rolling Stones sit high on my list of best rock
bands ever. Their song “Brown Sugar” is incredibly catchy and fun to jam out to
in the car, until you realize what Mick Jagger is singing about.
The
lyric is about slaves from Africa who were sold in New Orleans and raped by
their white masters. The subject matter is quite serious, but the way the song
is structured, it comes off as a fun rocker about a white guy having sex with a
black girl.
Mick Jagger was the writer
for the lyrics. According to Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones bass guitarist), it was partially inspired by a black
backup singer named Claudia Lennear, who was one of Ike Turner's Ikettes. She
and Jagger met when The Stones toured with Turner in 1969. American-born singer
Marsha Hunt is also sometimes cited as the inspiration for the song. She and
Jagger met when she was a member of the cast in the London production of the
musical Hair, and their relationship, a closely guarded secret until 1972,
resulted in a daughter named Karis.
The other perspective has
to do with many of the band members drug problem during their time as
musicians. According to the book Up And
Down With The Rolling Stones by Tony Sanchez, all the slavery and whipping
is a double meaning for the perils of being "mastered" by Brown
Heroin, or "Brown Sugar." The drug cooks brown in a spoon.
Some symbolic background knowledge on what brown sugar represents needs to be
explained. In 327 BC Alexander the Great came across the cultivation of sugarcane in India. From this reed, a dark brown sugar was extracted from the cane
by chewing and sucking. Some of this "sweet reed" was sent back to
Athens. This was the first time a European had come across sugar. (From the
book Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed
Pearce). From then on sugar cane became a source of wealth all over the world, eventually
finding itself in the New World. But along with the sweet sugar cane came the wretched
taste of slavery. Growing sugar cane was a major cash crop and ruled islands in
the Caribbean as well as the South in the United States.
The Caribbean during this
time was controlled by Great Britain, the Dutch, French, and Spanish. It is
this symbol of white-European colonialist rampaging land that is not theirs in
which “Brown Sugar” is getting at. The expanding power of sugarcane caused for
so much social injustice and inhumane treatment of African slaves.
It’s ironic since The Rolling Stones are an
English band (former colonizers) and their band was at the time forming the so
called “British Invasion” along with The Beatles, where America was embracing
the rebellious rock-and-roll music into their culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment