Propagandhi #4: “Mate Ka Moris Ukun Rasik An”
By Matthew Stella
Propagandhi plays Ritual on August 12th with RVIVR and War on Women. In the lead-up to the show, longtime fan Matthew Stella will reflect on how the band has impacted his life by reviewing a different Propagandhi song approximately every day until August 12th.
Song: “Mate Ka Moris Ukun Rasik An”
Album: Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes
Released: 2001
First Listen: 2001
Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes is a landmark album for several reasons. It was the first album to feature Todd “The Rod” Kowalski on bass in place of John K. Samson, it was the first album to veer into the realm of metal (thanks in part to The Rod’s arrival) and its politics seem a little less playful than before. There seemed to be less time to play around and a greater sense of urgency. It was also the first Propagandhi album that I bought as soon as it came out.
The album opens with a speech given at a concert or rally or something. It’s a woman who says she isn’t able to sing songs in her home country and how she hopes one day she ‘ll be able to do that. I didn’t really pay attention to what she said at the time, I just wanted the album to start. Then the song opens with a clean guitar (something rare in a Propagandhi song) and the lyrics, “Dickheads shit-talk, huddled single-file. First world frat boys and prairie skinheads, who will never walk a mile or mourn a murdered friend in this tiny woman’s shoes. Drink up and mumble your abuse I’m so humbled by it all.” Then it busts into a furious song about how when Hannah was a teenager, doing teenager things (riding bikes and getting busy behind the sportsplex) this woman was living under a dictatorship supported by our country. The recording of the speech comes from a benefit show that Propagandhi played to support refugees from East Timor. I didn’t know this at the time, I didn’t even know what East Timor was. I ignored the intro and waited for the band to start playing, much like the dickheads in the opening lines of the song. Touché Propagandhi.
The band has a fairly rich history of calling out their fans on bullshit actions, inactions, and prejudices. A lot of bands do this to an extent, but I’m not sure any other band has played a recording of their own concert and then referred to the people in attendance as dickheads. In Propagandhi’s defence, they also have a line in one of their songs that says, “I’ll call you on your shit, please call me on mine.” But the people at the beginning of this song were dickheads, and so was I, and sometimes you need a stern reminder that there are bigger things out there than your favourite band’s new album. Rather than sit back and claim the moral high ground over people who can’t connect to a woman who fled East Timor, Propagandhi included some information along with the album. If my memory serves me correctly, it was in the form of an enhanced CD (hooray 2001!). There was a history of the band, and some interesting links and documents that you could sift through.
Two things that come to mind from this album’s extra content were East Timor and COINTELPRO. The latter is an acronym for the COunter INTELligence PROgram, get it? This was a program that monitored various groups within the United States in the 60s and 70s. It largely targeted leftist groups, black radicals and other such potential threats to national security, you know the Black Panthers, SDS, Martin Luther King Jr., people like that. Oh yeah, and it was mostly illegal.
At that time, East Timor was occupied by Indonesia and called Timor Timur. It was formerly a Portuguese colony until November 1975 when it revolted and became an independent communist state. This lasted less than a month because Indonesia invaded in December. For anyone who doesn’t recall mid-70s international relations theories, East Timor fell under the category of a “domino” based on the Domino Theory. This theory stated that if one country “went Communist” then its neighbour will be sure to follow, and so on, until the entire world is drinking vodka and praising Uncle Karl. Since Communism was an evil and oppressive ideology, free and democratic nations such as Canada and the United States supported any effort to stop Communism from spreading. Under the Domino Theory this meant installing oppressive, right-wing regimes. Either way the “domino” country suffered.
Fast-forward a few decades to 1999: President Suharto (mentioned by name in “Mate Ka Moris Ukun Rasik An”) dies and a referendum is held for Timor Timur to decide their fate (to the extent that powerful countries allow smaller countries to decide their own fates). After an overwhelming vote in favour of independence the country was invaded and occupied by the Indonesian army. Hence the need for the benefit concert and the purpose of “Mate Ka Moris Ukun Rasik An,” which translates to “life or death, it depends.”
Diving into the history of a country such as East Timor makes one cast suspicions on the motives of their own country, especially in the realm of international peacekeeping. I, for one, learned that any claim by the Canadian government to be committed to freedom and democracy abroad should be viewed as tenuous at best, and an outright lie in most cases. I also learned that if someone (even your favourite band) calls you a dickhead, before defending yourself, take a step back and ask, “am I being a dickhead?”