How Kahil El’Zabar asks us to rehear America
Since last week’s post on Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. and campaign patriotism, I’ve been thinking more about symbols of national patriotism that circulate in visual and musical culture. I was struck this week by another flag, this one on the cover of Kahil El’Zabar’s new album America the Beautiful. It’s clear from this cover that the symbol of the American flag is powerful, but its meaning is also contested.
The late political scientist Benedict Anderson called nations “imagined communities.” He was fascinated by the question of how someone would feel part of a community of people, especially when they could never expect to meet the overwhelming majority of them. Anderson argued that a national consciousness forms around symbols, like national anthems and flags. People who experience these symbols as their own imagine connections to a broader community that shares the symbols, even if they have not met in person.
Because nations are abstract ideas—“imagined communities,” in Anderson’s terms—national symbols play a particularly powerful role in shaping and reshaping our sense of national identity. These meanings are also not set in stone; our idea of the nation is always open to new interpretations.
Kahil El’Zabar in 2008
Photograph by Sheldon (Shelly) Levy, Buffalo, NY, USA - CC BY 2.0,
The music and album artwork of Kahil El’Zabar’s America the Beautiful work in tandem to reimagine traditional symbols of American nationalism. The opening track is El’Zabar’s version of “America the Beautiful.” It begins not with the strict march rhythm typically associated with patriotic tunes, but rather with relaxed syncopated percussion. The tune to “America the Beautiful” soon enters recognizably, but each instrument contributes its own harmonization and unique timbre to the heterogeneous performance.
The album artwork by Nep Sidhu also brings us recognizable symbols of America reimagined and recontextualized. The cover’s American flag is obscured by an abstract gold metallic form, and its stars are replaced by white script (perhaps kufic?). The entire flag is framed in a warm yellow color that softens the self-assured patriotism of red, white, and blue. The black symbols next to the album title recall Arabic text, and tacitly ask us to consider how Arab identities are American, too.
In total, America the Beautiful presents the idea of America as a question, rather than a confident reality. Is America beautiful? If so, what makes it beautiful? Who is America? Does America sound uniform and rigid, or soft and eclectic? Through visual and musical symbols, El’Zabar and Sidhu ask us to rethink received ideas about American beauty and reconsider the shape of American community.
