On the Road with Music and Outrage: The Legacy of Lynching and the Agony of Child Sexual Abuse
This is the definitive book about the evolution of the band Crying 4 Kafka. The author is Erika Blair, and the book is titled The Sanctity of Rhyme: The Metaphysics of Crying 4 Kafka in Prose and Verse.
By Paul R. Abramson
You know the singer. The one with the pained, soul weary delivery that squeezed every last bit of feeling out a rolled-up tube of gravitas. Teetering, as she often did, on the edge of surrender, only to be revitalized, perhaps even resurrected, by the power of her song. And you and I, like awestruck passengers in the backseat of a Mercury Eight, always going along for the ride.
That was Billie Holiday. And Strange Fruit was her song.
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Lynching. That’s what it’s about, and the ever-widening disgrace and savagery of American democracy stooping to its most inhumane level. The song of the century TIME magazine called it. It was all Billie, through and through.
Or was it? Strange Fruit was Billie’s signature. Her imprint was all over it. Which is true, of course, but the fact of the matter is that a white guy wrote it. A Gandhi in gabardine. An alchemist of righteousness. When he could no longer save the Rosenbergs from the hot seat, he adopted their kids. When he saw a ghastly photograph of two hanging black bodies, and spectators pointing at those bodies, he wanted to do something about that, too. It was Abel Meeropol who wrote Strange Fruit. He then made a recording of it (under the pen name of Lewis Allan), and his wife Anne did the vocals. After Billie Holiday adopted it, Abel’s scathing indictment of lynching became electrifying. There has never been a song like it.
Music and Outrage is what I started calling compositions like this, and I wanted a small piece of that. I wanted to hit listeners hard. Getting them to pay attention. Take their heads out of the sand. Why would anyone sing about crowning thy good with brotherhood, when there was blood on the leaves and blood at the root?
Child sexual abuse is fucked up, too. The torment never goes away. I was working in the Bayou on a case where a 5-year-old girl had been raped by her mother’s 19-year-old boyfriend – and the mother, a thirty-seven-year-old law enforcement officer - concealed it. The conniving adults lied like hell when they finally took her daughter to the emergency room, drawling in unison to the attending physician, she jest been playin’ on da bed. I made the mistake of mentioning the details of this case in my UCLA Sex and the Law class. A student fainted. Another screamed uncontrollably. The paramedics came.
Meanwhile, I was working on another despicable case, this time in the Wild Wild West. A savage monster of a stepfather was sexually terrorizing his 10-year-old stepdaughter. Is there no end in sight to such wretched misery?
A chorus spontaneously materialized in my head. Fuck Mom, Fuck Dad, Fuck all the memories I never had. Fuck honor, Fuck obey, Fuck the wrath of judgment day. That repeating chorus is entombed in the 2010 Crying 4 Kafka song, fittingly titled Fuck Mom/Fuck Dad.
It’s not all bombs and sledgehammers, however. The verses begin artfully enough. The first one, for example, starts with an axiom about domestic child sexual abuse. Secrets hidden well, weary infidels. Pity spread on thick, morphine and the fix. Budda hooked on meth, clown that quotes Macbeth. Spirit handed down. Saint and his crown - and then - Fuck Mom, Fuck Dad, Fuck all the memories I never had.
I envisioned the song as a parable that could transcend the narrative storyline. At its core, Fuck Mom/Fuck Dad expresses a willingness to wrest meaning from the psychological pain of child sexual abuse. The hope was that by doing so, it would provide a credible voice, a mantra perhaps, for survivors of this grievous crime. And for all the rest of us, who are willing to take this lesson to heart, it’s a lyrical awakening. An ember, so to speak, in the world of Music and Outrage. Couching Fuck Mom/Fuck Dad within the sonic power of punk rock was like pouring gasoline on a fire.
It was then that I started imagining Crying 4 Kafka as gospel music. Not Christ’s teachings, of course, but instead, gospels that were distilled from artistic imaginations that had been charred by, or identified with, psychological adversity. The band members, as de facto apostles, were spreading recognition and empathy, as least obliquely, for the tyrannized amongst us, while simultaneously serving as inadvertent champions of Music and Outrage.
CREDITS: The original music for Fuck Mom/Fuck Dad, which appeared on the 2010 Crying 4 Kafka CD titled It Ain’t Always Paradise, was recorded by Steve Stewart at Waiting for Godzilla Studio in Santa Barbara, California. Paul du Gre produced and mastered the song. Paul Abramson wrote the lyrics and sang lead vocals, while the multi-instrumentalist Steve Stewart composed and performed all of the music. The current iteration of Fuck Mom/Fuck Dad was performed by Paul Abramson (lyrics and vocals), Tania L. Abramson (back-up vocals), Marc Bobro (Bass), Alfredo Ortiz (drums (while sitting in for Brian Kovarick)), and Ian Putnam (guitar). It was recorded at Vending Machine Sound in Santa Barbara, California in 2018, and at Paul and Mike’s Studio in Burbank, California in 2019. Paul du Gre produced, recorded, and mastered the 2019 version of Fuck Mom/Fuck Dad presented herein. The song can also be heard on the Crying 4 Kafka Sound Cloud artist page.