Ken Ficara

Coming back from voting today, I realized that today is the actual 9/11 anniversary. It didn't happen on a Saturday. It happened on a beautiful fall Tuesday, crisp and clear, primary election day. I'm not going to dwell on that day -- there are too manyother tragedies to commemorate right here at home -- lives destroyed by Wall Street and health insurance companies, by oil companies and corrupt regulators, by contaminated corporate food, religous bigotry and hate crimes. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza and the West Bank, Haiti, Congo ... have we no sense of perspective?

But, for a few moments today, I was taken back to that morning nine years ago, back in a different world. In fact, that was two worlds ago. There was the pre-9/11 world of affluence and obliviousness, and then there was the post-9/11 world of fear and war. But now we're past that too. We're bored with the wars. And the fears have been harvested, distilled, and processed, and packaged in attractive disposable containers, so hucksters can peddle them on television.

My 9/11 was a day of confusion and fear and not knowing where friends and loved ones were for hours or days. It was the constant smell of smoke, and the wafting of charred paperwork down Flatbush Avenue. It was rerouted trains and soldiers in the subway, Shrub declaring war and Ghouliani trying to cancel the election. It had nothing to do with anti-Islamic protests, flag-draped marchers, and Repugnants suddenly discovering their support for union labor.

I never wrote any songs about my 9/11 and I probably never will. But today I did record this song, about that other 9/11, the one that scares me even more than hijacked planes. It's a collection of sampled clips from Islamophobic protesters, set to the tune of "God Bless America," played on chromatic and blues harps, and features Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and other great patriots.

Technical Notes

I've done songs like this in the past using GarageBand or other multi-track recording software, but like all my harmonitronica work, this was recorded live to two-track. I programmed the basic rhythm track (including the "No mosque here" chant) on a Korg ESX. I found most of the clips on YouTube and sampled them into a Roland SP-404. Then I started the recorder, started the Korg going, and recorded the clean version of "God Bless America" on a D chromatic, into one of my delay pedals. I let that repeat, started triggering various samples and changing sequences in the Korg, along with overlaying the blues harp.