Björk and Declaring for Independence

Björk, short for Björk Guðmundsdóttir, is an Icelandic singer-songwriter, composer, actress, author and music producer. Born in November 21^st 1965, she was brought up by her mother and her step father in Reykjavik, Iceland. Her mother was a feminist activist turned homeopathist, her step father is a blues guitarist and Björk’s own biological father, Gudmundur Gunnarson, is the leader of the Icelandic Electricians’ Union. Aged 11, little Björk learned classical piano at primary school and recorded her first album right after.

Admired for her expressive vocals, theatrical performance and experimental music, Björk has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Her singles such as It’s Oh So Quiet, Army of Me and Hyperballad all charted in the UK Top 10. In year 2000, she won the Palm d’Or for best actress at the Cannes film festival for her lead role in Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. She was ranked #36 on VH1’s The 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll and #8 on MTV’s 22 Greatest Voices in Music and her record label, One Little Indian had sold more than 15 million albums worldwide.

As Tim Walker from The Independent described the artist to be “… inimitable, but with a capacity to frustrate as much as enthrall”, Björk as today’s living legend in music history is best known for integrating her own outlandish persona along with the pieces, colors, strings, screams and tones of her innovation - not only in music, but also in photography, literature, fashion and cinematography. For instance, in cinematography, she has been working with some of the film world’s most talented film makers, naming Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham, in producing surrealistic yet conceptual art form that stand apart from the music itself. Björk along with her countercultural works then became iconized by her appearance wearing an eccentric Alexander McQueen swan dress to the 2001 Oscars ceremony.

But there’s a lot more to Björk than on-screen eccentricity, as an ambassador to Unicef, Björk also dedicates herself in various humanitarian initiatives. Her role as an activist then has inspired her greatly in writing songs for her recent album, Volta, released worldwide on May 8, 2007. As an example, Earth Intruders that envisages a tidal wave of righteous protest “grinding the sceptics into the soil”. As Björk is an artist destined to internally defies forms ever known to creativity, she also externally defies the political norms that have contained it — hence, the song entitled Declare Independence. Similar to Earth Intruders, Declare Independence is also a track from Volta which speaks volumes for the independence activists worldwide. The lyrics include lines such as “Damn colonists. Ignore their patronizing. Tear off their blindfolds. Open their eyes.” and “With a flag and a trumpet, go to the top of your highest mountain. Raise your flag!”.

On her tour in China last March 2008, Björk performed Declare Independence and chanted “Tibet! Tibet! Tibet!” at the closing bar of the song, ending her first and possibly last concert ever in Shanghai. Björk’s call for Tibet had apparently drawn public attention both in China and across the net hemisphere to Beijing’s harsh rule over the Himalayan region. The issue of Tibet is rarely discussed amongst citizens in the country, while the state media has been restrictively accommodating a much more ‘governed’ perspective on Tibet compared to ones by the international media and guarded by press freedom rights. Tibet itself has been living through an endless struggle for independence since China’s People’s Liberation Army troops occupied it in year 1950 and maintained a stronghold of it ever since.

In reaction to the incident, China’s government officials has announced intentions to tighten restrictions on foreign performers and will have their background credentials and management checked more carefully by the culture mandarins. Björk’s concert is considered to be a political propaganda gathering and that her “outburst” broke Chinese law and hurt Chinese people’s feelings. The government also claimed that “there is no country that admits that Tibet is an independent country.”. Prior to Björk’s performance, China has already banned several pop festivals and outdoor events, tightened visa rules to restrict the number of incoming foreigners, snarled international broadcasters’ plans to televise the Games, closed down one of the city’s most popular English-language magazines and disallowed the use of musical instruments, banners and large flags by international supporters, among other steps in preparation for the Olympics starting this August 8th.

Björk has performed Declare Independence to support other independence movements in the past, even before the song was written. Back in the 1990s, Björk played at two Tibetan Freedom concerts in United States and during her performance in Tokyo, days before the Shanghai concert, she dedicated Declare Independence to the newly independent state of Kosovo. This caused a friction between the artist and organizers of Serbia’s EXIT Festival where she was expected to perform in July along with Sex Pistols, Paul Weller and the Hives. Unwilling to submit to the condition proposed by the festival’s organizers, and that is to deny any statements related to Kosovo, Björk’s management then canceled her performance in Novi Sad, Serbia.

Concerning her being a threat to China’s national sovereignty, Björk responded on her website:

I have been asked by many for a statement after dedicating my song ‘Declare Independence’ to both Kosovo and Tibet on different occasions. I would like to put importance on that I am not a politician, I am first and last a musician and as such I feel my duty to try to express the whole range of human emotions. The urge for declaring independence is just one of them but an important one we all feel at some times in our lives. This song was written more with the personal in mind but the fact that it has translated to its broadest meaning, the struggle of a suppressed nation, gives me much pleasure. I would like to wish all individuals and nations good luck in their battle for independence. Justice!.

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