Lullabies of the “Evil”

„Lullabies from the axis of evil“ – what a mighty and provocative CD title! It was perhaps the most political and at the same time most moving statement musicians have ever given voice to. The idea for this nation-bridging project came from the Norwegian music producer Erik Hillestad, who with his record label „Kirkelig Kulturverksted“, roughly translated „church cultural workshop“, had already brought together musicians from different cultural spheres many times. Hillestad comes from a religious background and believes that exchange and collaboration have a pacifist power.

In 2004 the Oslo-based producer developed the idea for these lullabies. In 2003, a year earlier, the USA had presented alleged evidence of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations (UN), evidence meant to serve the superpower as grounds for a war of aggression against Iraq and a regime change. This war was just as much a violation of international law as the war in Afghanistan that the USA had already ignited in 2001, in response to the 9/11 attacks. America had tried in vain to obtain a corresponding mandate from the UN Security Council for an attack, and had then tried to legitimise its attack through Article 51 of the UN Charter, the right to self-defence – which, however, does not apply here under international law.

Be that as it may: on 29 January 2002, in a State of the Union address, the American president of the time, George W. Bush, coined the political catchphrase of the axis of evil, which in his view threatens the peace of the world. Specifically he meant the countries Iran, Iraq and North Korea, which supposedly supported terrorists and sought weapons of mass destruction, but he also counted Cuba, Libya and Syria among them.

So during this period, as the USA sought the support of an international community of states in order to instigate imperial wars against a whole handful of countries, the churchman Erik Hillestad had the idea for how the term „axis of evil“ could be countered with genuine peace work: with lullabies for babies, for the weakest, most vulnerable and most innocent creatures of all. Each lullaby was to be sung by two women together – one from the Western cultural sphere and one from a country that, according to Bush, belonged to the axis of evil.

What symbolic power speaks from this project! East and West meet to completely reverse the war propaganda, to give the lie – with lullabies – to the American president’s claim that there are „good“ and „evil“ peoples. Cultural spheres set against one another meet to counter rhetorical aggression with understanding, to confront the violence of war and death with what is virtually the most tender and loving human utterance: the gentle songs of a loving mother for her child. They give a sense of security and are the counterpart to the rhetoric of the American president: wage war if you must wage war – we sing together for our children!

Both musically and in terms of content there are aesthetic commonalities in the lullabies, says Hillestad. The themes are often the same, as is the musical structure. Differences in key, language, metaphor and religion cannot obscure the fact that there is a connection between the cultures of the earth. The Norwegian had, put simply, the hope that US soldiers who hear the lullabies of Iraqi mothers would not torture Iraqi fathers. You cannot prevail against a lullaby, because it is so strong, says Hillestad.

But it was a stony road from the idea to the finished CD: for two years the Norwegian criss-crossed the Near and Middle East to record numerous women singers there under conditions that were at times adverse and not without danger. Thus he travelled on relief flights into war-torn Afghanistan and into pre-war Iraq, recorded singing women despite prohibitions in Islamic states such as Iran and Syria, and had tapes smuggled out of North Korea because he was not allowed to enter. Now it was a matter of finding the Western partners.

But a third of the artists Hillestad approached in the USA declined out of fear of being placed on a blacklist in America and then no longer being allowed to perform there or to sell records – does that not say a great deal about the USA, which defines freedom of speech as a fundamental right and the basis of a democracy and then claims to want to introduce democracy in the „evil“ countries? The fear was, incidentally, not unfounded – when the CD appeared in 2004, it was indeed placed on a blacklist in the USA. Cancel culture is thus truly no new phenomenon.

After a long search, Hillestad finally found top-class singers: the Scottish Eddie Reader sang together with the North Korean Sun Ju Lee, and Sarah Jane Morris from England joined with the Iranian Mahsa Vahdat. Rickie Lee Jones from the USA raises her voice with the Iraqi Halla Bassam, and a German was there too: Nina Hagen, together with Martha Lorenzo from Cuba, set a tender and yet powerful sign against war in the song „Lullaby, Sweet Baby“. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft are the true axis of evil, Rickie Lee Jones stresses in an interview:

They are themselves a triad of evil, which is why they think in such terms. To go down in history as the president who called the people of the Middle East evil is a terrible legacy. To try, in political times, to invoke religion and the idea of good and evil when in reality one is fighting over oil; to try to get the American people to think of these people as evil because one wants their oil – that is what Bush is doing.

The first of these 14 duets that Hillestad recorded was the collaboration between the Palestinian Rim Banna and the Norwegian Kari Bremnes. Rim Banna, who studied music in Moscow and married a Ukrainian man, he met in Nazareth during a cold December night, and he was deeply impressed. The Holy Land, where three great religions were once able to live in peace for centuries, is the region in which the double standards of the Western world constantly give fresh nourishment to the growing extreme fundamentalism in the Muslim world, says Hillestad.

Rim Banna had just given birth to twins and sang all alone before Hillestad’s microphones with frightening intensity „Ya lel ma atwalak“, a cappella. He was moved to tears, although he did not understand a single word of this song, which is about the heartrending longing of a mother wandering in the darkness while she is separated from her two beloved children. The night seems to be endless; the pain of separation from her children makes her age before her time.

It is a universal theme of a loving mother everywhere in the world, which Kari Bremnes then developed further and completed in Norway, supported by the brilliant string virtuoso Knut Reiersrud. When these two strong women live through this never ending night, then every note from their lips affirms that no war in the world was ever necessary. That no war in the world is worth mothers having to mourn their children and no longer being able to sing them lullabies.