A tribute to Linkin Park, a generational touchstone

The mounting number of greats the music world has lost, and in quick succession, in the last decade is unthinkable. In no particular order, and just to name a few: Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland, Prince, Michael Jackson, Chris Cornell. Just the other day, after the shock of Cornell’s suicide was beginning to wane on me, in walks my brother with another bombshell: “The Linkin Park singer died,” he said. At that moment, I instinctively turned my head and averted my eyes, staring expressionless into space in disbelief before I shook my head and compulsively Googled Linkin Park in search of the evidential headline: “Linkin Park Singer Chester Bennginton Dead, Commits Suicide By Hanging” read the link to TMZ’s post. Just two months prior on May 17, Cornell was in his native Detroit seemingly excited to be at “Rock City” for a show, as noted in what became his last tweet when mysteriously, he passed away the following day of the same cause. Likewise, Bennington – who passed away on what would have been Cornell’s 53^rd birthday – was too, in the midst of planned gigs. The band was set to play Mansfield, Massachusetts the following week to kick-off Linkin Park’s One More Light world tour, which has since been cancelled by the band in the throes of their devastation. The grief of such a tragedy reminds me of when Avenged Sevenfold lost their drummer, James Sullivan “The Rev,” in 2009 of a reported overdose. And, not to mention, Nirvana, when the group lost Kurt Cobain in 1994 from suicide.

While Bennington was characterized in recent years with his dark shaven head, gauges and winsome smile, the Bennington that will always stand out to me was in Linkin Park’s heyday circa 2000 when he first emerged onto the scene -- his hair bleached and wearing glasses occasionally. Looking back to my middle school days, the band was a generational touchstone to a group of coming-of-age kids that I was blessed to be a part of. It was Y2K when Linkin Park first gained commercial success with their debut smash “Hybrid Theory.” I first discovered them like I discovered most other rock music at that time – through my older brother. He had “Hybrid Theory” on CD as well as Alien Ant Farm and Eminem’s “The Marshall Mathers LP,” among others. We used to play them on a small, plug-in boom box that had a built-in radio, CD and cassette player that my parents gifted me for my 12^th birthday. I remember picking up “Hybrid Theory” and seeing the words “Linkin Park” in bold lettering. Even the name carried power. I didn’t really start getting into them until I was 14. Their music – whose lyrics oft-portrayed themes centered on self-defeat, insecurity, unresolved emotional pain and inadequacy – resonated with a generation of teenagers, a number of which compose today’s millennials, myself included. In fact, when I think about my high school days, I think about Linkin Park. The band, as well as other popular nu-metal acts of that time including System of a Down, Limp Bizkit and Korn – all too often shared the sentiment of motivation music for lots of angst-driven teens and a lot of athletes needing to get psyched up to train or compete in a sporting event. I remember being on the track team and hearing “In the End” and Mike Shinoda’s deftly delivered raps blaring from a fellow track runner’s headphones on the bus ride to a meet. The somber playing of the electronic keyboards of “Crawling” sounded as the clank the weights would make as football players dropped the chrome bar after a fierce few rounds of strenuous repetitions on the bench press. I remember the personal significance 2003’s “Breaking the Habit” meant to me and hearing Bennington rage about confusion and the urgent need for self-improvement against the juxtapositon of delivering dulcet vocals and throat-scratching screams. The song’s release was the same year Elliott Smith, an all-embracing indie rock hero and my favorite solo artist of all time, had taken his life.

On the day Bennington died, I did what I believe every fan of his did: played the music. It took me back to the good old days, which also sparked nostalgia of when Audioslave’s “Be Yourself” came out in 2005. I used to watch the music video on TV before heading to school, much like I did Linkin Park’s videos. It was one of my favorite songs as it stressed the importance of being true to you because, despite feelings of imagined inadequacy, why would you want to be anyone else? To quote Cobain: “wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you.” Bennington echoed this sentiment in “Numb” when he sang: “All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you.” I think this is a message we all have to heed because we are all beautiful, no matter our struggles. Eminem said it. Even Elliott Smith had a song called “Happiness.”

In a letter Bennington had addressed to Cornell after his passing which he shared on Twitter, he mentioned a few of his own personal thoughts about Cornell in particular, but are all too often a part of us all:

“… Your voice was joy and pain, anger and forgiveness, love and heartache, all wrapped up into one. I suppose that’s what we all are.”

'Purple Rain' adaptation falls in the Sahara Desert

Onstage before a crowd of wide-eyed, smiley fans, a local rock star positions a campo on his purple Fender and begins playing an infectious lick.

“I believe love can make you sick, crazy,” sings the phenom. “Make you lose your way…”

Dressed in purple garb and a cloth covering his face revealing only his soulful eyes, one could assume that given his long brown ring-adorned fingers and his swaying vigorously to the melody emanating from his left-handed guitar that this man is playing Prince. (Or maybe Hendrix?) But he’s neither. He’s Mdou Moctar – the young musical sensation who captured the hearts of locals in the Sahara Desert. While most recognize him from weddings, others know him as “the one from the cell phones,” as one fan remarks to another in the film. She’s referring to when Moctar’s spacey Auto-Tuned songs about peace and love went viral via the music trading networks of cell phones in Africa’s Sahel region in the late 2000s.

While paying homage to the late Prince in this fierce adaptation of Purple Rain – the 1984 classic which chronicled The Kid’s rise to fame – Moctar is not in the bustling mecca of Minneapolis playing with his band The Revolution. He’s in Agadez, Niger’s largest city with his band the Azawair group.

In Christopher Kirkley’s Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai loosely translated into English as Rain the Color Blue with a Little Red In It, the Portland native and owner of label Sahel Sounds who relocated to West Africa after college, settled for this title given the lack of a word for “purple” in Tamasheq, the native language of the Tuareg – a quasi-nomadic Muslim people inhabiting the region.

Kirkley, who documents the music scenes in cities, said the idea for the film had potential as a “cultural product” which could resonate to local audiences. The film marks many firsts: Moctar’s first full-length movie role, Kirkley’s directorial debut and the first feature film in the universe all in the Tuareg language. While doing away with the nudity and violence typified in Purple Rain, the 75-minute film stays the course of Prince’s life story – from his escapism through music, to coping with family troubles and jealous competitors, hurdling romantic woes and, of course, his ultimate triumph as the one-and-only.

Below, I speak with Kirkley about the making of the movie.

LA: How long have you been wanting to do this film?

CK: The idea to make a “Purple Rain in the Sahara” had been kicking around for years. I spend a lot of time hanging out with bands, and documenting the music scenes in various cities and towns. The wedding circuit, where musicians are competing with one another for these lucrative contracts, is one of the most winner-take-all scenes. Being a musician in West Africa is not a hobby, but very much a profession, with lots of competition. The idea of a film was originally in jest, the fever dream of a Westerner trying to make sense of something foreign. But over the years I saw it had real potential as a way of showcasing this scene to a Western audience in a familiar context as well as creating a cultural product that could resonate with local audiences.

LA: What was the eureka moment when you decided to cast Mdou for the lead role?

CK: Of all the musicians I work with around the Sahel, Mdou stands out as a “larger than life” character. He is very much an artist – his life revolves around his music. But he also is a very funny guy with a sarcastic wit, and you really need a sense of humor to make low-budget film. His most Prince-like elements have to be his flashy style, particularly his way of playing guitar – lots of flourishes and dancing around.

LA: I read you gifted Mdou with a left-handed guitar. Was that one of the guitars he used in the film?

CK: Yes, he’s still playing the same guitar that I brought for him in 2012!

LA: What were your thoughts when you first heard Mdou play live? What was that like?

CK: The first time I saw Mdou in concert was at a small wedding in the countryside of rural Niger. When he started to get into his solos, he formed a crowd, with dancing spectators clapping and kicking up huge clouds of dust. The camera and light, supposed to illuminating the bride and groom, cut to him and his entourage. It was electric.

LA:  A year after the film’s release, Prince passed away. Where were you when you heard the news and how great was the affect on you knowing that you had just done an adaptation of the film?

CK: It came for all of us, at a very unexpected time. With regards to the film, I guess I was hoping that someday we could screen it for him, and that Prince and Mdou could meet.

LA: Do you know if Prince himself had seen the film? If not, what do you think he would have thought of it?

CK: I like to think he would enjoy it, and find the humor in some of our choices in adaptation.

LA:  As a micro-budget film, how proud are you of the way it turned out given this being your first time directing?

CK: I’m impressed that the film turned out at all. Shooting in Niger on any budget would be challenging, let alone doing it in our DIY approach. It’s certainly raised awareness of film production in Agadez and encouraged some would be filmmakers. We’ve already shot a second film with the same crew – a Tuareg “Spaghetti Western.” And a group of Agadez youth recently pitched me a remake of Titanic, shot in the Sahara.

LA: Do you plan on making any more music-related films?

CK: As long as I keep finding good music, there will always be a larger story to tell – and why not do it through fiction?

See the film at the Winter Film Awards Indie Film Festival in New York City on March 1 at the Cinema Village Theater 1, located at 22 E. 12th St.