Return of the Irish Lass
![[Print This Post]](http://www.rantlust.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-print/images/print.gif "[Print This Post]")
On October 3, 1992, Sinead O’Connor was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. At the end of her performance, she produced a photo of Pope John Paul II and ripped it into pieces on camera. Needless to say, the network producers, the live audience and millions of viewers elsewhere were stunned. That act almost destroyed her career. A few years later, she asked the pope to forgive her in an interview. Not sure if he did forgive her.
The Irish singer is back with her best work. Throw Down Your Arms is a tribute to the proponents of Rastafari. It’s a collection of great reggae tunes from the likes of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Buring Spear, etc. Her voice is still angelic and mesmerising. The CD is getting a lot of playtime on my Nano.
Sinead O’Connor has always been a rebel. The SNL act was just the latest in a line of iconoclastic stuff she had done in her life. When she was a teenager, she was caught shoplifting and expelled from her school. In the late ‘80s, she defended the actions of the IRA and declared the music of fellow Irish rockers U2 as “bombastic”. In the early ’90s, she refused to perform in a New Jersey venue if the organizers went ahead and played the American national anthem (they didn’t) and she withdrew her name from the Grammy awards despite four nominations. In the late ‘90s, she was ordained by an Independent Catholic group as a priest, leading to her being excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. (Women are not allowed as priests in the RCC.)
Finally, it seems the mother of three children has found her true faith in Rastafari. In the album, she sings with great spirituality and you can feel it. Her rendition of Tosh’s Downpressor Man is downright moving.
The CD ends with the song that she sang on that fateful pope-ripping show: Marley’s War. It’s a long way from Ireland to Jamaica but again O’Connor has succeeded in confounding her critics and making that musical journey.
I have this CD and I concur, her best one yet.
Apparently, the right way to say it is Rastafari or the Rastafari movement of Jah people, since Rastafari consider themselves to have transcended all ‘isms’.
Regarding the photo ripping incident - she also followed it with the phrase ‘Fight the real enemy’. At least according to the site in the link, the Saturday Night Live performance was preceded by a performance of Bob Marley’s song War, based on the words of Ethiopia’s last emperor.
The song sanctions war as an appropriate response to racial injustice and child abuse. Not sure why she thought the Pope was the enemy in this regard (maybe she knew something about child abuse in the Catholic Church at that point?? hmm ..). In any case, she seems to have had Rastafari leanings even then.
Oops sorry - missed the end of your post where you talk about the fact that she sang War. But still, I find the juxtapositioning of the song and the apparent indictment of the Pope intriguing.
I read somewhere that the reason she sang that song and tore up the photo of the pope is because she was abused as a child by her mother. During the SNL performance, she changed the lyrics to say “sexual abuse” instead of racial something. People have argued that she was angry against the Catholic church for all the abuse going on in the church. (Note that this was much before this knowledge became prevalent in the US.)
Yes, I do believe that’s correct. Though I am not sure if Sinead herself revealed the real reason. See here.
I have corrected the Rastafari usage. Thanks for pointing that out.
A review of a recent performance in New York:
http://snipurl.com/kp5v
[...] January 3rd, 2006 by anupcs
Previously on Rantlust, there was a connection made between Ireland and Jamaica in the form of new Rastafari conv [...]