2020 has forced everything and everyone to adapt to it. A pandemic, in parallel with social unrest, swept across the world and brought to light society’s deepest systemic problems that’ve gone unaddressed for far too long. Americans came to — and are still coming to — grips with the injustices suffered by African Americans and communities of color at large, both historically and in our current moment.
Personally, I haven’t given much thought to how Britain’s been fairing with its own versions of pandemic and social awakening. So it was refreshing to watch Riz Ahmed shed some light in his own unique voice, through the lens of his family’s history in his livestream performance of The Long Goodbye. Originally a live show to be performed for an audience, The Long Goodbye was scheduled to premier back in March. Unfortunately, three days before its debut, the UK went into lockdown. Although it was rescheduled for 2021, Ahmed’s managed to adapt it for the digital realm we’ve all collectively melted in. I hope someday he releases it for mass viewing, rather than the “one off” chance I witnessed on December 19th. It’s so inspiring in both execution and message that it’s powerful enough to stand alone as its own iteration, existing alongside his live performance. I think artists and non-artists can take away something profound from it.
For those perhaps unaware of Riz’s musical career, he makes some really smart stuff. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to see him perform live, as part of Swet Shop Boys, around the era of his breakout acting roles in The Night of, Rogue One, and Nightcrawler. His rhymes and lyrics are thought provoking statements of personal experience, often politically charged and rich with clever candor. While he can powerfully hold his own as an actor, I think his music shows us more of his soul than what we’re allowed to see of him on screen.
The Long Goodbye “Livestream Edition” follows the album’s release way back in March, the music video for one of its tracks, “Once Kings”, and his film, Mogul Mowgli, about a British-Pakistani rapper who is struck down by an autoimmune disease — a story coincidentally far too relevant.
Going into this livestream, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Since the covid pandemic started I’ve been skeptical of virtual music performances. They’re often marketed as a substitute for the real thing and I’m just too scared to be disappointed — nothing matches up to the energy of a crowd. Riz admits this as well, in his lyrics and in his address to the camera: “what’s the point in a gig without an audience”. But this felt like more than just a gig. Don’t get me wrong, it was a gig, but it was also a theater production, a documentary, a short film, and a music video all in one. The most interesting part of its execution was that it was all shot over his phone, or at least cleverly appeared like it. At surface level, it’s Riz giving us a phone tour of the now desolate concert venue he was meant to perform at, the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco — a purported residence for ghosts, which holds symbolic meaning for the story he’s about to tell. All these details set the stage for an immersive experience I haven’t seen any other musician attempt to pull off during the pandemic, but which Riz presents flawlessly.
The opening shot is a close up of the rapper, center frame. It’s an image we’re all too familiar with from the Zoom and FaceTime calls that have infiltrated our lives. He addresses his virtual audience by putting forth the questions that provoked him into making this album; questions that he hoped to answer while making it:
What am i doing here?
Do I belong here?
Did I make a mistake coming here?
What follows is Ahmed going through the motions of his live set: songs from The Long Goodbye performed in various parts of the venue building, starting from the backstage toilet, moving through the greenroom, the empty halls, through the standing room, and finally ending on the main stage. In the interludes, he gives us anecdotes of his family which act as a framework for confronting the generational cycle and trauma those three important questions travelled on. At one point of his virtual “tour” he goes into the dressing room, approaches a wardrobe rack, and picks out a jacket that’s remarkably similar to one his grandfather wore.
Ahmed relays that his grandfather was a poet like himself; both questioned what the point of clever words was. He moved his family from India to Pakistan, from Pakistan to England, all the while wondering, “What am i doing here? Do I belong here? Did I make a mistake coming here?” The most heartbreaking point of the story is his grandfather’s struggle with Alzheimer’s and never being sure if he was in 1940’s India, 1970’s Pakistan, or post-9/11 England. The last words he ever said to Riz were: “did I make a mistake in bringing us here”. Watching Ahmed relay this memory weighs heavy with personal introspection but has the innocence of a child playing dress up for himself in the mirror. How much of his grandfather does Ahmed see in himself?
This bit touched me personally as a fellow person of Asian identity who people always ask, “Where are you from? Okay, but where are you REALLY from?” His grandfather’s story was eerily similar to my own grandfather’s journey from the Philippines to the US: a patriarch moving his whole family to a new place where the majority no longer looks like them, but instead responds abrasively towards the color of their skin. Suddenly, they’ve lost their sense of home, with a language and culture barrier immediately placing them at a disadvantage in the Western pursuit of happiness. I saw myself in Riz.
In another song break, he brings up Toba Tek Singh, a story about the relationship between Pakistan and India, and a man who learns to make his home in the “no man’s land” between the two places. Riz then picks out a record of Urdu or Hindi music (I apologize for being unable to distinguish), which leads into the backing music for his song “Toba Tek Singh”. He places his phone down and starts to perform as the lights flash in a flurry of colors.
It’s important to note here how creative he gets in filming these performances. Being completely alone in the venue with only his phone, there’s relatively few options he can choose to imitate any exciting theatricality of a live show. There’s no professional lighting equipment, or backup dancers, or hype men, no DJ or audience egging him on. Full immersion of the viewer’s attention is crucial if he’s to seamlessly move from story to song, to a walk towards his next destination, then back into his next story as he’s walking. In this regard, I think his acting and filmmaking chops really shine because of how he’s able to push the edges of his very limited medium. A very small detail I really loved was his burning of a family photo before going into one of his songs. About halfway through his rapping, you can hear the fire alarm go off and see smoke filling the screen with the same effect as a fog machine — Ahmed’s visage floating in and out of the haze.
In his next break of storytelling, he discerns culturally adept revelations on how “the system” is rigged. For example, he can’t talk about freedom without using the language of the oppressor: English. One cannot say “fuck racism” without acknowledging racism. He uses the paisley pattern on a shirt on the rack as a segue into how the English stole the design from Indian people only to then sell it back to them. Let us not forget about the post-Brexit rise in far right nationalism or that swastikas were taken from Indian culture. Being brown in post-9/11 England only makes these realizations more acute. It is these sorts of historical and contemporary injustices that have Riz fighting with his sense of belonging.
“What am i doing here? Do I belong here? Did I make a mistake coming here?,” he repeats. Those three major questions he’d been tackling well before the pandemic have now been exacerbated by the existential headspace one finds themselves in when faced with their own mortality; something many of us have just discovered in the pandemic. He felt a personal duty to speak truth to power and to give this album the power to change — to fight for something. “Maybe the home we’re looking for is in this story, in these words”, he reflects with vigor.
I think The Long Goodbye “Livestream Edition” furthers the achievements of the album. Rarely does an artist get to talk about what influences their music as they’re performing it live. Rarely do they get to do it with such intimacy and awareness as Ahmed has done in one viewing. It’s a feat that speaks to the power of adaptability and is an example of the most honest way to deal with enjoying live music in our current predicament. Riz is able to use his art as self-therapy and in attempting to answer his own questions, his discoveries become solace for others; such as myself.
You leave this experience taking more of the artist with you than you would’ve at a live show — a part of himself willfully offered.