Loved and loathed

Few musicians who become international stars and celebrities also become authors of change in their homelands. Ireland’s Sinead O’Connor did both in her too short, tragic and tortured life which ended on July 26. O’Connor was regarded as a “troublemaker” by friend and foe alike, was celebrated and castigated, loved and loathed.

While captivating the Arab world with her songs, Egypt’s Umm Kulthum supported her country’s 1952 revolution against the British-backed monarch, socio-economic development, and war against Israel. US “troublemaker” Elvis Presley burst onto the global “rock ‘n roll scene” although he was accused of subverting the morals of US teenagers while revolutionising the US music scene. The most beloved band in popular music history, Britain’s Beatles won world-wide acclaim for their inventive music and lyrics and gave impetus to the political, social, and cultural transformation of post-war British society.

Other iconic music figures won domestic and international acclaim but did not contribute to seminal changes in their countries. India’s sitar artist and composer Ravi Shankar introduced the world to Indian classical music and influenced Indian and foreign musicians while Sweden’s Abba focused on developing national and international audiences.

Writing on the BBC’s website, Irish Times journalist Una Mullally said O’Connor’s “death has cracked open a complex and deep emotional network in the Irish psyche.” Mullally listed the ways O’Connor achieved this goal. She told unwelcome truths. She castigated the dominant Catholic church over priestly child abuse and oppressing women. She encouraged people to “break free, to live authentic lives, to not care about what people thought, and to kick against the structures that told people...to stay in their place and to do what they were told.” O’Connor was “a lighthouse for those who felt adrift in Irish society” and “offered a new moral compass beyond the lie of [conservative] societal piety.” O’Connor “rebelled,” challenging negative personal consequences in Ireland.

Born in Dublin in December 1966, Sinead O’Connor began life with her barrister father and an abusive mother. After their separation, she went to live with her father but due to truancy and shoplifting she was sent to a Magdalene laundry for rehabilitation. Unfortunately, these facilities were notorious for mistreating girls and women. While there, however, she cultivated skills as a musician and writer imbued with causes. Her secondary school recognised her remarkable voice which she used to transform rage and pain into powerful lyrics and commanding music.

In the mid-1980s she left school to join a band called Ton Ton Macoute (Bogeyman In Haitain) in Dublin and was subsequently signed by a manager and recording company. While her music revealed her traumatic history, she was a political neophyte. She initially took up the cause of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which was fighting to oust Britain from Northern Ireland but soon admitted this was a youthful mistake. In 1987, her first album, “The Lion and the Cobra” was a released to acclaim, launching a 36-year career remarkable for artistry and the causes she adopted over the long haul, making her a political icon for her generation and the next.

She rejected constraints that define women. She regarded hair as the symbol of femininity and shaved her head. The title of her second album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” amounted to an assault on consumerism. This collection contained her sensational version of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes” which is about personal tribulations in an oppressed world. The lyric: “I will live by my own policies/I will sleep with a clear conscience” summed up her approach to causes.

She joined Roger Water’s performance celebrating the fall of the wall in Berlin, she contributed to an album raising funds for AIDS sufferers, she sang Elton John’s song “Sacrifice” for an album cheering his career as a musician. She refused to perform in the US if the country’s national anthem was played before her concerts. In 1992, while on US television she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II because of the Vatican’s failure to deal with priests who abuse children, prompting cancellation of most concerts on her US tour. She rejected four Grammy awards. She sang for commemorative collections and contributed to Black Lives Matter charities. Her 2021 memoir “Rememberings” was listed by the BBC as one of the best books of the year.

O’Connor scrapped appearing at concerts in occupied Jerusalem during 1997 and Caesarea near Tel Aviv in 2014. She received death threats when she agreed to appear at the first event entitled “Sharing Jerusalem: Two Capitals for Two States” which was organised by Palestinian women’s groups. The campaign of threats against herself and her family was led by Israeli extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, then 21, who is now Israel’s national security minister. Angered over his boast in a radio interview that he had driven her from Jerusalem, she dispatched a letter to news agencies saying, “God does not reward those who bring terror to children of the world.” She asked, “How can there be peace anywhere on Earth if there is not peace in Jerusalem?” She cancelled the second concert to protest Israel’s deadly onslaught on Gaza, sacrificing a hefty fee for principle.

O’Connor had a turbulent spiritual life fuelled by depression and post traumatic stress from childhood abuse. She began as a mainstream Catholic but briefly joined a dissident Catholic church and was ordained as a priest. She was influenced by Jamaican Rastafarian movement which she said was “anti-religious but massively pro-God.” She said she had studied Jewish traditions and expressed love for the Jewish people despite her backing of the Palestinian cause. She considered US boxer Mohammad Ali a spiritual hero and declared for Islam in 2018. By that time, she had been totally alienated by the “white” Western world which has inflicted pain and suffering on the formerly colonised and still abused and exploited peoples of this region, Africa and Asia.