美国国家公共电台 NPR Invisibilia: Inspired By 'American Idol,' Somali TV Show Aimed To Change The World

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

NPR's podcast Invisibilia is back with its fourth season. And today they have the story of a reality show in the Horn of Africa that set out to change our culture. It led NPR's Alix Spiegel to ask, can telling a certain kind of story create a new reality?

ALIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE¹: Once upon a time there was music on the radio, but then the music started fading out. First one radio station, then another, then another until there was almost no music to hear and people started MacGuyvering workarounds. One of the people who came up with a workaround was Xawa Abdi Hassan, a young woman who lived in a village outside Mogadishu, Somalia.

XAWA ABDI HASSAN: (Through interpreter) We used to use a memory card, fill the memory card with music and listen to it from our phones.

SPIEGEL: In her home, as she cooked and cleaned, Xawa would sing along with the great Somali singers. But even in this private space Xawa says she was careful.

HASSAN: (Through interpreter) I used to turn the volume low so nobody hears it.

SPIEGEL: Quietly?

HASSAN: (Through interpreter) Yes.

SPIEGEL: The problem was al-Shabab, the Islamic extremist group that dominated large parts of the country. They didn't like music. In 2009, they banned music at weddings, banished² musical ringtones. Then at some point I guess they figured best to go straight to the source, so extremists started targeting the musicians themselves. The Soloist³ Aden Hasan Salad was shot and killed in a teashop. Others were murdered in the street. But through all of that Xawa kept listening and practicing because Xawa had a dream.

HASSAN: (Through interpreter) I just wanted to sing and become an entertainer.

SPIEGEL: For most of her life, though, because of al-Shabab that was a pretty farfetched dream. But then in 2013, an unexpected and interesting opportunity emerged. Apparently⁴ there was going to be a new reality television show, an "American Idol"-style reality show. Xawa says she instantly knew she wanted to join even though she had to admit the idea really worried her.

Can she explain? What was she worried and afraid of?

UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: (Foreign language spoken).

HASSAN: (Through interpreter) Death.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SPIEGEL: What Xawa didn't know, couldn't know, is that this reality show, it was part of a much larger political plan.

BEN PARKER: Yes, it was sort of inoculation⁵, you know, against the temptations of al-Shabab's austerity.

SPIEGEL: This is Ben Parker, who was director of communications for the U.N. in Mogadishu at the time. It was the U.N. that was behind the show. They provided the support and money. See, in 2013, though al-Shabab had finally been pushed out of Mogadishu, the situation in Somalia was far from stable. There were still regular attacks. So the new government, which had U.N. backing, needed to prove to Somalis that Shabab's power really was fading, which is why a musical reality show that challenged the power of the music-hating group was so appealing.

PARKER: The beauty of the reality show is that the form itself achieves some of your goals.

SPIEGEL: After all, not only was there music, there was Democratic voting, individual expression. So even in its form it communicated to its audience a very different kind of being. So can a reality show actually change reality?

BETSY LEVY⁶ PALUCK: I am very interested in how we make the normal.

SPIEGEL: How do people come to see the world around them as normal, an unremarkable fact, the way things are and should be? Betsy Levy Paluck is a psychologist at Princeton University who studies media and how societies change. And she says that for a long time, people assumed that the path to political change depended on crafting the right argument.

PALUCK: It was all rhetoric⁷ and no poetic⁸.

SPIEGEL: But starting in the '90s, Betsy says, poetic started gaining ground because psychologists realized that people consumed stories in this qualitatively⁹ different way.

PALUCK: Their defensiveness¹⁰ is disabled. Their counterarguing is at rest.

SPIEGEL: What Betsy wanted to understand was whether this difference in how we consumed stories translated into any changes in what we thought and how we behaved. So she hooked up with this organization that was in the process of creating a new radio soap opera in Rwanda, a Romeo-and-Juliet-style romance between a boy and a girl from warring ethnicities. The point of the program was to encourage tolerance¹² between ethnicities. And what Betsy found after a year of studying communities randomly¹³ assigned to listen...

PALUCK: What it boiled down to was that despite the fact that people loved this program, it didn't change their beliefs. But it did change their perceptions of norms. And at the same time, it changed their behavior.

SPIEGEL: It didn't change their beliefs. It changed their behaviors by changing what they considered to be the social norm. For example, people who listened to the program were way more cooperative when dividing up valuable resources, even when they had to divide those resources across ethnic¹¹ lines. It absolutely moved the needle, which is a sobering idea.

PALUCK: We like to think that all of our behaviors flow from our convictions and what we do is a reflection of who we are and what we think. But we're constantly tuning¹⁴ ourselves to fit in with the social world around us.

SPIEGEL: So what this work suggests is that if you change someone's perception of what constitutes the social norm - like, you convince people that the world is safe enough to sing in public even though in actual fact singing in public is incredibly dangerous - then you just might be able to move the needle on the ground.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INSPIRE SOMALIA")

HASSAN: (Singing in foreign language).

SPIEGEL: Which brings us back to Xawa, the young woman who quietly listened to music off a memory card and dreamed of being a singer. She says when she first took to the stage to compete in the show, which was called "Inspire Somalia," her hands were shaking.

HASSAN: (Through interpreter) Yeah, that was my first time. Before that I did not sing in public places.

SPIEGEL: After Xawa, two other contestants¹⁵ had their turn, both men. One had a famous musician father. The second, Mustafa, had composed his own song.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INSPIRE SOMALIA")

MUSTAFA: (Singing in foreign language).

SPIEGEL: When they finished came the part of the show that was supposed to serve as a democracy demonstration¹⁶. Ballots¹⁷ were distributed to the audience and judges. And for a minute the room was quiet as they marked the papers in their laps.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INSPIRE SOMALIA")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Mustafa.

(APPLAUSE)

SPIEGEL: Mustafa ended up winning. But Xawa says she was honestly not upset. For her, just the act of singing in public for the first time was enough.

HASSAN: (Through interpreter) I was very happy. I was happy as, like, I was born that day.

SPIEGEL: Somalia continues to struggle with attacks by Shabab. But there's at least one undeniable change since 2013. Music is back in the streets, brought back slowly and painfully through a combination of political strategy and personal courage. Alix Spiegel, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 banished   

v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was banished to Australia, where he died five years later. 他被流放到澳大利亚，五年后在那里去世。
• He was banished to an uninhabited island for a year. 他被放逐到一个无人居住的荒岛一年。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 soloist   

n.独奏者，独唱者

参考例句：

• The soloist brought the house down with encore for his impressive voice.这位独唱家以他那感人的歌声博得全场喝彩。
• The soloist had never performed in London before.那位独唱者过去从未在伦敦演出过。

4 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

5 inoculation   

n.接芽；预防接种

参考例句：

• Travellers are reminded that inoculation against yellow fever is advisable. 提醒旅游者接种预防黄热病的疫苗是明智的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Travelers are reminded that inoculation against yellow fever is advisable. 旅客们被提醒，注射黄热病预防针是明智的。 来自辞典例句

6 levy   

n.征收税或其他款项，征收额

参考例句：

• They levy a tax on him.他们向他征税。
• A direct food levy was imposed by the local government.地方政府征收了食品税。

7 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

8 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。

9 qualitatively   

质量上

参考例句：

• In other words, you are to analyze them quantitatively and qualitatively. 换句话说，你们要对它们进行量和质的分析。
• Electric charge may be detected qualitatively by sprinkling or blowing indicating powders. 静电荷可以用撒布指示粉剂的方法，予以探测。

10 defensiveness   

防御性

参考例句：

• The fear of being sued for malpractice has magnified physicians' defensiveness. 担心因医疗事故而被起诉的恐惧加剧了医生们的防卫心理。
• This outbreak of defensiveness embodies one paradox and several myths. 排外行动的爆发，体现了一个矛盾和几个“神话”。

11 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。

12 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

13 randomly   

adv.随便地，未加计划地

参考例句：

• Within the hot gas chamber, molecules are moving randomly in all directions. 在灼热的气体燃烧室内，分子在各个方向上作无规运动。 来自辞典例句
• Transformed cells are loosely attached, rounded and randomly oriented. 转化细胞则不大贴壁、圆缩并呈杂乱分布。 来自辞典例句

14 tuning   

n.调谐，调整，调音v.调音( tune的现在分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• They are tuning up a plane on the flight line. 他们正在机场的飞机跑道上调试一架飞机。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The orchestra are tuning up. 管弦乐队在定弦。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

15 contestants   

n.竞争者，参赛者( contestant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The competition attracted over 500 contestants representing 8 different countries. 这次比赛吸引了代表8个不同国家的500多名参赛者。
• Two candidates are emerging as contestants for the presidency. 两位候选人最终成为总统职位竞争者。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。

17 ballots   

n.投票表决( ballot的名词复数 )；选举；选票；投票总数v.（使）投票表决( ballot的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• They're counting the ballots. 他们正在计算选票。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The news of rigged ballots has rubbed off much of the shine of their election victory. 他们操纵选票的消息使他们在选举中获得的胜利大为减色。 来自《简明英汉词典》