Leonard Cohen died on November 7, 2016. He was very popular in Poland in the 1970s and 80s, long before Hallelujah, before the world tours and the late commercial success. We loved our obscure-not-obscure artists, even as we misunderstood or misinterpreted them. We mispronounced his name (“Lee-oh-nard”). We didn’t understand English well enough to get the wry sense of humour or the sexual innuendos. And still.
We had no commercial radio at the time, and no record industry to speak of. Western music was brought to us by enthusiasts who travelled abroad – not many of us could – and spent their own money to buy records, then played them in clubs or on the radio. The rest of us made mix tapes off radio broadcasts, borrowed records and tapes from those who had access to them, stayed up late or rearranged our schedules to listen to music we cared about. There was no Western style commercial promotion through exposure. There was institutionalized political pressure to play Soviet bloc artists, but few, if any, commercial incentives to promote Western rock music. The DJs and broadcasters played it because they loved it, and the audience listened because we loved it back.
Cohen’s fandom first percolated to Poland through word of mouth: a borrowed record here, a tape there. Then a dude, Maciej Zembaty, translated some of Cohen’s songs into Polish and started singing and recording them. It took off like wildfire.
It was not all Cohen all the time, of course. We listened to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and the Beatles, and Hendrix and Tangerine Dream and Dead Can Dance. They were beloved, but also intimidating. You could blast Zep II or Tubular Bells or The Dark Side Of The Moon on your home stereo equipment and get blown away by the sound effects. You could delve into the complexities of The Wall. But when we needed something to sing around the campfire, or on a train, or in a dorm room when a conversation was too much and silence was not enough, few of us would attempt Floyd or Zep. Maybe some of the ballads, and even that was hard.
Cohen was more forgiving. It was OK if you only had a cheap guitar. It was OK to sing Cohen badly; after all, he was doing that himself. Your back could be bent into a permanent question mark, your lungs shrivelled and throat inflamed from the coal dust or chemical pollution or cigarette smoke. You could be missing a few teeth, as people often do when the food does not nourish, hygiene is impossible to maintain, and dentistry is the stuff of nightmares. You could still sing Cohen. And that might have been because he, as the songwriter, had done most of the heavy lifting for you in advance. Bob Dylan, interviewed for a New Yorker article, praises Cohen’s musical gift:
When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius… Even the counterpoint lines—they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music. … [Cohen’s] gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres.
For all of Cohen’s self-deprecating comments about his “golden voice,” he wrote melodies that were eternal and indestructible. They could withstand all the abuse that we inflicted on them, the drunken performances, the missing chords and forgotten lyrics. It would still be alright.
He was forgiving in other ways as well. I learned later that, in the land of the constitutionally guaranteed pursuit of happiness, Cohen was considered dark and depressing. That was not how we saw it. Sure, he sang of broken people, failed promises, lost wars. These were statements of facts that were just true, even when we did not have the permission or ability to say so. Having them spoken out loud felt like understanding and forgiveness. It might have even felt uplifting, in telling us that such things mattered, that they were worth a song.
On November 9, 2016, some Americans woke up feeling that they were in a country they did not know. Disoriented, they looked to historians and philosophers of faraway places for advice and consolation. They resolved to remember what normal life looked like and take note of everything that was not normal. They made lists of things they would not do and compromises they would not make.
Oh, you sweet summer children. I do hope that you will act, that your institutions can be mobilized to prevent the worst. I really do, for your sake and my own and that of everyone else on the planet. But since you ask me so often where I’m from, let me tell you what it’s like to live under oppression and see no end of it.
The Accidental Mathematician 