Sublime "Santeria"

I was aware I led a pretty sheltered youth.  But being aware of it and being confronted with it are two different things.

I should note that I recognized that I am a statistical anomaly.  I grew up in a happy, two-parent home.  And the large percentage of my closest friends also grew up in stable, happy two-parent homes---at least to the best of my knowledge . . . if those homes were not stable, happy, violence-and-major-tragedy free, I was not aware of it.

My Mom did drive this point home many times throughout my youth, that I would go out into the world and meet people whose experience growing up would be very very different from my own.


There was no real antecedent in my dating life, to this girl.  She was blonder than anyone I had previously dated.  She wore more make-up than anyone I had previously dated.  She'd been previously married and she had a kid.  And she had less formal education than anyone I'd previously dated.

On that last count, she was trying to catch up.  Now that she was nearing thirty, and the son she'd had as a teenager was a pretty responsible Middle Schooler, she was going to college.  She was a great writer, but she often asked for me to proofread her English papers.

"What's the topic?" I asked.

"We had to write about a song with controversial lyrics, and defend them, or not."

"What song did you pick?"  Being a DJ, this was of course interesting to me.

"'Santeria' by Sublime."

"And you defended them?

"No."

At the time (the mid-90s, when I was in my late 20s), Sublime was hugely popular and I was a big fan of their self-titled record.  I was am (and still am) a pretty staunch Free Speech advocate.  So I was a little put off by the idea that she would be arguing the other side of the coin in her paper.

But I read it.  And it made me think.

(Now you'll have to forgive me---I don't have that paper today to reproduce actual quotes from her, and everything I'm about to say was not in the paper---some of the information came from the discussions that followed)

Tell Sanchito that if he knows what is good for him he best go run and hide,
Daddy's got a new .45,
And I won't think twice to stick that barrel straight down sancho's throat,
Believe me when I say that I got somethin' for his punk ass.

Her basic argument was that the song had a casual approach to violence that was highly offensive to anyone who had actually been a victim of violence.

Yes, she herself had been a victim of domestic violence.

As a baby, she had been essentially abandoned by her parents, to be raised by her grandmother.  Tall, shy and awkward, with an unhappy, fractured childhood, she left home after high school, with the first man who gave her the opportunity.

Unfortunately, that man was a troubled human being.  Prone to mood swings, alcohol abuse and suicide attempts, he extended his self-hatred onto his new wife in the form of physical abuse.

She told me stories of awful, scary, creepy and manipulative things he did.  Stomach turning stuff just to hear.  Unimaginable to live through.

These episodes culminated in a day where he forced her at gunpoint into their yard, put the barrel to her head and told he would kill her first and then himself.

Ultimately, he did not carry through with his promise on that day.  She did escape the marriage, with her son and her life.  Sadly, her ex-husband made numerous further suicide attempts, and finally did achieve his goal to leave this Earth.

And somehow she managed to defy . . . shit, everything . . . by turning out to be a gentle, kind, sane, thankful, drama-free adult.  She had every right to be a sad, fucked-up mess of a human being.  But she wasn't.  In fact, you wouldn't ever guess she had been through such horrors if she didn't come out and tell you.  She didn't wear it on her sleeve.

But when it came to this subject, the subject of violence, she was not calm or casual or ambivalent.  She found this song disgusting.

If I could find that heina and that sancho that she's found,
Well I'd pop a cap in sancho and I'd slap her down. 

From that point forward, I had a really different relationship with Sublime.  I couldn't sing along to this, or "Wrong Way."

Quentin Tarantino was huge at this time, and I, like so many of my friends, watched movies like "Pulp Fiction" with ironic detachment.

But I couldn't anymore.

I won't say that I never watch a violent movie or listen to a song with violent lyrics.  But I have never looked/listened the same.

Being confronted with the reality of violence in the life of someone you know, makes you aware how stomach-turning even fictitious casual violence actually is.


Hear the song on Youtube.