I wanted to share Tracy Chapman’s “Bang Bang Bang” because of its gravity through minimalistic approaches. The song is a lot like a 5-ingredient recipe in its instrumental harmonies and lyric composition.

Sometimes what makes a dish so powerful is the complexities of many flavors coming together with countless spices, herbs, and vegetables in a medley. The same goes with layering instruments to add textures in a song—it can be so exciting. Yet then you have those other recipes—the simple ones with just olive oil, salt, lemon, arugula, and chickpeas for a salad. Its power lies in allowing a person to experience the boldness of each flavor choice. “Bang Bang Bang”’s minimal amount of instruments used and the repeated pattern without deviation really allows a listener to hear the vital impact each instrument holds. Tracy’s vocals take the fore front and are exposed—creating the effect of vulnerability an acoustic performance has. We really get to focus on the message of her words. We get eased into the song with the lead guitar—an acoustic guitar—alongside the light tapping of a cymbal in the intro. We are grounded. Then we get to the chorus:

(The two lines that precede “Bang bang bang” vary throughout the song’s choruses)

“But one fine day

All our problems will be solved

Bang bang bang

We’ll shoot him down” 

Skitterphoto. Person Holding Black Revolver in Bokeh Photography. Pexels

Is there a dramatic twist when adding other instruments into the mix after the long intro? Well, the chorus isn’t really dramatic but definitely holds impact.

The tempo increases. Conga drums aren’t being banged but softly hit at a quickening pace. The bass guitar creates a background vibration. The bass drum set isn’t hit count after count but hit hard once every several counts—that one hit really strikes. The electric guitar takes the stage in the chorus, yet not how it would in a rock or metal song. It sways in a dragged out manner, having a distinctly southern, folkish tune. A few strums are done on the electric guitar but its last strum is held the longest— having a lasting effect as the reverb vibrates and extends to the far corners of the room. All of these elements create a sense of urgency, especially when quickened violin strokes make an appearance. Yet the entire song holds a calm tone as if one were swinging on a hammock in the country side. When we get into the chorus which slightly picks up pace, it’s like a lullaby, we are soothed.

Well how about the vocals then? Perhaps the drama lies there?

Well, intensity does lie in the pain in Tracy’s voice, but again, not in the most obvious way through constant change and variation in pitch. The emotional tone of mourning lies in Tracy’s similar pitch throughout the song—not dropping or picking up. There aren’t mightily high or in-depth low vocals. She stays in a consistent pitch and slightly picks it up when starting the first line of a new verse to keep things interesting. But the pitch quickly goes back to that steady pitch. This differs greatly from her other songs. She picks up her pitch to add intensity of emotion in “Fast Car” when she cries, “I-I…had at feeling that I belonged”… She varies her pitch in “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” when she lowers to a whisper: “I’m talkin’ about a revolution / it sounds like a whisper.” She then heightens her pitch to shout, “And finally the tables are startin’ to turn! / I’m talkin’ about a revolution,” as she encourages the listeners of the social reform sprouting in the air. Yet here, the pitch stays level throughout. What kind of effect does that bring alongside instrumental harmonies that are urgent yet calming? What’s up with these contrasting tones musically in relation to the content of the song—gun violence dividing a nation?

Perhaps the cyclical affect through repetitive music harmony and steady vocal pitch match the grievances of lives lost due to the repeated cycle of gun violence and police brutality. Yet even deeper, she tells that these lives are lost due to class division which produces the scarcity that pushes some to crime to begin with.

The subjects of Tracy’s songs are kept vague rather than specific. This is no song about one act of gun violence because there have been so many, one can lose count. She doesn’t write about “so and so” but “a boy” given a gun from the larger social system who “we,” the listeners, make up and participate in. Tracy places herself and all individual’s into the story of her song—expressing that we all participate in the cycle of gun violence through complacency. Guns are made easily available for even a kid to get their hands on. She tells the tale of a young boy being given pacifiers to distract from the deeper issue of scarcity: “give him drugs and give him candy” and anything to make him happy, Tracy sings. The chorus comes around again—ominous and scary— with an us versus them mentality in which the fearful society will “shoot him down” if he ever turns around to shoot them. But if the boy grows up to shoot those in his own community including brothers, sisters, and friends—“We’ll consider it a favor / We’ll consider justice done.” Here Tracy taps into class divide in which the public is unconcerned with acts of violence when done in other lower-income neighborhoods, somewhere far-far away. But once your own community is threatened? Call the police and shoot the “gun-man” or “criminal” down. Yet the subject of the song as well as the feature of children playfully wrestling in the music video remind us of who these “criminals” are: kids.

At the start of the song, at the start of this larger cycle within our social system—we have children.

We have a sharply divided class system in which some have access to necessities for survival and to thrive and others don’t. We have acts of crime. And we have what we call “justice”—terminating the lives of “criminals” and shoving them in jail cells if kept alive. This is what law and order looks like in a civilized society rather than dismantling the toxic systems of racism, and the many other “ism’s” that dominate our institutions and deny a human being of their civil liberties. We as listeners grieve with Tracy even thirty years after this song was produced because this same cycle persists. Professor Tougaw commented in class that “bang bang bang” almost sounds childish and playful. I thought the same thing. A kid in a western costume yelling those words while shooting a toy gun popped into my head. Maybe that’s the point being driven home—the way we handle guns is as carelessly as a child would during play. Children don’t perceive the consequences of death yet, but the adults that do handle real guns still shoot away like it’s a game of cops and robbers.

Terms:

Harmony: “The concordant (or consonant) combination of notes sounded simultaneously to produce chords. Countermelodic notes to accompany a tune.The vertical dimension of music, referring to the notes sounding together. Often abstracted to mean sets of pitches thought to sound well together. (1) the study of progression, structure and relationships of chords (2) when pitches are in agreement, or consonance<br><br>The way in which chords are arranged in a musical composition.<br><br>The study of simultaneously sounding tones.”－Free Music Dictionary

Acoustic: “used to distinguish a non-electric instrument from the electric version-e.g., an acoustic guitar.” －Free Music Dictionary

Tempo: “The pace of a piece of music is known as its tempo. Tempo can be measured by beats per minute, or bpm; classical music tempos are described by a set of terms ranging from larghissimo (very slow) to andante (a moderate speed) to prestissimo (very fast).” －Spotify for Artists

Reverb: “A shortening of the term Reverberation (the persistence of a sound after the source stops emitting it.” －Free Music Dictionary

Pitch: “Pitch is the frequency of a sound—how high or low it is in relation to other sounds. A high frequency, produced by rapid vibration, creates a high pitch; a low frequency, produced by slow vibration, creates a low pitch. The chromatic scale contains 12 musical pitches.”－Spotify for Artists