David Byrne with Santigold: "Please Don't," from "Here Lies Love" (a BB exclusive)

Above, Boing Boing debuts the new video from David Byrne with Santigold, "Please Don't," from Here Lies Love, a musical biography of sorts about Imelda Marcos. David Byrne explains,

We did a photo session for a magazine the other day, and I told the interviewer that on this song, by the time you get to the chorus, she owns it -- she's turned it into a Santigold song. Perfect.

There are six of these videos that have been completed for this project. Most, like this one, use news and archival footage to, well, show that every word of the song is true! Most of the lyrics on this one are lifted gently from interviews and quotations -- the "please don't" chorus especially. At some point as first lady, Imelda began to feel that she could help Philippine interests by charming world leaders into seeing things her way. "Handbag diplomacy" she called it -- as she liked to imply that to solve a problem, she could bypass President Marcos and just grab a handbag and hop on a plane with some of her assistants. It sometimes worked! There was, for example, an Islamic-backed insurgency rising in the south of the Philippine archipelago, and she thought that a leader in that part of the world, Qaddafi in this case, might help pull the plug on that support if he saw things her way. Apparently he did -- the funding stopped and the insurrection lost momentum, and she later described him as a pushover, a mama's boy.

David Byrne: Here Lies Love, and you can purchase the music and book set here. The album is available in multiple formats (MP3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, and CD/DVD).

(thumbnail: portrait of David Byrne by Clayton James Cubitt)

• [Anonymous]

  Find love @ Chuzi.
  Swear you won’t regret it.

• [Anonymous]

  soooooooo is this project whitewashing her husband’s administration, or what?

  • [ubernym]

    The article’s pretty clear that it’s a biography about Imelda Marcos, not her husband. Also, it’s clearly not a full-blown biography, as evidenced by this quote from David Byrne on the website (and the introduction of the work):

    “The story I am interested in is about asking what drives a powerful person—what makes them tick? How do they make and then remake themselves? I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if—as this piece would be principally composed of clubby dance music—one could experience it in a club setting? Could one bring a ‘story’ and a kind of theater to the disco? Was that possible? If so, wouldn’t that be amazing!”

    It’s an art piece, and it’s not pretending to be much more than that.

    Hey, instead of anonymously sniping the first post with your vaguely accusatory sentence, do you perhaps have any suggested reading for those who want to know more about the history of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines?

• [Anonymous]

  If you’re looking for a good book on the Marcoses and their relationship with the US during their time, James Hamilton-Paterson’s “America’s Boy” is a good place to start.

• [nutate]

  I like Santigold’s first album and I probably should get more of her stuff with her punk band Stiffed. Still wondering why she went from Santogold to Santigold… I mean… her name is Santi… but… what a google nightmare… ;-)

  In spite of that I wasn’t expecting to like this musically, but I did. So… kudos to two great musicians for making another great track? Yup.

  • [dculberson]

    Apparently there’s a low budget jeweler called Santo Gold that threatened legal action so she changed her name to Santigold. Irritating source: http://www.idiomag.com/peek/64502/santogold#/64502/1/

    Data point on the “free music sells albums” graph: after listening to this track I ended up buying the album Santogold. Good stuff.

• [Anonymous]

  I think this was a good look at Imelda from the perspective of an Eva Peron… it is Imelda through Imelda’s eyes at the time. Like they say, if you’re in a broken system you don’t think there’s anything wrong. I really liked this, particularly the archival clips.