“Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da”: Paul McCartney, Diaspora and the Politics of Identity

Abstract

‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ is a track on the Beatles eponymously titled double album, released in 1968. It is often considered to be a trite but enjoyable piece of fluff. In this article, I want to examine the track as the site of complex negotiations around identity and diaspora. The song was written by Paul McCartney, while the Beatles were staying at an ashram in India. The song’s title comes from a saying McCartney heard used by a Nigerian conga player acquaintance of his. McCartney himself was of Irish origin. Liverpool was a port city built on the slave trade, which, in the second half of the nineteenth century became home to large numbers of diasporic Irish, many of whom continued their journey to the United States. In the nineteenth century, the Irish were considered to be ‘white negroes’. The track’s narrative form appears to have been influenced by McCartney’s knowledge of calypso drawn from Liverpool’s diasporic Caribbean population. The pop-ska of the track’s music was taken from the Jamaican ska style that had become popular with British Caribbean communities in the early 1960s. At the same time, the beginning and end of the track has music hall influences. The lyrics’ characters, Desmond and Molly, could be Irish, Jamaican, even Nigerian, or any mix of these. The song was released at a time of great racial tension in Britain. Enoch Powell gave his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968. From this brief outline, we can see that, far from just being ‘Paul’s granny shit’, as John Lennon described it, the track can be read as an expression of the effects of the British Empire, and their impact on post-World War 2 Britain.