As a baby boomer, I grew up in an era in which popular music directly reflected the political issues of the day. I remember singing the I-Feel_Like_I’m-Fixing-To-Die-Rag while in military training, and consciously annoying many of my peers with these incendiary words:
It’s a one-two-three: what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn!
My next stop is Vietnam!
And it’s five-six-seven: open up the pearly gates
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why:
Whoopee – we’re all gonna die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die
Of course Country Joe was a crusader, but even middle of the road artists made calls to principled arms – consider this early Elton John missive:
Holy Moses I have been deceived
Let us try to find a way to make all hatred cease
There’s a man over there
What’s his colour? – I don’t care
He’s my brother – let us live in peace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Song
I sang these lyrics throughout my teens and they contributed as an ethical guide to the founding of my principles.
They were also part of a much longer, important musical tradition in which ordinary people voiced their struggles, and managed to get them heard in the music of the day. They spoke to the pain of ordinary people, as in Robbie Robertson’s lament about the struggle of the American South during the American Civil War:
Well I don’t mind chopping wood – and I don’t care if the money’s no good
You take what you need and you leave the rest –
but they should never have taken the very best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_They_Drove_Old_Dixie_Down
Music was the voice of the oppressed, finding a receptive audience in depression-struck America during the 1930’s, when Woodie Guthrie would position businessmen as criminals, and criminals as the saviors of the poor:
As through this world you travel, you’ll meet some funny men/ Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Boy_Floyd
The 1930’s depression anti-establishment sentiment was echoed by legends like Leadbelly in Gallis Pole (a song which readers may recognise as an uncredited Gallows Pole on Led Zeppelin 3), describing the corruption of the prison system – a reality which ex-prisoner Leadbelly understood very well: What did you bring me to keep me from the gallis pole?
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gallows_Pole
The unions came into their own in the 1930s and, needing an anthem, adopted a slave song:
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water
We shall not be moved
http://folkmusic.about.com/od/folksongs/qt/ShallNotBeMoved.htm
The 1960’s led to an explosion of protest music, led by Bob Dylan who so understood the tradition that he attended Woody Guthrie’s deathbed http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/16/bob-dylan-woody-guthrie. Dylan, daring to challenge the post-American capitalist sentiment had the courage to openly express his contempt for the political-capital-military alliance:
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could?
These were more than words: when Joan Baez sang of Dylan -
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
It was because he lived the ethos – abandoning the comforts that Tin Pan Alley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley could have offered and “following Woody Guthrie’s footsteps” by traipsing across the country to experience the lives of the working men.
It is worth pausing to compare the commitment of these musicians to that of modern politicians.
Bob Marley spoke to his constituency, lamenting the effects of poverty:
Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is an angry mob
A rain a fall but the dirt it tough
A pot a cook but the food no ‘nough
http://www.mp3lyrics.org/b/bob-marley/them-belly-full-but-we-hungry/
Women – and feminism – also found a voice, exemplified by Nina Simone singing defiantly:
Got my heart, got my soul,
Got my back, got my sex …
http://www.metrolyrics.com/aint-got-noi-got-life-lyrics-nina-simone.html
By the mid-70’s it was recognized that music legitimately represented the aspirations of the working class, so much so that John Lennon could say, with some cynicism: A working class hero is something to be
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Class_Hero
The point of all of this is that music has traditionally been the voice of the oppressed. It has found the words for those without a voice, expressed the anguish for the numb, reached the audience that could help, brought empathy to the socio-cultural sentiment.
Today there was a protest in Oakland, part of the Occupy movement. As the resentment towards capitalism grows, there is silence from the popular artists that would traditionally have reflected this struggle. I tracked the Oakland events on Twitter, reported by Anonymous – but there have been no songs speaking for this movement, no troubadours capturing the soul of the struggle in music that would clarify our collective responsibility towards each other.
The musicians that should be speaking have become a part of the system itself, and have neither the desire nor the insight to recognize their social responsibility; or care about their potential to create positive change. The torch has shifted to the social media where some democracy and conscience still exists. It feels to me as if the heart of the music has been compromised by money, and the ethic of the medium is gone.
I hope I am wrong.
