Songs

Where have all the protest songs gone…?

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We watch the news to see what Trump said today, to see where got bombed and how many died and to witness another shooting of a black man by police.

We watch the news to see racial tensions higher than we’ve ever seen in my lifetime.  We watch the news to see society take two steps backwards for every one step forward in the LGBT rights movement.

We watch the news to see corporations swallowing democracy whole and shitting out tiny bricks of gold.

We watch it for other things, but these are the things we are seeing.

And I don’t know if it’s because what my eyes are seeing has stopped my ears from hearing, but I’ve been feeling a void.  In this age of the inter-noise the protest song has disappeared, replaced by the sound bite and 24 hour news.

Oh, it’s still there – as I discovered tonight after actively searching it out – but the dominance of music as the prevalent form to speak out against injustice has given away to the late night comedian skewering the establishment which, while entertaining, is hardly affecting people’s hearts and minds past the initial viewing.  It’s fantastic, brilliant stuff, but it is single serving outrage; the kind of commentary that lasts only as long as the time it takes for another brilliant comedian to skewer someone or something new.

The enduring power of the protest song is missing from our culture.  It is showing up in pockets, but it is not making the mainstream and, as such, the most effective call to arms we have at our disposal is being wasted.

A song you listen to again and again and again… layers of meaning set in; you sing it to yourself, you attach yourself to it, it helps shape and prescribe your ideologies.  Slave songs in the south, folk songs of the 60’s, punk, reggae, hip hop… hell, even good old rock and roll… during every major movement and social crisis we have been through in the last century has been accompanied by a soundtrack.

Think about what you have been listening to over the last six months… what has the soundtrack been?  I’m not judging here, I know exactly what mine has been: a dollop of Katy Perry and One D for my daughter (yes, I use the term “One D” and if that doesn’t automatically make you stop reading, thank you, because there is some good music ahead) and a mix of Twenty One Pilots, AWOLNATION and some good old fashioned early 2000’s Emo.  My point?  My soundtrack has not reflected the environment I am living in… reading about… watching on the news.

But maybe that is starting to change…

If there was ever a night I wanted to be at Molson Amphitheatre, it was last night.  Don’t get me wrong, number one on my list of places to be was exactly where I was – singing happy birthday to my now six-year old daughter at The Old Spaghetti Factory – but damn if I didn’t want to see AWOLNATION, one of my favourite bands, open for Prophets Of Rage.

I don’t need to describe it – just read this article:  Dave Grohl joins Prophets of Rage in epic Toronto show

Wait, seriously, if you didn’t click on the link, read that article and then come back to me… it was, from all reports, an incredible show.

Meanwhile, Chuck D had many turns at the mic as well, although he was at his best when he was delivering U.S. election messages to the throngs.

“I don’t know what’s going on America, but stay as smart as you are and stay put. Stay the f— awake, Canada,” the veteran rapper implored, before busting out Public Enemy’s Miuzi Weighs A Ton.

The tour is called “Make America Rage Again” and it started just last Friday and seems to be picking up steam.  Maybe that’s what we need!   A music supergroup to come out, blast us with nostalgia and get us raging again!

 

I mean… COME ON…

 

 

What better way to stir up rage against the establishment than make us remember the rage we felt before?

Well, maybe there is a better way… maybe we do need NEW songs that speak to the atrocities we are seeing all around us, even if they were written about just slightly older atrocities from, like, a few months ago…

I am not poison, no I am not poison
Just a boy from the hood that
Got my hands in the air
In despair, don’t shoot
I just wanna do good, ah

 

Or better yet, put a song out that CANNOT BE CLEARER in its message that Black Lives Matter, and then surround that song with all of the news clips and video that has already been consuming us.  A perfect confluence of form and message.

This is the best protest song I have heard in a LONG time.

Mistah F.A.B. – 6 Shots

So for all you white folks that say we all equal
I bet you wouldn’t trade pigmentation with my people

Drop a song during New York Pride that puts a clear message around the fact that while we celebrate acceptance we cannot forget the fight.

 

I guess love ain’t free, there’s a fee, they cut your paycheck
It’s a free country, that’s unless you love the same sex
To people with no place to stay, I hope you stay blessed
You ain’t gotta flex that you straight, long as you straight flex

* * * * *

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which cause we are talking about, which fight we feel is the most important fight.

Why aren’t we sharing THESE songs?

Why does 6 Shots only have 25 000 Views on YouTube?

Where aren’t these videos in my newsfeed, accompanying the commentary everyone I know is putting out there?

The Protest Song is alive, and if we want things to change, let’s seek out the music behind the issues that matter to us and flood social media with them.

John Oliver is brilliant, and sharing his segments does good, makes us feel smart and makes us laugh when we don’t know how else to feel.  They spark outrage and unite us and justify our own frustrations and feelings of powerlessness to change things.

But I ask you again – how many times have you watched a segment more than once?  And what have you done with the emotions it made you feel.

Now, have a look around at all of the music being generated on these topics… make a playlist… share it with your friends…

I’m not saying it’s the only answer to fighting back against the injustice in the world, but the echo we can create by filling the inter-noise with meaningful music might be just enough to shift the momentum in our favour.

* * * * *

Further Reading:  A Brief History Of Protest Songs – Wall Street Journal

A social media post from Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson calling on musicians to write protest songs.

“Songs with spirit in them,” the Roots drummer and “Tonight Show” band leader wrote on Instagram. “Songs with solutions. Songs with questions. Protest songs don’t have to be boring or non-danceable or ready made for the next Olympics. They just have to speak truth.”

Black Boys On Camera

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In the summer of 1999 a song made it’s way onto a mixed tape (yes, I was one of the few still doing those in ’99) that I had only just discovered.

It was haunting, beautiful, sad.

Sinead O’Connor – Black Boys On Mopeds.

The lyrics were obvious, the quiet rage behind them astonishingly clear.  Sincere.  Real.

And in ’99 the song to me was already from a bygone era.  A protest song around issues we have since resolved.  It was recorded in 1990 and was about an incident from the year before where police chased a black youth named Nicholas Bramble on a moped they thought was stolen (it wasn’t) and after losing control, Nicholas was victim to a fatal accident.

The song was on an album dedicated to a black man named Colin Roach who died of a gunshot wound inside a police station in London in 1983.  You can read the wikipedia entry here adding further to the feeling that we are… we HAVE to be… past this sort of systemic racism in our modern, enlightened society.

The shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are not new stories.  We have sadly seen too many cases like these in recent months and years; however, with these two shootings, followed by the police killings in Dallas, I am starting to feel in my deepest gut that we are at a tipping point.

The violence of Dallas is a huge escalation in this tension and, when coupled with stories like the Bahamas issuing official warnings and travel advisories for certain parts of the US, this has now gone further than we have seen it go in almost 50 years.

And that’s just the thing, now we SEE it.

We do not have these stories filtered through news media; we are seeing it first hand, from people’s cell phones, immediately.  I cannot shake the Philando Castille video from my brain.  It plays on the backs of my eyelids when I sleep.  The lasting effect of the immediacy with which we see these visceral images is yet to be determined, but there is one thing they do better than anything else: they polarize us.

When you see videos on topics like this (as opposed to reading news reports, columns, op-ed pieces) without the ability to discern full context it is so much easier to jump to assumptions and to form an opinion that is rooted in your own bias.  I am reminded of the footage we were all glued to in 1990 during the Iraq War – whether we knew it or not at the time, watching war happen in real time, for the first time, was the strongest form of war propaganda we had ever had in the Western World.

This is a great article from The Guardian on Confirmation Bias and sums up what I am trying to say perfectly:

“The more ‘news factoids’ you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand.”

This is no more apparent than with the recent hashtag #AllLivesMatter as a response to the #BlackLivesMatter message.

There have been some solid takedowns of this (see here and here for two of my favourites) but here is my simple take on it:

When you read #BlackLivesMatter which option below are you automatically confirming in your head?

#OnlyBlackLivesMatter

OR

#BlackLivesMatterToo

If you chose the first option you are, to put it nicely, simply unaware of the broader context of the message.

(You should see the descriptive sentences I deleted prior to settling on that one.  I’ll leave those in my drafts though – won’t win over anyone using insults now, will we?)

When the statistics show how much more likely it is for a black man to die at the hands of police than a white man, we NEED to have a dialogue around this and saying Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean that others lives don’t matter.  Again, to my point above, when we subject ourselves to getting our news in quick bites on important topics we risk simplifying the issue to the point that it disappears completely and the very nature of the conversation we need to have has changed.

Trevor Noah says this brilliantly in this piece.

“You can be pro-cop and pro-black, which is what we all should be.”

And this brings me back to Sinead O’Connor.  The song and the album were not only anti-police, they were her way of voicing her opinion against the Conservative politics of the time, comparing Margaret Thatcher’s methods to that of the Chinese totalitarian state that caused the massacre on Tiananmen Square.

“These are dangerous days.  To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.”

You can either listen to the song and rush into confirming your own biases, using it for whatever purpose suits the message you ultimately want to say anyway, or you can dig a little deeper and understand the context around it.

I feel that in these dangerous days, we should all be digging for a bit more context before spouting off our opinions.

* * * * *

Oh right, this is a MUSIC blog… I’m not supposed to have opinions on other topics here.

Well, here is the music that has been the soundtrack to the news videos that have been playing and replaying themselves in my head.

 

And the full lyrics to go with it:

Black Boys On Mopeds

Margareth Thatcher on TV
Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing
It seems strange that she should be offended
The same orders are given by her

I’ve said this before now
You said I was childish and you’ll say it now
Remember what I told you
If they hated me they will hate you

England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It’s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that’s why I’m leaving
I don’t want him to be aware that there’s
Any such thing as grieving

Young mother down at Smithfield
Five a.m., looking for food for her kids
In her arms she holds three cold babies
And the first word that they learned was please

These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave
Remember what I told you
If you were of the world they would love you

England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It’s the home of police who kill blacks boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that’s why I’m leaving
I don’t want him to be aware that there’s
Any such thing as grieving

* * * * *

In trying to make sense of everything over the last few days, I picked up the guitar and tried my hand at updating this amazing song to fit the still-developing narrative in the news today.

I don’t offer this as a piece of good music, just my attempt to interpret some further meaning in the chaos I feel building around us.

* * * * *

Update – June 10th 2020
With the death of George Floyd and the protests happening all over North America, I thought about writing a new post but decided against it, instead choosing to add to my previous thoughts here.

What I thought was the tipping point four years ago when I initially wrote this post was not, in fact, the tipping point at all.  The outrage subsided, inaction again ruled the day and there was no significant change.  I was complicit in this.  When the story moved on from the news cycle, it stuck with me, but did not force me to actually change or grow.

The action, awareness and calls for change we are seeing now eclipse what we saw in 2016.  I know I have been profoundly rattled, to my core, and I have been and will be working hard to ensure equality for people of colour.

Is this now, finally, the actual tipping point?  Will we see police reform?

Or will I be updating this post again in 2024?

My original post in 2016 had a video of a version of Sinead O’Connor’s song rewritten with the lyrics posted below it.

As the original song had a whopping 9 views on YouTube (8 of which I’m pretty sure were me) I’ve taken the opportunity to update the lyrics and post a new video.

As before, I don’t put this forward as a piece of good music, I put this forward because we are all now SEEING Black lives being taken, with our own eyes, more than we have ever seen them before.

To those who hate, to those who discriminate, to those who kill… the world is watching you now and, finally, it doesn’t look like anyone will be looking the other way anytime soon again.

Black Boys On Camera

Donald Trump on his Twitter feed
Inciting hatred and bigotry
It’s grown stronger since he was elected
#BlackLivesMatter but now they’re more neglected

We’ve seen this before now
We said “There’s been progress,” and you’ll say it now.
Remember what I showed you
If you hate and you kill we will film you.

America’s not the mythical land of apple pie and baseball
It’s the home of police who kill black boys for no reason at all
And I love my girl and that’s why I’m crying
I don’t want her to grow up in a world with
So many black people dying…

George Floyd taken down by police
Laid on the ground, held in place by a knee
In the camera we see a cold body
And his last words were “I can’t breathe…”

These are dangerous days
The darker your skin, the closer your grave.
Remember what I showed you
If you hate and you kill we will film you.

America’s not the mythical land of apple pie and baseball
It’s the home of police who kill black boys for no reason at all
And I love my girl and that’s why I’m crying
I don’t want her to grow up in a world with
So many black people dying…


* * * * *

Further Reading:  The Guardian and The NY Times

New York Times “A Nation Torn Over Race”‘

A review of O’Connor’s career to date and album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” from the Boston Globe circa 1990.

I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous

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It has been BUSY this past month with potential new jobs and a definite new place to live that we move into next week… funny how life creeps up on you all at once sometimes.

Tonight I get to see Frank Turner at the Danforth Music Hall and I am excited.  I have never seen Turner live before and really only got turned onto him a couple of years ago.  Having missed him at the Horseshoe almost exactly a year ago, tonight’s show has been a long time coming.

This post is not so much about him – that would be longer than I have time to write about right now – but rather about the lyrics of one of his lesser-played-on-the-radio songs, “I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous”.

This song is absolute genius to me.  When I first heard this a few years ago I listened to it non-stop and watched the video over and over as well.  This song is music about musicians and, like books about writers, or musicals about playwrights, or even movies about authors for that matter, art about art or artists is at the top of my list when it comes to subject matter.

Friends in bands (hmmm… “Friends In Bands” filed away as a potential future band name for myself… I can already picture the FIB logo in FBI font… yellow on dark blue… but I digress…) is a thing.  Throughout my life I have had friends in bands and some have actually reached a modicum of success as well, breaking through the noise, earning airplay and playing to audiences mostly comprised of people I did not even know!

Prufrock brings me into Frank’s world and it makes me feel like I’m a part of his gang.  The lyrics walk you through all his mates and the video shows them off in all their small-stage, pub-playing glory.  The sense of nostalgia for a time and place I didn’t directly participate in (fauxstalgia?) that this song and video evoke is very strong: I watch this and I feel like I remember being in my 20’s in England.

The lyrics only get better from there when Turner takes the stage.  If you don’t know the song, have a listen before I say any more.

 

I STILL get goose bumps at this verse towards the end… the crescendo, the emotion, the meaning and the simplicity… it’s definitely in my top five lyrics of all time:

Life is about love, last minutes and lost evenings,
about fire in our bellies and furtive little feelings,
and the aching amplitudes that set our needles all a-flickering,
and help us with remembering that the only thing that’s left to do is live

And then…

And then…

And then

I know… I don’t even want to say it… don’t even want to type it or admit it about a song I love so much…

And then, the last part of the song just thwumps down on your ears and it’s over.

Maybe it’s a simple call to drink (which I am all in favour for in song) and embracing the simple life over fame and fortune, or maybe the form is meant to embody the spirit of the song itself, telling of those who are just on the cusp of being great but never quite really make it… whatever the reason, the song just dies in the last few bars and therein lies my frustration.

This is a great song that makes you care about the characters, that easily and simply brings you into their world, building and creating expectations for greatness, only to deflate it all in an ending that is just too simple.

The fact that I firmly believe this ending needs to be rewritten while at the same time counting the song amongst my favourite songs of the last few years shows how strong the rest of the song is.

Hoping it makes the setlist tonight and yes, from what I’ve read about Turner live, I’ll probably get sucked into a sense of community and sing along proudly that we should all get another round in at the bar, but that still won’t mean I think it’s a good ending.

Or maybe, after seeing him live, I’ll be the one to change my tune.

Further Reading – The Meanings Behind The Lyrics

Prufrock Meanings

I love the genius behind genius.com. Check out this post on the song and click on the lyrics to get all the references; particularly helpful and interesting as Frank sings through the list of all his friends to get their back stories as well.

The Boxer

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I got my first guitar when I was 16.  I was at my grandparents’ house and my uncle reached into the back of a closet and gave me an old guitar that belonged to my granddad.  Granddad, who they used to call “Three Chord Jack” because he could take any song ever written and pare it down to a G-C-D chord progression, had passed away four years earlier so the significance of this gift was not lost on me.

It doesn’t take much for me to remember that moment so clearly… bringing the guitar down to the family room in the basement, the comfortable musky smell, the autumn-leave print couches and fake wood paneling along the wall, the bar at the end of the room that housed a huge collection of bottle openers, mugs and other bar paraphernalia that was popular to obtain through the 60’s and 70’s.  This was what surrounded me when I played guitar for the first time.

There was not a lot of sheet music… as much as we were a sing-along family, it was all learned by heart and the music coming out of the guitars sometimes never quite synched up with the words.  But there were a few pages and one of those pages was The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel.  This would be the first song I’d ever learn to play on guitar.

My father had the album (of course he did, he had over 300 albums in his collection) and had transferred over half his collection to tape.  I practiced every night in my room listening to that cassette, trying to get the shift from major to minor just right in my voice.  It took weeks to get to a point where I felt comfortable enough to try and play it for anyone else and, it just so happened, that another family birthday had come around and we were back at nan and granddad’s house.  I brought my guitar.

Not in front of everyone, but in front of a select few (I remember my mom, dad and uncle being there) I set myself up in the basement and played my first ever show.  One song, with the end chorus stretched out to infinity thanks to the singing along and clapping that was coming from my first audience.

I loved it all; I loved the song, the performance, and the fact that it was likely the first time an F chord had ever been performed on that guitar.

You’ve heard the song before, of course, but watch this clip on Letterman from 1990.  Not only are some of the riffs and harmonies new from the original recording, but the entire performance is powerful, seeing the two perform together so late in their careers knowing these reunion performances were so rare.

Listen for the missing verse as well, one that did not appear on the original Bridge Over Troubled Water recording.

Now the years are rolling by me / They are rocking evenly / I am older than I once was, but younger than I’ll be, but that’s not unusual / No, it isn’t strange / After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same / After changes, we are more or less the same

The song means many things to many people but the one unifying theme we can all see is that the song is about perseverance.  The fighter still remains.

Paul Simon opened Saturday Night Live with the song on September 29th, 2001, the first live SNL show after the events of September 11th.  Everyone watched that show; everyone needed to watch that show and the song was a perfect way to inspire strength and courage without resorting to bravado.  In this clip below, Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels and Amy Poehler reflect on that night and on that performance.

One last memory about this song… later that same year, in November of 2001, I went to Japan to teach English, an adventure that I am sure will come up on a number of occasions here on the site.
I taught at a junior high school and was the only foreign teacher on staff.  Most of the other faculty were warm and receptive to me, however there were those who were either shy or embarrassed about their lack of English and would be very cold or rude towards me as a result.

From an email back home to Canada, April 25th, 2002:

Had a teacher’s party last Friday night, and that is always an adventure. Nice restaurant, food upon food upon food and, as is always the case when drinking with a bunch of Japanese people, too much to drink. The problem lies with the fact that you can’t keep track of how much you’re drinking because people keep filling up your glass with their bottle.

And man do they speak English when they’ve been drinking!  One teacher, I call him a wall-looker (because we’ll be walking towards each other in the hallway and, just as we’re about to meet, he turns his head and stares at the wall as he walks past) asked me (through another teacher) what my opinion was of him. I gave him four words and he understood and smiled: “Big smile… after beer!”

After dinner we went to karaoke where I was urged to sing. I half mentioned The Boxer while looking over someone’s shoulder and the next thing I knew I was belting it out.

Karaoke Tip Number 4

When surrounded by a bunch of older Japanese always go with something pre-1980.

Tip Number 4.1

It doesn’t hurt to pick a song with five minutes of Lai-La-Lais either.

The wall-looker has been much nicer to me ever since.

 

The Boxer… breaking down walls and bringing cultures together.

 

Further Listening – Covers Of The Boxer

The Boxer Cover Tamar and Natanel

Tamar&Netanel do a beautiful version of the song.  What I love about this performance is how clearly they love singing with each other.

The Boxer Cover Jess Chalker

Jess Chalker is a singer/songwriter from Oz with a lovely voice and an excellent version of the song.

The Boxer Cover Jaiwant Nana

With not a lot of eye contact with each other or the camera, this video is not as visually engaging, but Jaiwant Nana’s guitar is impeccable and there is something innately sweet about his father providing the Garfunkel high harmony.  I like it.

The Boxer Living Room Sing a long

And lastly, a great house party version of the song that just shows people having fun with it.  I love this vibe and, honestly, my happy place is where the drinks are flowing, the guitars are out and everyone is singing along so far into the night that we don’t even realize we’ve crossed over to morning…