Several folks - Jon, Catarina, Eric, etc - here have been running a series of music posts. I can't compete with them for philosophical relevance, aesthetic insight, cutting edge hipness, or cultural diversity. Though I was actually a professional musician once upon a time in a world far away - orchestral trumpet, Columbus Ohio, 1970s - I have never thought particularly hard about music, and find that mustic generally gets worse when I talk about it. But not wanting to be left out of the game, I have decided to start posting a series of unabashedly political songs. I'll make up a theme and throw out a few songs, usually starting with something famous and moving to things that are less well known. I'm not going to say much - 'cause it makes it worse, right? - just let the songs present whatever they present.
So today, we begin with the famous musical observation: "brother brother, there's far too many of you dyin'" Marvin Gaye
Which leads to the question: "Why?"
Anyway, beyond kids goin' tragically mad, public High Schools life, and tv news, there's things like:
- economic imperialism: Bruce Cockburn - Democracy
- And, you know, sometimes people get pissed as a result: Bruce Cockburn - Rocket Launcher
- Here's an even more disturbing song along similar lines: David Rovics - Jenin (Full disclosure: David is something of a friend of mine, and the shirt he is wearing in this video is from an activist group I helped found. I trust everyone is capable of understanding that neither David nor we were endorsing violence in such performances.)
And partly as a bit of context, partly as a way of showing that experiences of violence can have exactly the opposite effect to that described above,I think I should include a more personal reflection of David's on the same bit of the world: David Rovics Return
Finally, I'll end this depressing and cranky post with something even more cranky that I just discovered while poking around the web, and something cranky that you all already know:
Recent Comments