The world seems troubled at the moment, I think that there's little doubt about that, but, as I went about my business in my usual merry way last week, I found myself listening to an old Peter Gabriel CD and, in hearing the anger and the passion that he threw into his anti-apartheid song "Biko" I did start to ask myself...
What the hell has become of the protest song recently…?
Now, I need to ask you to immediately bear in mind two things here.
The first is that I accept that there might very well be hundreds of protest songs doing the rounds at the moment, but I'm so out of the loop when it comes to "modern" music that I might be completely unaware of their existence, given that Radio Four isn't really known as a "music station…"
The second is that I'm very aware that just singing a song about a problem doesn't make the problem itself go away, but it might just help swell public opinion up enough behind your movement to make the message finally get heard by people who can change things.
After all, if a song makes enough of an impact to finally seep through to someone as musically unaware as I am, then maybe, just maybe, you've finally got someone to listen and pay attention to whatever it is that you've been saying.
Granted, if we get to the stage where compilations of "The Best Protest Songs Ever…" are being sold at petrol stations, then we may have got to the point where the message has been lost and it's just another song, but that's not our problem just yet.
Now, I need to ask you to immediately bear in mind two things here.
The first is that I accept that there might very well be hundreds of protest songs doing the rounds at the moment, but I'm so out of the loop when it comes to "modern" music that I might be completely unaware of their existence, given that Radio Four isn't really known as a "music station…"
The second is that I'm very aware that just singing a song about a problem doesn't make the problem itself go away, but it might just help swell public opinion up enough behind your movement to make the message finally get heard by people who can change things.
After all, if a song makes enough of an impact to finally seep through to someone as musically unaware as I am, then maybe, just maybe, you've finally got someone to listen and pay attention to whatever it is that you've been saying.
Granted, if we get to the stage where compilations of "The Best Protest Songs Ever…" are being sold at petrol stations, then we may have got to the point where the message has been lost and it's just another song, but that's not our problem just yet.
Nevertheless, when it comes to the protest song itself, you'd think that, at times like these, we really need them more than ever, given that there's a hell of a lot that we ought to be protesting about.
Of course, like so many of these middle-class liberal acts of protest, they are, perhaps, ultimately ineffectual, given that a few beaded idiots carrying guitars and wearing fair-trade t-shirts aren't ever going to be taken all that seriously, but sometimes we feel far better for having done something, rather than having done nothing, however futile it might ultimately be, and a good, old-fashioned protest song was always a very good way of upping the profile of whatever it was that was troubling the dinner parties of Islington on whatever weekend it happened to be.
After all, surely, as we sit and knit our own muesli, or macrame our sandwiches, sand slurp away at our lentil casserole, there must be something we can do…?
And singing a good old song about how bloody awful everything is is one way to go…
If only to cheer ourselves up a little as the barbarians storm the gates and ransack our cosy little world.
And, you never know, someone might actually be listening…
All together now…
"What the hell are we all fighting for…?"
"The times they are a-changing…"
"We shall overcome…"
Some day.
After all, surely, as we sit and knit our own muesli, or macrame our sandwiches, sand slurp away at our lentil casserole, there must be something we can do…?
And singing a good old song about how bloody awful everything is is one way to go…
If only to cheer ourselves up a little as the barbarians storm the gates and ransack our cosy little world.
And, you never know, someone might actually be listening…
All together now…
"What the hell are we all fighting for…?"
"The times they are a-changing…"
"We shall overcome…"
Some day.
No comments:
Post a Comment