Today’s Musical Rebels Uphold the Moral Responsibility of the Artist
In my youth I studied for many years as a classically trained oboist, and one day during the Yeltsin years whilst watching the squirrels in Washington Square Park it suddenly dawned on me that the stereotype of the classical musician being an elitist snob had an element of truth to it, and that there was something fundamentally wrong about the fact that most of us lived in a bubble utterly indifferent to catastrophic political and socio-economic problems. This revelation inculcated me with an understanding that the artist has a moral obligation to not turn away in the face of injustice, and to protect the memory and struggle of the weak in their attempts to defend themselves from being brutalized by the powerful. From Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie (“I ain’t got no Home in this World Anymore” and “The Jolly Banker” could have been written ten minutes ago) to Shelley and Blake, a small group of poets and singer-songwriters have always taken this courageous stance. Indeed, their struggles live on despite an increasingly powerful and pernicious censorship apparatus.
Sage Francis, one of the most important literate hip-hop artists, has written a number of inimitable songs that decry the growing inequality and totalitarianization in America. In his “Slow Down Gandhi” he rails against unfettered privatization, the Cult of Psychiatry (a demon likewise engaged in “Grace”), and the illiteratization of the proletariat. “Slow Down Gandhi” also emphasizes the moral bankruptcy of the two-party system resulting in a pervasive lack of intellectual honesty and meaningful choices for voters:
One love, one life, one too many victims.
Republicrat, Democran, one party system.
Media goes in a frenzy,
They’re stripped of their credentials.
Presidential candidates can’t debate over this instrumental.
In “Makeshift Patriot” and “Blue” Sage Francis condemns the psychopathy of our foreign policies which are intertwined with a rotting domestic culture, the latter falling under his crosshairs in “Conspiracy to Riot:”
Peep the game, dummy
You can’t keep the reign from me
It’s us who put in the overtime, they who make the money
Snickering at trickle down economy
We got nickled and dimed It’s more like highway robbery
Drive in the fast lane, eyes on the gas gauge
Listen to neo cons cry about black rage
It doesn’t stop there
They’re the blowhards, they puff out their chest they’re full of hot air
Providing entertainment for the status quo
Then once every 4 years they pander to the black vote
Oh, religion ain’t a tool of control?
Why they pull the God card once they’re losing in the polls
Foolish, I know, we’re victims of circumstance
It ain’t coincidence we’re children of the worker ants
And those in power ain’t never owned a pair of dirty pants
But they’re quick to kill your health insurance plans
Green Day, one of the most consistently radical contemporary American bands, and an ensemble with a political philosophy similar to that of Bob Dylan, executed one of the great anti-war songs in “21 Guns” which warns America’s youth of the devastating and often irreversible consequences of participating in illegal wars of aggression:
Do you know what’s worth fightin’ for
When it’s not worth dyin’ for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocatin’?
Does the pain weigh out the pride
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You’re in ruins
One, twenty-one guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, twenty-one guns
Throw up your arms
into the sky
You and I
When you’re at the end of the road
And you lost all sense of control
And your thoughts have taken their toll
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul
If even one American teenager decides not to enlist after listening to this song, this is one life saved, one soul salvaged, one dream “wrapped in a blue cloud-cloth” to paraphrase Langston Hughes.
Green Day’s wistful “Macy’s Day Parade,” whose music video was fittingly shot amidst the ruins of an abandoned factory, bemoans the demise of the New Deal, deindustrialization, and the terrible suffering and despair that have ensued. Can a society survive once in thrall to the cannibalistic brutalities of unbridled capitalism and hypermaterialism?
Today’s the Macy’s Day parade
The night of the living dead is on its way
With a credit report for duty call
It’s a lifetime guarantee
Stuffed in a coffin, ten percent more free
Red-light special at the mausoleum
Give me something that I need
Satisfaction guaranteed to you
What’s the consolation prize?
Economy sized dreams of hope
When I was a kid I thought
I wanted all the things that I haven’t got
Oh, but I learned the hardest way
Then I realized what it took
To tell the difference between thieves and crooks
Lesson learned to me and you
Green Day’s “American Idiot,” “Still Breathing,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake me up when September ends” also fulminate against the militarism, immiseration, dissolution, and relentless brainwashing that have eviscerated American society.
Undoubtedly under pressure to avoid controversial subjects once they started making millions, Linkin Park still managed to come up with a number of insightful songs calling into question the American dream such as “Numb,” which struck a poignant chord with embittered American youth resentful towards callous parents who were fortunate to have graduated college during the heyday of the New Deal; “What I’ve Done,” which bemoans the barbarities humans inflict on one another and their environment; the post-apocalyptic “Shadow of the Day,” which portends the unraveling of society and its descent into chaos and authoritarianism; and “In The End,” which acknowledges the struggle of atomized individuals in an often futile attempt to disenthrall themselves from ruthless and seemingly intractable socio-economic forces, a song which is anchored in a deep-seated sense of alienation and despair not unlike the aforementioned “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and Black Sabbath’s haunting “God is Dead?” Particularly pertinent is Linkin Park’s “The Catalyst,” which opens with a series of strikingly heretical lines:
God bless us, everyone
We’re a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can’t be outfought, it can’t be outdone
It can’t be outmatched, it can’t be outrun, no!
God bless us, everyone
We’re a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can’t be outfought, it can’t be outdone
It can’t be outmatched, it can’t be outrun, no
Coupled with the song’s dark sense of resignation that the end of democracy is nigh, “The Catalyst” suggests that, as transpired in ancient Rome, this growing authoritarianism is inevitable due to the barbarities Americans have long inflicted on others:
God save us, everyone
Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns
For the sins of our hand, the sins of our tongue
The sins of our father, the sins of our young? No!
God save us, everyone
Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns
For the sins of our hand, the sins of our tongue
The sins of our father, the sins of our young? No
Another noteworthy anti-imperialist song is Christopher Todd Nolan’s little known yet stirring “Adolescents in a War for a Third Time” which condemns the genocidal violence being perpetrated against the people of Gaza:
Heard the news about a whole lotta people dying
Watch the TV for the truth, but they sell the crime
Adolescents in a war for a third time
See lifetimes of death by 29
If you’re lucky
All the industry
All politicking
All the demons making bank on the misery
They try to justify
But don’t believe the lies
They want you to support a whole lotta people dying
So even though I know
This question’s kinda loaded
I just wanna know
How it all corroded
Who runs the world?
Who runs the world?
Intimated by Nolan is the sense that the Zionist entity’s attempts at exterminating the Palestinian people are emblematic of the West’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy, and that our elected representatives are sock puppets of a lawless shadow government.
One of the most remarkable recordings of a radical song released in the post-Soviet era is Patty Loveless’ rendition of “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.” While the lyrics are Darrell Scott’s, Loveless’ version is breathtaking and pays glorious homage to America’s suffering coal miners and unionizers of old – a class-conscious mentality which is in danger of being lost due to the sectarianism and tribalism relentlessly fomented by multiculturalism and identity politics. The song astutely points out that even the owners of the coal mines were sometimes buried under their own onslaught of brutality and avarice:
No one ever knew there was coal in them mountains
Till a man from the northeast arrived
Wavin’ hundred dollar bills, said, ‘I’ll pay you for your minerals’
But he never left Harlan alive
Mike Shinoda’s “Kenji” recounts the story of how members of his family were incarcerated in internment camps set up for Japanese and Japanese Americans by the Roosevelt administration after the start of the Second World War. Both “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” and “Kenji” seek to remind the older generation as well as educate the younger ones about critically important episodes of American history which have long been expunged from the history books. Can democracy survive within a vortex of mass historical amnesia?
The Branch Covidian coup d’état inspired a number of fine anti-biofascism songs such as Julie Elizabeth’s heartbreaking “Silence,” Lukas Lion’s brilliant “1984,” RC’s “Just Say No,” along with Hi-Rez & Jimmy Levy’s magnificent “Welcome to the Revolution” and “This is a War.”
Lukas Lion’s “1984,” which had over a hundred thousand views on YouTube before it was removed by the Ministry of Truth, masterfully encapsulates the devastating psychological warfare techniques of the Branch Covidian putschists:
They say it’s 2021 but I ain’t too sure,
it feels like 1984.
They’ve been mentally and spiritually waging war, can’t you see what they’re aiming for?
Orwell underestimated the capability of villainy and tyranny,
These sick elites are masters of trickery.
They’re moving wickedly, watching the world bleed as they feed off our misery.
The world’s gone quite mad.
Yeah, the human psyche has been hijacked.
Propaganda bombardments, your mind is the target,
They wanna deceive and lead us into darkness.
Fear is their greatest tool.
Fear can turn the brightest minds to fools.
Televise endless lies, keep people terrified. That’s the way they maintain their rule.
Like Sage Francis, Lukas Lion brings a much needed element of political literacy to the rap genre. His poetic gifts are undeniable:
The only infection here is deception.
They fooled the whole world with PCR testing.
Look at all the facts they’re neglecting to mention.
Ask too many questions and you can get censored.
The thought police are patrolling,
they don’t want information if they can’t control it.
In contrast to the diabolical ravings of the legacy media and the education system (in actuality, a blind obedience system) “Welcome to the Revolution” calls on American youth to not blindly follow orders and to always place one’s soul before one’s career:
Keep the money
I would rather have my soul
They want power and control
That’s their number one goal
All my friends turn to foes
Look how easily they fold
Even Nazis say they were doing what they’re told
Walking down this road all alone in the cold
But my soul never sold
I’m exposing the clones
God has chosen this role
Although those who oppose
Want me hopeless and broke
Like I’m Noah on boats
I’m just tryin’ to tell ’em all ’bout the flood
I can feel it in my bones
I can feel it in my blood
These brave singers all hail from different backgrounds and have adopted very different styles, yet each shares an uncompromising devotion to liberty and is willing to take risks to expose the lies of the rich and powerful.
In a West drowning in depravity and being torn apart by neocons who have nothing to offer except war and privatization, and neoliberal cultists who stopped thinking following the end of the Vietnam War and can no more have a rational fact-based discussion about serious political problems than a clan of diseased Neanderthals, these musicians stand as empyreal lights proudly flickering from the sacrosanct torches of compassion, reason, and truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment