Bruce Springsteen has a reputation for lavishly orchestrated, radio-friendly rock. That hasn’t done him any favours with radicals, who often dismiss him as an opportunistic peddler of a romanticised folksiness. But Springsteen has always alternated his more commercial style with albums of fiercely political, musically sparse folk – and his most famous songs have rebellious content aplenty, too.

After the massive success of Born to Run (1975), Springsteen, the son of a New Jersey bus driver, entered a period of reorientation. For 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town, he decided to pay tribute to the people suffering during the Carter-era economic slump through songs structured as first-person narratives of working-class lives. His characters, frustrated in the pursuit of their dreams by social conditions, are often angry and lost: 'Well, Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain/Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame…' Economic and clinical depression are never far apart.

Because he tells his characters' intensely personal stories rather than programmatically denounce the social order, Springsteen's radical oeuvre rarely provides revolutionary anthems. But together, his songs develop a devastating critique of the waste of human potential under capitalism. The protagonist of 'The River' finds his life passing him by: 'Then I got Mary pregnant, and man that was all she wrote/and for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat…' These are real people with aspirations, loves and regrets, not pawns in great historical struggles.

Born in the U.S.A. was the bestselling album of 1985, but Springsteen was furious to find it appropriated by the Right. The title track, mistaken for a patriotic anthem by Ronald Reagan, attacks the Vietnam War and the treatment of veterans: its protagonist 'got in a little hometown jam/So they put a rifle in my hand/And sent me off to a foreign land/To go and kill the yellow man'. On his return to America, he finds himself homeless and at a loss 'down in the shadow of the penitentiary, out by the gas fires of the refinery' with 'nowhere to run… nowhere to go'.

In 1995, his career at a low after a string of flops, Springsteen released The Ghost of Tom Joad, an album equally starkly political and musically minimalist. Inspired by John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Journey to Nowhere by Dale Maharidge, Springsteen sings about the new underclass of the homeless, the unemployed and migrants created by Reaganomics: 'Men walking along the railroad tracks/Going someplace and there's no going back/Highway patrol chopper's coming up over the ridge/Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge…' ('The Ghost of Tom Joad'). The songs heap bitter scorn on the wealthy responsible for industrial decline: 'Now sir you're telling me the world’s changed/Once I made you rich enough, rich enough to forget my name' ('Youngstown').

In the new millennium Springsteen turned from story songs to larger-than-life bombast and self-conscious myth-making. Even so, 2006's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions marked a departure. A ramshackle album of folk songs recorded with an entirely new band, We Shall Overcome weaved together anti-militarist classics ('Mrs McGrath', 'Bring 'Em Home') and anthems of the Civil Rights Movement ('Eyes on the Prize'), nineteenth-century songs ('John Henry') and radical material made famous by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. 'How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live', a Depression-era song updated as a denunciation of the Bush administration's racist neglect of New Orleans' black population, embodies the project. Springsteen was seeking not just to invoke an anti-establishment folk tradition but to create one.

That's certainly the theme of Wrecking Ball (2012). The eclecticism of Springsteen's latest album – the songs blend everything from his trademark classic rock to hip-hop – ultimately works against it: but if Wrecking Ball is more an angry cacophony than a single message, it has that in common with the times. The gospel-infused 'Shackled and Drawn' draws inspiration from the struggle between 1% and 99% the Occupy movement popularised ('Gambling man rolls the dice, working man pays the bills/It's still fat and easy up on bankers hill'), while the title track is a sports anthem doubling as a semi-shouted challenge to austerity-happy ruling classes: 'Take your best shot, let me see what you've got/Bring on your wrecking ball'. In Bruce Springsteen’s work America’s radical, popular tradition, which the Right attempted in vain to consign to the dustbin of history, is alive to inspire the search for alternatives.

Malte Ringer is a writer and activist based in Nottingham. He blogs at campuskritik.blogspot.com

Previously in the Rebel Music series:

Rebel Music #1 The Clash - Sandinista!

Rebel Music #2 George Clinton

Rebel Music #3 Atari Teenage Riot

Rebel Music #4 Robert Wyatt - Nothing Can Stop Us

Rebel Music #5 Manic Street Preachers

Rebel Music #6 Tracy Chapman

Rebel Music #7 Instrumental Interlude

Rebel Music #8 The Au Pairs

Rebel Music #9 The Band - 'King Harvest (Has Surely Come)'

Rebel Music #10 Crass

In January 2011 more than 600 (mostly young) people packed into a central London venue to hear speakers ranging from Tariq Ali to Hanan Chehata discuss ‘What is Imperialism?’ My friend Jody McIntyre, who also spoke, later explained why he had helped organise the event. It was “to bring together young people from all sections of society, to discuss and educate ourselves on one of humanity’s biggest enemies: Imperialism.”

One of the great successes of the event was that it engaged young people with a concept that the traditional left has had little success in communicating to a wider audience.

Late last year Jody and I travelled to Venezuela, a country that has been the repeated victim of US imperialism since Hugo Chavez assumed the presidency in 1999.

11 of April 2012 marked 10 years since a US government-backed coup briefly removed Hugo Chavez from power. Chavez was kidnapped from the presidential palace and flown to an island off the mainland where he was kept hostage by forces loyal to the new dictatorship. Less than two days later, through a combination of mass street demonstrations calling for his return and army officers loyal to the constitution the coup was overturned and Chavez was reinstated as president.

These dramatic events were captured in the incredible documentary ‘The Revolution Will Not be Televised’ made by Irish filmmakers who were in the presidential palace when Chavez was kidnapped. 

As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of this notable victory for people power it’s also worth remembering how key members of the west's political and media class reacted to the coup at the time. So-called ‘liberal’ media outlets from the BBC to The Guardian and members of the then Labour government were happy to grossly misreport, even celebrate, yet another US-supported assault on democracy in Latin America. Imperialism always needs accomplices.

And this is what the spokesperson of the IMF, imperialism’s chief economic arm, had to say on Friday 12 April, just hours after Chávez had been kidnapped from the presidential palace.

"We stand ready to assist the new administration in whatever manner they find suitable."

Imperialism always has “technocrats” happy to carry out orders.

Since then the US has been unrelenting in its pursuit to isolate the Chavez government with the ultimate aim of removing Chavez from power. US academic William Robinson has neatly explained US imperialism’s strategy for Venezuela:

“I think the US is pursuing a more sophisticated strategy of intervention that we could call a war of attrition. We have seen this strategy in other countries, such as in Nicaragua in the 1980s, or even Chile under Allende. It is what in CIA lexicon is known as destabilization, and in the Pentagon's language is called political warfare - which does not mean there is not a military component. This is a counterrevolutionary strategy that combines military threats and hostilities with psychological operations, disinformation campaigns, black propaganda, economic sabotage, diplomatic pressures, the mobilization of political opposition forces inside the country, carrying out provocations and sparking violent confrontations in the cities, manipulation of disaffected sectors and the exploitation of legitimate grievances among the population. The strategy is deft at taking advantage of the revolution's own mistakes and limitations, such as corruption, clientalism, and opportunism, which we must acknowledge are serious problems in Venezuela. It is also deft at aggravating and manipulating material problems, such as shortages, price inflation, and so forth. The goal is to destroy the revolution by making it unworkable, by exhausting the population's will to continue to struggle to forge a new society, and in this way to undermine the revolution's mass social base. “

But as Venezuelans have already shown, US imperialism is up against a formidable opponent. Jody and I visited Venezuela to make a film about the country’s Hip Hop Revolucion (HHR) movement, an inspiring collective of musical revolutionaries. Founded in 2003 to bring together like-minded young people from across Venezuela, HHR has organised several international revolutionary hip-hop festivals in the country, and created 31 hip-hop schools across the country, which teenagers attend in conjunction with their normal day-to-day schooling.

HHR told us that normally those attending the hip-hop schools learn hip-hop skills for four days a week and have one day a week of political discussion. However, in some schools those attending had decided they preferred the ratio the other way round. Once participants have ‘graduated’ from the course, they are encouraged to become tutors to the next batch of attendees. Most graduates come from low-income backgrounds, and many go on to establish schools in their local areas.

Our trip to Venezuela also coincided with the inauguration and first ever conference of CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Thirty-three presidents from all of the countries of the Americas (except the US and Canada) were in Caracas for the event. CELAC’s importance in creating a future regional bloc to counter US imperialism cannot be overstated.  

This was understood by Jamil, a member of HHR. “CELAC is the most important development in the last 200 years’, he told us. “We respect Chávez because he understands our struggle, but we are always looking to be self-critical in order to keep our revolution moving in the right direction.”

‘I’m a revolutionary from my heart. Chavez fucks around and flips on us, we’re gonna flip on him. And that’s what I think he expects from us. You know what I mean? That’s why he is so serious with his proposals and with what he does. He has the confidence that he won’t flip on the people. And he understands that capitalism is crumbling. And this is our time, this is our moment, you know, for Latin America, for Venezuela and for us.’

As Seumas Milne, another speaker at the London event on imperialism said: “Our job is to oppose and expose imperialism, and to fight for an alternative to the economic order that drives it.”

In Venezuela and Latin America this is already happening and the Hip Hop Revolucion collective are on the frontline of that struggle.

Support the ‘Hip Hop Revolucion’ documentary: http://www.alborada.net/hhr-donate

In an interview with NME magazine in 1981 Joe Strummer said the following of Crass: “Y’see, the thing about Crass is, ultimately it’s all sell-defeating, cos it’s all kosher. No-one gets to hear about it […] It’s a storm in a tea-cup.” Strummer’s dismissal of Crass is not entirely unsurprising, given the divergent career choices of both bands. Crass had, after all, written a song entitled “White Punks on Hope,” which decried the Clash as guilty of “fashionable talk.” The song accuses Joe Strummer of cashing in on the counter-culture. The ultimate irony is that a founding member of Crass, Steve Ignorant, was inspired to start a band after seeing an early Clash performance. Though, whatever defined punk to Crass was clearly betrayed in the subsequent mainstream acceptance of the Clash.

Achieving “success” was simply antithetical to the manner in which the members of Crass lived their lives. The band lived together outside of Epping, Essex, in a communal arrangement at a collective called Dial House. Here the band focused on producing and distributing music, free from corporate influence and in accordance with an Anarchist ideology. The aesthetic of Crass was fitting with their anti-commercial, anti-authoritarian belief system. The band, while sometimes playing what could be called straight ahead punk, diverged into the territory of the avant-garde with tempo shifts and dissonance that would be right at home in New York’s No Wave movement. Free of commercial aspirations, the band could produce music not limited in scope by pecuniary concerns. Inversely, Crass’ music was difficult enough that regardless of ideological groundings, its accessibility would be limited by rough edges.

Politically the message of Crass was vast, yet was almost always focused on the negative evaluation of mainstream systems, whether they were cultural or governmental. Songs such as “Nagasaki Nightmare” or “They’ve Got the Bomb,” highlight the powerlessness of the individual in the face of Cold War geopolitics and the threat of nuclear annihilation. “Shaved Women,” and “Smother Love,” highlighted the oppression inherent to traditional gender roles and patriarchal family structures. My personal favorite Crass song, “Systematic Death,” suggests that social tradition is characterized by fear, breeding, consumption and materialism. Crass’ opposition and resistance to the prevailing climate, through continual criticism, merge nicely with the thought of Herbert Marcuse (see One Dimensional Man).  But this is just one way to frame Crass’ ideological position, and many, many more are possible.

Crass’ performed actions that made mainstream news headlines, or at least they did once. This occurred when the band fabricated a recording of a phone conversation between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. This fabrication evinced a plan between the two leaders to use Europe as a target in the event of a nuclear war between the US and the USSR. The tape made headlines in the US and the UK, with some coverage suggesting the KGB as the tape’s source. It was later revealed by a reporter for the Observer that Crass had produced the tape. This act appears to be a precursor to today’s Yes Men, in addition to being an action that fits within the Letterist International’s concept of détournement.

In a 2010 interview Crass drummer Penny Rimbaud stated that the band actually made a significant amount of money from their self-released records. For instance the band’s third album, Stations of The Crass, sold 20,000 copies in its first week. Rimbaud is quoted, stating “… suddenly we had all this money.” The band, though, gave most of this money away. Rimbaud states that the band donated the lion’s share to charity, or organizations such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Green Peace. A decision, like many others, that reflects a concerted effort to deliberately live outside accepted social and economic convention.

Chris Famighetti is a social policy researcher and activist living in Brooklyn, NY, with a background in political/community organizing and disaster relief work.

Previously in the Rebel Music series:

Rebel Music #1 The Clash - Sandinista!

Rebel Music #2 George Clinton

Rebel Music #3 Atari Teenage Riot

Rebel Music #4 Robert Wyatt - Nothing Can Stop Us

Rebel Music #5 Manic Street Preachers

Rebel Music #6 Tracy Chapman

Rebel Music #7 Instrumental Interlude

Rebel Music #8 The Au Pairs

Rebel Music #9 The Band - 'King Harvest (Has Surely Come)'

*A guest post by Ellen Potts

A different kind of energy: In standing up to Big Energy on May 3, Climate Justice Collective and friends will continue to evoke the spirit of popular resistance that Mayday embodies.

It seems fitting that the Climate Justice Collective - along with a wealth of support from environmentalist, anti-cuts, anti-poverty and social justice groups and campaigners - will be taking action against Big Energy on May 3^rd, in close proximity to the global Mayday celebrations. The struggle for energy may well be one of the struggles of our time, and corporate practice in the production and provision of the energy we need to live lays bare its motivation: profit for the few, above all.

The UK Energy Summit is a clear example of the power Big Energy wields and the benign picture it attempts to paint. This exclusive gathering will bring together top executives from the Big Six energy companies, as well as fossil fuel giants Shell and BP, along with government representatives, to discuss ‘sustainability’ and ‘security,’ terms which in cases such as these should be linked primarily to the interests of those who use them. As energy supply becomes more problematic, investment in ever-more environmentally destructive energy extraction methods such as tar sands and fracking, as well as unsustainable sources like agrofuels and nuclear power, illustrate the rush to the bottom to maximise profit at the cost of a liveable climate. Moreover, Big Energy’s still-rising profits make a mockery of government rhetoric on the need for austerity - itself prefacing measures that increase inequality and concentrate power in the hands of the few - and contrast starkly with increasing fuel poverty in the UK.

One thing those attending the summit clearly do not have in mind is an energy system controlled by the people, which would signal the end of centralised energy interests. A decentralised, locally controlled energy system could develop incrementally yet substantially – a form of growth not based on abstractions, presenting the possibility of true sustainability. Though in its infancy, community energy is here and beginning to grow in the UK and elsewhere, from community controlled wind farms to energy coops such as those in Bristol and Brixton.  

On May 3rd the Big Six Energy Bash will challenge the reality Big Energy attempts to impose, and revel in the potential of taking power and energy back into our hands. Meeting at 11am at locations in the City of London, differently themed blocs - sending up dirty energy and fossil fuel dinosaurs, celebrating community energy, and taking people power back in the guise of Robin Hood - will converge to create a celebratory space encompassing spectacle, direct action, theatre, music, workshops and much more, evoking the spirit of popular resistance to those who would deny us our power, our right to a living essential, and to a viable future. Come join us!

The Big Six Energy Bash is supported by:

Biofuelwatch, Bristol Energy Cooperative, Campaign Against Climate Change, Disabled People Against the Cuts, Fuel Poverty Action, Global Women’s Strike, Kick Nuclear, London Coalition Against Poverty, London Rising Tide, Occupy London, Rising Tide UK, Stop Nuclear Power Network, UK Tar Sands Network, UK Uncut.

facebook.com/climatejusticecollective
follow us on Twitter @cj_collective
hashtag #big6bash

Levon Helm, the drummer and singer with The Band, sadly died last week. The Band will forever be fixed in popular culture as the subjects of the concert film The Last Waltz directed by Martin Scorsese. Before that, they were key in taking folk music into the rock era with their first two albums Music From Big Pink (1968) and The Band (1969). As well as being musically rich, those albums also created a hybrid folk-rock genre. The group explored America’s folk past through writing new songs or reconfiguring old ones using the full possibilities of an electrified band, rather than just strumming through the same old Pete Seeger standards. Those albums are, in their way, a kind of ‘history from below’ filled with tales of a hard working, hard living rural past. It’s no accident that they appeared just before Studs Turkel’s breakthrough book Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970).

The Band’s music did not, as some roots music does, depend on being particularly ‘authentic’. The arrangements are too lush for that: they were romantics rather than social realists. Politically, this meant that they were rather promiscuous. One of their most famous songs is ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ about the defeat of Confederate army at the end of the American Civil War. However, they did record one of the great American union songs ‘King Harvest (Has Surely Come)’. Sung from the point of a poor farmer who has joined a union, it moves elegantly between the despair of crop failure to the defiance of the collective action he is now going to take. By the end of the song the hope of better labour conditions dovetails with hopes of a better harvest. As ever the sophistication of  The Band stands outs: the unusual fast verse/slow chorus structure, the interchange of vocalists, the lyrical touches that create a sense of the narrator as a person (“I'm glad to pay those union dues, Just don't judge me by my shoes.”) A fitting tribute to the son of Arkansas cotton farmers who went on to become a great musician.

William Farrell is a member of the Labour Party and is researching a History PhD at Birkbeck.

Previously in the Rebel Music series:

Rebel Music #1 The Clash - Sandinista!

Rebel Music #2 George Clinton

Rebel Music #3 Atari Teenage Riot

Rebel Music #4 Robert Wyatt - Nothing Can Stop Us

Rebel Music #5 Manic Street Preachers

Rebel Music #6 Tracy Chapman

Rebel Music #7 Instrumental Interlude

Rebel Music #8 The Au Pairs

When I first began my exploration of the thrilling world of post-punk, I became convinced that I was spending my teenage years in entirely the wrong decade. Post-punk confronted my impressionable sixteen-year-old ears with a vitality which I found to be abysmally lacking in contemporary music (despite the vogue of the mid-‘00s which appropriated of this exact sound). I hunted down recordings of the myriad post-punk bands from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, many of which had modest back-catalogues, having only existed for a few years each. One particular band which pervaded in my listening habits was the Au Pairs. Two men and two women, driven by the vocals of frontwoman Lesley Woods, the band’s interrogation of sexual politics feels devastatingly relevant to this day.

Formed in Birmingham in the mid-‘70s, the Au Pairs released their debut LP Playing with a Different Sex in 1981.  The album spans ten tracks, broaching issues of gender and sex politics, with reference to British intervention in Northern Ireland and dystopian visions of supreme state control thrown in for good measure (‘Armagh’ and ‘Headache for Michelle’ respectively). Contrary to my teenage perception of protest music, this was neither a folksy, acoustic ode to mediocrity, nor exactly a brash and shouty explosion of hardcore punk. Much like their contemporaries Gang of Four, The Slits, etc, the Au Pairs buttressed their angry, radical politics with a style of punk driven by danceable bass lines and catchy riffs. While punk had been operating within fairly strict ideological parameters, post-punk was ready to fight the cause of any marginalised group and successfully translate political indignation into indie dance floor hits.

The album’s second track, ‘Love Song’, confronts power structures with an exploration of staid romantic conventions and the language of commerce (‘take out the ring/two fates sealed/negotiated a business deal’) that they entail. With echoes of Gang of Four’s ‘Anthrax’, it’s a sardonic interpretation of relationships and monogamy, made particularly interesting by the interplay between Woods’s vocals and the occasional distant yelps of ‘I love you’ and suchlike from guitarist Paul Foad.

This vocal collision occurs throughout the album and, on tracks such as ‘It’s Obvious’, its simultaneously melodic and combative form seems an apt reflection of the complexities of gender relations. The premise of universal freedom from the constraints of gender and sexual identity means that the discourse cannot simply operate in terms of a male and female gender binary. The need to reconcile this binary, so that both men and women are liberated from gender expectations, is especially pertinent as gender remains elemental in political strife. Ongoing government cuts are regularly likened to the Thatcherite era (the political climate which provided the backdrop for this album). Moreover, news that cuts are affecting women disproportionately more than men reflects poorly upon the level of gender equality that we profess to having achieved thus far.

Alas, it is perhaps easy to downplay the progress made in the thirty years since this record was released. The band’s cover of David Bowie’s ‘Repetition’ (the story of a man’s abuse towards his wife) is a depressing reminder of the restricted position that married women still inhabited at the time, despite the gains of second-wave feminism in the seventies. Factors such as the abolition of the marital rape exemption (alarmingly only instated by the House of Lords, in England and Wales, in 1991) certainly indicate that there has been a trend towards positive change. However, considering that on average two women are killed by a partner each week, and the appallingly low 6% conviction rate for rape, it is clear that there is a maze of injustice which we have yet to navigate. Rather than succumbing to the overwhelming gloom of these issues, however, there is a righteous anger pervading the Au Pairs’ songs, which enables the listener to reflect upon it without feeling patronised by dogmatism.

Since the eighties, female musicians have often shunned the tag of ‘feminist’, and understandably so. The term has been slyly rendered hostile and alienating by those who perpetuate the myth of bra-burning misandrists. In the period of ‘80s Capitalist glut, stale notions of femininity, masquerading as a kind of hyper-sexualised female empowerment (see the rise, and rise of Madonna for evidence), distorted the axis of gender relations in popular culture and also exploited the plight of women of colour and gay men etc. Seminal modern musicians such as PJ Harvey, who sings frequently about gender and the struggles of male and female relations, do not identify as feminists. And who can blame them, when the term has become marred by such restrictive connotations?

For me, feminism isn’t merely a political issue: it’s a human rights issue. It operates on a fundamental praxis of respect and equality between sexes, and this is the ideology espoused in Playing with a Different Sex. The album cover, featuring an Eve Arnold photograph of female combat soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army, captures an excitement about radical activism that this album incites in me.  Although the Au Pairs weren’t together for long (they disbanded in 1983, a year after releasing their second album), their incendiary and progressive exploration of gender remains entirely relevant today. They were exploring the constraints faced by women, while understanding that men also require liberation from societal gender norms for an equilibrated state of existence to occur. The band’s call for redefinition of power structures can quite easily translate to the plight of any marginalised group, whilst remaining centred within an indictment of the political climate of the time. Alongside all this, the band managed to create some incredibly infectious songs.  I see the Au Pairs as an ideal demonstration of indignation being transformed into something that is both productive and, dare I say it, fun. With such bleak political horizons ahead of us, this combination is entirely necessary.

Rupinder Parhar is a feminist activist and occasional writer. She helps to run the political and cultural blog the Kitchen Tapes.

Previously in the rebel music series:

Rebel Music #1 The Clash - Sandinista!

Rebel Music #2 George Clinton

Rebel Music #3 Atari Teenage Riot

Rebel Music #4 Robert Wyatt - Nothing Can Stop Us

Rebel Music #5 Manic Street Preachers

Rebel Music #6 Tracy Chapman

Rebel Music #7 Instrumental Interlude

A genuinely affecting paradigm of this close-to-the-earth leftist culture is provided by the example of the “Socialist Ten Commandments”, taught in the Socialist Sunday Schools set up by the ILP [Independent Labour Party] from the 1890s onward...

1. Love your school companions, who will be your co-workers in life.

2. Love learning, which is the food of the mind; be as grateful to your teachers as to your parents.

3. Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions.

4. Honour good men and women; be courteous to all, bow down to none.

5. Do not hate nor speak evil of any one; do not be revengeful, but stand up for your rights and resist oppression.

6. Do not be cowardly. Be a good friend to the weak, and love justice.

7. Remember that all good things of the earth are produced by labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers.

8. Observe and think in order to discover the truth. Do not believe what is contrary to reason, and never deceive yourself or others.

9. Do not think that they who love their country must hate and despise other nations, or wish for war which is a remnant of barbarism.

10. Look forward to the day when all men and women will be free citizens of one community, and live together as equals in peace and righteousness.

If there is an element of sentimental paternalism and pedagogy here and elsewhere in Socialism with a Northern Accent, this is part of the point. One of its repeated assertions is that we have to learn from our socialist elders, that there are vital lessons to be derived from the example of the ILP and the northern grassroots culture that grew up around it.

From Alex Niven's review for NLP of Socialism with a Northern Accent: Radical traditions for modern times

Don’t scab for the bosses,
Don’t listen to their lies.
Us poor folks haven’t got a chance,
Unless we organise.

The lyrics to this Union song ‘Which side are you on?’ written in 1931 for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County Kentucky can be heard in a variety of contexts, political and non-political. and the political message will still be understood. The meaning of the song is contained within the lyrics and not the music. If you heard the chords of this song, without the lyrics, and without knowing the original song you would be less certain of its political nature. Conversely, if these lyrics were heard on synths and strings and produced and released by Simon Cowell its political message would be disturbingly hijacked without actually being dissolved.

The problem therefore remains. Instrumental music does not convey information and meaning in the same way words do. Two people can differ greatly in their interpretation of instrumental music.  Take the tune ‘Fable of Faubus’ by Charles Mingus, which was a tune written about Orval E. Faubus, the Arkansas governor who called in the National Guard to prevent nine African American teenagers from attending the Little Rock School. This tune only makes sense as a political tune when coupled with its title. Alone, without prior information regarding its purpose, it could lead you to a different interpretation.

Yet there are situations when instrumental music can become political. Throughout history there have been regimes and governments that have denigrated certain instrumental music.  The act of playing it then becomes a revolutionary act. In Soviet controlled Poland, until Stalin's death in 1953, Jazz was considered the music of the enemy. It was not ‘socialist realism’, which as a concept of art meant, amongst other things, it had to be as bland as humanly possible. In pre-Allende Chile, the Nueva Cancion movement played Andean folk instrumentals with indigenous instruments. At the time, Chilean radio would play either American pop music or Chilean bands playing American pop music. Playing Andean folk instrumentals was a political and national statement: a hammer to hit at the cultural hegemony propagated by the Chilean ruling class.

Of course the jazz music in Poland, and the Andean music in Chile were not played because the regime disapproved of them. They were played because of something deeper than that. They were played because instrumental music does express things. It expresses the condition of the people who create it. Were the things that the music expressed, things that the regimes suppressed, denied, rejected? And if so what are these things? And can this relationship truly be established?

Even though you can’t have as clear cut a relationship between music and meaning as you do with words and meaning, this shouldn’t devalue instrumental music's value in political movements.

Emilio Reyes is a composer who, as he puts it, spends a lot of time playing, listening and thinking about music to the detriment of most other things in his life.

Previously in the rebel music series: 

Rebel Music #1 The Clash - Sandinista!

Rebel Music #2 George Clinton

Rebel Music #3 Atari Teenage Riot

Rebel Music #4 Robert Wyatt - Nothing Can Stop Us

Rebel Music #5 Manic Street Preachers

Rebel Music #6 Tracy Chapman

New Left Project apologises for any confusion.