The Death of Protest Songs in the West
Revolutionary hymns have disappeared in our world, but Arab Spring brought them back to life
Salvador Allende said, “There can be no revolution without song”. But without revolutions, how are protest songs going to spring up? If Joe Strummer was alive he would destroy a BBC camera.
It is the protest song’s obituary in the exhausted democracies of the West, despite the fact that they are more developed countries, they should have a look back at Arab Spring to learn how to construct a revolution in just a few days; there’s no need for a divine military intervention to shoehorn freedom (those feet have not fit in those shoes since 2001 and 2003).
A required glance at Arab Spring in the ideological aspect would result in a gradual enrichment of the drugged youth under the influence of culture industry indoctrination. Arab youth, using the new social media era, with Facebook and Twitter, began the base of their futures; here in western civilization, we are lying on couches, watching TV, ignorant about how our future is being destroyed. The West is exhausted. We are no longer the center of the ideological universe because we are the first world. We are not anemic to protesting (because it is not only revolution), we are anemic in the realization that we have a voice.
Songs nowadays are very egocentric drowning in the cynicism, that is a symbol of the content consciousness comfort which we have grown accustom to and the sense of revolution guillotined in our spirits.
In young people is where the future to our society lies, but unfortunately there’s some missing link in our educational chain, because our tongues are drowned in the larynx, consequently music is powerless in creating rebellion, in fact, there’s a lack of intention to do so. Lyrics applaud the supreme egocentrism, it’s pure cynicism, however much it is called “indie” (INDEPENDENT) it is a very detailed product fabricated by culture industry. Pasted Magazine raised the question in an article, a couple of months ago, if indie music was dead? It is not dead, it is more alive than ever, but it has lost its gist when it merged with mainstream music. It has lost the natural and authentic sense to mobilize those university students against Iraq war, to awake the 50% unemployment rate among Spanish youth, to push British college students to Trafalgar Square. “Songs make history, and history makes songs”, composer and lyricist Irving Berlin said. Not now.
Firstly, I would like to clarify what a protest song is. Martha Reeves of Martha and The Vandellas, was stunned when she found out her 1964 hit “Dancing In The Street” was a hymn of the Detroit riots of 1967, she thought it was a revel song; because Bob Dylan said on the stage “Blowin’ In The Wind” was not a protest song (Dylan always kept a distance from Rolling Stones’ business machine which Morrison had also fought against the free hippie spirit). That’s how we can doubt the concept “protest song” as Dorian Lynskey writes in “33 Revolution Per Minute: A History Of Protest Songs”, covered up intentions at the service of the uprising. That would means that throwing into the streets would be deprived of purity, of the authentic.
Where are hymns like “Give Ireland Back to The Irish”, “War”, “We Shall Overcome”, “Free Nelson Mandela” or “Give Peace a Chance”? It is too much for a 40-year-old woman (PJ Harvey) to make protest songs; and it is not because she can’t do it, she can, it is because she has more fire in her heart than any twenty-something year old guy who is expecting the new cool NME list, who shops at Urban Outfitters and American Apparel. Where are the violent protests? Where are those rock and roll songs about riots? The last protest songs were in 1999 during the uprising against the World Trade Organization in Seattle where hip hop was the soundtrack, hip hop was at its peak, its rapture, then it began to lose its purpose focusing only on the dollar signs ahead of them, its flame was put out at the same time Seattle’99 fell into obscurity.
Afterwards not even an unpopular event like the Iraq war had left a forged mark over the influence of music in the social revolution. Black Lips is one exception; they played in India and Israel, even in Iraq, they talk like true coup-plotters, but it is not happening here, in our western world. There are no hymns.
2011 is hopefully the change of the world’s ideological points of reference. Northern Africa and The Middle East shaped a new world perspective. Arab Spring was instigated by young people who use not only new communication tools but also music and culture as the vehicle. Tunisian rapper El Genéral had an important role in Tunisia’s revolution with the song “Mr. President”. El Genéral was arrested for his song but then released when President Ben Ali was overthrown. Songs which transmit a message similar to Matbakh music; a collective of Syran, Tunisian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Maroccan musicians. Iran is an extreme case, “No One Knows About Persian Cats” was a must-see movie, the story of two guys, music lovers, who wanted to be free through music organizing clandestine gigs: obviously, the film was banned in the Iranian dictatorship. That is the paradigm, using music as the oxygen of freedom in one of the world merciless regimes. Meanwhile, in the West, we waste the freedom we are coated in.
Originally published in Spanish in March 2011: La Muerte De La Canción-Protesta En Occidente
