Music and Politics

[pophead2k]

Hey everyone- I teach an Advanced Placement Civics course for 12th grade girls and I've decided to do a unit on popular music and politics- everything from answering the questions about which comes first, the music or the movement, to addressing how rock and roll has been co-opted by politicians and Wall Street. I'd love to get your suggestions for songs/content in this area. I've got several pretty obvious things picked out, but I want to hear what this incredibly intelligent and erudite board has to say on the topic before I proceed. This unit won't happen until this spring, but I need to start on it now. Thanks in advance!

[bobster]

One place to look is in musical satirists like Tom Lehrer and, in a different way, Loudan Wainwright III (I think he was actually doing a "musical newspaper" for NPR awhile back.) Even the songs from "Bob Roberts", too.

And you might explore why there are actaully so few musical rightwingers. Except in country -- so for balance you could look at Merle "Okie from Muskogee" Haggard and the excreble Lee Greenwood.

Also, obviously, punk rock in its early days and alter, aside from the obvious ones like the Clash, don't forget X! And then there's guy named "Costello" you might wanna look into.

[laughingcrow]

I don't know if his music is big in the US or not, but a musician I really admire called Paul Heaton, latterly of The Beautiful South, was in a band called The Housemartins in the 80s.
They had a lot of labour and anti-monarchy inspired songs, most notably...
'The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death' , 'Me and the Farmer' and 'Sheep'.

Hope you might find this useful... if not I hope you check out the Housemartins and the Beautiful South if you haven't heard them. Criminally underrated!!!!!!

http://thehousemartins.com/

[El Vez]

[quote="bobster"] And you might explore why there are actaully so few musical rightwingers. Except in country -- so for balance you could look at Merle "Okie from Muskogee" Haggard and the excreble Lee Greenwood. quote]

I have to disagree with you on Merle Haggard. Yes, Okie is forever on the man's set list but he has written a TON of songs that are a great deal more thoughtful and suprisingly liberal in tone. Irma Jackson was a terrific song about an interracial romance and he's getting some press now for a song on his new album that addresses the war in Iraq in a way that is not going to get championed by Fox News or Toby Keith. If anything, Okie From Muskogee is an anomaly in his songbook. Some say he wrote it as a satire of the very view point he appeared to be celebrating and there are others who also believe he wrote it as a sincere way of looking at the late 1960's through the eyes of his parents' generation. After the song became a major hit, he was pressured by his label to play up that particular side of his musical inclinations and his reputation among the same leftists who dig Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson never quite recovered. He is not, however, reactionary in his politics.

Lee Greenwood IS excreble. No arguments there.

[El Vez]

Randy Newman's seminal Good Old Boys is a stunning album that I think would be very appropriate for your class. Spring for the remastered edition with the wonderful, illumination bonus disc.

[SoLikeCandy]

My dad, being the Angry Black Man that he is, introduced me to the Last Poets at an early age. Talk about political :"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is the Angry Black Man's Manifesto.

Also, Public Enemy might be a good place to start.

Of course, those choices might be a little militant, but it would give a good view of another side of politics...

[stormwarning]

A few off the top of my head...though mainly focused on the UK, and mainly in the 80's.

Gil Scott Heron : B-Movie (about Ronald Reagan), Johannesburg (S.Africa), Gun (Everybodys got a pistol, everybodys got a 45"), South Carolina (building of a nuclear plant) and of course The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Stiff Little Fingers : Inflammable Material. Most songs concerned with the British Armys occupation of Northern Ireland, and the Catholic/Protestant divide. Alternative Ulster, Suspect Device, Barbed Wire Love...

Robert Wyatt - East Timor, Namibia, and of course Shipbuilding.

The Special AKA - Free Nelson Mandela, The Wind of Change. The Specials first two albums had a fair amount of political comment.

Julian Cope (ex-Teardrop Explodes) - sings the environment

The Red Wedge of 80's Britain - Redskins, Billy Bragg, Paul Weller, Communards etc.

The (English) Beat - Stand Down Margaret (as sung by EC)

From the Vietnam Era - Neil Young:Ohio (Isley Bros versions combines it with Jimi's Machine Gun), Chairmen of The Board:Men Are Getting Scarce, Edwin Starr: War

Last Poets - cool


Oh, and don't forget Good Charlotte.

[HungupStrungup]

Well, you can't ignore the San Francisco groups, particularly Jefferson Airplane. Their "We Can Be Together," "Volunteers" and "Mexico" have to be part of this curriculum (Grace Slick singing "Up against the wall, motherfucker" and "We are forces of chaos and anarchy/everything they say we are we are" must be heard!). CSNY's "Ohio" is a perfect example of music mobilising to make a difference in how a news story was perceived. Neil Young wrote the song, the group recorded it and the single was in the stores and on the radio within 2 weeks of the killings at Kent State: "What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground/How can you run when you know?"

You have to do Dylan, and to talk about him properly you need to start with Leadbelly, Willie McTell, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

XTC, "This World Over"
The Ramones, "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg"

And of course there's Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit."

[BlueChair]

Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Bruce Springsteen, Jefferson Airplane. All of their catalogs can be raided for political music. And there's tons more, I'm sure.

[LessThanZero]

We didn't start the....um...fire?

The devil made me do it!

[ice nine]

Chicago Transit Authoruty - "The whole world's watching"

Peter Gabriel - Biko

[LessThanZero]

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite

Man that song sounds cool.

When will I be able to hear it in quality stereo?

I guess the Anthology will be my best for now. In the car, I can't turn that song up load enough...it sounds so flat. It could be political.

[bambooneedle]

Women's roles as shaped by popular music (including the role of the dreaded "male gaze", eg. when they exhibit their g-strings over their low-cut hot pants), post-Madonna.

[Pov]

I think that any course like this has to start with the songs of Woody Guthrie. That's where it all began.

[El Vez]

Bruce Cockburn's Stealing Fire is another good candidate for discussion. Written shortly after his visit to Nicaragua, it is a sublimely pissed off tract against all the bad shit that was going down in the 80's under Reagan's foreign policy.

[laughingcrow]

Stormwarning...good call with Inflammable Material. Brilliant and poignant album.

I was trying to think about right-wing musicans...could'nt come up with any, save for far-right nazi hate 'bands' which isn't music, just propoganda and bile.

Another great example is Prokofiev's 'Cantata for the twentieth anniversery of the October Revolution'. It's his satirical dedication to the Marxist dissolution of Christianity. Meant to be pleasing to the ideals of the Marxist state who had publicly decried Shostakovich, but in parts (the oath) he draws the comparison between the government and it's commandments with an organised religion, which they were against.

[PlaythingOrPet]

BlueChair read my mind. The Smiths/Morrissey hated the Royal Family and Thatcher. The Manic Street Preachers are probably the most political band around today, although they try a little too hard somethimes ('If White America Told The Truth For One Day Its World Would Fall Apart'). Hail To The Thief from Radiohead. Cocaine Socialism by Pulp rips into Blair's New Labour. That's all my tired brain can think of right now.

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is a political piece composed way back in 1820-something. Not exactly today's "popular music" but it was then. But, as Pov says, Guthrie is a good starting point.

[HungupStrungup]

Gang of Four, "Capital (It Fails Us Now)," "He'd Send in the Army," or just about anything.

The Au Pairs, feminist-lesbian gender politics as well as "America," as anti-Reagan as they come.

Artists United Against Apartheid, "Sun City": "Tell me, why are we always on the wrong side?"

[miss buenos aires]

The co-opting of punk (i.e. Sex Pistols' quotes on the walls of the Hard Rock Casino and the Clash on the loudspeakers, Hot Topic).

The co-opting of the riot grrrl movement ("grrl power," anyone?).

Capitalism as a ravenous beast that eats everything in its path, including/especially dissent. Sorry, that's not strictly on topic.

As for no (or few) musicians being right-wing, one could argue that supposedly apolitical artists, by not challenging the status quo, are inherently pro-establishment. If that establishment happens to be right-wing...

[bobster]

El Vez --

I'm aware that the great Merle Haggard's politics are relatively complex -- and I'm not really an expert. However, every article I've read mentions that he's still a Republican, loved Reagan, etc. And, btw, it's no reflection on his worth as an artist.

Actually, btw, Neil Young and says he voted for Reagan.

I think what happens is that any sufficiently talented artist is able to encompass contradictory ideas in his ideas and work.

So (Bobster says, retreating to a field he knows better), for example, Clint Eastwood can make movies that seem to espouse some ideas which are more left-wing than right-wing (though, in fact, they're probably neither). He can make movies with out-and-out leftwingers like John Cusack, Tim Robbins, and Sean Penn and say things that seem quite progressive. He can even share a girlfriend with Elvis Costello. (Well, maybe "share" isn't the right word, since that was years ago. Don't wanna start any new gossip but you get the idea.) But, last time I checked, Clint is still a conservative and it still shows in his movies. John Ford is sort of similar, as are David Lynch and James Ellroy, but their work contains lots of things that, at least on the surface, would seem to be counter to a rightwing agenda.

_____

Back to the subject -- forgot to mention Randy Newman -- not just Good Ol'Boys (which I've never heard all the way through -- gotta remedy that one!) but, well, you can't forget "Political Science."

There are couple of political songs in the Bacharach-David cannon, believe it or not. "Windows on the World" and there's another one about urban apathy that was on final disc of the Rhino 3 disc set (can't find my copy) which I can't remember. Really great songs. Actually, "What the World Needs Now" is full of political subtext, realizing the time period it came out.

Also, has anyone mentioned Stevie Wonder? "Big Brother" is clearly about Nixon and the enemies list; for my money "You Haven't Done Nothing" could've been Clinton's theme song...."Living for the City," "Village Ghetto Land" (which the kids will recognize, maybe, as "Gangstas Paradise." etc.)

In my endless effort for you to be "fair and balanced" you could also look at various wartime pro-war songs like "Over There" and "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" and evei stuff like "Der Fuhrer's Face"

Or how about looking at songs which are, on the surface, apolitical but actually have unintentional political contexts, like the Goffin-King-Lieber-Stoller "Only in America" (recorded by Jay and the Americans, natch). You really want to get a discussion started, try "He Hit Me, and it Felt Like a Kiss." (Hopefully you'll still have a job when it's all over.)

Ouch.

[Boy With A Problem]

I've been trying to think of right wing artists with right wing songs and I can't think of any outside of the "country genre" - ugly Charlie Daniels comes to mind.

I can think of many on the left - some of my favorites have been mentioned (Gang of 4, The Clash, SLF etc). Some that haven't - Crass, Dead Kennedys - and let's not forget Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

I think it's much easier to get impassioned by injustice (and consequntly moved enough to write a song) than it is to be impassioned by exclusion and intolerance. (I'm mixing tenses again, damn).

As to Merle and "Okie" - I enjoy the song and have always taken it as kind of tongue in cheek. Of course I'm biased. He's certainly taken a different stand on hemp. In an interview I read over the last couple of years he talked about his reluctance to tour in Canada because it's such a hassle going over the border with a road band and crew who are regular dope smokers.

[El Vez]

The Dead Kennedy's Bedtime For Democracy is a truly great political album although you would likely be out of a job after playing it for the kids.

Burning Spear is a really cool reggae musician who uses music to promote his political agenda.

Steve Earle's Jerusalem is another good candidate. The title track, Ashes To Ashes, John Walker's Blues, Conspiracy Theory and Amerika V. 6.0 are all great discussion starters. He's also got tracks scattered over just about every album that directly address socio-political issues. Christmas In Washington from El Corazon is a personal favorite as are The Rain Came Down from Exit 0 and Someday from Guitar Town.

The soundtrack for Dead Man Walking is another winner to think about using for your class.

[bobster]

Don't why I appear to be obsessed with finding you rightwing songs, but there you go. (BTW: Can't forget Merle Haggard's "Fightin' Side of Me", which I think comes from the late eighties and I actually kinda like Charlie Daniels' "In America")

Anyhow, I've remembered that there was an actual moderate-to-conservative new-wave punk band, and there name was....Oingo Boingo! Well, Danny Elfman confessed to being a Republican, I vaguely recall. Well, at least he was pro-death penalty. And that was the them of OB's big break-out KROQ hit, "Only a Lad."

In fact, so powerful was this song that it is supposed to have caused the younger James Kenneth Hahn (now better known as James Hahn, mayor of L.A.) to go with the flow and be for the death penalty.

[pophead2k]

Thanks everyone! A lot of you pointed out stuff I had lined up but I also was reminded of some that I had forgotten and some I was unaware of. I'll keep you posted on how this goes. I'm also writing a proposal for a music appreciation type class to offer as an elective for next year, so I may be back for more advice.

[HungupStrungup]

The most "right-wing" record to ever be a major hit as a response to the glut of 60's anti-war songs was "Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt. Barry Sadler. As awful as it was musically, I think it's significant and needs to be in your syllabus.

Oh, and let's not forget "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire.