Brad Schreiber - Music Is Power: Popular Songs, Social Justice, and the Will to Change

Music Is Power

Music Is Power

Popular Songs, Social Justice,

and the Will to Change

BRAD SCHREIBER

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Schreiber, Brad, author.

Title: Music is power : popular songs, social justice, and the will to change / Brad Schreiber.

Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019018579 | ISBN 9781978808126 (cloth : alk. paper) |

ISBN 9781978808157 (web pdf )

Subjects: LCSH: Popular music Political aspects History. | Popular music Social aspects History.

Classification: LCC ML3918.P67 S37 2019 | DDC 306.4/8424 dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018579

A British Cataloging- in- Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright 2020 by Brad Schreiber

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S.

copyright law.

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48- 1992.

www .rutgersuniversitypress .org

Manufactured in the United States of America

Music can change the world because it can change people.

BONO

No matter how corrupt, greedy and heartless our government, our corporations, our media and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

KURT VONNEGUT

Somebody has to do something, and its just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.

JERRY GARCIA

Contents

vii

viii Contents

Music Is Power

Introduction

Music is sound waves. It is energy made entertaining, mathematics in service to the human ear. It is power but not just sonic power or power in consumer currency or the power to evoke an emotional response or memory. Music, when it is crafted to address the ills of the world, becomes a special kind of force.

Historically, music has often been used to drive soldiers onward into battle. There are (and will always be) more songs about patriotism than the horrors of war. There will always be more songs about how much I love my baby than about racism, governmental authoritarianism, poverty, drug addiction, and a panoply of other existential maladies. But that does not mean that a piece of music with lyrics that criticizes a perceived failure in society should be marginalized as a protest song. That term is often dismissive, like conspiracy theory. To dismiss a musical composition as a mere protest song is to virtually condemn it, to inherently call it precious and peculiar and outdated, belonging to a specific era when such curiosities were recorded and accepted widely.

Politically motivated music arguably has its American origins in the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. While a patriotic song like When Johnny Comes Marching Home, published in 1863, celebrated the safe return of a Union soldier, it in no way decried the horrors of war. Conversely, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child was popularized by 1

2 Music Is Power

the black a cappella group the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the early 1870s. As a plaintive and wrenching plea that came out of the subjugation of slaves in America and the horrific separation of family members in that process;

Motherless Child was one early song of protest that has had a life through multiple performers. Those musical artists included Paul Robeson, who sang the piece in the 1930s, and Richie Havens, whose stirring version at the historic Woodstock music festival in 1969 was actually a spontaneous decision. Havens was asked to stretch his act. The next group scheduled to perform was embedded in a field with more than 400,000 listeners.

Music addressing social justice in a concentrated manner did not materialize until the 1910s and 1920s, when labor organizing was met by brutality and oppression and complicated by the paternalistic involvement of U.S. Communist Party members and, at times, the bombs of anarcho- syndicalists.

This book endeavors to analyze major works of popular music in many genres and examine them over the sweep of time. The artists discussed in these pages sometimes departed radically from their normal songwriting to remind listeners not how wonderful love is or how miserable heartbreak is but what is wrong and unjust in this world.

The musicians, composers, and singers presented herein are by no means the only ones who have made important contributions in this arena. For every Bob Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature days before these words were written, there are other songwriters and groups who write and perform socially conscious songs but will never have the impact he did.

While the reader might find reference to, for instance, a song by Joan Baez or Edwin Starr or Black Sabbath, know that these choices were made with the awareness of other fine works that had less overall influence.

As an example, I insist that the greatest antiwar song ever created is by a group you have likely never heard about. But when I saw the Madison, Wisconsin, duo The Prince Myshkins (Andy Gricevich and Rick Burkhardt) perform The Ministry of Oil with just two voices and a mournfully beautiful accordion, tears filled my eyes. The songs first two stanzas make clear the power of its lyrics, inspired by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003: Once again, we hear the word precision

From people who think bombs can be precise.

We hear the price of fighting terrorism

From people who dont have to pay that price.

Introduction 3

We see a cloud where there should be a college.

We see a reservoir reduced to soil.

And though they now admit that the marketplace was hit, They didnt hit the Ministry of Oil.

Let us applaud all musical artists everywhere, through time, who wrote and who will write songs to challenge us as a species to be better, to do better.

Musical Workers of

the World Unite

Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie,

and Pete Seeger

Like any other performer, a singer- musician has a public persona and a private world. If fans knew every detail of the artists private life, as they so often seem to crave, their devotion might not be as ardent. The hero (and heroine) worship of major acts in popular music can never reconcile this schism because, as the Eric Berne aphorism goes, No man is a hero to his wifes psychiatrist.

Some followers are more forgiving than others when they learn their idols are guilty of domestic abuse, drug or alcohol addiction, sexual debauchery, or the inability to open their mouths without something transgressive and offensive tumbling out of it. Apparently, modern society generally tolerates these supposed by- products of success. The music fan typically yearns to commune with and be a part of the life of the artist out of an appreciation for how the music has made him or her feel and think.

Musical Workers of the World Unite 5

So when the established artist writes songs that address social issues, the public is compelled to ask questions: Do we agree with your political and social views? Do we feel uncomfortable being reminded of the issue in your song? Do we perceive the work to be a momentary departure from your previous music? And what is this some kind of protest song?