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Against a backdrop of voter apathy, a global financial meltdown, a war that divides opinion and a questionable political system I want to know why we aren’t hearing more prominent protest songs?

Recently, a friend asked me about my experience of September 11^th 2001. For the benefit of those who don’t already know, I was staying in lower Manhattan at the time (Battery Park to be precise) in an apartment right next to the World Trade Centre. I had been enjoying New York with childlike abandon up until that point, and had even been into the Twin Towers just hours before they collapsed. Like so many other people who were fortunate enough to survive that day, 9/11 has had a profound effect on me and has permanently changed my outlook on life.

During the course of conversation, my friend said that he was surprised I hadn’t produced a body of song that dealt explicitly with my personal experience during that period, perhaps to serve as a form of self-therapy. I replied by saying that in the years that have followed I haven’t really talked at length about my experience at all, let alone take to the stage to sing about it, but that there was one exception in a song called ‘Inside/Outside’ from the first Audio Justice album Overdrawn At The Memory Bank. “Ah, a protest song” my inquisitive chum remarked. “Not quite…” came my somewhat ambiguous response.

‘Inside/Outside’ isn’t a protest song per se, and while it references my own experience of 9/11 (“there’s a three digit number that’s tattooed on my brain”) it is not a song that deals directly with that event. In fact, I wrote the song a few years after the attack when the hysteria surrounding the Allied Forces invasion of Saddam Hussein’s backyard was at fever pitch. People were taking to the streets all around the world to display their frustration at being taken to war on the basis of the 'discovery' of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, and a rather distasteful message was being directed at joe public by the powers-that-be (and reinforced by the media); “You are either with us or you are against us”.

Irrespective of whether I agreed with the invasion of Iraq or not, I didn’t like being told that I had to make a choice that would ultimately determine which side of the fence I would sit on. Surely the issue required a little more depth than a black and white ultimatum?! ‘Why do I have to be with you OR against you?’ I wondered. ‘If I agree that there’s a problem, but don’t necessarily agree with your methods of dealing with that problem, how does this mean I am fundamentally against you?!’ This whole notion of ‘us and them’ still seems ludicrous to me and the lyrics of the song ‘Inside/Outside’ go some way to explaining how I feel that at that particular time, as individuals, we were being grossly manipulated by the press and our governments. Of course, it’s still happening, but a few years into this war people can just about see what a complete mess it is and are subsequently a little more resilient when it comes to being pulled in one direction or another.

(If you want to listen to this song at the same time as reading the lyrics you can download it right now at the iTunes store by clicking here).

You say what you want and you do as you please
You say it’s all in the name of defending the free
Well I don’t think so
The leaves of the tree are falling day after day
As an invisible minority it leads us astray
Well I don’t think so
You caught me inside/outside again
There’s a three digit number that’s tattooed on my brain
And if I close my eyes I see it all again and again
But I don’t think so
One step forward and another one back
Did you think about the aftermath before the attack?
Well I don’t think so
You caught me inside/outside again

This is the closest I’ve come to entering the political arena in my songwriting, and let’s be honest, it’s hardly going to have the same impact as Pete Seeger’s incredible ‘Bring ‘Em Home’ (written as a response to the war in Vietnam), but as I started looking through my notebook of random lyrics and inane scribbling I began to ask where the protest songs of today are coming from?

^{Pete Seeger’s landmark protest song ‘Bring Em Home’ provided the benchmark for all others that followed.}

During the aforementioned Vietnam war, the power of the political lyric, backed by the legitimacy of veterans of the battlefield and the solidarity of the civil rights movement, helped mobilise social change. Groundbreaking songwriting from the likes of Neil Young (Ohio), Edwin Starr (War), The Doors (The Unknown Soldier) and the incredible deconstruction of the Star Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock spoke to audiences worldwide who, through the power of contemporary pop music, were able to engage in a global political conversation with one another at a time when they thought they were powerless to bring change.

This united counter culture proved to be an extremely difficult force for governments to have to contend with. Vietnam was the first war that was documented in real time, live on the television, with reports on the evening news. Journalists were right at the heart of the battlefield with their cameras, and the images of destruction, chaos and massive bloodshed were being delivered directly into people’s living rooms. Seeing the extreme violence of the war so explicitly was a real eye opener but simply too much for many of the viewing public to accept. The ever growing catalogue of protest songs provided a powerful voice for those who wanted to see an end to the situation unfolding before them. It is no coincidence that in wars (with US involvement) since Vietnam, the military have largely been in control of where journalists can and can’t go in a war zone. From Grenada right through to the current conflict in Afghanistan, you will not see pictures of combat from the frontline that are anywhere near as explicit as those transmitted during the Vietnam war.

Focusing on anti-war songs, this absence of visibility from the battlefield must be partly responsible for the lack of proliferation of the protest song today. Since Vietnam, many of rock’s royalty have used their voice to encourage political change (John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Public Enemy and Rage Against The Machine to name but a few), but against a recent backdrop of global financial recession, voter apathy and increasingly controversial conflict in the Middle East where are today’s Bob Dylan’s?! Where are today’s Joan Baez’s?! Surely now is as good a time as any to encourage social awareness, and if music is one of the most appropriate mediums to get that message across then why aren’t we hearing it?!

There are, it seems, very few recent examples (besides my own by Inside/Outside rant of course ). System Of A Down released the song Boom to coincide with the world’s largest ever peaceful protest (a number of demonstrations that took place simultaneously in many of the world’s largest cities to argue against the invasion of Iraq), and you should check out Bobby Conn, an artist who produces a lot of politically themed music. It does seem, however, that the mantle has fallen to the ol’ seasoned protest songsmiths to do the job for us once again…

In 2006 Neil Young returned with Living With War, an entire album of protest songs about the conflict in the Middle East, with a particular criticism of the Bush administration (most explicitly in the scathing attack ‘Let’s Impeach The President’). Inspired by a newspaper article about seriously wounded soldiers being flown to hospitals in Germany (that totally ignored the suffering or death depicted in the graphic pictures that accompanied the story but instead took the angle of ‘medical breakthroughs made during the war’), the album was largely well received. A subsequent tour, however, did find outraged Republicans leaving the concerts in their droves, which inadvertently generated even more publicity for Young’s message. Around the same time, Tom Waits, Robert Cray and Patti Smith also began releasing work commenting on the current war.

^{Neil Young’s rallying cry ‘Let’s Impeach The President’ outraged and entertained audiences in equal measure.}

^{Bluesman Robert Cray produced the haunting anti-war ballad ‘Twenty’, a song about the experiences of a GI in Iraq.}

Maybe I’m missing something…? Maybe the lack of visibility of protest songs is because it’s too easy for them to be ignored these days? Maybe people are protesting in more effective ways? Or maybe protest songs are out there but just aren’t raising consciousness in the way that they used to? Maybe I’m looking back instead of forward? Or maybe I should just write some protest songs of my own if I’m that bothered?!

I’d love to know what you think, so please do leave your comments and thoughts below. Perhaps you can enlighten me and other readers by pointing us in the direction of some great contemporary protest songs dealing with the social climate we find ourselves in today, or maybe you have some thoughts on why these songs aren’t as prominent as they used to be? Either way, thanks for reading and checking out the videos. As ever, I look forward to your feedback

Dan

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Tags: 9/11, audio justice, audiojustice, bob dylan, bobby conn, edwin starr, inside/outside, jimi hendrix, joan baez, john lennon, neil young, overdrawn at the memory bank, pete seeger, protest song, protest songs, robert cray, september 11th 2001, system of a down, vietnam war, weapons of mass destruction, world trade centre

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Audio Justice Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.