The Last of The Protesters?
April 19, 2008 by Jack
‘I’m Not There’, the Bob Dylan biopic, could teach the bands of today a good lesson or two about song writing. When a young Bob Dylan, portrayed as young hobo kid going by the name of Woody Guthrie, talks of his songs about previous hardships, he receives the most valuable information ever uttered; Live your own time, child. Sing about your own time. What happened to the people singing about the tribulations of our own time in the form of contemporary protest music? Hip-Hop has taken over as the form of protest music but Hip-Hop seems to have a knack of stirring up more controversy than bringing about change, Rock Against Bush, rocks contribution, was actually inspired by Rock Against Reagan in the 80’s and the Woodstock of ’69. So not exactly original then.
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly had a valiant attempt through his politically charged 2006 debut The Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager and has continued to with his forthcoming second album Searching For the How’s and Why’s. I Could Build You A Tower is as blunt and forthcoming as protest songs go, featuring a sound clip of a news broadcast of the Virginia Tech massacre and lines such as ‘there’s an 8 year old boy in Lebanon with a rifle in his hand’ and ‘I’m counting down the days until the world destroys itself’. Although being slightly more direct than any Dylan poetry, he seems to embody Dylan’s early forcefulness and passion. Although Bright Eyes, Devendra Banhart and Arcade Fire among very few others have all recorded songs with political undertones but to call them protest singers would be a very long shot. Where are the artists more worried about the world rather than their bank balance?
Get Cape. is just one light in the dull blackness of commercial world of music. There are very few artists singing about what’s happening now and taking an actual interest in attempting to be heard. It’s not as though there is nothing to sing about. Should we really need to rely on Neil Young to ask questions?
I completely agree, it seems as though bands and artists prefer just to moan about things these days (that’s you The Enemy) as opposed to really ruffling some feathers and making a stand. Get Cape is a great example of this as not only do his songs contain the opinions and passion that seems to be lacking in other musicians songs, he puts the work in outside of the recording studio; making numerous appearances at protests and fund/awareness raisers.
Music is one of the only free mediums left with which you can completely express yourself and make your opinions heard; at least I don’t think it’s covered by the terrorism act just yet. Is it a case of artists purely not percevering anymore, or is it just that the world has moved on? For all we know a small army of Bob Dylan’s are out there plugging away and have yet to be discovered.
Mark.