When you think of the Decemberists, usually sea shanty’s or epic tales come to mind, not protest songs. Ironically their most widely know song from their most recent album Picaresque is just that. “16 Military Wives” got significant play on MTV when released. It’s a scathing comment of the shallow and selfish  and self-centered culture that is America today.

Eighteen academy chairs
Out of which only seven really even care
Doling out the garland to five
Celebrity minds, they’re humbly taken by surprise

Cheer them on to their rivals
Cause America can, and America can’t say no
And America does, if America says it’s so
It’s so!

The music video itself is a mock U.N. staged in a middle school with Meloy as the lead representative for the U.S. inciting a police action against Luxembourg and eventually ends up regretting it later. How’s that for taking what Rage Against the Machine did to a whole new level. We definitely need these kind of messages in an entertaining and engaging way so that young people might begin to pay attention and get involved. Even if it just just gets them asking about whether the US actually acts that way in world politics as this video might. 

Read: Full Lyrics to “Sixteen Military Wives.”

Watch: Music Video. (YouTube)

Zack de la Rocha is no stranger to protest music. As lead singer of Rage Against the Machine he has produced some of the most powerful lyrics of protest exhibited in the last 15 years. In a project with DJ Shadow called March Of Death, they produce a track only available as a download on their website of the same name. The song is loud, abrasive and exactly the kind of thing one might expect from de la Rocha.

When you go to their site the full lyrics are the first thing you see, so I won’t reprint them in full. However I did want to highlight the last two lines of each of the three verses for you to get a sense of what this is all about: 

This Texas Furor, for sure a compassionless con who serve a
Lethal needle to the poor. The cure for crime is murder?
…

What is a flag but a rag, a shroud out loud, outside a faceless crowd
Cause a cowering child just took her last breath, one snare in the march of death

…

All targets are taking aim
We’re the targets, they’re taking aim
 

While this song is not new it was released in March 2003 as a response to the invasion of Iraq that began that month. Here are their comments about why they released this song:

Without just cause or reason, without legal or moral justification, and without a thread of proof that Iraw directly threatens the security of the United States, the Bush administration has headed to war. As I am writing this, bombs are raining upon the defenseless civilians of Bagdhad in a continuation of a policy that has already claimed the lives of over 1 million innocent Iraqi people. People jsut like us who want democracy but find themsleves cornered by a dictator on one side, nake U.S. aggression on another, and the oil beneath their country; for which it appears they are to be massacred.

Lies, sanction, and cruise missle have never created a free and just society. Only everyday people can do that. Which is why I’m joining the millions world wide who have stood up to oppose the Bush administration’s attempt to expand the U.S. empire at the expense of human rights at home and abroad. In this spirit, I’m relasing this song for anyone who is willing to listen. I hope it not only makes us think, but also inspires us to act and raise our voices.

-Zach de la Rocha

Artists, be they painters, actors, writers, or musicians, have a responsibility to reflect and interpret the world around them. Our current administration’s foreign policy strikes me as being reckless, inhumane, and hopelessly out of step with the so-called “values” it claims to defend.

We, the world’s only superpower, have immense capacity to ease human suffering throughout the world, yet we instead choose to inflict it upon those we deem a threat to our agenda of empire.

As an American, my government’s actions give me cause for great concern.

I’m proud to support Zack de la Rocha in giving a musical voice to that concern.

-DJ Shadow 

 

Read the full lyrics and download the track here.

HT: Drowned in Sound.

This is Mos Def’s “Katrina Clap.” Just now passing the one year anniversary of the hurricane and we are reminded that New Orleans is still a gaping wound in our national conciousness.

It’s dollar day in New Orleans,
It’s where water everywhere and baby’s dead in the streets,
It’s enough to make you holler out,
Like where the fuck is Sir Bono and his famous friends now,
Don’t get it twisted man I dig U2,
But if you aint about the ghetto, Then Fuck You Too,
Who care bout Rock N’ Roll when babies can’t eat food,
Listen homie that shit ain’t cool,

It’s like dollar day for New Orleans,
It’s where the water everywhere and homies dead in the streets,
And Mr. President’s a natural ass,
He out treatin’ bruthas worse than they treat the trash

It’s clear that restoring New Orleans to its former glory is a low priority of federal government. To ignore the racial element of the issue is to ignore the history and what the numbers say. For a short time the national press examined the racial and class dynamic surrounding the initial response and who was left to fend for themselves. Mos Def brings that issue alive again with this song and video, that is an underground favorite.

To suggest that action or inaction is ever a decision based on race has become crass. We like to think the newspaper version of our country has integrated and things like this would never be allowed to happen anymore. We want to think that this was simply a “Perfect Storm.” We really want to believe that Army Corp of Engineers fucked up big or that events like this are bound to happen sooner or later when attempting to tame nature. But a significant question to confront is: Had the demographics of the area protected by those levees been different, would those levees have been taken care of differently? I don’t know the answer to that question, but Mos sure has plenty to say about it.  

Watch: Katrina Clap Video (YouTube)

Full Lyrics: Katrina Clap

Their name says it all. Rage Against the Machine. And they took protest to a new level. This now defunct band brought the protest to the streets. When I was first introduced to Rage as a freshman in high school by a friend I was immediately drawn to their anger and their politically oriented lyrics. They were getting played on MTV and major radio stations, and spoke to my disenchantment with our culture growing more frivolous and lazy. The establishment hated them, and I loved them for it.

Their 1999 album The Battle of Los Angeles is an essential pickup for any personal collection, and a loosely cohesive protest album, railing against the corruption in our society. The first song from that album is called “Testify” and the music grabs you immediately. The opening lines of “Testify” handily sum up the half-aware attitude of our national conciousness right now, the meaningless drivel we are spoon-fed daily and our willingness to digest it without even the hint of questioning of what we are actually putting in our own mouth.

The movie ran through me
The glamour subdue me
The tabloid untie me
I’m empty please fill me
Mister anchor assure me
That Baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing 

Later on with a single refrain, the song voices the anger many feel about these times we live in and the true motivation for our actions abroad:

Mass graves for the pump and the price is set
And the price is set
Mass graves for the pump and the price is set
And the price is set
Mass graves for the pump and the price is set
And the price is set
Mass graves for the pump and the price is set
And the price is set

“War Within a Breath,” the last song on the disc, leads with these lines:

Every official that come in
Cripples us leaves us maimed
Silent and tamed
And with our flesh and bones
He builds his homes

Does this sound familiar? Katrina-esque even? These songs are meant as a wake up call and a call to action. These lines are directed at the listener, imploring someone to speak out, imploring someone to deviate from the accepted path, imploring someone to recognize the inequality inherent in the system. 

The final song I want to highlight from The Battle of Los Angeles is “Guerilla Radio.” He could have been writing these words as a premonition to either of our last two presidential elections.

As the polls close like a casket
On truth devoured
Silent play in the shadow of power
A spectacle monopolized
The cameras eyes on choice disguised
Was it cast for the mass who burn and toil?
Or for the vultures who thirst for blood and oil?

…(snip) 

Lights out guerrilla Radio
Turn that shit up
It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here?
What better time than now?

This generation’s guerilla radio is now enabled through the internet and with sites like Daily Kos and TPMCafe that are enabling new legitimate voices and ideas into the national discourse outside of the corporate controlled media. This albums truth, while written 8 years ago in and in a pre-9/11 world (whatever that means), suddenly seems prescient. I think with the unprecedented threat to incumbents we have seen reflected in state primary races so far this election season, maybe the revolution is finally starting.

Rage recognized the power of the music video and MTV, so the music video’s that they created which are highlighted below are a political statement, even apart from the lyrics of the song. 

Read: Full Lyrics to “Testify.”

Read: Full Lyrics to War Within A Breath.

Read: Full Lyrics to Guerilla Radio.

Watch: “Testify.” (YouTube)

Watch: “Renegades of Funk.” (YouTube)

Watch: “Guerilla Radio” (YouTube)

Neil Young has never been one to shy away from making a political statement. These lyrics come from a song called “Let’s Impeach the President.” Young’s most recent album, ”Living With War” is an entire protest album, dedicated to George Bush and his antics.

Let’s impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door
He’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let’s impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones
What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Let’s impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected
Thank god he’s racking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean
Thank God  
 

This album, released in 2006, arrived online before it came out in hard copy and Young has taken his messaging one step further by creating an active blog that speaks out against the threats to our civil rights and national reputation that our current leaders perpetrate. His “Living with War Today” blog/news site is fascinating. It’s USA Today style logo and graph of US military deaths as a result of Iraq greet you as the first thing you see at the site. The CNN style newscasts as video downloads are a strong antidote to the hollow news reports we are delivered by pseudo-journalist anchors of today (Anderson Cooper excepted). This site also prominently highlights protest songs of the current times (which I will have to source heavily).

Prior to this album, Young has a history of quality protest songs like “Ohio,” with CSNY, and “Rockin’ in the Free World.” “The Needle and the Damage Done” is a protest in its own way to the results of drug use. His newest effort, featuring songs with names like “Let’s Impeach the President” and “Shock and Awe,” doesn’t dance around the circumstances of today’s reality, and he has plenty to say in regard to what we should do about it. 

A video for each of the songs can be seen off of the LWW main page on the right. Or you can stream the entire album from that page as well.

Watch: Neil Young on The Colbert Report (YouTube)

In Part 4 of our ongoing series we highlight a song from a few years ago but who’s words ring true just as much today. Mason Jennings a singer/songwriter out of Minneapolis who has recently gained some exposure touring with Jack Johnson. But back when he was just a small club troubadour he had a number of protest songs on his second album ”Birds Flying Away.” The first one we take a look at in it’s entirety is called United States Global Empire (lyrics below).

Our united states of america
Has quickly become a global empire
Come on
See it now for what it really is
Power hungry with nothing much to give
And violent, all in the name of freedom
Freedom is not domination
I believe freedom has got to come from within
Yes it does
And without the gun
Freedom’s the ability to feel love for everyone
The empire controls the media
And media controls the world
Come on
Media is the empire’s mouth
Capitalist propaganda coming out
And violence, all in the name of freedom
Freedom is not competition
I believe that freedom’s got to come from within
Yes it does
Not with the gun
Freedom’s the ability to feel love for everyone

Read the rest of this entry »

With the recent upsurge in certain parties calling for initiation of hostilities with Iran I thought that this song seemed apropos. This song comes to us from a veteran of the 60’s protest era, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who’s songs such as “Fortunate Son” and “Who Will Stop the Rain” are direct indictments of those in power send others sons to die in Vietnam. Released in 2004 as a response to our occupation of Iraq and the GWOT, “Deja Vu (All Over Again)” returns us to that time in history and reminds us that we’ve been here before.

Did you hear ‘em talkin’ ’bout it on the radio
Did you try to read the writing on the wall
Did that voice inside you say I’ve heard it all before
It’s like Deja Vu all over again

Day by day I hear the voices rising
Started with a whisper like it did before
Day by day we count the dead and dying
Ship the bodies home while the networks all keep score

Did you hear ‘em talkin’ ’bout it on the radio
Could your eyes believe the writing on the wall
Did that voice inside you say I’ve heard it all before
It’s like Deja Vu all over again

One by one I see the old ghosts rising
Stumblin’ ‘cross Big Muddy
Where the light gets dim
Day after day another Momma’s crying
She’s lost her precious child
To a war that has no end

Did you hear ‘em talkin’ ’bout it on the radio
Did you stop to read the writing at The Wall
Did that voice inside you say
I’ve seen this all before
It’s like Deja Vu all over again
It’s like Deja Vu all over again

Listen: John Fogerty - Deja Vu All Over Again

Contemporary Protest Music Series::Part 1 - Stars::Part 2 - Bright Eyes

When the President talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our womens rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the President talks to God?
 

These are the opening lines of the song “When the President Talks to God” written recently by Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst. This song is a scathing indictment of our current president and his “compassionate conservative” policies over the last almost six years.

This is a song of outrage and searching for meaning in our president’s actions. Some might say this is a one long insult to the president because their is no way he actually thinks these horrible things. The song is inflammatory, and maybe this is the reason it resonate, but the other hand I would ask you this: Whether or not Bush thinks these things, the perception is that he lives in a different moral reality than the rest of us and this song puts that into context. 

This is the second installment of a set of posts highlighting recent protest songs. Our first entry had a song by Stars which didn’t reflect nearly the same exasperation and anger about the current world situation as this song. Clearly these songs have different approaches to their message yet both evoke strong feelings, one of sadness, the other anger. Something that they have in common though is a simplicity of composition that highlights the words and enhances the delivery so that by the end of the song you are pulled in.

Full Lyrics: When the President Talks to God - Bright Eyes

Listen: When the President Talks to God - Bright Eyes

After listening to an NPR report about music in New Orleans and how underground protest songs passed around on CDR’s are what is popular I got to thinking. We currently live in a divisive time where most agree our country is headed down a path of disaster. The government has a clouded self serving perspective of reality while the rest of the country is diverging to a sense of true human and moral cost of continuing down our current path of instigating hostilities, treating prisoners without regard for their humanity, and blatantly refusing to submit to any higher international authority for any purpose. A similar time to that of Vietnam, when “protest” songs served as a voice and rallying cry of the people. I was interested in contemporary songs, within the lat 10 years or so, and most interested post 9/11.

The first one that immediately came to mind was a song by Stars called “Celebration Guns.” It’s not angry, just solemn and reflective of what is really going on the Middle East. A beautiful almost acapella delivery sharpens the sadness, in contrast to an album that is a sound frenzy. In the lyrics, there’s no judgement about fault, just the stark result of war juxtaposed with the simple attitudes and actions of those carrying it out. The song bypasses all of the bullshit anger and blame and gives us an unvarnished picture of war and its method.

The lyrics are short and powerful so I have put them below in their entirety.

Celebration Guns by Stars from Set Yourself on Fire

so tomorrow there will be another number
for the one who had a name
a desert wind and a perverse desire to win
history buried in shame

are those beating drums
celebration guns
the thunder and the laughter
the last thing they remember

and then the next day
how will you know your enemy
by their colour or your fear
one by one you can cage them
in your freedom
make them all disappear

are those beating drums
celebration guns
the thunder and the laughter
the last thing they remembe

goodnight, sleep light, stranger

Listen:  Celebration Guns - Stars