Bad folk music

[sabotabby]

It's a wonder that I made it through last night sober and still a leftist. N. and I got the foolish idea to show up at a War Resisters benefit concert. (N., by the way, is the guy who called me a "tofu-futon folkie" for preferring Phil Ochs to Bob Dylan.) Anyway, we figured it might be a bit snicker-worthy, but nothing could have prepared us for the horrors that awaited us in the back room of the Oasis.

Two of the three IS triplets greeted us at the door. Inside, it was solidly IS. It was the sort of scene that people in conservatism envision when they think of the radical left -- half old hippies, half young wannabe Marxists, and a girl with long, flowing blond hair and a guitar singing old labour songs earnestly into the microphone. (I like old labour songs, by the way. They're really hard to bungle. I was sort of impressed.) We sat in the back and I tried to stop N. from drawing too much attention to the fact that we weren't taking this very seriously.

And the old labour songs were the highlights of the evening, musically speaking. At least they have good lyrics. The same could not be said for original compositions ("I wrote this song about Cindy Sheehan!"). I felt a sudden, crushing horror -- is no one writing good folk music anymore? All of the new political songs that I like are hip hop. Not that there's anything wrong with hip hop, but I'm a big fan of spontaneous sing-a-longs and hip hop, being reliant on the talent of the performer, doesn't lend itself well to sing-a-longs.

True to form, songbooks were circulated. I was stunned to see that almost all of the songs were Wobbly songs and almost all of the graphics they used were Wobbly graphics. I was ready to be severely pissed at the IS for appropriating Wobbly culture before I spotted a lone Wobbly, "Fellow Worker," sporting an IWW hat and buttons. (Subtlety is not anyone's strong point.) So I guess she did the songbook. Fair enough. Meeting her was probably the only good thing to come out of the whole experience, although she was less friendly than most of the Wobblies I've met.

They were selling a CD called -- get this -- Peace Not War. Now, I like a lot of the artists on that, but it epitomizes the sort of thing that I hate about the anti-war movement, such that it is. This is not the '60s. Iraq is not Vietnam. Putting a white headband over your hippie hair and painting peace symbols on your cheeks didn't defeat US imperialism then and it's sure as hell not going to do it now. It's kind of embarrassing, and it's hardly a way to confront the complex geopolitics of Iraq and the Middle East.

All of those songs are still relevant today, but the difference is that when they were written, they weren't to be sung with a pacifist, liberal sensibility. These are, at their root, songs about anger and outrage and passion. They are meant to be fluid and adaptive, but what I heard instead was all of the vibrancy and fire replaced by moderation and political correctness.



Case in point: Solidarity Forever

This is a great song. It was a great song in 1915 and it's still a great song today. And yes, I am one of those people who will stand up for it, fist in the air, singing at the top of my lungs.

It's also an old song. Like a quaint Victorian neighbourhood, maybe it could use some touch-ups here and there. But instead of incorporating these changes so that they fit with the spirit of the original, some would-be builders would like to place a 1980s-style glass-and-steel tower smack in the middle of the porch. There's nothing wrong with the tower, of course, but it doesn't fit with the ornate brickwork that gives those old homes such character.

Compare Chaplin's original words...

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.

...to new lyrics added relatively recently (taken from the CAW-TCA website, and also sung last night):

We're the women of the union, and we know just how to fight,
We know about women's issues, and we know about women's rights.
We're prepared to fight for freedom, we're prepared to stand our ground,
Women make the union strong.

It's not that there's anything wrong with adding a verse about women in the union, but does it need to be so pedantic? It reminds me of those history textbook where there'd be a chapter on WWII and a page for "The Role of Women in WWII." And where's the metaphor? Chaplin's verses are poetic; this is shoehorning in "women's issues" because someone wants to be PC. Ugh.

So that I can't be called a stodgy self-hating feminist, here's a new verse that I don't mind (taken from the latest edition of the Little Red Songbook):

It is we who wash the dishes, scrub the floor and chase the dirt
Feed the kids and send them off to school and then we go to work
Where we work for lower wages for a boss who likes to flirt.
We will make the union strong.

It's not as evocative as the original, but it's funny, and it doesn't work against the structure of the rest of the lyrics. I can't be the only one who's noticed this. I'm far from being a lyricist or musician, but you'd think someone who identifies as such would pay attention to these discrepancies. Or are we all so desperate for any left-wing culture that we'll take what we're thrown?

The only song anyone did last night that worked well was a cover of "Cops of the World" by Phil Ochs. Fellow Worker and Sara Marlowe sang it. Throughout every song they played, I kept noticing their lack of anger. (Sorry to keep harping on the anger. But these are protest songs.) Fortunately, it's nearly impossible to do "Cops of the World" in a way that isn't angry. They did try, but by the time they got around to: "We'll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck/And we'll find you a leader that you can't elect..." even they couldn't keep the snarl out of their delivery.

Anyway, I did manage to stick to cranberry and orange juice, despite the fact that this tempted me to fall off the wagon more than the offer of free sake shots on Thursday. I somehow woke up feeling very hungover regardless.

Comments

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

We're the women of the union, and we know just how to fight,
We know about women's issues, and we know about women's rights.
We're prepared to fight for freedom, we're prepared to stand our ground,
Women make the union strong.

I agree, these lyrics can be a little more poetic and less like something that I wrote back in 3rd grade.

(so they're not exactly pedantic, they're just egocentric and crappy)

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Even the use of "going to" instead of "prepared to" would help.

Referring to "women's issues" and "women's rights" distances the singer from women, even if she is a woman. "Our issues" and "our rights" would have much more punch - they become personalized.

I wonder if a man wrote that verse - it sounds like the writer didn't internalize it much.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

It's a lot harder to sing Phil Ochs's songs without anger than Bob Dylan's.

Being a Dylan fan has been socially acceptable almost from the start (aside from "how do you stand his voice?", voiced by many a parent during the 60s). Somehow, I can't see how "tofu-futon folkie" would ever be applied to someone who listened to both of them. Anyway, tofu and futons were not generally available in most parts of North America when Phil Ochs was alive.

[sabotabby]

Of course, I love Dylan's voice. I don't like a great deal of his music (i.e., anything he did after going electric).

Tofu-futon folkies are people my age who like folk music, not people who liked it in the 60s.

[moonwrangler.livejournal.com]

"I Ain't Marching Anymore" is an ANGRY AS FUCK song, and yet nobody sings it that way..I'd like to see it covered as a punk rock song..
Can't you see This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb playing it?

As to the marxists and reformed tame hippies, FUCK THEM.

Our A.R.A bloc saved their ass from some really aggressive Protest Warriors intent on getting physical, and their reward was to try and sick the cops on us because, you know, ANARCHISTS ARE VIOLENT. Yeah.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I agree. This has never made sense and it bothers me. Your tormentor is just wrong, Sabotabby!

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

a girl with long, flowing blond hair and a guitar singing old labour songs earnestly into the microphone.

We got a video of one of her "songs" for Video Active 5. The production quality was actually pretty good, but the song... oh my god the song. It's painful lefty stuff.

is no one writing good folk music anymore?

I don't listen to folk music, but some of my friends keep raving about Dan Bern, isn't that folk?

[sabotabby]

I love Dan Bern, so I'm probably one of the ones raving to you about him. Thanks for reminding me -- generally speaking, I like his songs about love and religion more than I like his political songs, but he is a fantastic performer who writes intelligent lyrics. So a big exception to my blanket statement above.

What'd you do with the video?

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

Sounds like quite a night.

I'm a bit disillusioned by the songs that are coming from the "political" singers songwriters these days. I'm not very contemporary when it comes to my musical taste, though, and the stuff you write about those people doesn't surprise me at all. For me, a Bob Dylan track circa 1963 or any Woodie Guthrie song or Pete Seeger's interpretation of the early 20th century troubadours is pure bliss.

It's an odd coincidence. I was just watching a documentary about the history of folk music and it had the same critical attitude towards the contemporary youth culture affected by the self-absorption of Kurt Cobain and Joey Ramone. The only really authentic voices of protest that are out there right now are coming from hip-hop, and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon. That makes me wish I were a bigger fan of hip-hop music than I am.

[sabotabby]

It took me awhile to learn to appreciate hip hop because I'm such a white girl. But now, when I listen to Asian Dub Foundation or Dead Prez, the music strikes me as having similar aesthetic sensibilities to Woody Guthrie et al. (People don't quite get how angry Guthrie was.) It resonates on an emotional and artistic level as well as a political level, which is exactly what seemed to be missing last night.

Most of my favourite protest songs seem to have been written around the turn of the century. I'm still not sure why the bands at McVeigh's will play "Willy McBride" or "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" (without the need to say something silly like, "Wow, things haven't changed much, have they?" -- people are intelligent enough to figure it out), and leftie folksingers haven't clued in yet.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Ugh, clumsy sledgehammery political folk... never good.

There is good political folk being written out there... I'm sure there is... um, Show of Hands are fantastic, though only some of their stuff is political (which is a good thing IMO). Oh, Seize the Day are brilliant. Have you seen their Club X-Ray song? Ooh, you can download and pay your songs for free!

[sabotabby]

I'll check them out. frandroid reminded me of Dan Bern earlier in the thread, and of course, Billy Bragg is still around.

I also love the term "sledgehammer folk" and am inclined to use it from now on.

[azad-slide.livejournal.com]

i emailed you :)

[sabotabby]

Oddly enough, I don't seem to have received it.

But Yahoo is screwy.

[corvus.livejournal.com]

Erik Petersen

I just turned another Canadian on to him. Now it's your turn.

mischiefbrew.com

[sabotabby]

I can't get it to work! Is it the actor?

[earthlingmike.livejournal.com]

It sounds like a sobering experience to me, somehow I think I can understand the hangover effect though.

[sabotabby]

Empirical observation has determined that bad folk music has the same morning-after effect as whiskey shots with Maoists. The only difference is that latter activity is actually fun, whereas the former activity is useful only for anecdotal purposes.

[ridemycamel.livejournal.com]

"I wrote this song about Cindy Sheehan!"

OMFG, that's got to be the LOLsiest thing I've heard in ages.

You win the 'best-weekend-post-award'.

[sabotabby]

What do I get?

[brownfist.livejournal.com]

Maybe, this is completely obvious to people, but why does Cindy Sheehan get to become the face of the anti-war movement? Why the hell are all of these suppossed internationalists placing more emphasis on white lives rather than brown ones? and why oh why, are the butchering good political folk music? This is why the cultural revolution was a necessicity, because anti-revolutionary elements within the party wanted to perform badly played folk music. I say off to the villages for re-education you go!

[sabotabby]

That's what I keep saying. We need to whip these reactionaries into shape. A few years picking lichen in a Nunavut work-camp sounds good to me.

[apperception.livejournal.com]

I'm with you 100%. I hate pedantic, purely didactic political songs. I've known so many leftists who defended their atrocious musical tastes on the basis of the songs having leftist content. Doesn't form matter at all? I could go read a book about how women contribute to unions, and that'd be fine. But I want a song to be clever and to sound good, too. Ugh.

You're awesome.

[earthlingmike.livejournal.com]

Yeah there's this thing called 'art.'

[emak-bakia.livejournal.com]

i totally agree. a lot of that hippy-dippy peace and love shit is pretty embarrassing for other war-resisters.

[sabotabby]

I'm sure. It embarrasses me, too.