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Currently viewing articles tagged with Music.
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The Progressive Thrash of Propagandhi’s Supporting Caste
Supporting Caste, Propagandhi’s newest album, is a heavy set of 12 battle calls, meditations, and lamentations on the daily struggles of four “visibly aging prairie skids” against injustice
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Media as insurgent art
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” —Bertolt Brecht
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Promoting Intelligence
The Dope Poet Society’s front man, Professor D, strides on stage with a rapper’s typically confident air. Snatching the mic with one hand, he thrusts the other straight up, V-shaped fingers projecting peace to the thousands gathered at Metro Hall Square for the Global Day of Protest.
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Canada Steel
Every street in every old Canadian industrial town has its own Gus Popadopolous. He’s the old timer on your block that stuck around when the abandoned factory morphed into gentrified condos. His mode of dress is a white undershirt, no matter what the weather. His all-purpose accoutrement is a shovel, not a cell phone. He might cheer you on at road hockey, but wouldn’t hesitate to yell at you if the ball went into his garden. You know him. You might even be him!
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May ‘68: An Appreciation
The earth moved. It was one of those rare moments in history when all that had been solid (and stultifying) seemed to melt into air. As William Wordsworth wrote of the epoch of the French Revolution, in 1805 — verse that also captured something of the spirit of the ‘68: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/ But to be young was very heaven!”
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MIA’s new, fighting rap
They came by the hundreds, packing the Commodore, Vancouver’s big-band-era ballroom, with leopard-print leggings and neon arm bands to see the socially conscious rapper, M.I.A. Known for her political lyrics, her eclectic personal style and her culture-mashing sound — a raw fusion of dancehall reggae, favela funk and electro — M.I.A. has recently taken up the role of brash envoy for the Third World.
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Music of Oppression, Music of Resistance
The conditions of an oppressed group’s lived experience are directly connected to the kind of resistance songs that the members of that group will produce. For example, “La Marseillaise” became the anthem of French revolutionaries in the late eighteenth century at about the same time as revolutionary Haitian slaves were gathering in the hills above Port-au-Prince to play their instruments and invoke the spirits of their ancestors.
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Rockers in a Straight Man’s World
Galaxy is a very good band that happens to be made up of a trio of two lesbians and a bisexual. Vocalist/guitarist Katie Stelmanis explains: “I’m totally fine with being a gay band and having that label, just as long as people know that we’re just as good, if not better, than all the other rock bands.” Katie and her collaborator, Emma McKenna (vocals and guitar), understand the importance of identifying with a specific community while fighting their way through Toronto’s crowded indie scene, but they don’t always agree when it comes to how being gay women affects playing rock music.
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Jazz and Radical Politics
Major social changes in the United States have fundamentally determined the evolution of jazz music, just as they have other art forms. The 1930s were the period of the rise of jazz and the organized Left. Concretely, this meant big bands and the Communist Party. Notwithstanding some early dogmatic opposition to jazz from cultural commissar Mike Gold, the party soon threw itself into proselytizing for jazz and fighting segregation in the music business.
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Rebel Yells
Music in itself is of little direct political value to progressive forces. It organizes no one. It is poor defense against bullets and truncheons.
However, it does affect what people talk about. What’s your favourite anti-war protest song? Anthemic songs (like Ralph Chaplin’s “Solidarity Forever,” or “Red River Valley” during the Spanish Civil War) can help activists remember that we started out to drain the swamp. Even celebrity can have momentary political value, as the vocal responses of Celine Dion and Kanye West to the recent neglect of New Orleans testify. At the very least, the content of popular music is a weather vane of social concern and the state of ideological hegemony.
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