Where have all the protest songs gone?

[Paul Mobbs]

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Grauniad article talks of "the dearth of protest songs" -- is it perhaps that 
they just can't play, or don't want their beloved instruments to get smashed 
by the police (certainly that wasn't a risk when I used to walk around 
protests with a guitar on my back).

:-(

P.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/04/young-people-politics-
protest-songs

Billy Bragg and Johnny Flynn: where have all the protest songs gone?

As many young people become political and take to the streets, musicians Billy 
Bragg and Johnny Flynn reflect on the dearth of protest songs to accompany them

Emine Saner, Guardian On-line, Friday 4th November 2011


The young people involved in the student protests and Occupy movement are 
strongly political. But why is this not reflected in the music they listen to? 
Billy Bragg talks to folk musician Johnny Flynn, with Emine Saner.

Billy Bragg: When I started to make music, there weren't many ways for someone 
from my background to articulate ideas. There was no internet, I didn't have 
access to the mainstream media. The best way was to pick up a guitar, write 
songs and do gigs. The internet and social networking sites have replaced that 
urge – you can make a film, a blog.

Johnny Flynn: It's confusing to know where to put your energies now. I don't 
have a Twitter account, because I want to keep it a bit more how you had it, 
and put my creative energy into writing songs.

BB: Songwriting is about communication. For people who have something to say, 
songwriting is a great medium. You can make something happen in that club you 
play, in that town, that you can't really do on the internet. We had the 
student demonstrations last year, we have the Occupy movement, and it is 
predominantly a younger generation of activists who are trying to deal with 
these subjects in a different way. Rather than storming the Bastille, they seem 
to be taking a moral stance. Do you feel this is something you should be 
engaging with in your music?

JF: Yes. The pop industry is so well-practised at channelling young people's 
creative energy that I think it gets abused. A record label might hold on to 
an album so as to not compete against Christmas or whatever, and the sentiment 
can be lost. When the riots happened, I thought, I can't ignore this. I think 
it was simpler when punk happened. I think young people could more clearly see 
where right and wrong existed … but there are so many issues around the riots, 
or the Occupy protest.

BB: Unfortunately, it never really was like that. Punk came out of riots in 
west London, where black youths were fighting police, and ostensibly it looked 
like vandalism, but now you can see that was the beginnings of our 
multicultural society where black youths said, "We belong here too." I 
recognise that your generation don't have the ideological politics as a 
backdrop that we had. Punk happened within 10 years of the summer of '68, 
which was the high point of political creativity and there were still, in the 
music industry then, people in positions of power who had been inspired by 
'68. Those people expected you, as a young musician, to have a political view. 
Now, I think the opposite is true – if you do, you get stick from the 
mainstream music press, or you're dismissed as earnest or whingeing.

JF: It's not in the mainstream media, but across towns it is amazing how there 
are small groups of people getting together and forming artistic collectives – 
they may not be being overtly political but I'd say by channelling their 
energy into community projects, that's a valid political statement. I tour to 
places where I get loads of people coming up to me and telling me the things 
they're part of. It doesn't create friction, but if you put your energy into 
something positive and community-based, that gathers an energy and wins 
people's hearts.

BB: But surely our job is to create friction, to confront people with the 
situation as we see it, and the time has never been more fractious than it is 
now. This isn't like the miners' strike, this is an international movement. I 
accept it's harder to get a grip on it because we live in a less ideological 
period, but surely as artists we're still capable of seeing who is holding us 
back. Occupy is a good example of that – they haven't come out with a set of 
answers, but just by being there they are posing important questions. Artists 
don't have to do any more than that. We should be asking questions that make 
people's ears prick up.

JF: That's happening as well. My favourite record this year is PJ Harvey's 
album, and it's really challenging about what it is to be from this country 
and what people are doing in our name.

BB: I meet a lot of people from your generation who don't feel comfortable 
talking about politics. I didn't. It was the miners' strike that was an 
education for me. You're not going to get on the mainstream, nobody is going 
to sing your songs on X Factor, but the energy you get from audiences when you 
do this kind of stuff, you've got to channel that.

JF: I went on the antiwar demos, and I was excited to be part of the stand 
against something. I think there is a despondency among young people and it is 
disappointing. Westminster politics is very unattractive and people are 
channelling political energy into more inward questioning – there are a lot of 
musicians whose songs are all about feeling, and it's almost like that's the 
only safe place to express yourself.

BB: There is so much snark out there now. All I had to worry about was snarky 
reviews in the music papers and the odd nasty letter in the NME. Some of the 
shit I get on Twitter is unbelievable. If I was starting out trying to make my 
first political expression and I was getting that sort of shitstorm, I would 
think twice. Our biggest enemy is cynicism.

JF: I'm not that politically educated. I'm left-wing and probably have some of 
the same references and heroes as you, but it's not as cut and dried now. My 
direction, what I'm drawn to, is overcoming cynicism, but in a more abstract 
form.

BB: If you look at my first album, the politics are broadly personal. There is 
no big ideological heaviness, but the miners' strike focused my ideas and gave 
me the confidence to express them. I think that time is coming again. Your 
generation is about to enter a very steep learning curve. You are possibly the 
first generation to be worse off than your parents since the war. What's 
happening at Occupy is new and exciting and we need people from your 
generation to communicate what is going on to everybody else. The language I 
speak is protest songs – it's about any song that seeks to speak truth to 
power.

Emine Saner: Have the people in the charts changed? There was that 
extraordinary statistic last year – 60% of the people in the charts had been 
to public school, whereas in 1990 it was 1%.

BB: You've got to be careful about that. If you had thrown all the privately 
educated people out of the punk bands, there would only have been me and Paul 
Weller left probably. Articulate people have always come from many different 
backgrounds. The edgiest music is in hip-hop, and I can't help feeling that's 
because this is their only chance, the only way to change their lives. This 
generation faces record unemployment. Being rejected by society does help to 
give your output some edge, whether it's writing or making songs or films.

JF: Where people come from has no relevance. It's another cynical thing to put 
the boot in about that.


Johnny Flynn is in Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre until January. The Left 
Field in Motion tour featuring Billy Bragg, King Blues, Akala and Sound of Rum 
starts in Edinburgh on 13 November. billybragg.co.uk


- -- 

.

"We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government,
nor are we for this party nor against the other but we are
for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom,
that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness,
righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with
God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
(Edward Burrough, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')

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Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations
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