HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------I almost deleted this. Then I read it and sent it on to a bunch of folks. Barry, did you write this? It would be nice to have a discussion about culture and the movement. I was a folksinger in the 1960s, and formed some groups in the 1970s, and wrote a lot of songs in the 1980s. (inspired by the Reagan et al. The question of whether the revolution needs music and dancing is not just one for anarchists. (Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution.")
It is a question for Leninists too. Maybe not proper for STOPNATO, but with demonstrations coming fast and furious these days, songs and music can really liven up the crowds.
The most exciting part of the Washington Demo on Sept. 29 was the moment in the march when the masses turned and saw thousands coming up the hill behind us and a chant leader called out a very complicated,dancy sort of chant:
Black, Latino, Arab Asian and White
No racist wars Home or abroad
Defend our civil rights.
We learned it and shouted it out and danced to it. It was one of the most powerful moment sI have experienced in years of demonstrating.
And years before, in a NYC Mumia march, me and the strangers near me took up a musical version we invented on the spot from the chant,
"Brick by Brick, Wall by Wall, Wr're gonna free Mumia Abu Jamal." We harmonized and played the soda cans we found with pens and sticks; we played on street signs as we passed them, and it carried us along.
The French sing, the Latin Americans sing, the Africans sing. The uptight attitude about music has to break here, and more musicians need to make up crowd songs, easily sung, exciting songs. (NOT "All we are saying, is give peace a chance," though in September after the 11th, that was radical since to sing that was daring in NYC.)
Youth is listening to music constantly, it is in their ears, on their radios, blasting out of their windows.
But that is just passive.
There needs to be a new effort to get music out; it isn't counterrevolutionary to bring music back into the movement. It was intrinsic to every struggle before now. It was the LISTENING passively, it was the bourgeoisification, the taking of the music BUSINESS by capitalism that was destructive. The people can take it back if the musicians will become part the people, not stars participating in the commodification of culture.
Heather Cottin
==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
