Music
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As the government intends imposing anti-strike laws this song is pertinent to the times.(shame Hulett still has a weakness for national liberation)
Alun Parry
Tressell And Me: A Radio Balladhttps://alunparry.bandcamp.com/album/tressell-and-me-a-radio-ballad
In light of today’s media glorification of Zelenskiy’s visit to London, let’s not forget John Lennon https://youtu.be/C3_0GqPvr4U
More like: “Give a world from each according to ability to each according to need, a chance.”
Doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?Anyway, here’s “Working Class Man” by Jimmy Barnes:
Oops sorry just started a thread about Burt Bacharach death at 94.
The first anti Vietnam war song. White middle class were demonstrating against their sons being sent to war in Vietnam.
The military began its conscription of Afro Caribbeans Americans.
There was no racism when it came to fighting in capitalisms wars!
Dionne Warwick sang the song, it was however more popular known sung by Aretha Franklin.
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HairThe 1960s musical Hair, about a politically naive draft dodger during the Vietnam War, contains the memorable line
The draft is white people sending black people to make war on the yellow people to defend the land they stole from the red people!
This was snatched from boxer Muhammad Ali who refused the draft, not on pacifist hippie grounds à la Hair but on militantly religious grounds à la the Qur’an, that it was a Christian war and not a Holy War — the only one he would fight in (World Title bouts excepted).
TWC Interesting point. Not a fan of the musicals…? Might watch it now?
I was thinking about Ali in my other thread in reply to Chelmsford…Ali famously said: no Vietnamese ever called me the n’ word.
There were a number of anti Vietnam war songs around at the time.
One of my favourites, What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye.
I didn’t actually know it was actually anti war at the time just loved the track, in fact I bought album, not actually knowing what any of the other tracks, (one of many)it was my very first one.
This from the track on Apple:
When Marvin Gaye brought the title track of 1971’s What’s Going On to Motown founder Berry Gordy, Gordy reportedly said it was the worst thing he’d ever heard. The music was too loose, the lyrics too political. Too political? Gaye countered. This is the 1970s: You’ve got the Vietnam War; you’ve got growing poverty and systemic racism; you’ve got an environment under threat. Even Elvis was singing protest songs (1969’s “In the Ghetto”)—why couldn’t Marvin Gaye?The album’s genius is in its lightness. Songs drift and breathe; performances feel natural, even offhand—Eli Fontaine’s saxophone part on the title track, for example, was recorded when Fontaine thought he was just warming up. As Sly & The Family Stone channelled their anger into into bitter funk (1971’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On), Gaye sublimated his in lush string sections and Latin percussion—signals not just of musical gentleness, but cultural sophistication. Even in the face of bleakness (the addiction portrait of “Flyin’ High [In the Friendly Sky],” “Inner City Blues [Make Me Wanna Holler]”), he floats.
The revelation is that political music doesn’t have to be confrontational—it can be mellow and inviting too, the province not just of radicals, but the same mixed, middle-class audiences that had been buying Gaye’s albums all along. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and as Gaye seems to say on What’s Going On, you don’t have to be a hippie to be worried by what you see—you just have to be human.
Here is the reformists’ anthem with its chorus (it’s an insult to the poets of Ancient Greece to call it lyrics).
(Now!) Now is the time to set things right (Now!)
Now is the time we should unite
We don’t need revolution
We just need to open our eyes
Revolution is no solution we ought to realise (Now!)
Now is the time to set things right(Now!)
Now is the time to see the light
Looking back to see the future
And to rid the age of nuclear
[or whatever reform you are campaigning for]Assorted reformists are still singing it today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_Is_the_Time_(Jimmy_James_song)
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