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A Man’s a Man for a’ That Rabbie Burns (1795)
“For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.”Burn’s poem was translated into German by Ferdinand Freiligrath, who was the revolutionary poet of Marx’s Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Organ der Demokratie (NRZ) during the 1848 Revolution.
When the censors closed the NRZ down Marx ran the last issue through the press in red ink: “red, red, red was its war-cry — today it is soaked in red”.
Freiligrath’s defiant “Farewell to the NRZ” was spread across the front page banner …
“Farewell, brothers, but not farewell,
My spirit they can’t slay!
I’ll rise again with rattling Mail,
Better armed to join the fray!”(Apologies for all the edits — twc)
Noël Coward
Perhaps a mistake to include this conservative, but socialists may enjoy his sardonic humour …
(1) The Stately Homes of England (1932)
(2) There are Bad Times Just Around the Corner (1952?)
Ruler of the Queen’s Navee Gilbert & Sullivan (H.M.S. Pinafore)
You can “hardly ever” ignore G&S when it comes to 1870-80s political satire.
With the Paris Commune and the notorious International still in living memory, “socialism” was in the air and, in egalitarian form, it pervades G&S.
The Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, First Lord of the Admiralty proudly reveals the loathsome secret to his brilliant political career.
He and the Major General (Pirates of Penzance) are bumbling careerists of the type who oversaw the slaughter of a generation in the coming Great War. But Gilbert playfully pillories them as figures of political mockery.
Political Prisoners’ Chorus Ludwig van Beethoven (1805)
Beethoven’s opera Fidelio is based on a French play of the Reign of Terror, that took place just a decade earlier, and it contains a scene in which the broken political prisoners are temporarily let out into the yard.
Staged opera operates without the visual resources of cinema, and modern productions give the director free reign to improvise with the setting, but however he represents or misrepresents it on stage this harrowing basis of the Shawshank scene remains indescribably moving.
It was on the eve of the 1849 Dresden uprising, after a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony that Mikhail Bakunin approached the conductor Richard Wagner and passionately declared “if everything else goes down in the revolution, we must see to it that Beethoven’s 9th survives”.
Russia and the Rebel
Russian music about rebels is remembered most for its ecstatic love themes …
The Ballad of Stenka Razin. Poem by Dmitry Sadovnikiv (1883), music [trad?]
Stenka Razin (1630-71, leader of the Cossack revolt against the Boyars [feudal lords], sacrifices his young bride in the Volga River to placate his grumbling crew, and arouses them to carouse “where beauty lies”.
“Volga, Volga, Mother Volga, Make this lovely girl a grave!”
Stenka Razin — Russian Red Army Choir
(2) Spartacus. Ballet, Aram Khachaturian (1954)
Gladiator slave Spartacus (103-71 BCE) leads a slave revolt against Rome and frees slave girl Phrygia. They celebrate their short-lived liberty in the famous Adagio before Spartacus is captured and summarily executed by the Romans.
The Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia — Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, cond. Azim Karimov.
The great climax starts around 5:30.
Great Depression
(1) Brother Can You Spare a Dime, Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney (1932)
Anthem of the Great Depression.
The unembellished singing of Al Jolson captures those desperate times.
(Jolson’s once popular blackface performances are now deprecated for their perceived racism).
(2) Hallelujah I’m a Bum — Theme and variations.
Protest Scene from the movie Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936)
Fifties & Sixties
These songs are not socialist—very little music overtly is…
(1) You’ve got to be Carefully Taught, Rogers and Hammerstein (South Pacific, 1949)
From the 1958 movie of the Broadway musical.
(2) The Times They Are a-Changin’, Bob Dylan (1964)
Spirit of ’60s protest.
(3) Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, Pete Seeger (1958-64)
This version by Joan Baez — when will they ever learn?
