Music and politics
What makes a good protest song, asks Tony Clayton-Lea
‘Too many protest singers, not enough protest songs”, sang Scottish songwriter Edwyn Collins some years ago. He had a point: how had rock music become so toothless in such a short space of time? Where had the rebellious youth of the ’60s — fired up by the likes of Bob Dylan’s eloquent rhetoric in ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘Masters of War’ — scampered off to? The answer (not so much to be found by listening to ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, which Dylan himself had said wasn’t a protest song) came from his good friend, Joni Mitchell, who burst the crusaders’ bubble when she sang that peace, and all of the marching and rallies in defence of it, “was just a dream some of us had”.
Pop music and politics may always be regarded as uneasy bedfellows, but there’s definitely something in the air these days that smells like a blend of creative cordite and righteous indignation. The most recent example occurred a few days ago in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, when US President Donald Trump’s campaign team used, without permission, the Tom Petty song ‘I Won’t Back Down’. Joining Neil Young, R.E.M. and Rihanna in objecting to their songs being used as rally rabble-rousers, the late rock star’s estate sent a cease and desist notice to the Trump campaign. In a concurrent social media message, the family stated that “Trump was in no way authorised to use this song to further a campaign that leaves too many Americans and common sense behind… Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate. He liked to bring people together.”
What is a protest song, anyway, and why have they been regarded with either derision or suspicion (and rarely ever celebrated) since their 1960s prime? According to UK writer Dorian Lynskey, in his 2010 book 33 Revolutions Per Minute: a History of Protest Songs, “detractors dismiss all examples as didactic, crass or plain boring [while] enthusiasts are prone to acting as if virtuous intent suspends the usual standards of musical quality.”
In many ways, Lynskey continues, “writing a protest song is asking for trouble.” He isn’t talking just about discourse or publicity (adverse or not), but commercial pitfalls. Mixing politics and pop music rarely does the songwriter/performer any favours, and if it does then it’s generally at a time when society is going to hell in a hand cart.
A perfect example is The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’. Released in the summer of 1981, the song vividly summed up the desperate mood of a riotous UK in the tight grip of a recession under a Conservative government lead by Margaret Thatcher. Urban degeneration, inner-city violence, unemployment and racial intolerance were pasted across all of that era’s media platforms. It’s no coincidence that less than a year later UK group Chumbawamba formed. Inspired musically by postpunk bands The Fall and Wire, and politically by UK band Crass (who advanced anarchy as a political ideology and encouraged direct action in areas such as animal rights, anti-fascism and feminism), the group’s best-known song is 1997’s ‘Tubthumping’. The song was written about, says the band’s guitarist, Boff Whaley, “the resilience of ordinary people.” In keeping with their anarchist principles, the band asked fans of their music who couldn’t afford to buy their CDs to instead rob them from major High Street retail record shops.
Making a moral and/or political point in the way Chumbawamba once did isn’t for everyone, of course, and as the years have passed what was once deemed highly charged could now be viewed as well-meant if naïve. Some pop/rock groups or musicians do themselves no favours whatsoever (these include Eric Clapton’s drunken advocacy at a concert in 1976 of anti-immigration speeches by UK
Conservative minister Enoch Powell, an occurrence that motivated the founding of Rock Against Racism). Mostly, however, the intent is positive.
Examples of Irish music acts fusing their music with either fiery or reflective political language is widespread. Whether you’re into their music and their politics or not, ballad group the Wolfe Tones represented a section of the Irish population that wanted to hear rebel songs belted out with little subtlety. A balladeer of a different stripe, Christy Moore (whose 1978 album, H-Block, was afforded unique status when its launch event in Dublin’s The Brazen Head pub was raided by the Special Branch) has been at the centre of pop-political discourse for decades. Through his many solo albums and his work with Moving Hearts (an ensemble group once described by Derry’s Eamonn McCann as “the political wing of the Wolfe Tones” and which themselves also came under Special Branch scrutiny), Moore can lay valid claim as Ireland’s Godfather of protest music.
There are other honourable devotees, of course, including Belfast’s Stiff Little Fingers’ ‘Suspect Device’ and ‘Alternative Ulster’, U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, ‘Pride (in the Name of Love)’ and many more, That Petrol Emotion’s ‘Big Decision’, and Hozier’s ‘Nina Cried Power’. The latter song is inspired by the likes of Dylan, Billie Holiday, and Woody Guthrie, all of whose music has amended the way people think about certain things.
This is surely the point of politicised protest music. It isn’t to move the world on its axis, or to cheerlead a politician from stage left to a podium, but rather, writes Dorian Lynskey, “to say something about the time in which you live and, sometimes, to find that what you’ve said speaks to another moment in history.”
‘Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate’