activism

Photo credit: Tim Trentham/Wiki

From HuffPo 01/12/2012:

"WASHINGTON -- Legendary D.C. post-punk band Fugazi hasn't played a show since 2002, but languishing fans can now revisit their favorite performances online at the Fugazi Live Series, an ongoing archival project that when complete will feature up to 800 audio tapes recorded by the band.

Singer-guitarist Ian MacKaye now co-owns Dischord Records, which launched the series. On Wednesday, MacKaye dropped by WAMU-FM's "Kojo Nnamdi Show" to talk about how Fugazi wound up recording their shows in the first place and muse on the band's place in the annals of D.C. music history.

"I've always been a bit of a documentarian," MacKaye said on the program, adding there wasn't a whole lot of method to the madness when it came to recording. "At some point, a couple hundred tapes into the process, we kind of realized: Wow! We kind of have to keep going." Fugazi's music is remembered as having a slant toward social activism, which translated into many shows performed for charities and protests."

Read more here, and check out a video of "Waiting Room" by Fugazi below.

JAN 12, 2012 - Eddie Van Halen, through the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, has donated 75 of his own guitars to LA area schools, to help them with their mission of inspiring creativity and expression through playing music. Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation was founded in 1996, inspired the great movie, "Mr. Holland's Opus" starring Richard Dreyfuss. The film's composer, Michael Kamen, is the founder and they donate instruments to schools to help with their music programs. 

Read more here, and check out the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation here.

                                                             Photo credit Carl Lender/Wiki

JAN 12, 2012 - (Sort of...)

Jan 12, 2012 - Libyan activist musicians, who go by the name GAB Crew, have been putting out activist music supporting the youth uprising and the Arab Spring in Libya from the start. They wrote a song called "Libya Bleeds Just Like Us" while Qaddfi was still in power, and months before Tripoli fell. The song was leaked, and when asked by a Qaddai loyalist to write a pro-Qaddafi song, they were horrified and went underground. When the rebel force took the capital, they returned home, and are happy now that they can be more free to be creative and express themselves with protest songs under the new transitional government.

Read more in a NY Times article here, and check out GAB Crew's "Libyan Bleeds Just Like Us" music video below.

JAN 11, 2012 - Ran across this pro-Occupy activist song from a band called "New Party Systems", and it is called "We Are". Check it out below, and read more here.

JAN 11, 2012 - Kid Pan Alley, an organization founded on the principles that "kids make the greatest co-writers" of songs, has sparked a controversy over a song containing references to Occupy, but not by any of the kids parents. Kid Pan Alley is a group of musicians specializing in children's songs, and they travel to schools to get kids involved with the songwriting process, and urge them to be creators of their own music, not just consumers of popular cultures. In October of 2011 they visited the Woodbrook Elementary School in Charlottesville, Virginia, and they and the kids wrote and performed a song with the lyrics containing references to the Occupy movement. For instance one line went "Now I'm Part of the 99". Read more here.

The extremist conservative website "Big Government" eventually found out about it, and are now upset what they assert as kids being forced to sing a political song, and in their own words, "Marxist Rhetoric". The blog states, "Remember, these are third graders.  The simplistic left wing economic nonsense of this ditty boggles the mind.  But to an impressionistic third grader, it plants poisonous seeds at odds with long egalitarian American traditions that disdain class hatred.  It mocks American traditions of industry, hard work and accomplishment.  It teaches the young to distrust and dislike, which of course is a tactic employed by thug cultures and governments throughout history."

None of the parents of the children involved in the music program are complaining. Probably not wanting to get involved in too much controversy, the founder of Kid Pan Alley Paul Reisler, issued a statement apologizing. He told the local TV station WCAV,  "This is a song about being satisfied with what you have, a song about how life has its ups and downs, as so many people in our country are experiencing now. It was my personal mistake to introduce these phrases and I take complete responsibility for it. I will not make a mistake like this again." Find out more about Kid Pan Alley at their website here.

Click Read More to read the lyrics.

The activist music group, Anonymous Expression sent us their new song in support of the Occupy movement and say on their YouTube Channel, "Jesus was an Occupier of his time (Share this Video!) He stood up against oppression and taught us how to have compassion and how to love those that persecute us. Jesus is us, we are him, after all, he is you and me. Watch the video and share with everyone! Rap Lyrics inspired by JJ3 on YouTube."

JAN 5, 2012 - Activist band, "The Employees", have released a song called 'Part of the 99", inspired by the Occupy movement. They say on their YouTube channel, "The Employees are at it again, OCCUPYING your EARDRUMS with this song, Part of the 99, inspired by the Occupy movement. The band has also been hard at work finishing up their new concept album, UNEMPLOYED. While rocking your socks off, this album focuses on serious issues in todays world like government, unemployment, the environment, the economy, corruption, and wanting to escape it all! Who else better to know about these issues than THE EMPLOYEES in it!" Check out their Facebook page here, and watch the video below.

In an interview with SuicideGirlsBlog.com, Anti-Flag guitarist Justin Sane says the Occupy movement "gives me a lot of hope."  He adds, "I think in America there’s a sense of fairness – that everybody has an opportunity to get ahead and that’s based on an assumption that there’s a level playing field that we all start out on. Now people are looking around and seeing that there isn’t a level playing field, things are vastly out of balance, and people with a lot of money are actually breaking the law in many cases and doing things that should be illegal to make more money – all this while the rest of us are just trying to scrape by. I think Americans are pretty fair minded – most people are just saying that they want a level playing field and that’s why we see a lot of protests popping up recently."

To read the whole interview check out SuicideGirlsBlog.com.

 Reed Johnson and Deborah Vankin over at LA Times.com posted an article that delved into the question of where are the protest songs, specifically about Occupy, when it comes to the top-grossing acts of the '00s? The article goes, “…much of the music that has topped the Billboard charts in the new millennium — Britney, Lil Wayne, Lady Gaga — might suggest that America has been one big party since 2001, despite the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, two major wars, a wobbly economy and a bitterly divided government. Likewise, the recent popular manifestations of that unrest, the tea party and Occupy Wall Street movements, so far seem to have been largely lost on popular music.”