Political Music I Like
(This is the final part of a three-part series. Part One here. Part Two here.)
In earlier posts in this three-part public series, I’ve written critically about the music and politics of the founders of modern American lefty folksong: the Almanac Singers of the early 1940’s, especially the songwriting and vocals of the young Pete Seeger. The audio clips in Part Two give examples of the Almanacs’ 180-degree musical switch, in response to the 180-degree switch in the Communist Party’s line. In early 1941, the “peace” song “C for Conscription” protested the 1940 US draft law as anti-Soviet warmongering. Less than a year later, “Round and Round Hitler’s Grave,” and “Dear Mr. President” supported U.S. entry into WWII. In another post, I showed how the “American Masters” documentary on Seeger used basic filmmaking trickery to cover up the reason for that switch: it wasn’t, as the documentary would have us believe, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but the German invasion of Russia, months before Pearl Harbor. You don’t need AI to create disinformation.
Some people defend and others excoriate the Almanacs’ politics of the 1930’s and ‘40’s. For me, the key point about the wartime political switch is that despite the near-absurd inconsistency of the content, the quality of the music remains perfectly consistent. The Almanacs’ pro-war music is as bad as their anti-war music.
I should note, one last time, that I’m keenly aware that “bad” is a subjective term meaning “bad to me.” So today, in keeping with a recent, related post on history books I like, instead of going on knocking the Almanacs I’ll give a few examples of political songs I like.
As usual, I’m trying to poke into something about American folk and pop idioms, something about music, something about history, politics, and dissent, something about art and I guess, since this is all a matter of opinion, or maybe gut response, something about me.
Woody Guthrie was a member of the Almanacs, sometimes, and he could crank out agit-prop ditties with the worst of them, but he could also write songs with political content operating on another level, songs hard to characterize because they’re so good. His vocals and overall musicianship have a straightahead, unpresumptuous quality totally alien to the Almanacs’ overdetermined efforts to rouse an audience emotionally to a particular point of view. Seeger and others later applied that style to the non-political folk-pop of the Weavers. It’s also heard in the work of Peter, Paul, and Mary. Guthrie did something totally different.
Examples abound of Guthrie’s genius, but here’s “Vigilante Man.” (Note: Most of these YouTube links aren’t great, some have ads, etc.: probably better really if you want to know what I’m talking about to pull the songs up on your music service and just listen.)
Maybe you hear exactly what I mean. To me, the difference here between “bad” and “good” is just naked.
But then I know you might actually prefer the Seeger/Almanacs/Weavers/Peter-Paul-Mary approach, or hear these things as all of a piece. So I’ll explain that what I love about this song, and about Guthrie’s singing and playing on it, has something to do with mystery, and something to do with restraint.
The lyrics are a series of questions. The imagery is insistently specific. No conclusions are drawn. The vocal doesn’t emote. Woody’s not coming at you; you have to come to him, and it’s easy to do.
So the vigilante man becomes real, while I’m listening. Even the big, dark forces behind him become real too.
The same song can be done differently, with more overt drama. That’s OK. With real artists, something is always held back—even in an ‘80’s rock video, like the next selection. I think the non-showy guitar solo in this one gets something from Woody’s sense of restraint, even modesty. It would have been pretty easy, a little on-the-nose, as they say, for Bruce to shred his way through three choruses or something. But he doesn’t. (Note: This is an actual music video, not somebody using YouTube to post a song, so maybe worth watching, I don’t know.)
So maybe all of these judgments are a matter not just of the taste of the listener but also of artistic taste? Not sure.
Woody could be witty, too. The next song states the facts, and nothing but the facts, as the narrator has experienced them:
Now that’s a political song, to me.
A lot of Buffy Sainte Marie’s music operates in the broad, histrionic Almanac vein I usually don’t like—but there’s just something about her. So there you go. Another mystery. And lyrically, “Cod’ine” is pretty much in the factual Woody vein, though the vocal is totally non-Woody. When I first heard this, at maybe seventeen, I wrongly took it to be a modern arrangement of a traditional Anglo song.
Plenty of drama in the next one. But despite the fact that I loved it at fifteen, right around when it first came out, I still think it’s a good protest song—and the vocal is surprisingly restrained emotionally, mostly just delivers sonically, if on an intense level. (The music gets, let’s face it, pretty pushy, even corny.)
I don’t know exactly what the following number was protesting. I still like it.
Finally, since this is just an oddball sampling: super-topical in its day, still great, to me:
Public Enemy was good at protest too, in its day; so was NWA; Johnny Cash had his great moments; Merle Haggard was often a protest artist. A lot of the best of Steve Earle is of course political as hell. Bob Marley would take too long even to start getting into here. Sinead O’Connor—of course. And I really like the handling of political themes in the recent work of Jason Isbell.
None of that’s exactly Gen Z. I know the stuff I’ve linked to and talked about here is quite old.
I can’t ideally sum up this post. There’s plenty of variation in style in the examples I’ve linked to, yet I hear everybody here using protest, topicality, politics, etc., as inspiration for making music—not using music as a way of getting people to think and do certain pre-determined political things. That’s the difference.