I didn’t allude to Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie in the piece below, but if ever banjos and guitars needed to surround hate and kill fascism, it’s now. I got as personal in the roundup as professionalism and the context allows. But it is good to have a radio station that publishes pieces like this knowing it will make some listeners upset. I appreciate that. Click on the image to link to the whole story, or start it below.
As ideas go, “Shut Up And Sing” has only backfired. The edict comes from conservatives triggered by political beliefs more liberal than their own coming from songwriters they like. Broadcaster Laura Ingram wrote a book about it. It became so central to the blackball campaign against the Dixie Chicks over their 2003 remarks against the Iraq War that the phrase became the title of a documentary. But the Chicks certainly didn’t go mum, and neither has popular music generally.
Today, the United States is experiencing a crisis of political division as profound as the Civil Rights 1960s and the McCarthyite 50s. And with a threshold election even now underway, artists in the roots/Americana space seem to feel that now is the time to use whatever voice and influence they have. We’ve heard a flood of new message songs lately, and they’re becoming more explicit as the nation’s temperature rises and the stark choices facing voters comes to a climax.
“This is a really special moment for protest songwriters, because you can get away with a lot,” says Melody Walker, a progressive activist and singer-songwriter in the Nashville band Front Country. “Not every national moment is a time when people are down for the most preachy, diatribe type of song. But I think right now, that's where people are. And I think that people are finding these kinds of songs really cathartic.”
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