WHAT SONGS MEAN TO ME
"I knew of Ireland's Easter Rebellion from the reading matter to which I had
been guided by my father. It is no accident that, thirty-five years later, my
daughter named one of her boys for Kevin Barry, executed martyr of that struggle,
although her son is Jewish on both sides. She had grown up to the strains of:
"Shoot me like an Irish soldier,
"Do not hang me like a dog,
"For I fought for Ireland's freedom
"On that dark September morn.
"My hymns were of all nations: German - 'Auf, auf, zum Kampf, zum Kampf,-
Arise to the struggle, to the Communist martyrs Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxembourg; Polish -- 'Czerwoni Sztandar' -- The Red Flag, from my father; the
marvelously satirical anthem of the American Industrial Workers of the World,
'Long-haired preachers come out every night, Just to tell us what's wrong and
what's right' and their equally sardonic jibes at employer-owned police and
judges. And, of course, the stupendous sweep of the Polish-into-Russian and then
worldwide revolutionary anthem, 'Whirlwinds of danger are raging around us.' As
the years went by, the chorus of Beethoven's Ninth -- 'Alle Menschen werden
Brueder,' all humans will be brothers -- became more and more important to me.'"
"Fifteen years after the war ended, I committed an unforgiveable mistake in
playing to Russian and Ukrainian Soviet graduate exchange students at Berkeley the
most powerful song to come out of the USSR in that conflict: 'May noble wrath
crest like an ocean wave. We fight a people's war, a sacred war.' Hearing it again
turned them to stone. Fathers and brothers dead, homes burned, mothers and sisters
starved, fields destroyed, cattle slaughtered, spent cartridges for toys,
surviving pages from army manuals used for primers in school. That had been their
childhood. I have heard its music used in films made after the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
"Let cynics who think World War II was morally no different than its
predecessor listen to that 'Sacred War,' to the Jewish guerrilla song from Eastern
Europe, 'Never say that you have reached the very end,' and to the song of the
anti-Nazi Germans in Spain's International Brigade, with its unconquerable and
incomparable upbeat, 'Frei-heit!,' leaving simply no room for doubt that
'Free-dom!' would win."
-- from my autobiography, SAYING NO TO POWER, Creative Arts Book Co., 1999,
Berkeley. William Mandel
radman wrote:
> >From: "earthman" <earthman@i4free.co.nz>
> >Subject: [AUP] history of protest music
> >Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 19:53:40 +1200
> >
> >http://tlc.discovery.com/tlcpages/sabc/sabc.html
> >
> >"Now somebody will ask me, Pete, how can you prove these songs really make a
> >difference? And I have to confess I can't prove a darn thing, except that
> >the people in power must think they do something, because they keep the
> >songs off the air." - Pete Seeger
> >
>
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