Where are the socially-conscious/protest songs from mainstream artists? (rap, sixties, Utah)
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We make all of our suns the same
Everyone must suffer the fire we've made
They all explode just the same
And there's no going back on the plans we've made
Chorus
Peacekeeper take your time
Wait for the dark of night
Soon all the suns will rise
Peacekeeper don't tell why
Don't be afraid to fight
Love is a sweet suprise
Only creatures who are on their way
Ever poisoned their own well
But we still have time to hate
And there's still something we can sell
Chorus
When the night is cold and still
When you thought you had your fill
Take all the time you will
This is not a test, it's not a drill
Take no prisoners, only kill
You know all of our friends are gods
And they all tell us how to paint our face
But there's only one brush we need
It's the one that never leaves a trace
Chorus (x2)
When the night is cold and still
When you thought you've had your fill
This is not a test, it's not a drill
Take no prisoners, only kill
Last edited by Shooting Stars; 08-11-2011 at 07:10 PM..
I can't help but wonder why you thought people were protesting in the sixties just for the "sake of change".
Sure, a great portion of the protesters were college students, but they were protesting on behalf of themselves and others ... the Vietnam War (1955 to 1975) with over 58,000 soldiers dead, POWs, civil rights, womens rights, environmentalism, free speech and more.
I was a child in the sixties, but we were aware of what was going on. It was impossible not to be aware. So much of what your generation takes for granted had its roots in the social change of the sixties.
That's sure the truth. When it is your butt on the line, it gets real personal. The Viet Nam war was a reality that all the able bodied young men had to face in some way, and the war spanned 2 different generations. The kids of the early 60's were much different than those of the early 70's. Really a lot of changes happened in that decade.
The same was true in the Great Depression. The people who were hurt the worst by it were the ones who wrote the songs, and like Viet Nam, the Depression went on and on.
There were no social safety nets back then; some of the poor did starve to death, thousands hit the road because there was a major drought during much of the 30's, and striking miners faced machine guns carried by men that were hired by mine owners.
Both those times are long gone now, but the effects linger on. The great political divide we have now is due in part to Nam... we never got over Viet Nam. Bruce Springsteen and others were still writing songs about it well into the 80's- Born in the USA was one.
The oddity was how popular protest songs became in the early 60's. The public at large always likes lighter, happier music when times get hard. And 1958-1965 were pretty fat times for the country.
You left them swimming for their lives
Down in new orleans
Can't afford a gallon of gasoline
With your useless degrees and contrary statistics
This government business is straight up sadistic
Now you don't fight for us
But expect us to die for you
You have no sympathy for us
But still i cry for you
Now you may kill the revolutionary
But the revolution you can never bury
Don't speak to us like we work for you
Selling false hope like some new dope we're addicted to
I'm not a desperate man but these are desperate times at hand
This generation is beyond your command
And it won't be long
'til the people flood the streets
To take you down
One and all
A black rain is gonna fall
I'm not going to try to prove you wrong, Passionatearts. I agree with you.
But the folks song movement of the 60's may not be repeatable. There is a vast difference in the generation that was so attracted to folk music that it became a Top 40 staple. The protest songs you mention were a big part of that attraction.
That Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, and others became known as 'protest singers' now sounds odd- the very thought that a writer/singer who could make a living singing only protest songs seems ludicrous, looking back. The late 50's-early 60's were fat economic times in hindsight. The U.S. had very few of the knotty problems we face today.
But those times were a great period of social change- there was a lot of real poverty in pockets all over the nation, much racial inequality, and a lot of unfocused fear that came from the Cold War. The Pill caused a great social change as well, in a much quieter way- for the first time, people could have sex without fear of pregnancy, and that fear was a major reason for marriage. Illegitimacy was still a terrible thing in the minds of most folks.
Much of the protest music was centered around those issues, and later, when we became stuck in the swamps of Viet Nam with no end in sight, and a generation of boys unwilling to be drafted for a war that was seen as bad and purposeless, fueled even more protest songs. And real protests as well.
The outcome of all this was many of the causes were addressed. Laws were passed that cracked the Southern institutionalized racism, welfare laws created a wider social safety net that saved the poor from starvation, and eventually, the Viet Nam war ended.
By then, most of the singers who once made protest songs Top 40 material had already gone on to other music. Bob Dylan understood the trap he had made for himself early on, and went to writing different material, played with a rock band. Rock, by the late 60's, matured and became the music that the kids wanted to hear.
The kids wanted their music to be an emotional experience. Buying a new record became a shared experience; all the friends were invited over to listen to the new stuff, and the music was listened to intently in a way that's now not so common.
There was also a strong sense of history in the 60's. Kids were still taught history, and protest music was a part of our social history that had comparisons of earlier struggles to those that were happening currently at the time.
These days, most of this stuff is very different. Our problems back then were comprehensible to young people. They were all in Living Technicolor compared to our problems today. Those old problems could be understoodin simple terms, but today, nothing is simple. Kids are kids- they didn't understand complexity much then or now.
The kids of the 60's felt empowered. They could protest, march, and actually change things to some extent. The kids today feel helpless. They are swept along by social currents they don't understand, and have no simple answers, so they're just along for the ride.
The kids today are very cynical as well. They have grown up seeing our nation becoming less and less able to make great changes, and don't have much faith in our political system or our government. The 60's mantra of Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out has come to fruition in the kids who were born as the millennium turned.
How is a person going to write about bad home loans? Or 2 wars that were put on the nation's credit card? Or Daddy being laid off, when everybody else is laid off too? All are subjects that are simply beyond 4 stanzas and a killer chorus. The kids would rather just dance, anyway. Words these days don't have the power they once had.
An excellent, well-thought post but I disagree with the bolded. Issues like the Cold War, Vietnam, and civil rights were hardly "simple problems" that could be explained any easier than Iraq/Afghanistan, gay rights, and economic disaster.
For the poster who said that rap is the only modern music which protests-completely false. Rage Against the Machine comes to mind.
That's sure the truth. When it is your butt on the line, it gets real personal. The Viet Nam war was a reality that all the able bodied young men had to face in some way, and the war spanned 2 different generations. The kids of the early 60's were much different than those of the early 70's. Really a lot of changes happened in that decade.
Yes! You know you're getting older when someone makes a statement about an era they never personally lived in ... and it kinda makes you crazy.
There is a message board I read elsewhere, and a lot of the posters are in their twenties and thirties. Sometimes one of them will say something about feminism and imply that middle-aged women are not as in tune with those rights ... and I just want to slit my own wrists because of their ignorance and arrogance.
Really? I mean REALLY?
Everything they now take for granted was fought for by my mother's generation and my generation. I think feminism was far more "loud" in the seventies than it is now! Because women were creating something where there was nothing.
No one told me about this part of getting older. I had no idea that our times would be reinterpreted so weirdly by younger people who weren't there.
The thing I remember about the sixties, is that it seemed like everything in society was on the line, and allatthesametime. The younger people asked the hard questions and pushed for changes, and the older people felt like the world as they understood it was disintegrating ... and they were fearful. The changes were coming too fast for them.
In comparison to that time, the following decades have felt apathetic to me. If I was aware of all that as a kid, what on earth must it have felt like to someone in their teens or twenties at the time?!!!
My ex husband was over seven years older than me. He was of age at the tail end of the Vietnam War. His two older brothers didn't get drafted because they were in college. But he was the youngest and as soon as he got out of high school, the army did everything in it's power to draft him. He was completelydeaf in one ear, which I would think is dangerous in a war. You wouldn't believe the hell he went through to avoid the draft ... numerous tests and doctors opinions. No matter what evidence the doctor provided, the army didn't care.
In the end, he got lucky that the war was finally ending.
I remember when I was in my twenties during the 1980s and I was working with women a decade older than me. I heard stories about how their husbands would wake up screaming in the middle of the night because of nightmares from their time in Vietnam.
We've been fighting in the Middle East for a long time now, and there is no comparison to the amount of deaths we had in Vietnam. It's hard to imagine that many young people dying, and yet the war just going on and on. Oh, and I read that over a million died on the enemy side.
Times' are a changin'
Weren't the Dixie Chicks almost run out of town for voicing their opposition to war?
I think that's largely because country music listeners tend to be a bit right-of-center. If a rock artist expressed admiration for Bush that could also be controversial. I think one of the Ramones shocked people by being pro-Bush. Likewise when Toby Keith, or whoever, did songs strongly supporting the Afghanistan War or what have you country fans liked that.
Yes! You know you're getting older when someone makes a statement about an era they never personally lived in ... and it kinda makes you crazy.
There is a message board I read elsewhere, and a lot of the posters are in their twenties and thirties. Sometimes one of them will say something about feminism and imply that middle-aged women are not as in tune with those rights ... and I just want to slit my own wrists because of their ignorance and arrogance.
Really? I mean REALLY?
Everything they now take for granted was fought for by my mother's generation and my generation. I think feminism was far more "loud" in the seventies than it is now! Because women were creating something where there was nothing.
No one told me about this part of getting older. I had no idea that our times would be reinterpreted so weirdly by younger people who weren't there.
The thing I remember about the sixties, is that it seemed like everything in society was on the line, and allatthesametime. The younger people asked the hard questions and pushed for changes, and the older people felt like the world as they understood it was disintegrating ... and they were fearful. The changes were coming too fast for them.
In comparison to that time, the following decades have felt apathetic to me. If I was aware of all that as a kid, what on earth must it have felt like to someone in their teens or twenties at the time?!!!
My ex husband was over seven years older than me. He was of age at the tail end of the Vietnam War. His two older brothers didn't get drafted because they were in college. But he was the youngest and as soon as he got out of high school, the army did everything in it's power to draft him. He was completelydeaf in one ear, which I would think is dangerous in a war. You wouldn't believe the hell he went through to avoid the draft ... numerous tests and doctors opinions. No matter what evidence the doctor provided, the army didn't care.
In the end, he got lucky that the war was finally ending.
I remember when I was in my twenties during the 1980s and I was working with women a decade older than me. I heard stories about how their husbands would wake up screaming in the middle of the night because of nightmares from their time in Vietnam.
We've been fighting in the Middle East for a long time now, and there is no comparison to the amount of deaths we had in Vietnam. It's hard to imagine that many young people dying, and yet the war just going on and on. Oh, and I read that over a million died on the enemy side.
Shooting stars:
That's the way of the United States. Our collective memory goes back about a minute and a half.
Those ladies of the 70's were grand-daughters of the suffageragettes, who fought just as hard for the right to vote as feminism was 60 years later.
The 40-hour work week, overtime, child labor laws, and worker's rights were all once battles between the unions, the industrialists, and the government, and were eventually settled after some literally bloody battles. These days, it's all taken for granted and the unions are seen as lazy bad guys.
The state of Utah shot Joe Hill for writing protest songs in 1910. 50 years later, the same kind of songs made Bob Dylan a millionaire celebrity.
In 20 years, everyone will take health care for granted.
It's just the way we are. We fight like hell for or against, then forget it all except when it's so big that it's impossible to forget, like the Civil War, or it fits the myths we have about ourselves.
annika:
I fully agree that the issues of the 60's were very complex. I only meant to imply that the kids thought of them in more simple terms than the older generation, who also thought of them in different, but still simple terms. Both generations were partly wrong and right in their thinking.
The big thing, I think, was the country's leaders were still totally convinced that the spread of Communism had to be opposed at all costs. The kids didn't care if Viet Nam became Communist or not. They were paying a blood price for something they didn't believe in, and that's not a complex thing to ponder.
One thing that emerged from the 60's was a greater tolerance for individuality, I think.
I remember when kids were kicked out of schools all over for wearing their hair too long and skirts too short. The older generation then would be flabbergasted to see the kids today sporting blue-arm tattoos, piercings, and the other fashions that are so common today, and how accepting the older folks are of them.
While it seems silly today, those battles over long hair caused lifelong problems for the kids who were denied high school diplomas.
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