Music

"The Witch Is Dead" - sexist or not?

Excerpts from a discussion among Solidarity readers about the using the phrase "The Witch Is Dead" about Thatcher's death. I'll admit to laughing when I first saw "The Witch is Dead". But then I spoke to a comrade pointed out all the language being used to describe her was sexist, and she felt there would not be as much hatred if Thatcher had been male. While I disagreed with the latter I did feel completely ignorant to the use of language, especially when I chaired our trades council and a number of people were laughing and using the terms "witch" and "bitch". While that was going I saw some...

Marxism and art

This is the text of a speech given by hip-hop artist and spoken-word poet The Ruby Kid at a Workers' Liberty meeting at Goldsmiths University in November 2012. He was speaking alongside the screenwriter Clive Bradley . I’m going to talk quite mainly about music, and some poetry, although I’ll touch on other art-forms too. I’ll say now that I’m not going to talk particularly about my own work. Although if anyone has any questions about that maybe you can get at me afterwards. To answer the question that titles this meeting – I think the short answer is “no”, and the longer answer is “not really...

The Establishment Blues

Sixto Rodriguez is a Mexican-American singer-songwriter from Detroit. His life story is incredible. A construction worker who drifted around the city’s working-class districts writing about poverty, alienation, drug abuse, and class struggle, he was discovered by Detroit-based music producers in the late 60s who hailed his songwriting talent as comparable to that of Bob Dylan’s. When his two albums, released in 1970 and 1971, flopped in America, he went back to construction work and relative anonymity, going on to gain a degree in philosophy and stand as a candidate in local government...

Return for GYBE!

After re-forming in 2010 for a series of live shows, Godspeed You Black Emperor! (GYBE!) returned to the recorded music scene following a decade of silence, slipping their latest album “Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!” on to the merchandise table at a gig in Boston on 1 October. This gesture, a refusal to play the commercial game, is symptomatic of the band’s approach to the music industry and capitalism in general, balancing somewhere between sullen indifference and outright contempt. The band, formed in 1994 in Montreal, operates as a democratic unit, working on its instrumental music without...

Soweto Blues

Miriam Makeba's song Soweto Blues, written by her ex-husband Hugh Masekela, is a lament for the victims of the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa. On 16 June, police fired on demonstrations led by high-school students protesting the ban on non-Afrikaans languages. Over 200 protestors were killed and many more were injured. The song's use of the language of black South Africans is itself an act of defiance. More than thirty years since the massacre at Soweto, the post-Apartheid South African state was complicit in another massacre, as platinum miners striking for decent pay and conditions...

New York City Cops

On 19 July, Simon Harwood, the policeman who killed Ian Tomlinson, was found “not guilty”. No police officer has ever been brought to justice for the killings of Smiley Culture, Mark Duggan, Jean Charles de Menezes, or any of the other victims of police shootings. In America, Manuel Diaz and Joel Acevedo of Anaheim, California, recently became the latest additions to a long list of individuals — invariably black or Latin American — killed by the police in suspicious circumstances, sparking riots in response. Throughout the “liberal democratic” world, the police remain an often brutal...

Marley as artist and activist

Jade Baker looks at the life of Bob Marley and how it is portrayed in a new biopic of the musician, directed by Kevin MacDonald. Bob Marley was and remains one of the world’s most popular musicians. He was also an advocate for the rights of black people, spoke up against poverty and a fighter against western oppression. Bob Marley, the film, tells the story well. The film touches most poignantly on the conflict Marley’s mixed-race identity posed and the effect it had on his creative output and ideological outlook later on in life. It is also the story of the poverty-stricken and reggae-infused...

9-5ers Anthem

While perhaps less accessible than some of hip-hop’s more obvious “protest songs” (Public Enemy’s ‘Fight The Power’ or KRS-One’s ‘Sound of da Police’, for example), this brooding, imagery-heavy piece from Aesop Rock’s seminal album ‘Labor Days’ finds the rapper in his most explicitly “political” register. The “We the American working population” chant (performed acapella on the recorded track) is a stark, no-frills attack on the shackling effect of work on human creative potential, and contrasts brilliantly with the dense, figurative content of the song’s other verses. Even in the verses...

Two views on Plan B's "iLL Manors"

Daniel Randall, aka The Ruby Kid , is a hip-hop artist and spoken-word poet. He has been a member of Workers' Liberty for over ten years. He has previously written on the subject of music and social struggle here . Essex rapper Plan B’s new project iLL Manors (a “hip-hop musical” film, with a soundtrack featuring a soon-to-be-released title single) calls out the government and the right-wing media over the cuts, the riots, the housing crisis, racism and the demonisation of the working class. It’s got a lot of commentators on the left very excited. Owen Jones (author of Chavs: The Demonisation...

What did Amy Winehouse leave us with?

Amy Winehouse seemed to walk willingly into the mould of rock’n’roll cliché, but what is her legacy? Her songs were largely self-penned, so credit is due for that. And having listened back to a few of them in the last week, some of them are very good; she really could sing. But, in the end, is her undeniable talent the thing that allowed her album sales to rocket or her image to sell magazines? No. Winehouse’s assets to the industry also included a rather shaky sexuality, which strutted around on spindly legs, and made me feel like a mother watching a child tentatively take their first steps...

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