THE PULSE OF REVOLUTION:
Musicians as Cultural Warriors in the
Occupy Movement
By John Pietaro
For as long
as there has been dissent, there has been the protest song. In the people’s
history, the fight for social justice has always been accompanied by, inspired
by the voices of outspoken songwriters, the daring harmonies of dissident
composers, the passionate cry of radical poets and the compelling news reports
of the topical balladeer. This is the drumbeat of radicalism. Phil Ochs told us
that every headline can be realized as verse just as he cautioned us that, “a
protest song is something you don’t hear on the radio”. But regardless of
popular acceptance or not, the music of revolution prevails.
One can
easily trace work songs back to the earliest toilers and songs of revolt
directly to the movements to organize—in each era. Reviewing poetry or ballads
composed on slave ships, within workers’ hovels or concentration camps, or in
cold urban landscapes, we can not only gain valuable information about earlier
uprisings against injustice, but develop a visceral understanding of them.
Where progressive history books offer core stories and important dates, topical
art-forms deliver the fervor, the agitation, the struggle of the embattled to
survive and then to live. Bread and
roses.
Often
artists can become overwhelmed by the stressors in their midst. In the US, the
creative community has never had adequate funding or respect, so in times of
fiscal constraint, we can easily fall victim. Further, audiences during lean years
find it easier to simply avoid. Popular culture reflects this in “the feel-good
movie of the year” or the litany of Top 40 hits that are pure escapism.
After eight
years of Bush and Cheney, with the rise of cowboy capitalism, first-strike
offenses and a repressive economy, progressives of every shade began to build a
protest movement of ebbs and flows. Many sought out change through the Obama
candidacy. With the promise of the nation’s first African American president,
one who’d had a background as a community organizer, countless among us were
moved to rebuild a progressive base. But Obama’s drive toward conciliation with
the forces of reaction for far too long turned many off. The teabaggers were
all over the news and every brand of lunatic flooded the right-wing. Oh, there
were pockets of celebrated rebellion: Wisconsin taught us all. But on the heels
of that amazing takeover, Occupy Wall Street happened. And then nothing was the
same.
In my own
experience as a musician and a cultural organizer (one moved toward Left
philosophy as a direct result of the first Reagan term!), I’d long sought out
something—anything—like OWS. And here came a disparate group with no visible
leader, one that united all facets of the Left, liberalism, and Labor, and not
just the most progressive of unions. Yeah, it turned out to be this generation’s
Popular Front. After my first visit to Zuccotti Park, I was drawn to return many
times, usually carrying a drum. The first time I sat in with the pulsating mass
of a drum circle, I realized the distance our message could carry. How voluminous
the voice of a determined, unified group! We breathed as one through percussion
and this was evidenced by the reactions of the beaming, dancing passerby, often
wearing designer suits and Italian shoes but sharing in a historic moment with
this band of rad rhythmatists.
Though drum
circles are empowering and an excellent means to build still larger masses,
there is a need for musicians of conscience to forge a more cohesive
unit, a cultural arm of OWS. Rather than the occasional folksinger or rapper
writing an anthem for the movement, why couldn’t there be, shouldn’t there be a
solid, committed organization which would feed the protest, inspire creativity
and then take it out to the wider populace? The Occupy Musicians group (www.occupymusicians.com)
is an exciting means toward this goal. Hundreds of signatories and a series of
events has fortified the organization’s dawning. Now what’s left to do is to
draw on the considerable strengths of musicians of conscience; we must agitate,
educate and organize through song, through verse, through shout and stomp, through
musical weaponry.
Using earlier
cultural movements as models, we can draw on the work of the bards, the songsters,
poets, playwrights and journalists of the Industrial Workers of the World. This
radical internationalist union counted artists in their front line of
organizers. This spawned the likes of Joe Hill; no mean feat! And the Socialist
Party in the first decades of the 20th century also laid the ground
work for later models. It did so with the likes of Jack London and Carl
Sandburg and by the 1930s founded the Radical Arts Group toward the establishment
of a national cultural program. However it was the Communist Party which, in
the 1930s and ‘40s, successfully founded a cultural commission of widespread
proportions. It not only counted artists such as Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Dalton
Trumbo, Hazel Scott and the Almanac Singers in its ranks, but a massive list of
fellow travelers across the country. Of important note are the arts collectives
under CP cultural auspices which were both activist bases and educational
seminars for all genres: the John Reed Club, the League of American Writers,
the American Artists’ Congress, the Red Dancers, and the Composers Collective
of New York which produced contemporary classical works that were at least as
daring musically as they were politically!
The
generation of folksingers in the 1960s became the very soul of the struggles of
civil rights and peace. Immortal, moving works were created and tirelessly sang
at each rally and march. Folk revival musicians such as Bob Dylan, Odetta, Phil
Ochs and Joan Baez wrote the anthems that acted as shields against the assaults
of the police and the national guard, as did the songs which had originated in
southern Black churches. Performers like the Freedom Singers made all the
difference in the world when staring down Bull Connor. And the Black Arts
Movement offered creative guidance along with fiery radical sounds to urban
centers. Avant garde jazz figured highly into this scene, as well it should in
today’s movement. Legendary names like Amiri Baraka, the late Sam Rivers, the
AACM and Black Arts Group were instrumental, so to speak, in countless
seminars, rallies, gatherings and confrontations. There’s was a music which
celebrated African culture as it fought for American rights through the most
creative means.
The Punk
movement often carried with it an anarchist message, or in the least an
intolerance for mere compliance. While some aspects of Punk could seem
right-wing due to the presence of fascist imagery (to shock) most Punks were
drawn to the Left messages found in the music of the Clash and the fight
against Reaganism launched by the Dead Kennedys. Punk also turned “DIY” into a freedom
cry for all artists. Hip Hop has also stood out as a people’s movement which
has called on multiple generations to speak out. For every gangsta rapper there
are scores of Hip Hop artists who use their poetry and music as a means of
unity and expression: life and survival in the ghettos, exposing social ills
and the need for social change are mainstays. Some rappers are inspired by the
Beat poets of the ‘50s, and most are well aware of the radical statements of
Gil-Scott Heron. Rappers like Dead Prez and Immortal Technique have focused on
a specific kind of topical Hip Hop.
MUSICIANS
ALIGNED WITH THE OWS MOVEMENT need to make a close study of the history of cultural
workers in building a lasting organization. Occupy Musicians should call on
composers, improvisers, rappers, singers, songwriters and instrumentalists;
there’s a need for pop singers, jazz and contemporary classical musicians, hip
hop artists, world music performers, folkies, satirists, rockers, balladeers
and punks. We must speak in every language, to every taste, to allow for the
unrestrained flow of outreach. And we need to establish a series of awareness-raising
concerts, to circulate recordings of OWS musicians and offer teach-ins and
workshops to not only insure continuity of current artists but to inspire the
generations to come. Occupy Musicians can not only offer a soundtrack to OWS
but can drive it with Shock Brigade bands to descend upon rallies and marches. And
to really be thorough, we need to do so in concert with radical poets,
performance artists and other cultural workers.
Occupy
Musicians can become an integral part of Occupy movements all over the nation,
all over the world. And through both concert presentations and social media we
can grow a network that will keep live music relevant even as it carries
activists to the necessary next level, true social and political change. Upward,
onward.
-John Pietaro is a musician, writer (http://TheCulturalWorker.blogspot.com)
and activist from Brooklyn NY. He is the leader of Radio NOIR (www.reverbnation.com/radionoir)
and the director of the annual Dissident Arts Festival.
