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To recognize the power of protest music, acknowledge its role in keeping dissent alive and how musicians translate social issues and systemic problems into song, The Dissenter has launched a daily feature that highlights a protest song every weekday.
The debate between vice-presidential candidates was predictable with neither the candidates nor the moderator questioning whether the United States has the legal or moral right to wage a war in countries like Iran. The Benghazi attack was debated, however, the interventionism that could be said to have created conditions, which led to four Americans, including a diplomat, being killed was absent from discussion.
With that said, today’s song is an Afrobeat jam by Antibalas called “War Hero.” Off their album from 2007 called Security, the song begins:
Commander-in-chief
Him dey bring
Democracy
To all the people of the world
Limited liability
Him dey bring democracy
To all the people of the world
The war, the intervention brings destruction. It brings corporate greed. It brings an open market. It brings a killing spree. Duke Amayo sings about all this as the drums drive the rhythm and the horns nicely accentuate the message of the song.
The “chiefs” in power do not see what they are doing, “Because (they’re masterless)/Because (they’re shameless)/Because (they’re ruthless).” They don’t really bring democracy. They do destroy men and women they send to fight in their wars, men and women who return home and are publicly treated as heroes so long as they keep their mouth shut about the war and what it was really like to fight.
Band member Martin Perna, who founded the band, told The Nation after a concert in 2007:
…Afrobeat as our musical architecture is connected to political struggle. And we’re not just talking about political struggle in our context, as a multicultural, multiracial band from Brooklyn, New York. We have songs about patriarchy, about military myths, and we have songs about the need to really overhaul [our] representative democracy [due to its] corruption and the [fact that] the public has been betrayed by both parties…
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The Dissenter will be putting one of these up every weekday morning. If you have requests for songs that should be featured or if you have a protest song you recorded, which you would like to see featured, email dissenter@firedoglake.com.
And all previous Protest Song of the Day selections can be found here.
6 Comments
Been doing this for over three weeks now. It has been a great joy.
Artists are sending me their own music to have featured. I have people submitting requests. Also, multiple artists whose songs I have selected as “Protest Song of the Day” have found the post and retweeted it.
It is rewarding and something I hope to continue at The Dissenter for at least the next few months.
Thank you for doing this. I don’t think a change can happen in any society that is totalitarian, unless people really get into some heavy duty tunes. Tunes helped apartheid go away.
Maybe someday soon tunes will get the entire Corporate World to go away. (The Monstrous aspects – not small family owned Corporations.)
“… the interventionism that could be said to have created conditions, which led to four Americans being killed…”
many things could be said, but not many could be said to be as specious and without merit as that.
“When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them.” Plato
Just thought I would throw Uncle Plato in here.
I don’t comment much, Kevin, but always do I read and check out what you have up. Thank you. Music paves the way to the heart of things, methinks.
“We want to stop attacks on our embassies? Let’s stop trying to overthrow governments. This should not be a partisan issue. Let’s avoid the hype. Let’s look at the real situation here. Interventions do not make us safer. They do not protect our nation. They are themselves a threat to America.” -Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich is a dope and a dupe, Kevin.
Perhaps you might try internalizing the words of someone more worthwhile and avoid coming across as a sophomoric thinker. I’ve read other things that you’ve authored and I know that you can do a little better than to regurgitate the pap that Kucinich offers.
It could be said that you’ve a problem caused by “garbage in, garbage out”.