Get Up, Get Up, Get Up, Get Up, Get Down
I’m watching the PBS program Get Up, Stand Up: The Story of Pop and Protest, which is a look at American protest songs and the artists who sang them. It started with the pro-worker songs of Joe Hill, who is the father of protest music. His quote, “A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over again,” is the pull quote for the show’s website. One of the songs that got a few seconds of air time was “Marching to Pretoria,” which I remember singing over and over again in elementary school. I can sing it straight through today. When I heard it, I remembered all the great protest songs we sang in school: “This Land is Your Land,” “This Little Light of Mine,” “We Shall Overcome,” “John Henry,” “If I Had a Hammer” Those are just the ones I clearly remember singing. I’m sure we sang others.
My kids don’t sing protest songs in school. They open every school day singing a “patriotic” song like “Grand Old Flag,” “Oh, Beautiful” or “The Star Spangled Banner.” Don’t get me wrong. We sang songs like that too. I remember singing “My Country ’tis of Thee” every other day. But we had Woody Guthrie in there too.
Anyway, the PBS show is good, even if it falls apart a little bit in the nineties. Unions, Vietnam, Bangladesh, African famine, Farm Aid, Tibet, AIDS, Punk, Apartheid. Remember when Stevie Wonder got arrested for demonstrating too close to the South African embassy in D.C.? There’s some of that happening today.
September 28th, 2005 at 8:55 pm
I was really enjoying the show, although I’ll always think of protest music as the music of my parents’ generation. When I was at the U of MN and taking an American History class (and a pretentious little conservative bastard who thought he was a fiscal independent) our substitute prof for a day was a professor from the music department who brought in his guitar and did a history of protest music from the 50s to the 80s. Absolutely the best class I ever had, and I knew it at the time - I should have realized right then my opinions about small government at the expense of the people wouldn’t last.
City Pages Culture to Go was talking about the program and noted that the Strib reviewed it thusly: “project is tainted by the lack of conservative representation”… Exactly what viewpoint do they attribute to those people shooting students in Ohio, putting John Lennon under surveillance and trying to sweep Vietnam Vets under the carpet?
September 28th, 2005 at 9:15 pm
Well they did include “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” Left out the whole No Nukes thing.
After watching Dylan the last two nights and this protest music thing tonight, I had the thought that maybe some viewers would get dangerous ideas. You gotta know the Repubs in charge at PBS now are plotzing.
BTW, I bought a DVD of Willie Dixon the great blues composer called “I Am the Blues.” Turns out Willie was a conscientious objector during WWII and one of the tunes in the set is called “Peace.” “It makes no sense if we can’t make peace.” You can see by his face how much he means it.
If you want to be prepared for the next economic downturn, can’t do much better than WC Handy’s “Wall Street Blues.”
It all comes back round again don’t it.
September 28th, 2005 at 9:20 pm
How about that fur jacket Stevie Wonder was wearing when he got arrested? Pretty sweet.
September 29th, 2005 at 4:34 am
I just wish they’d have mentioned this guy, but maybe you can see him in person
September 29th, 2005 at 4:48 am
Exactly what viewpoint do they attribute to those people shooting students in Ohio, putting John Lennon under surveillance and trying to sweep Vietnam Vets under the carpet?
LOL.
And gmoke is right. That Green Beret song was in there. So was Alan Jackson. The strib will have to wait for a show on censorship of protest songs if they want something that’s weighted with a conservative perspective.
September 29th, 2005 at 7:30 am
My brief review of this show is here.