Dangerous Songs

Happy MLK day! I hope you brushed your teeth and changed your underwear for this important day (seriously, try to take the time to do the basics of personal hygiene for the greater good).

I recently purchased a new album that is apropos of this day: Song of America. Granted, it is an older album from all the way back to  2007, but it usually takes me a while to catch up to things happening. It is a complication of 50 songs “related to the history of America” and I would say coming out of the folk/protest genre of music. Right now I am listening to “Lift Every Voice” which is very, very appropriate for today.

Songs include “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” “Peg & Awl,” “John Brown’s Body,” “Thousands Are Sailing to Amerikay,” “Brother Can Spare a Dime?”, and “Deportee.” That is just a small sampling, but hopefully you get the idea.

There is something sad about protest songs. They are a part of our history, a part of who we are as a people, and often they are lost. Either that are forgotten, or the meaning is forgotten. These are songs that were written to express the pathos of a particular group of people and when they are lost that experience is lost. When this happens the history of our nation becomes monolithic, safe, white, and boring. 

A safe history leads to a torpor of American consciousness; a dangerous compliancy that at the least weakens democracy and at the worst leads to a self-subjection of the people.

On this day when many people are spending time saying what an important person Martin Luther King Jr. was we need to look at and remember more and more of our story. The person of MLK evokes the darker side of our nation’s story but also a side where true and real heroes are found. I would encourage you to read of other movements, other times of suffering, and learn of other American heroes. Read about the plight of the immigrant in the 1840s, the struggle of women, the struggle of the Native American, the struggle of the Chinese, the Japanese, the worker, and on and on. And then learn the music. The music will connect you with the experience of the suffering better than any history book can.

Finally ask yourself who is suffering in America today. We are not a perfect nation and we still have a lot of work to do. Who are the forgotten, the lost, the oppressed, and the silenced and what can you do to help them?

Postscript: I just purchased two versions of "Strange Fruit," one sung by Billi Holiday and the other sung by Nina Simone. Both are fantastic and powerful. This is a perfect example of the dangerous music I am talking about. If you don't know the song, sit down and just listen. If you aren't moved at all, then you must be a bastard or dead (or a Vulcan).