The protest song has been a staple of music since, well, pretty much since music began. From ancient marching songs to subversive troubadour social commentary through the sixties golden age of the form, let’s not forget that hip-hop and punk were born from disenfranchisement and the idea of rebellion. I’m only surprised that, given the state of the world today and a future that looks no brighter, it hasn’t reached a new level of peak popularity!
The smart thing about this new one from Oaken Lee is that it takes the tone of a sixties-style folk protest song and applies it to a modern-day issue. Back then, protecting the earth might have just seemed like a hippy utopia. Today, climate change is the most pressing matter of our times, or it would be if the powers-that-be could see past their own pocket-lining greed.
Hence, “Where Now?” a song forged of chiming chords and guitar rhythms, rumbling bass, and all manner of “field recordings” and additional musical motifs. But, as with all protest songs, the message is all, and here, he addresses not just the looming disaster that global warming promises but also the plight of those displaced by its effects. Environmental migration undoubtedly promises to be the most significant political and social tectonic shift of the next few years.
Everything is summed up brilliantly in one line, a line that perhaps resonates with so many issues that face us today—“no plan, no planet, B.” This isn’t a dress rehearsal, it reminds us. What is at stake here is nothing less than the future of the only planet that we have ever called home and, therefore humanity, too.
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