Top 10 Revolutionary Songs
By no means exhaustive, this is a very subjective list (they all are, eh?) of songs I consider revolutionary. Primarily for lyrical content but sometimes for what the music itself compels or the circumstances of the act of creation. Whatever debate can incur from politics’ place in music, a voice is a voice and music has always been simply that. You can dance, you can propagandize, you can turn out, enrage, whatever.. there’s room for all of it. There is so much omitted from the list.. feel free to add your own fight songs.
I dedicate these and all rallying songs to the more than 1000 arrested for using their voices at the G20 summit in Toronto last month.
“Remember it’s not a safe time & all the more reason
To do wholeheartedly what you have to do” – Diane di Prima
John Lennon – Working Class Hero, from Plastic Ono Band (Apple/EMI, 1970)
Forget “Imagine” (I wonder if you can?). The fluffy utopian theme of “Imagine” never had the class-warfare thematic teeth of “Working Class Hero”. It’s the distillation of the class struggle, laid out almost deadpan by Lennon, who seemingly never forgot the depth and breadth of the struggle of the poor. Anyone who comes from a background of poverty in the Western world understands the lyrics as a missive, a special letter between John and them. In the song’s grim conclusion he sings straight past the sycophants and hipsters of the day with the devastating lines:
“…and you think you’re so clever and classless and free / but you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see..”.Dead Prez – Stimulus Plan, from Turn off the Radio: The Mixtape Vol. 3: Pulse Of The People (Independent, 2009)
Gangsta but revolutionary… a scary mix to powers that want to dumb down the masses with big dumb beats and glorifying gansta culture that most of these ringtone phonies never really lived through. Still sharp in an industry dominated by dumbass and one dimensional “Urban” acts like Black Eyed Peas, M-1 and company stick to their lyrical guns and the aim is still true and devastating.
“..they so called war on terror / is just a ploy to get more cheddar / dinero, the root of all evil / they come in bombin shootin exploiting people / and call it freedom…”
MDC – Dead Cops/America is so Straight from Millions of Dead Cops (Rhythm Vicar, 1982)
What is incredible about MDC is how well these songs hold up 30 years later. MDC is uncompromising hard edged political rage that makes Green Day’s recent output seem like the scratching of toothless kittens. Who was putting out anti-homophobic songs that called for the heads of cops in that era? Who is doing it in this era? What makes bands like this so vital is that every oppressed generation will now have a canon of songs to bind them together and give them strength, even while being abused by the filth.. who are still as homophobic and violent as ever.
“… dead cops / watcha gonna do / the mafia in blue / hunting for niggers and queers and you / dead cops / time for a switch / army of the rich / macho fuckin slaves / we’ll piss on your graves…”
Bruce Cockburn – Call It Democracy from World of Wonders (True North, 1986)
Yes, I just did that.. I just went from MDC to Bruce Cockburn. Listen, most people haven’t heard MDC but up here in Kanada, Bruce is revered.. much like your American Bruce but with less layers of flag-fluttering mythology. Prescient of the state-demolishing forces of globalization and greed that the IMF and the WTO represent, “Call It Democracy” saw Bruce speaking his truth as plainly as he could put it down.. part of his early 80s activist awakening which included the scathing “If I Had a Rocket Launcher”, it’s a sad testament to the vitality of the lyrics that they are as accurate today as when first penned.
“… padded with power / here they come / international loan sharks backed by the guns / of market hungry military profiteers / whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared with the blood of the poor / who rob life of its quality / who render rage a necessity / by turning countries into labour camps / modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom..”
Anthrax – Indians from Among the Living (Island, 1986)
There are few tracks by white America that deal with native issues without coming off as patronizing, or over-poeticizing what’s a continuous and systemic genocide. Anthrax, a bunch of goofy thrash metallers from New York conflate the real issues of land theft and apartheid with a naive (or ironic) use of “Noble Savage” type imagery. No other bands at that level of popularity were singing flat out about stolen land and the integrity looks good on them still 25 years later. To boot, Indians is an incredibly mosh-worthy track.. what a breakdown!
“..respect is something that you earn / our Indian brother’s getting burned / original American / turned into second class citizen…”
Willie Dunn – The Ballad of Crowfoot (NFB, 1968)
Believe it or not, Canada’s first music video was a 10 minute film directed and set to an original song by Willie Dunn, a Mi’kmaq/Scottish folk singer from Quebec. Released under the NFB, “Crowfoot” is the stark distillation of the real story of the decimation of the Aboriginal in North America. Dunn encapsulates this in the story of Crowfoot, legendary leader of the Blackfoot Nations during their denouement in the 19th century. The story is always bitter.. the great plains nations, broken by war and disease extorted into ceding land. Willie lets the story speak for itself, adorning it with a casual poetic ballad style that resounds with the still unfolding and deeply wounding colonialism.
Negativland – Guns (SST, 1992)
After being forced to pull their infamous single “U2” after a legal smackdown by the Irish band of the same name, Guns was released with a hilarious cover that poked fun at the fiasco (the cover effectively replicated the banned U2 single, but with a large gun pointed at a U2 plane). The single has two sides “Then” and “Now”, which both make use of Negativland’s trademark splice and dice of old movies and newscasts on “Then” and more current samples on “Now”. It’s funny, deadpan and deals a stark reflection of America’s fixation with gun violence over generations.
(Furthering the irony, U2 lifted Negativland’s media cut-up aesthetic wholesale on their own 1991 release Zoo Station.)
Ministry – NWO from Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs (Sire, 1992)
While Bono called up his pal George Bush I from the stage, Al Jorgensen was stabbing musical pins into the administration with this pounding industrial metal track. This was the protest music of 20 years ago, the type of raging anger release that gave voice to the generation that emerged after the cold war and matured through the Gulf War. In something approaching epic cognitive dissonance, “NWO” was nominated for a Grammy in 1993 (well.. I find it dissonant.).
“… I’m in love with our potential dissent / I’ll buy the torch if you can pay for the rent / fly it high with the good book in hand / we’re all in love with the promised land…”
Eminem – Mosh from Encore (Shady/Interscope, 2004)
A decade after Ministry’s hate letter to Bush sr. came Eminem’s “Mosh”, a scathing indictment of the new Bush administration. Working with the Guerilla News Network, Slim Shady produced a video for “Mosh” that exhorted the youth to vote Bush out of office.. this didn’t work. But you still have to give props to Eminem for sticking his neck out and putting his pen where his conscience lies. He was investigated by the CIA for what he said on that album, something he references later on in the video.
“…no more blood for oil / we got our own battles to fight on our soil / no more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain’t loyal…”
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – BBF3 from Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada (Constellation, 1999)
Godspeed’s first EP was perfectly situated in place and in time. Montreal in the late 90s had an atmosphere of palpable pre-millennial angst… it wasn’t the indie mecca for the hipster wanderlings it’s become. There was a darkness of spirit all over the city, a subtle feeling of a collective breath being held. The crumbling post-industrial buildings that were briefly rediscovered and re-purposed by artists and musicians are now being mulched into shiny condos to house the new class of game programmers and well heeled bohos who wanted to live where the action is. The action is long over and now the cycle continues, gentrification is a given. But every day I pass the water tower on Van Horne and St Urbain ( the one on the cover of Godspeed’s F#A#∞) and if I stop and look at it I hear the strains of “BBF3” swelling in my mind’s ear. It’s epic and cathartic chords are still resounding there in the churn of the train and the hollow bones of the abandoned textile buildings along the tracks.
