Disgusting. Horrifying and outrageous. These are the only words that can aptly describe Trayvon Martin's murder at the hands of an overzealous neighborhood watch captain. By now it's well-known that George Zimmerman, the man who pulled the trigger on a seventeen year old kid with no history of violence, has yet to see the inside of a jail cell for killing Martin.
There have already been comparisons to the fifty-plus-year-old case of Emmett Till. And it has to be said that the similarities are indeed stunning: a young African American man with a potentially bright future ahead of him, vigilantes obsessed with what Black people are "supposed" to be doing, even a visit to a local store to pick up candy.
Jasiri X, the same independent rapper who has become well-known for releasing videos online in the wake of Jena, Oscar Grant and other cases of blatant racism, has now plied his trade to this flagrant racist violence. As before, Jasiri's take is spot-on:
Bruce Springsteen is back. And according to fan and detractor alike, he's angry as hell. Given the times in which we find ourselves, this should be unsurprising.
What is surprising, however, is the musical method he's chosen to express this anger: a sound and structure that is at once vintage Springsteen and new territory for the Boss. It's what makes Wrecking Ball not only comfortably familiar, but an album uniquely relevant in a way that few other artists of his level can muster.
Reviews were predictable enough when Wrecking Ball's lead single "We Take Care Of Our Own" was released several weeks back. All the markers of an E Street Band song were instantly recognizable. Screaming guitars. Punching drums. An irresistibly anthemic chorus. And lyrics that walk a tense tightrope between longing for the American Dream and exaltation of those for whom the dream has become a nightmare.
What has changed, however, is the context, the world at large. This is, as many commentators have pointed out, "Springsteen in the age of Occupy." Once again, little surprise that the man who famously told Ronald Reagan to shove it, who has lent the content of countless songs and albums to stories of the dispossessed, should support the first open-ended movement against American inequality in decades.
Says Salon writer Marc Dolan of a recent press conference in Paris:
"Springsteen gave a mixed to favorable review of President Obama's first term, commending the president's hard work on health care and his reduction of the war in Afghanistan, but expressing frustration that neither effort went further. At the same press conference, Springsteen was more unalloyed in his praise of Occupy Wall Street, for their introduction of the very idea of income disparity to the national dialogue.
"Significantly, he told reporters that he probably wouldn't take part in the presidential campaign this year, suggesting that it had been more essential to get up off the bench in 2004 and 2008."
That's not to say this is some kind of political retreat for the Boss. On the contrary, one of the common criticisms of 2009's Working On a Dream was that Bruce's trademark hunger was conspicuously absent. It left some (including this writer) to wonder whether he too was falling victim to a bit of post-Obama complacency.
For as predictable as the vitriol in "Our Own" can seem, there's no mistake that he--like many others who supported Obama in 2008--is once again mad as hell. This, in essence, is what makes Wrecking Ball a familiar Springsteen album. The hunger is back, and the lyrics are dripping with indignation against the 1 percent. What makes the album un-familiar, however, starts after the opening track's final notes.
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From the sweaty sing-along of "We Take Care of Our Own," Bruce takes a left-turn into a completely different side. "Easy Money" dwells on the old world of fiddles, acoustic six strings and gospel stomp-claps for almost a minute until anything electric is heard. Choosing one, "Easy Money" is much more representative of Wrecking Ball's musical thrust.
To be sure, we've heard both of these from the Boss many times before. His testimonial style of rock and roll is his most iconic trait. The past 20-some-odd years have also seen his "folk side" become much more prominent (The Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils and Dust, The Seeger Sessions). What we haven't heard before is these two sides incorporated and balanced so seamlessly on the same album.
The distinction is an important one, because the dynamic interplay between folk and rock makes Wrecking Ball an album both steeped in history's abject cruelty and a revived sense of rebellion. The mournful frustration of "This Depression" and "Jack of All Trades" is surely known by countless outcast working people.
Just as palpable, however, is an undeterred hope that something better is ahead. In both songs, the rootsy, windswept instrumentation is complimented by the searing electric guitar work of none other than Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello. As for Bruce, he is clearly channeling the ghost of Woody Guthrie in the song's lyrics:
"The hurricane blows, brings the hard rain
When the blue sky breaks, it feels the world's gonna change
And we'll start caring for each other, like Jesus said that we might
I'm a jack of all trades, we'll be all right"
Contrast this with "Death to My Hometown," which takes this glimmer of hope and morphs it into a rage-filled, penny whistle and bagpipe-tinged battle cry:
"Sing it hard and sing it well
Send the robber barons straight to hell
The greedy thieves who came around
And ate the flesh of everything they found
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now
And walk the streets as free men now"
Did I mention that the song is angry? It almost seems designed for the "unwashed masses" of Occupy. Most likely, it was.
This anger, and the lyrics' sometimes violent imagery has some commentators nit-picking on whether Occupy has "found its soundtrack" in Wrecking Ball. It's an oblique concept from the outset, as if any one artist has ever been able to perfectly encapsulate a movement outside the safe pages of a history book.
Tris McCall, music writer for the Star-Ledger, willfully sidesteps the album's most hopeful moments in order to contrast Wrecking Ball with the optimism of Occupy's grassroots. He also makes a fetish of the movement's more moderate wing. "For every protester who felt swindled by financial legerdemain [sleight of hand]," says McCall "there were many others who simply believed they'd been cheated out of an opportunity to prosper."
At the heart of the issue, though, is the ongoing debate on what kind of movement Occupy will end up being--specifically whether it's a movement that can fundamentally change things or just tinker with the setup. McCall isn't only cynical about how quickly today's young people are radicalizing, he seems blind to how much Springsteen's own ideas are shifting.
None of this is to say that the Boss is just on the cusp of declaring himself a card-carrying red (though that wouldn't be a bad development in this writer's eyes). He is, however, coming to a simple yet long-obscured conclusion: that when people's backs are this close to the wall, when all other options have been exhausted, there's little left to do except fight back and take the bastards down:
"When your best hopes and desires
Are scattered to the wind
And hard times come and hard times go...
But they just don't come again
Bring on your wrecking ball!"
First published at SocialistWorker.org
It hasn't taken long for a backlash to develop against the poorly thought out "Kony 2012" campaign. Director Jason Russell is now backtracking, saying that he meant to oversimplify his film. Conveniently leaving out, for example, that Joseph Kony isn't even in Uganda anymore, and that the US-allied Ugandan government is itself guilty of using child soldiers. This video is, basically, a cover for US intervention on the African continent.
So, count this among the backlash. Mistah FAB has already proven he has a conscience after his song dedicated to Oscar Grant went viral. He speaks truth on this track too:
The Boston Police Department has recently announced that they will be cracking down on mosh-pits. That's right; after reports of "aggressive dancing" at a Flogging Molly show at Boston's House of Blues, the Boston PD have claimed that the pit "violated safety rules." House of Blues was cited for public safety violations, and has been ordered to install illuminated signs informing the crowd that moshing is banned.
This move by the Boston PD seems to come rather out of nowhere. Boston has a thriving punk and hardcore scene well rooted in the city. Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys, when asked about the moshing crackdown, seemed understandably perplexed: "I don't see it as a concern for us. Maybe in 1998 it would have been."
Nor is this the first seemingly random finger pointed at a subculture by the authorities. This past October, the FBI quizzically added the "Juggalos," face-painted fans of the Insane Clown Posse, to the list of rising gangs in the US.
I am loath to defend the Insane Clown Posse or their followers. The notion that a group like this is still around fifteen years later merely reveals that the music industry is one of the few places that Stugeon's Law is strictly enforced. But it is also worth putting the villification of Juggalos in the context of the FBI's long history of surveillance on hip-hop culture. ICP might be a complete non sequitur to the basic thrust of hip-hop (in fact, I think that they make a mockery of hip-hop itself), but then, the feds have never been exactly known for their cultural savvy.
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On a personal note, I've moshed more times than I can remember ever since I turned thirteen. I was a scrawny-ass kid too (five-foot-six and barely a buck ten until my late teens when, thankfully, I hit a spurt). Frequently, I was launched into pits with people who had an easy foot and extra hundred pounds on me. I was never injured. In fact, if I fell, I was always picked up, and normally by the very same massive dudes who you would think would want to do significant damage to a little guy like me.
Yes, I saw my fair share of bloody lips and black eyes, but in the hundreds of concerts I attended, they were infrequent. And when it became apparent that someone was possibly seriously hurt, the pit normally ceased, and room was quickly cleared to get the injured comrade out of the crowd. Normally it was total strangers carrying them out. But again, it wasn't very frequent I saw someone injured at all.
Likewise, nobody at the Flogging Molly show was injured either.
I bring all this up to highlight the kind of camaraderie that exists in tight-knit youth subcultures. It's that instinctual solidarity that police departments are interested in doing away with, not any possible threat to public safety.
It's well worth pointing out that while punk rock certainly has had to deal with its share of police harassment in the US, nowadays it's far more common in hip-hop (real hip-hop) and other subcultures more commonly associated with people of color. The difference is that it doesn't get reported as much. That being said, the crackdown on mosh pits and the listing of Juggalos as a gang both reveal that if any youth culture is under the gun, then all of them are.
Across the country, cities are gutting social services, shutting down clinics, slashing funding for community centers, laying off public employees--except, that is, for cops. Police departments are on the whole having their funding beefed up in major metropolitan areas. And as always, harsher laws and ordinances are following. The most obvious example is here in Chicago, where Rahm Emanuel has placed severe restrictions on protesting and brought in out-of-state police forces to help with crowd control during the NATO summit in May.
Mix this in with the fact that scapegoating of all kinds increases during eras of economic hardship, and you start to get a picture of what role these types of crackdowns play.
You knew it was going to happen, didn't you? And though you might not have predicted that it would be Tom Morello behind it, that's not exactly surprising either. Says a post at Prefix Mag:
"Tom Morello aka The Nightwatchman is a tireless activist on top of being a killer musician and a thoughtful songwriting. He will combine these assets at SXSW, where he'll have his first-ever showcase, in a couple days. The event is set to kick off Friday, March 16, and will move into the next day when Morello plays a set starting at 12:30 in the morning...
"In a similar time frame, Occupy Austin will begin a flash mob march at an undisclosed downtown location at 9 PM. The dancing protestors will continue until they reach the Swan Dive, the venue that Morello will be rocking. About this somewhat mysterious party-with-a-cause, the guitarist had the following to say."
SXSW has long had a bit of a problem with some of its perceived elitism. Despite the fact that the festival and conference basically takes over Austin for several days, it's always been rather hard for ordinary Austinites to get into the most "important" events. Kind of like Sundance, except that the nearest homeless people aren't all the way on the other side of a mountain range. (Though it does bear pointing out that, per Morello, "there will certainly be a healthy Occupy presence in the venue")
This isn't to blame artists like Morello or, for that matter, other performers who play the game at SXSW. The industry's reality is one artists simply have to abide by if they want to keep up their ability to make a living.
Changing the structure, of course, requires a movement, and now that's the kind of thing that Morello and others like him are finally able to plug into. Here's to hoping that flash mobs like this can spread into the rest of the season's festivals.
Indeed the rumors are true. Chicago will host an "Occupy Festival" in the run-up to the NATO summit this coming May. NBC and Huffington Post have already broken the news, and the buzz in the social media world has just started to percolate:
"The inaugural, Occupy Chicago-endorsed festival, scheduled for May 12-13 in the city's Union Park, aims to 'highlight the struggle of social and economic inequality through artistic performance' according to an event announcement."
No acts have been officially announced yet, but there's word the fest will incorporate electro, rock, hip-hop and more. I also know for a fact that some high-profile names are being spoken with. In the meantime, keep your eye on the fest's website and Facebook page for updates. The bastards who think they can exploit and trammel over this planet might believe that they control the culture too, but the events of this May will surely prove them wrong.
"Better Days Ahead": a cultural tribute to the memory of Troy Davis and Martina Correia
Friday, March 23rd
Wicker Park Arts Center, 2215 W North Ave
7pm, 8 bucks at the door
On Friday, March 23rd, at the Wicker Park Arts Center (2215 W North Ave), the Occupy Chicago Rebel Arts Collective will host a night of art, music and culture remembering the life and struggles of Troy Davis and Martina Correia.
Six months ago, the state of Georgia executed Davis for murder of a police officer--despite virtually no evidence and a worldwide campaign to save his life. Months later, his sister Martina Correia, a tireless advocate on his behalf, succumbed to cancer.
Both Troy and Martina were dedicated fighters against the death penalty and the racism of the criminal injustice system. As we move into Chicago Spring and a revival of activism for social and economic justice, OCRAC wishes to pay tribute to them. This event--featuring music, poetry, performance and art--will celebrate their lives, and the continuing struggle against racism and repression in Chicago, Georgia, the United States and around the world.
Included will be local painters and artists involved anti-racist movements in Chicago, as well as local rock, hip-hop and blues, poets and performance artists. Come join what is guaranteed to be an inspiring night. Though Troy and Martina are no longer with us, the culture of resistance they were a part of lives and thrives!
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Local hip-hop phenom FM Supreme has jumped on board this event, but we're still in need of artists and musicians. If you're in the area and want to contribute, then get in touch with OCRAC. And RSVP on Facebook!