Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 May 2008 14:23:23
Oh, yes, it's there alright. You just need to look for it.
I am a great fan of the Folk Music radio show on Radio 2. The last two times I've listened to it, I have heard the following lyrics being sung. Joe Macarthy would be turning in his grave.
Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain
It's from ‘The Preacher and the Slave'. Sung by Nancy Kerrigan, as a medley with ‘Let the Mystery Be', to get across the full religion-is-the-opium-of-the-masses meaning.
Or how about ‘The hard times of England retold', a contemporary version by Billy Bragg of a classic folk tune? See here for a video of it's that well worth watching. Some of the rather wonderful lyrics:
The Countryside Alliance want my support I suppose
When they go down to London to bloody Blair's nose
But they said not a word when our post office closed...
Time was I could sell all I grew at the shop,
when Tesco's turned up all of that had to stop
No I can no longer live off my crop
Oh, the hard times of old England, in old England very hard times.
Still, even those fine words don't have the naked class war vibe of this Iris Dement song (who also wrote the aforementioned ‘Let the Mystery Be'). Now we're getting hardcore - I don't think that even the Morning Star is pushing for this to happen these days. Maybe it should though.
I've traveled 'round this country
from shore to shining shore
It really made me wonder
the things I heard and saw
I saw the weary farmer
plowing sod and loam
l heard the auction hammer
just a-knocking down his home
But the banks are made of marble
with a guard at every door
and the vaults are stuffed with silver
that the farmer sweated for
‘I've seen the weary miner
scrubbing coal dust from his back
I heard his children cryin'
Got no coal to heat the shack
But the banks are made of marble
with a guard at every door
and the vaults are stuffed with silver
that the miner sweated for
I've seen my brothers working
throughout this mighty land
l prayed we'd get together
and together make a stand
Then we might own those banks of marble
with a guard at every door
and we might share those vaults of silver
that we have sweated for
I remember seeing Dick Gaughin, the Scottish folk singer sing various songs, introducing many of them as being ‘written by a good man, a good Communist' (this loses something without the indecipherable Glawegian accent with which it was delivered).
I guess folkies are just commies, right?
Or is it the reality that music which comes ‘from the poor', as folk music to some extent must, reflects their concerns and solutions to their problems - which may have little to do with the liberal capitalist consensus?
No wonder the New Labour politician claimed that ‘my vision of hell is three folk singers in a pub near Wells.'
But perhaps a folkie has a reply to that. And perhaps, as Capercaillie might say, we're waiting for the wheel to turn.