"Our musicians wear body armour instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals — even to those who can’t hear them. But the music will break through anyway. We defend our freedom to live, to love, to sound. On our land, we are fighting Russia, which brings horrible silence with its bombs — the dead silence. Fill the silence with your music. Fill it today to tell our story. Tell the truth about this war on your social networks, on TV."
Does a world leader belong on an awards show? Who knows?! You could criticize the logic: Why would the glamorous celebrities at their awards show be the ones to tell what Zelensky calls "our story"? He's inviting others to appropriate his people's story. And yet, as he says, they are silenced, so he chooses to rely on others to get the story out. Whether they can do it skillfully or not, he is desperate, and he means to convey desperation. Stop what you are doing — enjoying the pleasures of peace and freedom — and make my cause yours!
And there is a music tradition of singing about the needs of others.
ADDED: I wanted to call up a Spotify playlist that highlights white artists in the 1960s who sang in support of the civil rights movement, but that's not easy to do! The list I've embedded has many black artists, and I think if I want an all-white playlist of civil rights movement songs, I'd have to put it together myself.
HERE: I made a modest effort:
BUT: Maybe Zelensky only meant: Use your social media to write about the war, not your music talent. Your musical ability is what got you a huge following on Twitter and Instagram. That's why you matter. I want you to pass things along.
There's no reason to believe these music stars will get things right as they attempt to do politics (and propaganda). If you subtract the music, what do you have?
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62 comments:
Cause de jour.
Zelensky is a CIA stooge. The CIA staged a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and runs the show.
Hillary and Nuland sent over sexual identity clowns to indoctrinate Ukrainians in fag haggery and convince them to cease their stupid Orthodox Christian practice.
Zelensky is a pervert chosen by the CIA to appeal to fag hags like you, Althouse. Your fag hag ideology is now the spearhead of U.S. imperialism.
I have to figure out now how to protect my grandkids from being chemically and surgically mutilated. Your evil ideology has turned you into a monster. We may be fighting a nuclear war soon to force your disgusting kink on the world.
He wanted to appear during the Oscars, but I guess they had enough drama to deal with.
To riff on your addition, Democrats fundamentally misunderstand the politics of FDR and the Depression. The lesson is not 'never let a crisis go to waste.' It is that even in a crisis it's possible for the things you claim are going to 'solve' it to scare the bejebus out of people. By 1938 things were stable enough that FDR's continued bold persistent experimentation caused a backlash. People who are in a crisis are more afraid of losing what they have then what they might never get, or get back. The time for expansion is when people feel they have a firm foundation and can reach out, as in the period immediately after the end of WWII that produced the biggest civil rights gains.
Zelensky is doing it right, and it's effective.
"Hey Jude" a protest song? Great song, and the Beatles are my favorite band, but I'm not sure I get that connection. I was only 4 or 5, so I don't remember it or the times, but I think I remember reading that the "Na na na" part was part of that. Maybe togetherness? Especially the performance on David Frost's show.
He could have taken the peace deal offered three days before the war, but as the WSJ quoted him as saying, he wanted to join NATO, so war it is. What a cutie.
Wasn't the Viet Nam War about us defending Viet Nam from Russia's ally in the North? Was that a "good war" now?
The Military Situation in Ukraine
The Unz website has published a translation of a French-language article written by Jacques Baud, a retired colonel in the Swiss intelligence service. Baud has served as a highly placed, major participant in NATO training operations in Ukraine.
Baud's article is superb -- by far the most informative article I ever have read about the current situation in Ukraine.
Does a world leader belong on an awards show?
This would typically be the time Joe Biden showed up everywhere to help the Dems in the mid-terms.
Paul Simon's song "Sounds of Silence" is a song about the Civil Rights Movement.
Read my blog article explaining that song.
Good grief ST, get some coffee.
"Cause de jour."
du, that is.
Mike Sylvester - be careful taking that article at face value.
Mike Sylvester - be careful taking that article at face value.
I'm pleased to see ST back, even if he is a bit overwrought this morning he is largely correct.
NO BLOOD FOR OIL!
Oh sec...
WAR! WAR! WAR!
Peter Paul and Mary - If I had a hammer
Pete Seeger - If you Miss Me at the Back of the Bus
Part of the Sixties was the way civil rights protest merged with anti-war protest and anti-capitalism protest. And with drugs. And with feminism and with what is now called trans. I saw all these arrive in the hippie community in Toronto. These aren't all equal - you couldn't say it then in that community and you can't say it now and be acceptable to Our Betters. But the rationalist part of the Western tradition begins with Socrates trying to get people to think about what they were saying. Read the Death of Socrates.
The point isn't his death however; the point isn't that he was a "rebel"; the point is that he showed how to think. It's a skill one can acquire just like tennis but unlike tennis, it's a challenge to Our Betters. What do we mean by "better'? You see?
You cannot be a citizen as opposed to being a serf, a peon, a coolie, a comrade or a silent coward unless you value this skill. The Ukrainians have decided to value it and to be a liberal nation and they are ready to die for it - to be a nation but also a liberal nation. How should we respond? "Love justice, you rulers of the earth." That's from the Christian tradition. Rulers are not to be about power politics or Machiavellianism. Those words don't mean "be careless about starting a nuclear war" or "we shouldn't be thinking about the oncoming famine" or "Biden and Co. aren't trying to use Zelensky to forward the climate agenda." In an interconnected, polyphonic world they mean, I believe, that a citizen should not accept any analysis of the Ukrainian war which is a one-noted shrill cry in favor of injustice.
He was needed for cover after the Louie CK victory.
By appearing at the Grammys, he makes the war seem more fake and less life threatening.
I feel like I'm watching the Hunger Games.
Mid-Life Lawyer said...
"Cause de jour."
du, that is.
seems like, SOMEONE is making assumptions about something's gender!!
GENDERPHOBE!!!!!!
maybe that day (or whatever a jour is) has a different gender than the one YOU are imposing on it
GENDERPHOBE!!!!!!
Zelensky's call for celebrities to tell his story is a means to an end. What does he actually want?
American's fighting Russians is my guess.
Does a world leader belong on an awards show?
Hate the game, not the player. Zelensky understands that he's got to win continued support for Ukraine from western nations, and that means appealing to the western political and cultural class.
""Hey Jude" a protest song? Great song, and the Beatles are my favorite band, but I'm not sure I get that connection."
I didn't make the playlist, but I guess one theory could be that Paul is calling on all the sad people of the world to make it better.
One option is to give up…
#UnpopularOpinion 👉🏽 https://youtu.be/YPHPcDv409c 🤯
This whole Zelenskyy-in-tshirt is starting to feel the same as some ad campaign for the latest energy drink.
Reading the "Hey Jude" lyrics, I've got to say that it's a very personal song addressed to one particular guy who wants love from one particular girl. So it's the polar opposite of a protest song. The reference to the larger world is "Don't carry the world upon your shoulders" — which would suggest avoiding political activism and concentrating on your personal happiness. That's the opposite of a protest song.
By the way, Genius.com includes "fucking hell" in the lyrics!
The "protest" songs of my youth seem safely vague and anodyne now.
I mean, even at the time who knew what they were on about. But I guess it was "revolutionary" to sing about anything besides luvvv.
Imagine going through life being Shouting Thomas.
I wanted to call up a Spotify playlist that highlights white artists in the 1960s who sang in support of the civil rights movement, but that's not easy to do! The list I've embedded has many black artists, and I think if I want an all-white playlist of civil rights movement songs, I'd have to put it together myself.
Ironic.
Isn't that how segregation got started in the first place?
‘Hey, Julien’ was the working title; written for John’s son. Not a protest song…
"as he says, they are silenced"
As opposed to all the Russian artists who aren't silenced.
UN rejects investigation of war crimes in Bucha, so I am sure that we are in the right and no need to look at the facts on the ground.
For better or worse, Pete Seeger, one of the whitest guys who ever lived, should head your list. He wrote, recorded, or sang If I Had a Hammer, Blowin' in the Wind, Little Boxes, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Turn, Turn, Turn, etc. He popularized We Shall Overcome.
He was an American original--born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he ached to have come from the soil-- with a gift for melodic propaganda. He lived and breathed protest to the twang of a banjo.
I thought Hey Jude was about Julian and his Dad leaving the family...
“Blackbird” by the Beatles. Paul McCartney wrote it about black women and the civil rights movement in the 1960’s.
In my view, a ‘protest song’ has to, well, protest something; it has to object to something explicitly. It has to convey “Down with ____”. Just expressing a preference for peace or fairness to me does not make a song a protest song. It if did, then singing ‘Peace be with you’ at the end of church service would be participating in the singing of protest songs.
If you are looking for a Beatles protest song try The Taxman.
So now I am supposed to support my country, which destabilized Ukraine in 2014 and installed the corrupt sewer of a government that rejected the former government’s neutrality and immediately embarked on a project to cross Russia’s brightest red line, reiterated by every Russian leader since 1989. Amoral Joe Biden was not the man to have been put in charge of that mob which was busy creating vast fortunes raping the resources of that poor country, and protecting the thieves by firing the prosecutor.
Then Saint Joe published a letter in November guaranteeing Ukraine NATO membership and the same war salesmen and marketing people who dragged us into Iraq are doing their best to drag us into this one. What’s good for Raytheon is good for the country, Joe Biden right or wrong.
Excellent historian's first cut at the Ukraine war and strategies of both sides youtube
The information war is being won by the Ukrainians and it's vital because they need continuing Western aid to pull off the defense-in-depth strategy they're using against the Russian shock and awe approach.
So Zelensky at the grammies is important.
Does a world leader belong on an awards show? Who knows?!
I can't help thinking of what Michael Lind said, "The sudden outburst of vicarious Ukrainian patriotism on the part of many Americans—as well as people in similar North Atlantic democracies—seems like a Freudian “return of the repressed.” Taught that celebrating their own national traditions is racist and xenophobic, and deprived of opportunities to play a meaningful role in national defense, many Americans and Western Europeans have found an outlet for a lost sense of belonging by borrowing the national pride of another nation."
"Where have all the Flowers Gone"
Maggie’s Farm is not the protest song people think it is. Dylan is comparing his experience in the record industry to slavery. Listen to the song again with that in mind.
‘Well I try my best to be who I am. But everybody wants you to be just like them. They say sing while you slave and I just get bored.”
Ukraine is only a pawn in the globalist’s game. Dementia Joe said the quiet part out loud when he about deposing Putin. Russia is just another country standing in the way of globalism capturing all of Eurasia. Poland and Hungary are on their hit list also. The EU and State Department want the war to drag out in the hopes of an uprising in Russia. Notice how the U.S. has been excluded from most of the peace talks? Could it be the serious anti-war leaders see the U.S. as an obstacle to peace but cannot say it because of fear of retribution?
I actually watched this and, in the context of the show, the memorial tribute to Stephen Sondheim was far more heartfelt. Ukraine appeared and disappeared and the people winning awards returned the focus on themselves, their music, and their clothing.
“War” Edwin Starr
Thanks for the great Ukraine link, Mike.
I like the Jello Biafra & Mojo Nixon version of “Love Me, I’m A Libersl” better.
It's not surprising that Phil Ochs appears so highly on both lists. He was the one singer who cared a lot more about changing the world than any success as a musician. (Unlike, say, Dylan, who would say that if you found revolutionary stances in his lyrics, that was on you.) Ochs was the sort of sort of "progressive" we see frequently today, who was angrier at the people who claimed to agree with him than those who didn't, because they didn't have the courage of their convictions -- hence songs like the very sarcastic "Love Me, I'm a Liberal." But he was a fantastic songwriter and had a beautiful singing voice. He eventually got so incensed about his generation's failure to stop the Vietnam war or make any real change -- in addition to having poorly treated psychiatric problems -- that he briefly transformed himself into a sort of self-parody of a pop singer, then committed suicide at age 28. (Interestingly, his brother, Michael Ochs, became one of the most important photo archivists in the U.S., focusing mostly on rock music and popular culture.)
Oh, I get it…
Zelensky is not looking for studs to wall-mount his tv for him. He’s looking for studs artists to help liberate his country for him.
Big difference. 👉🏽 https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/04/i-watch-tiktok-for-you-and-here-are-my.html
I get so tired of reading about the wisdom of the Beatles and their "profundity". These guys aren't Nobel Prize winners like Dylan. McCartney wrote bubble gum music. "I want to hold your hand. Woooo" Hey Jude sounds like a funeral dirge. And Blackbird???? Yeah, white guys from Liverpool know nothing about Black women in the US, except misinformation. Remember when people thought someone was dead because of "hidden signs"? Sometimes words are just words. Devoid of hidden meaning. Write clearer.
People sing about their own people's oppression, not others' so much. You can see parallels on social concerns now. Black athletes demanding justice for black people? You will notice that the areas they target are all "justice for young black males." Schools? Not so much. Aunties? Not so much. 60s protest songs (oh, I sang 'em!) were about not being drafted and made to go to war.
It's not a terrible thing to protest for your own people. It's just not something that's very morally elevated, either.
I understand that they also heard from Satan.
Shouting Thomas said...
"I have to figure out now how to protect my grandkids from being chemically and surgically mutilated. Your evil ideology has turned you into a monster. We may be fighting a nuclear war soon to force your disgusting kink on the world."
Hey, ST. Long time no ST. But I think you've got our hostess wrong. It's not feminist ideology that drove her round the bend. It's Motherly Love.
Roger Sweeney 's comment bears repeating.
"I can't help thinking of what Michael Lind said, "The sudden outburst of vicarious Ukrainian patriotism on the part of many Americans—as well as people in similar North Atlantic democracies—seems like a Freudian “return of the repressed.” Taught that celebrating their own national traditions is racist and xenophobic, and deprived of opportunities to play a meaningful role in national defense, many Americans and Western Europeans have found an outlet for a lost sense of belonging by borrowing the national pride of another nation.""
If Putin is the devil, then Zelensky MUST be canonized. Works for him, he has NO problem finding a stage to host his propaganda.
"Bye Bye blackbird" is a 1920s song about lynching. "Hey Jude" is actually a ripoff of an obscure German/nazi song "Hey Juden".
And now you know the rest of the story.
That was a very interesting read, Mike Sylwester.
Thanks!
How was it that Rolf Harris failed to make the list of protest songwriters? You know, the Rolf Harris of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" fame, based on that part of the song where he seeks to "Let (his) Abos go loose, Lou"? "WHAT DO WE WANT? FREE THE ABOS! WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
NOW!"
So it is all just bullshit.
The IMF, WEF, hedge funds and banks are all getting paid by Ukraine for debts.
If they were all serious about helping Ukraine they would cancel those debts.
But I think we know why there is taxpayer funded financial aid being directed to Ukraine now and we are piling debt on Ukraine for weapons shipments don't we.
Egmont. Fidelio.
Long, but pretty clearly on the side of the small country against the evil empire.
Only one woman, Mary Travers, in the preliminary list of white artists who sang in favor of civil rights--and she's only one-third of a trio, at that. Let's add Joan Baez's "Birmingham Sunday" (originally by Richard & Mimi Farina), Judy Collins' "Carry It On" (written by Gil Turner) and "It Isn't Nice" (written by Malvina Reynolds, and Judy Henske's "Wade in the Water" (traditional). And while I'm at it, I'll sneak in a personal favorite, Eric Andersen's gorgeous "Thirsty Boots."
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