sonicweapons

[sonicweapons]

In the week after the attacks, Clear Channel Communications, the Texas-based radio empire then controlling nearly 1,200 radio stations reaching 110 million listeners nationwide, drew up an informal blacklist of sorts — more than 150 songs its DJs should avoid, so as not to upset or offend anyone. As a Snopes investigation subsequently revealed, adherence was voluntary, and many stations ignored it; at the time, sheepish anonymous employees described it to The New York Times as a corporate memo gone wrong, snowballing thanks to an “overzealous regional executive” who kept adding more songs and soliciting more input. A wayward reply-all email debacle made sentient.

https://theringer.com/banned-in-the-usa-71e2df44f11a

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“Such commercial self-censorship isn’t happening to me alone,” Ms. Ho said, referring to the Taiwanese singer Chou Tzu-yu, who had to apologize to China after waving the Taiwanese flag on a television show. “There are values you need to protect whether you’re an artist, a public figure, or a brand,” Ms. Ho said. “I don’t think we want a society where we live in fear for supporting these values.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/business/international/lancome-hong-kong-denise-ho.html

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Rokia Traoré - Né So. A song for refugees.

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It was the dearth of parts for black actors that motivated Mr. Bibb to remold himself as a folk singer in the mid-1950s, drawing on the spirituals that one of his aunts had sung to him as a child in Louisville, Ky. Albums like “Leon Bibb Sings Folk Songs,” released by the Vanguard label in 1959, and frequent performances on the television show “Hootenanny” made him one of the more prominent folk singers of the era. A regular at clubs like the Bitter End and the Village Gate in New York and the hungry i in San Francisco, he sang at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and reached a broad television audience that same year when he sang “Sinner Man,” one of his signature songs, on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Mr. Bibb became involved in the civil rights movement early on, taking part in voter-registration drives in the South and performing at the 1963 March on Washington. In 1965 he performed in front of the statehouse in Montgomery with Joan Baez, Oscar Brand and Harry Belafonte, whom he had known since their acting days at the American Negro Theater in Harlem. “He was really committed to the cause of civil rights, and he was hugely inspiring,” Mr. Belafonte said in a telephone interview. “Between him and Mahalia Jackson, we had all the music we needed for the movement.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/arts/music/leon-bibb-actor-folk-singer-and-civil-rights-activist-dies-at-93.html?emc=edit_th_20151027&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=5983616

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His voice was raw from two days of singing at small gatherings and, as he took the stage, he asked for some water. “I have some experience with this from the eighteen days” of Tahrir, he said later. “Playing the same songs over and over, with no water, no breaks, no sleep. I think I can handle a nice bar, and a fancy university.” He smiled widely, and started to play.

I mentioned Ramy Essam on this blog when I was writing about the music of the Arab Spring. The Egyptian singer is widely regarded as a prominent musical figure of the Egyptian Revolution and was a staple of Tahrir Square during the protests that led to (and followed) Hosni Mubarak's ouster. Essay was also featured in the 2013 Academy Award-nominated documentary The Square, which chronicled the protests. Now living in Sweden on the invitation of that country's government, Essam recently played a few shows in the U.S. and The New Yorker's Joshua Hersh reported on his New York stop in this piece.

[sonicweapons]

R.E.M.’s longbox, printed with a petition in support of the Motor Voter Bill, became a piece of political machinery. When Out of Time hit the record stores on March 12th, 1991, the petitions started rolling in. After 3 weeks, they had received 10,000 petitions, 100 per senator, and they just kept coming in in droves.

I'm not sure I completely agree with the premise of this story—to quote the author, that "R.E.M.'s Out of Time is the most politically significant album in the history of the United States. Because of its packaging"—but I was not aware of the role that the inclusion on the cd longbox of a Rock the Vote petition in favour of the Motor Voter bill (which would have allowed U.S. citizens to register to vote while signing up for or renewing a driver's license) may have eventually played in its passage as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

You can check out the full story (and listen to a podcast that discusses in further details both the creation of Rock the Vote and the longbox) here.

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The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People's Army (FARC-EP), which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its struggle against the Colombian government this year, has just released a rap song calling for peace in Colombia. The song, which features Dutch FARC member and negotiator (as well as alleged terrorist, according to the U.S. government) Tanja Nijmeijer (who is referred to as "the Dutchwoman" in the video) and Cuban group Cuentas Claras, is at once a rallying cry for peace ("In the name of the exploited/of barefoot and malnourished children/of bad-paid [sic] and poorly educated women and men/of threatened peasants/we have come to talk about peace without any fear"), a strident attack on "...that circus that you call government..." ("to keep on killing/that is what pleases you/To dialogue with the people/of course you don't like that") and a call to arms ("Like Don Quijote without fear of being defeated/The people should unite/the truth should be discovered"). While the song is in Spanish, it is also clearly addressed to a global audience, ending with a message in several languages ("Support the peace process in Colombia").

To try to raise awareness or call to action are common uses of political music, and the song seems to have been effective in reaching an important audience in a short period of time (a version of the video with English subtitles that was posted on 13 May has been viewed nearly 40,000 times as of 16 May, while the original Spanish version that was posted a day earlier has been viewed over 21,000 times). It remains to be seen whether it will have an effect on the ongoing peace process.

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Maria Alyokhina (left) and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (right), best known as the two members of Pussy Riot who were incarcerated for taking part in a "punk prayer" in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral and ferocious opponents of Vladimir Putin, photographed by Mark Seliger at the Vanity Fair/Bloomberg party following the 2014 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

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Today marks Music Freedom Day, a global event for freedom of musical expression organized by Freemuse–an international organization fighting to prevent the violation of musicians' rights. This year, Music Freedom Day comprises events in 18 countries that are "self-organized by artists, cultural operators and media operators" and include concerts, conferences and workshops. In Canada, the only planned "events" are a post about Music Freedom Day on the CBC Music's blog (which includes an excellent playlist of "songs of exile, protest and hope") as well as reports throughout the day on CBC Radio 2.

You can find more information about Music Freedom Day here. A detailed schedule of Music Freedom Day events around the world is available here.

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Since its release, the anthem [Ali Barakat's "Seal Your Victory in Yabroud"] has, perhaps predictably, become yet another flash point in the Syrian civil war. Those backing the government of President Bashar al-Assad have spread it on social media. Rebels and their supporters have recorded their own musical rejoinders and accused Mr. Barakat of sectarian incitement.

In the early days of the Arab Spring and the Syrian uprising, I often posted about musicians who entered the fray by recording songs in support of or opposition to those who demanded Bashar al-Assad's departure. While a new New York Times piece suggests that South Lebanese singer Ali Barakat's pro-Hezbollah, pro-Assad "Seal Your Victory in Yabroud" ("The soldiers are coming/they will give you dark days/O Hezbollah, God be with you/seal your victory in Yabroud") has opened what it describes as a "new musical front in the bloody civil war", it is not quite true that this is a new phenomenon. After all, this blog documented several anti-Assad songs, and pro-Assad musicians have been producing songs for some time.

Nevertheless, this article does a good job of documenting the impact of Barakat's song both on his own personal life ("The insults and threats flow to the singer...around the clock" and "make his cellphone perpetually ring and buzz") and in inciting reactions ("Those backing the government of President Bashar al-Assad have spread it on social media. Rebels and their supporters have recorded their own musical rejoinders..."). BuzzFeed's Mike Giglio  also wrote about Barakat in December, noting that the singer "hoped his songs would help to prepare Hezbollah and its supporters for the continuing battle" (Barakat believed that he had helped to inspire Hezbollah fighters triumph in the battle over the Syrian town of Qusayr) as well as to memorialize the fighters killed in Syria ("We don't cry when our martyrs come home. We make a nice song", said Barakat).

You can the New York Times article here, but I would suggest reading the BuzzFeed piece first for more background details about Ali Barakat.

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Freemuse, an international organization advocating and defending freedom of expression for musicians and composers around the world, released its 2013 annual statistics on violations of freedom of expression for musicians this week [full table above or here]. According to Freemuse, there were 109 violations of rights (from simple censorship to assassination) in 33 countries in 2013; these figures account for 19 musicians who were killed last year, as well as several instances of censorship in several countries that are ostensibly rights-based democracies (including Canada, Sweden and the USA).

While such numbers are disturbing, Freemuse notes they "are not a complete survey and do not give full picture of the situation globally; they only represent the tip of the iceberg", as they only include publicly known violations. In fact, the real numbers could be much higher if unpublicized threats in fundamentalist or totalitarian regimes as well as the effects of internal conflicts on musicians were to be included in these statistics.

You can read Freemuse's full report here.

[sonicweapons]

Old(ish) News: Nadia Tolokonnikova Models for Russian Online Clothing Store

I apologize if this is old news to some of you, but I came across this series of photos featuring Nadia Tolokonnikova modeling clothes by brands such as American Apparel, Guess, Evil Twin and Glamorous for Russian online store Trends Brands just yesterday (the shoot is titled Nadia Tolokonnikova: Beautiful and Free). The photos were taken shortly after Tolokonnikova's release from prison.

While the notion of modeling for an online clothing store may appear to be in contradiction with both Pussy Riot's anti-capitalist and feminist views (which members of the Russian feminist collective re-emphasized in an open letter to Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina earlier this month that described them as former members of the group), The Calvert Journal reported that Tolokonnikova justified this on her Facebook page by saying that she wanted to thank her "capitalist friends" for the clothes that they donated to her while she was serving her prison sentence. 

Nevertheless, this still seems a bit strange coming from someone who founded an feminist activist collective of women who originally challenged the Russian social order "[b]y hiding their faces and raising their voices" (here, she quite literally is beautiful and silent!) and rejecting the notion that women "are there to look pretty" and "to have babies and cook and clean", as Miriam Elder pointed out in an excellent piece on Pussy Riot for BuzzFeed.

I am very curious to hear what you think of this.

[sonicweapons]

Those detained included Aleksei A. Navalny, the anticorruption blogger, and two members of the protest group Pussy Riot — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina...

Following an eventful stay in Sochi last week during the Winter Olympics, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina [apologies for the multiple spellings of her Alyokhina/Alyekhina/Alekhina's last name, but the Western media cannot seem to settle on one] were once again detained yesterday for several hours by Russian authorities. As reported in The New York Times, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were among hundreds arrested on Monday in front of a Moscow courthouse while protesting the sentencing of seven men and a woman convicted of "mass rioting and assaults on police officers" following events that took place during a 6 May 2012 mass rally against Vladmir Putin on the day of his inauguration. Alyokhina tweeted a picture of the two women in a police van as they were being transported away from the courthouse.

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This remains my favourite among the documents that I have unearthed over the course of my research: a 1953 letter from Woody Guthrie to the remarkable author, folklorist, Ku Klux Klan infiltrator and activist (among many other hats!) Stetson Kennedy, who was living in Berlin, Germany at the time. I placed a FOIA request in early 2012, and the letter was declassified in May 2012 (probably because it could finally be released to the public following Kennedy's death in 2011).

There isn't much to the letter itself–though it should certainly be of interest to Guthrie fans, as his prose is quite unique–the fact that it was intercepted at the time and kept in an FBI file suggests that the U.S. government certainly kept a close eye on Guthrie and–probably–Kennedy. I suspect fans of Billy Bragg and Wilco will also want to read this, as it adds a bit to the story of "Stetson Kennedy", one of the best offerings from the second volume of Mermaid Avenue songs, which used unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics.

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ICYMI: Pussy Riot Arrested, Released, Whipped in Sochi, Release Powerful New Video

Since arriving in Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, on Sunday night, Nadezdha Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina (formerly?) of Russian political punk collective Pussy Riot have been arrested and detained for allegedly stealing a woman's handbag in the hotel in which they are staying. According to their lawyer, Alexander Popkov, there have been numerous incidents: first, the women were questioned on the night of their arrival, allegedly to determine their identities; on Monday, they detained for several hours; on Tuesday, they were arrested yet again on theft charges, but were rapidly released after another interrogation (The Guardian's Shaun Walker has a full report on these arrest).

Upon their release, the women performed a new song, "Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland", on the steps of the police station and took part in an impromptu press conference where they discussed their arrest as well as their reason for being in Sochi (to criticize the "huge corruption" of the Olympics). While I don't necessarily with Stephen Marche that the best response from the rest of the world would be to bring their athletes home (I appreciate the sentiment, but a lot of Olympic athletes have spent decades making huge personal and financial sacrifices for an opportunity to compete that may only come around once in their lifetime), his post about the arrest for Esquire raises some important points about Vladimir Putin's motivations (let's assume that he had a hand in the arrest of the recently released activist/musicians) in placing two of Russia's most famous dissidents behind bars again–if only for a few hours.

Yesterday (Wednesday), Tolokonnikova, Alekhina and others (including one man) put on Pussy Riot's distinctive and colourful balaclavas and took to the streets of Sochi to stage and film a performance of their new song (which may actually be titled "Putin Will Teach You How to Love" or "Putin Will Teach You How to Love the Motherland") under a sign advertising the Olympics. There, they were accosted, bruised and bloodied by whip-wielding Cossack militias (the Cossacks were reportedly hired to perform some security duties during the Olympics). You can watch a video of the bizarre and disturbing attack here. Despite the attack, The Guardian reports that Tolokonnikova, Alekhina and two unidentified others performed the song again later that day in front of Sochi's city hall, without incident. Although the staging of yesterday's performance as well as the strange and almost theatrical "whipping" at the hands of the Cossacks may arouse some suspicions, the picture tweeted by Alekhina of the "traces" left by the men on one of the participants would seem to dispel any doubt as to the reality of the attack.

As for the song released by Pussy Riot yesterday, it is now accompanied by a video (which you can view here) that features several powerful images and captures the events of the past week in under three minutes. I cannot comment on the song's content–I would be infinitely grateful to any Russian speakers out there that could translate the lyrics for me or point me to a reasonably accurate translation–but it is certainly the catchiest and most melodic offering to be released under the Pussy Riot banner. This is also perhaps the first song from these women that sounds less like the product of an amateurish art project and more like a visceral, political rock band.

I doubt that this is the last we will hear of Pussy Riot–or whatever we should call Tolokonnikova, Alekhina and the others taking part in these actions–at the Sochi Olympics.

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Pussy Riot - "Putin Will Teach You How to Love" (aka "Putin Will Teach You How to Love the Motherland). This is the video that was shot over the last few days in Sochi, in between Pussy Riot's arrests, detention, release and beating at the hands of Cossack militia (which features prominently in the video).

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Ohio State University's student paper, the Ohio State Lantern, (rightfully) called OSU alumni Phil Ochs "a rare talent" in its 1 December 1978 issue. It also called him Paul Ochs.