Rights Rhythm: Spain in My Heart

Last week I kicked off our discussion of Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine with Pete Seeger's take on the Spanish Civil War song 'Viva La Quinte Brigada.' How about we close out with a little more music? This is from an album of contemporary musicians putting their spin on anthems of the era, Spain in My Heart: Songs of the Spanish Civil War. The album includes Pete and Arlo Guthrie singing Woody Guthrie's song 'Jarama Valley', another version of 'Viva La Quinte Brigada' by East LA natives Queztal and the always inspiring Lila Downs (see video above) with 'El Quinto Regimiento.'

The idealistic appeal of "fighting the good fight" against the fascist troops of General Francisco Franco as he warred against Spain’s democratically elected government drew more than 45,000 volunteer soldiers from over 50 countries during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). This influx created a canon of war-related songs sung by the freedom fighters and revived during the American folk boom of the Fifties. Rather than emulating the strident chaos of battle, the CD conveys more subtle aspects of the conflict – yearning for simpler times ("Asturias," "En La Plaza De Mi Pueblo"); longing for distant loved ones ("The Bantry Girls’ Lament"); the equal significance of life, love and death ("Llegó Con Tres Heridas"). The war and the bravery of the anti-fascist forces are addressed in such songs as "Jarama Valley," "El Quinto Regimiento," "Taste of Ashes," and "The Abraham Lincoln Brigade." No matter in what language the songs are performed, the bravery, pain and loss felt by soldiers and civilians alike are rendered with a conviction and feeling that transcends words and forges an aching link with the listener.

Sample more tracks from the album below.

Rights Rhythm: Defeat Facism with Pete Seeger!

Let's warm up for the discussion of our August mystery, Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine, set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War with a recent performance of Pete Seeger and grandson performing in front of a massive audience in Barcelona in the video above. Pete recalls the solidarity album he and other American anti-fascists helped put together in 1943, Songs of the Spanish Civil War 1: Lincoln Brigade, and urges the crowd on just as vigorously as back in the day. Pete would want you to sing along: find the lyrics here. Sample the original album below. Rumba la rumba la rumba la!

Rights Rhythm: Listen to Roma Rights!

Yesterday I posted about Amnesty International's concerns regarding discrimination against the Roma in the European Union as part of our larger discussion of Oksana Marafioti's memoir American Gypsy. It was just coincidence that we chose this book just as AI activists throughout Europe were coming up with creative ways to get the word out, but we always appreciate artful campaigns here at Rights Readers. So check out this video of Austrians hosting some gypsy street dancing and this one of a Belgian flash mob forced eviction drama in front of the European Parliament.

Best of all, Amnesty's Dutch activists have assembled a CD of Roma musicians from throughout Europe, Listen to Roma Rights, to support the campaign. The YouTube playlist above gives you some idea of the variety of music and also allows the musicians to talk about their own concerns for the Roma community. The mp3s are available on iTunes for download, however, if you think a physical CD sounds like a great gift for a musician-activist in your life, you may have to wait. The CD was released in May of this year, so perhaps some copies will arrive on a slow boat to the Amnesty USA Store later this year.

But how about something Russian to close out our discussion of our book about Russian immigrants? Did you know Yul Brynner also claimed Russian and Roma heritage? Enjoy!

Justice at Last? Pete Seeger on Victor Jara

Did you catch the news that Chilean authorities have arrested the former army officers accused of involvement in the murder of singer Victor Jara? Jara was killed after the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power in 1973. Listen to the clip above from PRI's The World to hear Pete Seeger tell the story of Jara's death and how the musician inspired him. Further arrests in the case are expected, according to the BBC, including one officer who currently lives in the U.S. An international justice case worth monitoring.

Something else to watch for in the coming year is a new documentary, The Resurrection of Victor Jara. See the trailer below:

The Music of Maurice Sendak

I was starting to research my posts for our discussion of Avi Steinberg's Running the Books when I discovered that he had recently done an interview for the Paris Review with the late Maurice Sendak,

In the past, you’ve spoken of listening to music while you draw. What were you listening to with Bumble-Ardy?

There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books. And there is a logic to my choices, even if I don’t always know it. Here, I chose Verdi. I don’t like early Verdi, and I love very late Verdi. I’m eighty-three. When he was eighty-three, after Aida—it’s too bad he didn’t say this before Aida—he said, “Enough already, enough.”  He said that he was done, finished, kaput. And then he met this young man, Boito, composer of Mefistofele, who told him, “You have more in you, old man. You have more in you!” So Boito wrote libretti for Otello and Falstaff, and, by the time they were done, Verdi was eighty-five or eighty-seven and died. But, in my opinion, those are the two greatest Verdi operas in existence. Those pieces are unbelievably fresh, young, fantastically beautiful.

This reminded me that Sendak collaborated with Tony Kushner on a production of Brundibar, the children's opera which was composed and performed at the Nazi concentration camp Terezin. Kushner and Sendak also produced a book version:  Brundibar.  PBS' Now has a useful page for more information about the opera accompanying this great interview with Bill Moyers in which Sendak explains how he became fascinated with the opera. and probes the author on blackbirds and Schubert, bullies and the Holocaust and how you can't get rid of evil.


I also recommend Fresh Air's Sendak tribute and this cartoon by Sendak and Art Spiegelman from The New Yorker.

Rainbow after the Storm: Solidarity Sing in Norway

Thousands of Norwegians gathered in the streets of Oslo on Thursday to sing a Pete Seeger  song, "My Rainbow Race", that the mass murderer Anders Breivik had termed 'Marxist brainwashing.' The protest was an effort to reclaim the children's tune and unite in solidarity against  Breivik's ravings against multiculturalism at his on-going trial for the killing of 77 people. Pete must be so proud!

It's not often I find a human rights-related topic to blog about in a Nordic country, unless it's as a model of civility to emulate, but we did get in on the Scandinavian thriller craze, sampling some of Stieg Larsson's Millenium series and Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast.  Many have remarked on the irony of the countries with some of the lowest crime rates in the world producing such a high fictional body count. But some have noted that many of these authors have also raised flags about the rise of neo-Nazism and these were themes we encountered in the books we chose. Still, the Breivik massacre has to be a game changer for these writers in terms of how they view their country and the forces of evil that lurk in their stories. Last fall, The Guardian probed several authors, including Nesbø, for how this event might affect them. Nesbø said he doesn't expect to address the issue directly, but he is sure it will affect his writing in some way.  Some clues for where he might go may be found in an eloquent essay he wrote last year, again for The Guardian, about Norway's lost innocence,

After the bomb went off – an explosion that was felt where I live in Oslo – and reports of the shootings on the island of Utøya began to come in, I asked my daughter whether she was scared. She replied by quoting something I had once said to her: "Yes, but if you're not scared, you can't be brave."

So if there is no road back to how things used to be, to the total, unconscious and naive fearlessness of what was untouched, there is a road forward. To be brave. To keep on as before. To turn the other cheek as we ask: "Was that all you've got?" To refuse to allow fear to set limits to the way we continue to build our society.

Keep on as before. Keep on singing

Rivers for Reflection

Yesterday I attended a very moving St. Paul Chamber Orchestra performance of Neharot, Neharot by Israeli composer Betty Olivero for viola, accordion, percussion and two string ensembles. The viola soloist was Kim Kashkashian, who has recorded the composition. This haunting piece uses the elegies of women who had lost loved ones in the Israeli conflict with militias of the Lebanese Hezbollah in 2006 as it's touchstone.  The program notes explain,

The title of the composition Neharo't Neharo't, means “Rivers, Rivers” in Hebrew and refers to the rivers and floods of tears which are too often shed by mourning women in disastrous situations. On the other hand, the title contains also an element of hope: the root of the Hebrew word “nahar” (river) resembles the word “nehara,” meaning “ray of light.”

I found the music very appropriate to marking this Holy Week and the season of reflection we experience each April with Remembrance Days for both the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. How fitting too, that we are reading Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife this month at the same time the people of Sarajevo are commemorating the 20th anniversary of the siege their city. Take a few minutes to soak this in. Listen to Part 1 above. Here is Part 2.

Rights Rhythm: Note of Hope

Last year at this time we were discussing Alex Wilkinson's book about Pete Seeger, The Protest Singer and wondering where our generation's protest singers and songs were. Then a couple months later, some good folks in Wisconsin got a little upset when some of their rights got taken away and they started to sing.  Here they are jamming with Arlo Guthrie.  Did you know the Solidarity Sing Along is still going strong every weekday at the capitol?  They've even created a special holiday songbook to bring some seasonal cheer to the 'people's house.'

If they need still more new material, there's a new album, Note of Hope, of Woody Guthrie’s lyrics freshly set to music by artists like Lou Reed, Ani Difranco, Jackson Browne, Tom Morello and Pete Seeger.  This is all a warm-up for next year's Woody Guthrie Centennial. For more on the album, see Guthrie's daughter and album co-producer Nora Guthrie's interviews with WNYC and American Songwriter,

There are some real activist artists on the records like Ani DiFranco, Tom Morello, Pete Seeger; was that a conscious decision? 

One of the things I found are so many people are activists in their own ways. We just don’t hear about it. They each have a cause or a picket line that they’re involved with. Woody’s kind of activism is a 360 degree kind of activism — he’s not just focused on unions. But when you listen to Jackson Browne’s love song, when they’re sitting on the bench at night and the stars are shining and what is this young couple talking about and whispering into each other’s ears? Some of the lines are “and we talked about this and we talked about that, and we talked about the union. I was like “wow, Woody wrote the union into this romantic song.”

So you don’t have to be a political activist, you can be a lover and find ways to bring all these ideas and stuff into your conversation into your home and into your town. I kind of found out that all these people are activists in a way, and to me, the thing is to find words or a lyric that match up with that.

Here's that Jackson Browne track for union romantics and sample the others below that.  You might also want to see the Tom Morello track put to use in a video supporting the Occupy movement. Sing out!




 

One more time with feeling!

Not done with Pete Seeger yet!  First, here is the lovely group of Readers assembled to celebrate Pete and the season. As always, looking sharp!

Here are a couple of clips from Pete's show Rainbow Quest singing holiday songs with Bessie Jones. This seemed like the most appropriate way to wish you all good cheer on this day. Thanks so much for interest in the blog and our activities! Keep singing into the New Year!

Our December Book: The Protest Singer by Alec Wilkinson

This month we read The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson.  Wilkinson writes regularly for the New Yorker and you can check out some of his other pieces, including his most recent about rhythm and blues singer Bettye LaVette, here.  If you'd like to learn a little about his background, you can listen to this interview.

As for Pete Seeger, here's a vintage (1984) Fresh Air interview. And then just last August, NPR's Talk of the Nation had Pete on to discuss his latest Grammy-nominated album, Tomorrow's Children made with children from his home near Beacon, New York and featuring new songs on environmental themes. After a bit of a slow start the interview really kicks in when Pete can't resist breaking into song and gives a nod to Rights Readers favorite Wangari Maathai ("There should be a song about her.") The Huffington Post also has an interview,

MR: And might you have any advice to new artists?
PS: Sing in front of as many different kinds of people as you can. Old folks, middle age folks, kids, infants, and sing for people you disagree with too. Learning how to communicate with people we disagree with is something the whole world has to learn.

The New York Times checks in on Pete's current Sunday routine ‘Letters to Answer, and Logs to Split’ while this Atlantic reflection contains some great nuggets,

"In 1910," he said, "John Phillip Sousa wrote, 'What will happen to the American voice, now that the phonograph has been invented?' And it's true—parents don't sing lullabies to their children anymore, they'll put them in front of the TV to fall asleep. Men used to sing together in bars all around the country—now there's a TV or loud music there instead."

From NPR, Pete Seeger and friends close out the 2009 Newport Folk Festival including Pete's song "Walking Down Death Row", a song I hadn't heard before. 

We've previously mentioned the PBS documentary The Power of Song (view the trailer here) and the Smithsonian-Folkways podcasts. Take note also that the PBS site has bonus interviews and a handy timeline, while the Folkways Seeger profile also comes with a slideshow and video and audio features.  And please do check out the Beacon Sloop Club and the Clearwater. Have you found yourself humming along while reading? Ready to burst into song? Look to Sing Out! for inspiration.

The episode concerning the censorship of Pete's appearance on the Smothers Brothers is described in fascinating detail by David Bianculli in Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour".  He also tells the story in this Fresh Air interview (transcript). Here is the performance of the American War Songs Medley from the show and the censored clip of "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy".  I like this clip of "Wimoweh" and "Where have all the Flowers Gone?" better though, because no Pete Seeger performance is complete without the audience reaction (and who doesn't love Tommy Smothers?).



The episode of Rainbow Quest featuring Roscoe Holcomb mentioned in the book is excerpted here.  There are just too many good Seeger YouTube clips to share in one post so we promise to think of more excuses to post them in the future. By popular request though, here is Pete and Friends performance of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" at the Obama inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.



Check out this video from the kids at Clearwater who have added some new verses to "This Land is Your Land."

What's your favorite Pete Seeger song?

Listening to the Protest Singer

This month we are reading The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson.  This is a book you need to listen to with a soundtrack. Now, if your old Pete Seeger records are unplayable due to the fact that you no longer own a turntable to play them on, you can go to the Smithsonian-Folkways website and click on the "radio" button and chances are Pete will show up sooner or later and you'll discover some other unique musicians on your way there.

I'm sure many of our Loyal Readers have already seen the Pete Seeger PBS American Masters documentary The Power of Song, but take note that Smithsonian-Folkways offers three podcast series combining musical selections and interviews and each one has a special Pete Seeger episode available. You can listen online or search iTunes to download. 

The "Folkways Collection" series explores the history of Folkways records and an overview of the record label's vast holdings. Episode 12 is dedicated to Pete Seeger, but several of the others, such as those on music of the labor and civil rights movements and the episode on children's music also feature our friend Pete.  Well worth a listen.






Episode 20 "Pete Did That?" of the Sounds to Grow On series also explores the many sides of Pete Seeger's music. Loyal Readers may also be interested in some of the other programs in this series, for example "Songs of Struggle and Protest" or "Sacco and Vanzetti."

Finally, the Sound Sessions series also has a Pete Seeger episode in addition to features on Seeger friends Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson. Happy listening!

Listen to the Banned

This month we are reading The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson. We will have more Seeger resources to explore in an upcoming post, but among other themes, the book explores Seeger's experiences as a blacklisted musician in the 1950s and with censorship of his performance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the 1960s. Freemuse, the independent international organization which advocates freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide, awarded Seeger their Freemuse Award in 2009 for his commitment to musicians' freedom of expression.  You can hear his grandson's acceptance speech here. 
 
This year, Freemuse has an album out (for the music lover on your holiday gift list?) called Listen to the Banned, a collection of songs from artists around the world who have faced censorship or had their music banned. Artists from Afghanistan to Zimbawe are featured and you can learn more about their music and struggles to be heard at the website for the project.  Here's a glimpse of one of them, Mahsa Vahdat of Iran, the Freemuse Award Winner for 2010.  Women in Iran can practice various musical forms but cannot sing in public for mixed audiences. They can participate in women-only concerts, but Mahsa Vahdat refuses to perform for women only. Here she is explaining her commitment to freedom of musical expression:





Here's a sample live performance:



Try here and here for more.

For December: The Protest Singer by Alec Wilkinson

For December, we have chosen The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson:

A spirited and intimate look at American icon and activist Pete Seeger, and his life and his accomplishments. Pete Seeger transformed a classic American musical style into a form of peaceful protest against war, segregation, and nuclear weapons. Drawing on his extensive talks with Seeger, Alec Wilkinson delivers a first hand look at Seeger's unique blend of independence and commitment, charm, courage, energy, and belief in human equality and American democracy. We see Seeger, the child, instilled with a love of music by his parents; Seeger, the teenager, hearing real folk music for the first time; Seeger, the young adult, singing with Woody Guthrie. And finally, Seeger the man marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King in Selma, standing up to McCarthyism, and fighting for his beloved Hudson River. The gigantic life captured in this slender volume is truly an American anthem.

Juarez: Poetry, Art and Song

As a little warm-up to this month's discussion of Teresa Rodriguez' The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border, take some time out for a poetic treatment of the tragedy of the women of Juarez through the work of Marjorie Agosin. Her poetry collection, Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juarez,

Sometimes
How many times do I talk with my dead?
And the night was a precipice

More of her poems here.

You might also want to check out musical tributes by Lila Downs and Los Tigres del Norte (more on the Los Tigres song from NPR here). I know there has been more than a few artists who have commemorated these young women, but so far I've found only one link. Suggestions welcome.

Our June Author: Steven Galloway

This month we read The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

Lets start with this CBC interview,

While media coverage of the conflict was loaded with identifiers like “Muslim,” “Serb,” “Croat” and “Bosnian,” Galloway purposely avoided using any ethnic or religious labels in The Cellist of Sarajevo. The main characters are simply referred to as Sarajevans, their common enemy described only as “the men on the hills.”

On being Canadian, from Three Monkey's,

One advantage to being a Canadian writer is that, unlike American writers, the concept of writing the Great Canadian Novel doesn't really exist. Writing the next Gatsby isn't something you're trying to do, or at least you're not obliged to try. I think of Canada, in terms of world nations, as that guy at the party that everyone likes but nobody wants to talk to for too long! Which gives one time to sit quietly and observe what's going on. You're brought up in Canada to think about the rest of the world. We're a country full of immigrants, and we're by and large an empty nation. Many of the traits of Canada as a nation are the traits of a writer, except for extraordinary politeness - that's not a great trait for a writer!!

In this video, the author takes on a tour of key locations for the novel:


Another audio interview here.

Background on Vedran Smailovic, the orignal 'Cellist of Sarajevo'.

A lovely children's book about the cellist:



A musical homage, courtesy of Yo-Yo Ma is also available.

Sunday Musical Meditation

For your contemplation this Sunday we offer Mistislav Rostropovich playing the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1. What a final crescendo on an exemplary life as a musician and activist. (I don't know if its just me and my overexposure to things cello in childhood -thanks Mom!- but you may need a tissue!)

Music Freedom Day

March 3 has been designated "Music Freedom Day" by
Freemuse the independent international organization advocating freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide. Take a few minutes to explore their site. Or browse a selection of articles, interviews and videos on the subject at Mondomix. CBC radio has also produced a series of programs under the heading Censor This! Exploring issues around Censorship including an hour-long program tonight (which I hope will be accessibly archived on their site soon:

This hour long program takes a sonic tour around the world from the street bazaars of Istanbul to the townships of South Africa. From the conflict zones of Beirut and Rwanda to the North American popular music of the 20th century. Using the strength of the music and powerful narratives the documentary exploes the duality which allows music to be at once frightening and seductive to those in power positions.

On another music-related note, I found this post this post from Boing Boing about ethnomusicologists against the use of music for torture to be fascinating.

Arts and Culture from the Axis of Evil

NPR ran a profile the other day on poetry and prose from Iran, Iraq and North Korea, now in a new collection, Literature from the Axis of Evil. The page features a short story from North Korea and samples from a similarly themed musical collection, Lullabies from the Axis of Evil.
SoundRoots has an Evil sample playlist which might appeal if you find lullabies to tame. If your taste runs more visual, NPR also explores Guy DeLisle's Pyongyang, a graphic novel/memoir of his stay in North Korea. You can download a pdf excerpt of the comic at the site. That one has been on my to-be-considered list for a while. Just waiting for the paperback!

Afrobeat and Beasts of No Nation

Time for your Beasts of No Nation soundtrack! Well, it turns out there really is one. The epigraph for the novel is a quote from Fela Kuti, the founding father of Afrobeat-- "This uprising will bring out the beast in us"-- and the title of the book also corresponds to a 1989 Fela Kuti recording: Beasts of No Nation, so a little exploration is in order. No samples at link above, though there's a bit at the end of this BBC Radio profile of Fela, but you can find lyrics for the song here.

A profile of Fela from National Geographic World Music describes the musician's contributions to African music as well as his political activism,

Singing neither in Yoruba nor the King's English, Fela delivered his musical jeremiads in pidgin English, so as to reach as wide an audience as possible. And he was loved for it by the masses, who made him a star. But his broadsides against the corruption and of General Olusegun Obasanjo's military government made him some enemies in very high places, and he suffered repeated harassment, including a full scale attack on his Lagos compound (which he called "The Kalakuta Republic") in 1977. Over 1,000 soldiers set fire to the premises and beat anyone they could lay their hands on, including Fela's 82-year-old mother, who was thrown from a window and later died from her injuries. Fela himself suffered fractures in his skull, arm and leg. In his lifetime Fela would undergo 356 court appearances and three separate imprisonments, including a 1985-87 sentence on trumped-up currency charges that made him a poster boy for Amnesty International.

To round out our Beasts soundtrack, Fela's son Femi Kuti, also a musician/activist, is a contributor toth Afrobeat Sudan Aid Project. You can view a video promotion for the project here. And you might want to check out Ceasefire from Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier from Sudan, now a spokesperson for the Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. Finally there is Uganda musician Samite's Embalasasa-- NPR profile and samples here. This is the one most appealing to me musically, perhaps because the focus of the album is music as a "weapon of healing" for child soldiers.

Tags: music, Uzodinma Iweala, child soldiers

Your Eritrean Soundtrack

On the look out for ways to make reading a long book (I Didn't Do It for You : How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation) easier, I found some samples for the Eritrean singer Faytinga. According to the National Geographic World Music site, the songstress,

bases her music on the traditional sounds of Eritrea's Kunama ethnic group, and her songs are a reflection of her nation's struggle for independence.

Wow! Great stuff from the first a capella sample to the more syncopated grooves! I want this album!

Now for the soundtrack that isn't... One of our Esteemed Readers recalled a previous Eritrean Prisoner of Conscience case that we had taken action on last year and I went sleuthing around to find the details. The case concerns the Christian singer, Helen Berhane, who has been detained incommunicado since May 13, 2004. She is one of many members of banned evangelical churches who have been detained without charge or trial on account of their religious beliefs. This Guardian article also provides some detail on fellow muscians campaigning on her behalf and this article from Freemuse adds a bit more on the shutting down of two music stores.

By the way, I was please to discover Freemuse, an independent international organization advocating freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide. Check it out!

Technorati Tags: Eritrea, music, religious freedom, censorship