When musicians get involved in politics in a direct way the results can be the opposite of what is desired by them. It could be argued…
Over the years, ‘issue’ songs, from Kenny Rogers’s Vietnam vet tune 'Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town', to 'Anarchy In The UK' by the Sex Pistols have often just marked a mood rather than inspired anything radical, like voting for someone a bit less shitty. On other occasions, they have given the feeling of being involved in something positive, just by buying a record, and then leaving the actual boring activism to those who are more deeply affected. With 'Do They Know It’s Christmas' by Bandaid there was genuinely an element of ‘money-raised’ but there was a strong argument at the time that raising a few million without mentioning why it was needed in the first place (yes, starving people - but why were they starving?) was, literally, a bandaid on a gushing wound.
This year, at Christmas, when, so the story is fed to us, we celebrate a baby born to a virgin mother in a stable in Bethlehem, which happens to be in Palestine, who was the son of a god and represented the truest manifestation of divine love that has ever existed, we are also largely ignoring the murder of thousands of children in the same space by a nationalist army who are funded and supported by our government and most of our media.
What are we listening to, as this happens? Why, it’s Wham! who are 'having the number one they deserved', so the story goes, way back in the 1980s, when the right-wing Israelis currently in charge of the slaughter wouldn’t have dreamed of getting away with what’s happening now.
Massive Attack has teamed up with Young Fathers and Fontaines DC and are releasing an EP to raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières who have been targeted by the Israeli military as they try to save lives in Palestine. The EP is also an opportunity for pop groups to, not just do something, but also, very carefully, to say something. Link here
It’s got to be the very least we should all be doing. Saying something. Otherwise, really, just accept, yep, ‘we’re the bad guys’ - we’re the cunts who stood by while children are bombed, their limbs blown off, their heads caved in, and, in fact, our brothers and sisters sold the bombs and helped deliver them, our parents helped make them, in government subsidised factories. That’s us, this Xmas.
if ever there was a time to have a political argument over the turkey and trimmings, this is it. Buy the EP. And check, just check to make sure, that your family understands what’s happening. Say something.
Happy holidays.
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