Is anyone making political music these days and if not why not?

it isn't getting radio play

it isn't getting in the charts

which may be the crucial difference between the eighties and now, rather than it being simply because the political landscape has changed.

All music's political, innit? The fact that Red Wedge is no longer around can only be a good thing.

that's why not

also another one I found, read it later:

Are Afro-American political issues in music gone?

But really, Red Wedge smells like Comic Relief: safe, official, lowest common denominator, self-congratulatory.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDSUB040404301955531596&sql=Aljjn7ia4g76r

Erm...something something station,
I'm going on vacation,
Fuck it, let's just stick to one word choruses from now on...

good song too!

anyone heard: sheikh terra - dirty kuffar feat. soul salah crew? truly politcal music: hiphop terrorism.

i don't think that politics and music don't work per se, its just they so rarely do we are more sensitive to the idea. everything is politcal. everything is sexual.

I'd hit it.

So he says.

god i can hardly control my liquidity at the thought of bragg's openness.

It's on Capitol Records, so it's major-label heresy. No way it'll end up on MTV though. I thought it was kinda catchy, but then I come from the Crass school of agit-pop-prop. And they reference Flux Of Pink Indians at the end, so that cheered me a little too.

Generation Y with a jaundiced eye, I don't know what I'm doing here, motivate and make us grow, let it go and watch us die, Generation Y with a wounded eye

In a post-modern shed on the edge of town the work force rallies with a weary frown all they want to do is burn it down sick of this and a week to payday, taking orders from a sacred cow a revolution with an empty round, Jesus Christ wouldn't draw a crowd, I slept like a pig through Mayday

(chorus)

This world makes me feel undressed, encourages me to get depressed, drugs me up until I'm powerless, steals the wheel I was holding onto, offers something that I can't resist between a clenched fist and a kiss like a smokescreen in the mist three jeers 'cause I belong to...

(chorus)

Generation Y with a lazy eye. Ask Generation Y, you'll get no reply.

(Generation Y - TV Smith)

The "ivory tower" thing is a strawman - if you want to hear political opinions, search for political analyses in newspapers, books or television. If you want to get involved more, get your hands dirty in actual politics or do academic research.

< /rant >

I talk quite a bit in my first book about the awkward and ultimately foolish grafting of black nationalist politics onto free jazz, which would have been much better off left to stand or fall on its own musical merits. (Note: my argument is not about the validity of black nationalist politics, merely that they mesh poorly with instrumental music, driving away as many potential listeners as they entice.)

Yaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhh!!!!!

To be honest, throughout the past few months I've heard a lot of artists take time out of their shows to encourage people at length to vote and get politically active. Believe it or not, Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas made a particularly effective plea. Much more effective than Shakira's onstage tour video that showed Bush playing chess with Saddam. Gasp! The irony! Second least effective political message: Professor Griff unleashing some mad conspiracy theories at a PE show.

In music you are always making an argument (whether its instrumental or not). There is no difference.

x-post

http://home.clara.net/antoni/kj2003.jpg

>A more politically correct blip in my ballot is that, for the first time in ages, I suddenly seem to love protest songs. Maybe I just read the newspaper more this year, I dunno. It was hard not to, and it was hard not to take pre-emptive quagmire and Constitution dismantling personally, plus what used to be paranoid wacko conspiracy theories now seem like good common sense, so maybe topical songs just hit me harder because of that. But I'd argue the three explicit anti-war demonstrations (Panjabi MC with Jay-Z, Living Things, Man in Gray) and one explicit illegal-immigrant statement (Molotov, whose Mexican-American audience may well now vote Republican next year) on my list might be just more evidence that the Left is finally getting intestinal fortitude; ditto Merle Haggard's "That's the News," which I almost voted for as well. These records still all come off kinda muddled and confused, in a way, but then so do Clark and Dean and Edwards and Kucinich, and I'd vote for any of them too, you know? But none of the songs is on my list only *because* I agree with what their politics seem to be; they're there because they make life sound like a party-- even if all indicators suggest that, come November, there won't be much anything to celebrate. They make life sound like a party just like all the limbo-dancing-round-the-strip-pole songs do. And just like Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld fan Toby Keith does, for that matter, though he's on my list with his song about how you can find him in da club, not his songs about the Taliban or about lynching. So maybe the current-events lessons I voted for *don't* really add up to much. But figure in NOFX, KMFDM, Mutant Press, the Fugs, the Ex, Voivod, Vijay Iyer/Mike Ladd, Haggard, John Cougar Mellencamp with "To Washington," Local H with "President Forever," reborn old Terry Allen and Mekons songs, the Dixie Chicks by virtue of their mere continued existence, even Brooks & Dunn with "Holy War" and David Banner with "Bush," and whaddaya got? Lots of pissed off people preaching at me, and somehow I don't mind. Which is somewhat new.

(I even like what I read in *Metal Edge* in the supermarket last week about how Living Things, who recorded the year's best hard rock song, and whose very good album might never come out now since the advance says "Dreamworks" on it, are actually three young brothers from St. Louis whose '60s radical Dylan-and-Neil-Young-fan mom useta slide Malcolm X and Chomsky books down the chute to the basement ever since they were 11 years old, and she'd only let them have a band if *all* their songs had political messages. If they learned a cover tune, they'd have to change its words, even. In *Metal Edge* they said they read newspapers front to back every day, and are planning a national tour to let kids know why the Patriot Act is so dangerous. I hope they still get to do it.)<

They could drum up political issues nobody'd even heard of just to get a song out of it.

What about that Morrissey song?

Where's the voice of dissent?

Same game...

You can't reform 'em

Madvillain - Strange Ways

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDCASS70311061825440045&sql=A90qog4hztvoz

well, it's 2010
is anyone making political music these days and if not why not
we have plenty of stuff to be angry about

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uW50wIuHW5E/Sr_rVX3kPFI/AAAAAAAADoI/5mmvmbLMt9I/s400/biafra+novo.jpg

nobody's doing political comedy either, if by that you mean something more than what Marcus Brigstocke does, which i do

is anyone besides Jello Biafra making political music these days and if not why not

Fixed for relevance.

ahem Ianucci... xp

i dunno, i was just thinking about this when i realized that this was something that i looked for in music as a kid (i was one of those annoying greenpeace/amnesty/PETA letter writing nuclear disarmament group starting type kids) but don't hear a lot of (or any of) today on the radio. and that's where i heard stuff -- the radio -- i had no older siblings to tell me what i should be listening to or whatever.

i think fugazi is probably the last political band i remember caring about

The Ex are still going strong, and you'd probably dig them if you like Fugazi.

oh god i just realized something
maybe (in the US) it's only republicans/xtian radical weirdos who are making political music and i just have NO INTEREST in what they have to say? are they the ones making political music these days?

i like the Ex -- i saw them a few years ago when they made that album with Getatchew Mekurya (awesome awesome show btw)

as i said on the RATM Xmas #1 thread the thing that really stood out about it was the 'popular despite anger' aspect, even if its success the second time was just a joke.

if you saw MIA's reaction to the NY Times description of Sri Lanka as 'now trouble-free/safe to go to' in a tourism piece...interesting to see if she could actually sound that angry on record.

not that politicised pop necessarily has to sound angry i guess.

m.i.a.'s music is pretty political i think, tho i guess it'd be hard to articulate her agenda beyond a general Global South Empowerment.

http://webs.wichita.edu/depttools/depttoolsmemberfiles/wsunews/129/capitol_steps.jpg

the capitol steps are still around

i'm not really seeking this stuff out anymore, i was just wondering if anyone was making political music in the USA anymore
my answer, sadly, is THE CAPITOL STEPS.

have bad religion put out a record recently?

:|

if they have i can guess what it sounds like

No mention of James McMurtry on here? He wrote what might end up being the lasting political songs of the GWB decade ("We Can't Make It Here" and "Cheney's Toy").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKUE0RTuw24

Oh, sorry, I didn't know that video was full of 9/11 sound effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesZ4LRia7c

ha, see i would have loved that ^^ when i was 12
but god that song is LONG

i guess maybe steve earle is still making political music?

Todd Snider

I've been asking this question a lot lately. What the fuck is wrong with musicians? I mean, visual artists seem to have taken plenty of fodder for creativity and non-cliche, sophisticated expression out of the last 10 years. I've noticed plenty and I only have a casual interest in the visual arts.

I honestly can't recall anything truly notable in the realm of musicians (who weren't already career political commentators) making political music in the last few years.

So a Facebook friend has brought up this old favourite recently, quoting (of all people) Johnny Marr, who's been bemoaning the music of today for not being political enough because 'the establishment has succeeded in distracting people from their activities and agendas to the point where it's too much for the public to want to bother with it'.
Part of me thinks there's an element of truth here - no one can be bothered with the kind of outright base-level system-smashing espoused by the likes of Levellers, Blaggers ITA, Fun>Da>Mental and RATM. But I'm interested in finding out about some more solid examples, particularly mainstream examples, of music that has a clear political message.

Would it be fair to say that it's not so much music that's changed as politics, and what it means to be political. Social justice and identity politics are now more largely felt, especially on the pop music landscape, than the aforementioned punk rock/antiestablishment messages being touted from the late sixties up until the early 90s?

Recording a song, releasing it, and promoting it are political acts. You're right to say that gender and sexuality politics have made me aware that every song is political.

When a person can no longer hear chaffinches well then it must be that chaffinches no longer exist

Sky News just disinterred Pat Kane - currently residing in the where-are-they-now file - to give his expert opinion on political music, in the light of some pisspoor anti-Theresa May thing that's doing the rounds at the moment. Virtually the first thing he said was to confidently state that "Ghost Town" by the Specials had foretold the Brixton and other riots in the Spring/Summer of 1981, having been released the year before, in 1980. Back in the bin, Pat.

fucking pat kane - never not a prick

the greatest trick the devil ever pulled as convincing people that that baldy cunt out of hue and cry was a heavyweight cultural commentator

Which one was he? Hue or Cry?

Did they ever find Linda?

looking for linda was a tune by the way

Pity about the words.

also tom i'll have you know that pat kane is a columnist with the national and thus a star in the firmament of scottish journalism (albeit a pretty small star)

Pretty small firmament. He's been (starry) ploughing that furrow for donkeys.

thinking about it rage against the machine should totally reform, they were made for these trump times

Ha, you can see someone holding a "vote Trump" sign in the 'Sleep Now In The Fire' video, if I remember correctly!