15 f Ranting & Reeling
Land declared as public domain, alleging that the copyright was never renewed. They’re using the same law firm that recently freed Happy Birthday from its publishing shackles so they stand a good chance. Regrettably Satorii’s own record- ing of This Land Is Your Land sounds like someone in the studio sat on the demo function of a Casio keyboard, but it’s proof the song endures in the public imagination.
A
It got me thinking about the often uttered adage that today’s hits are tomor- row’s folk songs. And how I’ve always thought that was balls. When we sing a pop song, even if we do it in an unfettered regional accent at a folk club floor spot, we know its history and authorship. Robbie Williams’ Angels will never not be Robbie Williams’ Angels, no matter how many weddings, funerals and children’s nativi- ties it’s inappropriately bawled at.
The difference between a traditional song and a pop song is surely the unknowability of its past. Authorless, placeless, scraps of a lost entertainment; a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world of
New York band called Satorii are involved in a legal campaign to have Woody Guthrie’s 1945 protest song This Land Is Your
cross-dressing sailors, fratricide and mis- taken swan shootings. They may once have been of the people but it’s their mys- tery we revived and fetishised.
But as often happens when I think a theory is watertight, the guillemot of inconvenient truth shoves its beak through my hull.
I’m watching film of Elvis Costello playing live at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. He’s paused the performance to show the audience a clip of his father Ross McManus singing Pete Seeger’s If I Had A Hammer. It was first recorded in 1950 by Pete’s group The Weavers, then twelve years later the song was a pop hit for Peter, Paul & Mary and a smash for Trini Lopez over here. And yet, like This Land Is Your Land, it’s tran- scended its origins to become… well what? Not an oral tradition. At Junior School we sang it from thin soft-cover books, the colour of faded jeans. But we knew nothing more about it. We accepted it in our young minds as a song to be sung whenever 400 or more children reluctantly gathered, alongside Sydney Carter’s hymn erroneously insisting Jesus claimed to be Lord Of The Dance.
If I Had A Hammer made a bid for the charts as recently as 1999 in a version by
Handy Andy who, for
younger read- ers, was a sort of Olly Murs for the daytime DIY show genera- tion. For older readers, Olly Murs is a sort of Robbie Williams for the given- up-trying-com- pletely genera- tion. It’s a song so ubiquitous that Handy (if that is his real name) trusted we’d get the joke. Although sadly he never com- pleted the accompanying concept album If I Were A Carpenter, Oh Wait I Am Literally A Carpenter.
So now I don’t know what to think
about Angels. Perhaps one day, following a successful legal challenge to EMI Publish- ing it will become a song of the people; people who won’t know or care it once saved Rob’s post-Take That career from the dumper. “And through it all she did offer I protection…” [insert floating verse about the angel visiting his girlfriend in the night; accordeon solo to fade.]
Tim Chipping
The Elusive Ethnomusicologist L
et’s face it – the great British pub- lic have not just voted to leave Europe. Because what this actually means has never really featured in the referendum debate. Pitching up to the ballot box they simply saw “Do you like immigrants, yes or no?” – the result of cyn- ical fearmongering by the ‘haves’ in a pop- ulation that is suffering from increasing social division, a poor education that leaves them mentally and economically dis- advantaged, and vulnerable to the down- right lies of self-serving politicians seeking only their personal short-term gain.
We are now in a country where those who speak for the people are of a mindset that thinks it’s a good idea to fly Leave ban- ners over a memorial service for someone who died for her belief that to vote Remain was to take the humane road ahead. Jo Cox was brutally murdered by a Brexit believer who sprang straight from Pandora’s box – so cravenly opened by Cameron as he caused the referendum in the first place purely to trouser the keys to Number10.
And so what’s important about music when there are so many other pressing concerns to be addressed? It’s a question asked by the world-renowned ethnomusi- cologist, John Baily, in the introduction to his beautiful, thought-provoking book War
Exile And The Music Of Afghanistan. He answers “I reply that music does matter for as John Blacking put it: ‘music is essential for the very survival of man’s humanity.’”
Music expresses our creativity, our imagination: it facilitates our connection with place, with our sense of identity and with one another as it eases cross-cultural connection. Through it we are taken beyond ourselves and can experience a transcendent sense of unity that lies beyond barriers of human construction. Some feel this as a connection with the divine whatever they perceive that to be. This understanding underpins Qawwali music, the religious music of the Sufi branch of Islam – music that springs from a belief in peaceful, loving devotion to their particular concept of that divine. Brought to us by wonderful artists such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the Sabri Brothers from Pakistan – initially via WOMAD and releases on Nonesuch and Real World – Qawwali music resonates with audiences the world over whatever their culture or religion.
Also from Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai – herself a victim of a crazed shooting (for speaking out about the perils of a society that denies a decent or indeed any educa- tion) – spoke at Jo Cox’s memorial service,
the day before the Taliban shot the beloved Qawwali mae- stro Amjad Sabri back in the country of her birth. As the streets of Cox’s constituency overflowed with mourners, so did the streets of Karachi.
Like the British MP, Sabri’s life work was dedicated to promoting peace and cross-cultural understanding. His music remains, rooted in that belief that it con- nects us all in the moment with each other and the divine, there are no boundaries. That’s what the Taliban and Brexit politi- cians are afraid of. With inter-connection there is no fear of ‘the other’ and with no fear they lose control. Across the globe musicians prove that music is a powerful tool for promoting peaceful co-existence. Like our politicians who strive for peace and cross-cultural harmony they are anti- barbarism. It is barbaric that they are now in the front line.
Elizabeth Kinder
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