Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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If you are asking: ‘Where is all the protest music?’ you aren’t looking hard enough
If you’re prepared to look beyond guitar-based rock music, you’ll see the protest song is still alive and well, says IAN SINCLAIR
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
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NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Every now and then an opinion piece is published in the press lamenting the lack of political songwriting today.
A couple of assumptions lie behind this much repeated concern about popular music.
First, “political music” is taken to mean music giving voice to left-leaning, anti-Establishment politics — aka protest music.
Second, that the “golden age” of political music ran from the 1960s to the 1980s, from Bob Dylan’s broadsides against the military-industrial complex and US racism to John Lennon’s feminist Woman Is the Nigger of the World and a slew of anti-Vietnam war songs.
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