Now with the weekly radio show the tips pile up.
About a month ago I stole a tip from Nick Cave's "Love Song lecture":
Tip #21 All love songs must contain duende. For the love song is never truly happy. It must first embrace the potential for pain. Those songs that speak of love without having within in their lines an ache or a sigh are not love songs at all but rather hate songs disguised as love songs, and are not to be trusted. (Nick Cave)
(For an explanation of "duende" and the complete lecture see the link below or get his complete lyrics for the library or if they don't have get them to order it).
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=800055
Well these tips will be out of order because I don't have my Bob Dylan book of interviews with me. but a couple weeks a Matt Jelly (former mayoral candidate, graphic artist, and among other things, songwriter) came on the show. His tip is a simple one given repeatedly to all artists and craftspeople, and one that needs hearing repeatedly:
#22 Practice your craft everyday.
Even if its just for 10 minutes, giving yourself the daily time and space for inspiration is a rewarding discipline.
I asked Matt about his forgo-ence (not a real word, I'm sure) of the writing "protest" songs, which is especially striking considering his political passion. He said he admires some political songs, but he likes art and politics separate like "pea and potatoes". Personally, I don't think it's possible for any of one's beliefs (political, philosophical, religious, ect) to be separate from any part of your acting, thinking or being. However, later, Matt said he didn't like songs about only one thing, ei love. Song need conflict or tension or contradiction. I think his later statement is the truer one. A problem comes when start thinking of protest songs as being solely concerned with political actions (about one thing), thus turning people into one dimensional objects to be incited. The best protest songs, rather, are about people, both in groups and individually multi-faceted creature.
Please permit me to bring in some philosophy here (or permit yourself to stop reading). The word politics comes from greek word polis , meaning "city" (and probably other things as well). Ancient Greek philosopher Plato's famous dialogue The Republic, the "politeia" is said to be about a politic system. But there's much more, because Socrates says, "the city is the image of the soul of each person". The means whatever happens in the city (macro) is reflected in each person and vice versa. In a plutocracy (the rule of wealthy), we see great monuments to business and banking, ei any North American city. We also see a great disparity of wealth, with extensive poverty and want. This an image of each person, as we see people impoverish certain desires (friendship, love) to the desires for material success and luxury. Thus the "class" battles of politics are mirror in internal battles of each person.
Actually Plato's view, I'm guessing, is very much against "activism", as it is impossible to create the "ideal" city, though it possible for some people to change themselves on an individual level. (we can disagree with him on this).
So how does all this relate to protest songs? The best protesting songs, I'm suggesting are those that look at the issue on both micro and macro level, like Bob Dylan's John Brown and folk song from the 19th c. Mrs McGrath.
