Dario Martinelli

Give Peace
a Chant
Popular Music, Politics and Social
Protest
Give Peace a Chant
Dario Martinelli

Give Peace a Chant

Popular Music, Politics and Social Protest

123
Dario Martinelli
Kaunas University of Technology
Kaunas
Lithuania

ISBN 978-3-319-50537-4 ISBN 978-3-319-50538-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959179

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

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Preface and Acknowledgements

This monograph presents the results of a research path I have conducted (on and off,
in the midst of several other scholarly and pedagogical activities at my university)
since 2010, plus the early rudiments produced in an old article from 2004.
Throughout this path, I intended to produce an analysis of the popular music
repertoires of social protest, with a particular attention to some case studies that, for
historical and geographical reasons, are to a lesser extent taken into consideration
than others. I have tried to offer theoretical descriptions, methodological tools, and
an approach encompassing various fields of musicology, cultural studies, semiotics,
discourse analysis, media studies, political and social sciences.
Also, I made an explicit effort to keep my writing style as comprehensible and
engaging as possible, without compromising the academic level. I hope this will
make the reading of this text interesting and enjoyable.
The book is virtually divided into three main parts. The first one (Chap. 1)
introduces the problem at the levels of terminological definition (suggesting
upgrades on the existing and commonly used expressions) and musical catego-
rization (protest songs are hardly taken as a musical genre on its own, while the
book argues that they should be), and it also illustrates the main structure and
methodological approach of the theoretical model developed in the book. The
second part (from Chaps. 2 to 4) presents the model itself, focusing on the con-
textualization of protest songs, their lyrical and musical contents. The third part
(Chaps. 5–8), finally, works around four case studies corresponding to four different
semantic fields: the cultural and musical equivalent of the basic ideological dis-
tinction between left and right (with examples from various repertoires); a
socio-cultural movement centered on music (the Lithuanian Singing Revolution); a
genre (Italian pop-jazz during Fascism); and a musical act (The Beatles).
As an interdisciplinary form of investigation, hopefully the book will appeal to
more than one readers’ community. However, it is predictable that the following
scholars (in the written order) may take particular interest in it: musicologists (in
particular popular music scholars and sociomusicologists), semioticians, cultural
and political theorists.

v
vi Preface and Acknowledgements

At the same time, as mentioned above, there is a number of topics that are
approached in this book for the first time in general, or for the first time within certain
contexts. For instance, the topic of the Lithuanian Singing Revolution was never
analyzed in English by any scholar affiliated to Lithuanian academic institutions (the
phenomenon has been exposed internationally only by Estonian, and most recently
Latvian, scholars. In Lithuania, studies on this subject have appeared only in the local
language): this may be an indication that the international readership interested in
Lithuanian history will not be indifferent to this publication. Furthermore, the
ever-crowded readership in Beatles studies may be intrigued by the fact that this book
presents an analysis of the band’s songs of environmentalist contents, a topic very
seldom approached by scholars. Third, while the relationship between jazz and Italian
fascism has been tackled (and very well) by various scholars, the main hypothesis
formulated in the particular chapter I devoted to this topic is entirely novel, and in a
sense risky (I took the responsibility, and the liberty, to qualify one particular song
employed in a regime-friendly context, as a subtle mockery/protest against the
oppressions inflicted to jazz by the fascist authorities): readers interested in Italian
history may find these reflections worthy of consideration. Finally, although used and
abused in various contexts, the ideological left–right opposition has been in recent
times considered obsolete and inadequate to represent the current spectrum of political
ideas and practices: instead, I defend the thesis that such opposition—particularly on a
cultural level—is alive and kicking, and it is still well-represented musically.
Hopefully, some sociologically relevant insight can be found in this part.
Overall, in preparation for this book, I have worked on several hundred cases
between songs and albums, 348 of which are explicitly mentioned and/or discussed in
this book. I was not really sure on what would have been a statistically significant
sample that would have both a qualitative and quantitative resonance in my analysis,
so I simply decided to let things flow naturally: in the end, some songs were analyzed
in accordance to my initial plans, some others came my way during research work, and
occasionally proved to be more interesting cases than the ones I had already chosen.
I was also interested in emancipating the study of protest songs from a traditional
bias that affects popular music studies: their Anglophonocentrism (I shall return on
this in Chap. 6), with a particular focus on Great Britain and USA, plus the
occasional incursion of Ireland and Canada. I tried to focus on other repertoires as
well, particularly those I had direct access to, due to my personal and professional
conditions (in particular: I am Italian and I live and work in Lithuania: I suppose
there is a reason why two out of four case studies in this book discuss songs from
these two countries). Taking an overview on the final work, I must admit that I
succeeded only in part in this task. Surely, readers will not only read about
“Blowing in the Wind” or “Give Peace a Chance”, but will get acquainted with acts
and repertoires that they will possibly be reading about for the first time. However,
it is also true that—while searching for efficient illustrations of my theoretical
reflections—I more often than not recurred to Anglophone examples, exactly
because, in certain points, my main concern was to be understood, and I realized
that, indeed, a Dylan, Beatles or U2 song (just to make three very famous examples)
were much more a cultural lingua franca than anything else, and would not force
Preface and Acknowledgements vii

every time the reader to open YouTube or Spotify to get an idea of what I was
talking about. I must say that, in particular, the book is too Beatle-centric, and not
only for the case study at Chap. 7: I think that is due to both the fact that, arguably,
the Fab Four are indeed lingua franca more than anybody else, and to the fact that I
myself have more expertise on this band, having published academic material on
them and having also given academic courses in Beatles Studies at Helsinki
University. I therefore wish to apologize for a choice that made the UK–US vs. rest
of the world unbalance even more evident.
In any case, out of 348 songs/albums analyzed, no less than 85, that is, roughly,
one out of four, belonged to geographical areas outside UK or North America. Most
of those I excluded from the final text had linguistic specificities that were hard for
me to convey effectively in English. Paradoxically, the majority of those I dropped
were Italian: maybe the fact that they were songs written in my native language was
more intimidating for me, as I could both catch very subtle linguistic nuances and
realize that I was not able to 100% get the idea across in English (whoever has been
working on the translation of songwriters like Fabrizio De Andrè, Rino Gaetano or
Sergio Caputo knows perfectly what I am talking about).
Anyway, in the end, as I said, 85 non-Anglo-American songs were considered,
and about 25 countries were scrutinized. Whether this is a laudable result or not
remains to be seen. I certainly feel I could have put more effort in, but at the same
time I consider this percentage a clear step forward, in comparison to the average
book on this topic (where nearly 100% of the songs analyzed are invariably from
UK, USA, Ireland or Canada).
In any case, and regardless of the countries and styles represented here, there is no
way the number of songs analyzed here is “representative” of the thousands that were
produced in different times and places. Therefore, sincere apologies to all of those that
are not even mentioned in this book, and instead should have been. My selection has
been primarily functional, focusing on what I considered the most significant examples
within the purposes of my analysis, in terms of aesthetics, contents, socio-cultural
context, among others. Of course, I certainly made quite a few important omissions, and
I have no doubt that more than one reader will not fail to contact me personally to point
them out, as they have done on other occasions—particularly a recent book I wrote on
the representation of animals in cinema, which prompted several colleagues to endlessly
play the “Find the missing movie” game. What can I say? I can only warn about the
futility of playing such a game (there will always be omissions, no matter how hard one
tries, and there will always be someone who will consider the missing items as totally
impossible to ignore), but I am sure it will be played anyway.
Another apology I intend to offer concerns the very limited amount of lyrics I
was able to quote per song. In an ideal world, I would have transcribed the whole
set of lyrics and I would have performed an accurate and non-fragmentary analysis
of them. But no, the copyright laws do not allow scholars to do their job properly,
and in order not to pay a fortune to already-rich artists and managers, I had to break
song lyrics into small pieces that would be accepted as “fair use” (see notification at
the end of this preface). I would like to state, loud and clear, that it is a shame that
researchers and educators have to submit to such greedy stupidity, and that
viii Preface and Acknowledgements

copyright holders are determined to make profit out of absolutely anything. An

academic monograph like this is not published for great profits, and in any case to
make an artwork more visible to the readership can only be beneficial for that
artwork: it does not damage anybody’s reputation. Scholarly work aims to produce
knowledge and understanding, and knowledge and understanding produce a better
world. Anything that gets in the way of this should be regarded with disdain.
In conclusion, I would like to thank some of the people who have been helpful and
inspiring during the making of this book, including students and colleagues of some
academic institutions that have been gracious hosts of different events (lectures,
articles or congress papers) where I had the opportunity to showcase the
advancements of my research (some of these institutions, of course, are also the
ones I am affiliated to). In alphabetical order:
Vaclovas Augustinas, Petras Baršauskas, Belgrade University of Arts, Martynas
Bialobžeskis, Paolo Bucciarelli, Eglė Butkevičienė, Davide Colonnari, Audronė
Daubarienė, Silvie Demandt, Leonidas Donskis, Lucy Fleet, the International
Semiotics Institute, Kaunas University of Technology, Vytautas Kederys, Krakow
Music Academy, Andrius Laucevičius, the Lithuanian Academy of Music and
Theatre, Lithuanian Railways (as I wrote in other books as well, the Vilnius-Kaunas
train-ride is my favorite writing place), Brian Marmion, Arnas Mikalkėnas, Lina
Navickaitė-Martinelli, New Bulgarian University, Aida Piktienė, Leonardo Polato,
Rima Povilionienė, Asta Pundzienė, Ano Sirppiniemi, Jurgita Šiugždinienė, Springer,
Rūta Stanevičiūtė, Gino Stefani, Aldona Steponavičiūtė, Eero Tarasti, University of
Amsterdam, University of Helsinki, University of Torino, Ulrika Varankaitė, Giedrė
Žickytė. Special thanks to Aušra Berkmanienė and Gavin Stewart, for respectively
proofreading and language editing this book, and to the two anonymous scientific
reviewers of my manuscript for precious comments and advice.
From this list, I would like to single out my language editor Brian Marmion and
my colleagues and friends Leonidas Donskis and Leonardo Polato, who are sadly
no longer with us, and all in a sudden, unfairly premature manner. Brian had
worked on my previous two books and had just started working on this one.
Leonardo was a great musicologist who also had an interest in political issues.
Leonidas was one of Lithuania’s greatest intellectuals, and his work—among other
things—was also important for my research on the Lithuanian Singing Revolution.
They had great brains and big hearts, and they are sorely missed.
“FAIR USE” NOTICE: This monograph contains copyrighted material (very short
excerpts from song lyrics), the use of which has not been specifically authorized by
the copyright owners. I am making such material available exclusively in my efforts
to advance understanding of issues of scholarly significance.
All the figures appearing in the text are of three types: my own graphic elabo-
rations for schemes and models, images of public domain or images licensed under
the Creative Commons. No copyright is infringed in any shape or form.

Kaunas, Lithuania Dario Martinelli

Contents

1 Definitions and Categorizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2 Songs of Social Protest and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4 Songs of Social Protest and Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy and Its Musical
Manifestations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution
and the Case of Antis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy
in the Beatles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against
Fascism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Index of Names and Musical Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Index of Songs and Albums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

ix
Chapter 1
Definitions and Categorizations

Abstract The present chapter serves as an introduction to the whole topic, but
also—and mostly—as a problematization of two important issues in terminology
and stylistic categorization. Firstly, indeed, I suggest that the classic definition
“protest song”, commonly employed to name the types of repertoire investigated in
this book, is probably unsatisfying to correctly circumscribe the semantic field, and
should rather be replaced by the more complete “song of social protest” (SSP).
Secondly, I reflect on the status of SSPs as “genre”, offering some insight on the
legitimacy of a “musical” (that is, not just lyrical) classification. After that, the
chapter introduces the triadic theoretical model that will be thoroughly discussed in
Chaps. 2, 3 and 4, and which constitutes the main analytical novelty proposed in
this book: context-lyrics-music.

1.1 From “Protest Songs” to “Songs of Social Protest”

The discussion around “protest songs” in popular music has been, and still is, at
once rich and, to an extent, incomplete. If the literature on the subject is ample and
authoritative, ranging from song-by-song (e.g. Fowke-Glazer 1973) Glazer, Joe to
genre-by-genre (e.g. Pratt 1990) Pratt, Ray analyses, plus more organic reflections
(e.g. Lynskey 2011), on the other hand, the role of “music” as such has never been
given the prominent role that I shall instead try to confer in this monograph.
Problems, and therefore opportunities, already start from the expression that is
normally employed to describe these repertoires: “protest songs”, which may
benefit from a little implementation. I shall begin from a far worse expression: the
Italian “canzone impegnata”, often used as alternative to the more exact “canzone di
protesta”. “Canzone impegnata” means “committed song”, with the implication of a
political type of commitment, but of course the expression is rather superficial.
Music can be useful to society also in other forms (would it not be fair, for instance,
to call Paul Simon’s or Peter Gabriel’s efforts “committed” to let their western
audience become acquainted with non-western music?), and, in addition, there are
dozens of “protest” songs that are simply not committed to anything at all, and

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1_1
2 1 Definitions and Categorizations

explicitly so, since their goal is exactly that of showing lack of interest for a society
that appears rotten and impossible to fix.
An Italian singer-songwriter, Sergio Caputo (who is mostly known for the
pop-jazz crossover in his songs), expressed very clearly his disapproval for this
expression on his own website:
There is a certain trend, here in Italy, to call “committed” that kind of music that conveys
social and political messages, and “frivolous” the kind that does not. I find this trend
extremely superficial. First of all, we need to realize that anybody who works in the show
business does nothing else than “entertainment”. There are obviously different cultural
levels of entertainment […], but they are all equally legitimate […]. So, what is “com-
mitment”, after all? There are various forms, and each of us can choose one. I, for instance,
consider myself “musically committed”, since I am “committed” to bring a cultivated
musical genre (jazz) in a context that normally is not. (Translated from Caputo 2000)

That is exactly the type of “commitment” we were mentioning in relation to Paul

Simon and Peter Gabriel. Of course, to an extent, one may still call “political
gestures” Gabriel’s “Real World” project, or Simon’s decision to record an album
with South-African musicians during the apartheid—a post-colonialist and
anti-racist gesture respectively. Even Sergio Caputo’s “mission” to popularize a
more difficult musical idiom can be read in Marxist terms. Still, we would be very
far from what the average Italian listener would intend when using the expression
“canzone impegnata”.
However, the word “protest”, too, shows its flaws. How else, indeed, should we
call songs like The Clash’s “Train in Vain” (“You must explain why this must be,
Did you lie when you spoke to me, Did you stand by me, No, not at all”) or Alanis
Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” (“And I’m here, to remind you, Of the mess you
left when you went away, It’s not fair, to deny me, Of the cross I bear that you gave
to me”), which are clearly songs of protest, except that they protest against their
cruel partner/lover? What is even funnier, in The Clash’s case, is that there are
verses that seem to announce a classic politically-engaged tune (just like many
others the band released): “Now I got a job, But it don’t pay, I need new clothes, I
need somewhere to stay”. Except that, well, in the next lines of that particular
stanza, we understand what this is all really about: “But without all these things I
can do, But without your love I won’t make it through”. “Protest” may be the only
word that manages to keep, in the same group, descriptions of and prescriptions for
a wrong or just society, leftist or rightist musicians, songs of revolution, reaction or
resistance, but nobody prevents us from applying the same attitude to private and
intimate matters, unrelated to the conventionally-shared idea of the repertoires we
are here dealing with.
A second common denominator, to place along with “protest”, is possibly
needed, and I suggest adding the adjective “social”. With “songs of social protest”,
we are able to underline the equally important aspects of the “explicit disapproval”
of a given state of things (protest), and the “social” dimension of the latter. Other
distinctions, besides these, are not so relevant, as a “song of social protest” (SSP,
from now on) can feature a number of diverse, even contradictory, characteristics,
and yet remain as such. There are aggressive and pinpointed SSPs, but also quiet
1.1 From “Protest Songs” to “Songs of Social Protest” 3

and diplomatic ones, up to soft and corny ones, like charity songs such as “We Are
the World” or “Do They Know It’s Christmastime?” . SSPs do not necessarily have
a standard political color, and may easily be leftist, rightist or even anti-political (in
fact, the latter option possibly constitutes the majority of SSPs). It may look for-
wards, backwards, or to the hic et nunc. Finally, it may be coherent and “com-
mitted” (in the Italian way), or it may rather sound like a Facebook user thinking
that pressing “Like” to the picture of an abandoned dog or a starving child is
enough to make him/her a person of virtue. Obviously, the establishment of
thresholds of analytical depth or intellectual honesty is not our problem (unless we
want to get rid of the majority of the most celebrated protest singers: wife-abusers
singing feminist songs, rich superstars singing about poverty, 1400-hectares
property owners singing “Make a little space, make a better place”, and so on). As a
matter of fact, one of the messages that this book intends to convey is that SSPs are
a larger group than the “angry-tough-leftist” cliché we tend to assign. What we like
better (or believe more) should not really count for a correct assessment of a
category and the definition of its boundaries. We all (openly or not) may agree that
Woody Guthrie qualifies more than, say, The Beach Boys for the title of protest
singer, but, really, one single “Student Demonstration Time” within a whole
repertoire of love and surf songs is enough to ensure full access to the club.
To be meticulous, one could also argue (and legitimately) that “protest” does not
cover every single attitude that we find in songs that deal with a social problem—
particularly those who display a more descriptive, rather than prescriptive, attitude.
Perhaps a more appropriate word would be “awareness”, instead: “Songs of Social
Awareness”. However, as it often happens in these cases, a look at the etymology of
a given term can be of great help, when trying to reach an acceptable terminological
focus. What we learn is that the meaning of the Latin “protestari” is actually
“avowal; public, solemn declaration”, and that—from the 18th century onwards
only, that “public declaration” became intended as a declaration “of disapproval”.
So, the idea that an SSP is a musical “public declaration of disapproval” (of a
social issue, as we have added), fits perfectly to the repertoires we intend to discuss
in this book. At the end of the day, the adoption of the expression SSP is not unlike
Dorian Lynskey’s idea that a protest song is “a song which addresses a political
issue, in a way which aligns itself with the underdog” (Lynskey 2011: xiv). How
this issue is addressed is not something we should be too selective (or snobbish)
about.

1.2 Songs of Social Protest as “Genre”

If, in popular music studies, notions like performance, multimodality, multimedi-

ality and others have become more central than the good, old debate on styles and
genres, it shall not be forgotten that significant instances of research in this area are
still being published, and scholars like are Borthwick (2004) or Holt (2007) have
certainly kept the discussion lively and fresh. At the same time, it is fair to say that
4 1 Definitions and Categorizations

the search for a commonly-shared idea of a semantic and operative concept of the
notion of “genre” is far from over. This is due first of all to different subjective
demands: genres are important for the musicologist, sure, but also for the music
critic who needs to decide how a certain work/artist has to be reviewed (someone
like Sting may be assigned indifferently to the rock or the jazz column, and—after
Songs from the Labyrinth, released in 2006 for Deutsche Grammophon—to the
classical column too); for the young band opening their page on YouTube or
SoundCloud (what music do we really play? How do we make sure that listeners
who may like our music will actually understand that they may like it?); for any
branch of the music industry (is it legitimate, say, that Grammy Awards have
created, as they did, two separate prize categories for “Rap” and “Rap with sing-
ing”?), etc.
Secondly, it is popular music as such to be in constant development, and that of
course is reflected on the genres too. It is a common praxis that new musical (and/or
social) events are circumscribed through the creation of a new genre, the latter
eventually establishing a case that remains codified even when the event fades
away. Britpop was in actual fact active during the 1990s, but it subsequently
became a comfortable label to classify a number of more recent British bands
whose stylistic features are vaguely reminiscent of bands like Blur, Oasis or Suede
—or even to retroactively label bands from decades preceding the 1990s who
displayed similar characters. Not to mention all those styles that (via an even
minimal aesthetic development or refinement) result into a post-something that
becomes in itself a genre (post-rock, post-punk, post-tango…).
Finally, there is the never-ending question of the legitimacy in principle of
stylistic classifications, and in this case one may move from populist,
anti-ideological positions (“There are only two kinds of music: the good and the
bad”), to straight refusals of musicology as such (“Writing about music is like
dancing about architecture”).1
In all this, it is interesting to notice how the SSP repertoires were hardly, if ever,
taken as “genre”, neither institutionally nor theoretically. There are no Grammies
awarded to the “protest song of the year” and students browsing the history books
on popular music in search for Joe Hill or Pete Seeger, will more likely find them
under “American folk singers”.

1
Funnily enough, both quotes are of uncertain attribution. The first one (“There are only two kinds
of music: the good and the bad”) is often attributed to Duke Ellington, but other sources indicate
Louis Armstrong, and there are also reports that Gioacchino Rossini said it first. The second one
(“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”) has an even longer list of attributions:
from Laurie Anderson to Steve Martin, from Frank Zappa to Elvis Costello, from Thelonius Monk
to Clara Schumann, from Miles Davis to George Carlin. In any case, the latter was a rather
unfortunate joke, I must say. As all the insiders of the two arts know very well, indeed, dance and
architecture are closely related, in that they share most of their main concerns (and concepts of
those): space, movement, objects’ composition… To compare dance and architecture to writing
and music is thus a good argument to legitimize musicology, not dismiss it. So, on the behalf of the
category, thank you guys: whoever said it!
1.2 Songs of Social Protest as “Genre” 5

What is this reluctance about? I believe it relates to two more basic questions:
(1) The more general reluctance, within such taxonomic enterprises, to identify
genres on the basis of the themes of the lyrics; (2) Another general reluctance to
identify genres in a political and ideological sense.
It is quite true that, unlike literary or cinematographic genre classifications, the
musical ones are not particularly eager to place linguistic and thematic aspects at the
center of attention. If we quickly browse the names of the main genres, we notice
that the lion’s share goes to categorizations of musical, or at least aesthetic, nature:
we find references to music as such (Prog, Boogie, Melodic Pop…), to music as art
(Experimental Rock, Art-Rock…), to the instrumentation employed (Synth Pop,
Acoustic Pop, Electronica…), to the venues of performance (Arena Rock, Club
Music, Pub Rock…), etc.
However, the latter example produces a potential hypertext. Expressions like
Club Music or Pub Rock do not refer only to music (as in: “where that type of music
could/should be played”): more relevantly, they refer to a context, and that is a
departure from music. Indeed, the contextualization of music is a rather common
form of genre classification, as we can find hints about geography (Philadelphia
soul, Delta blues, Mandopop…), social occasions (lounge, surf, skate punk…),
emotional states (blues, soul, goth…), and so on, increasingly shortening the dis-
tances between music and lyrics, when it comes to defining a genre. Let alone the
vast, complex universe of blues (a genre that is richly codified both musically and
thematically), we find for instance that genres like gothic rock are distinguished
from other sub-categories of rock on the basis of their introspective, dark and
pessimistic atmosphere of the lyrics: that is what justifies the word “gothic”, cer-
tainly not the music, which sounds neither like a horror movie soundtrack, nor like
a Gregorian chant. A song like Siouxie and the Banshees’ “Premature Burial” does
not display any particular “musical” feature that may justify the creation of a new
genre. However, such action is called for when the lyrics go like this: “This cata-
comb compels me, Corroding and inert, It weights and tries to pull me, Must I resist
or re-assert?”, or like this: “Ejected to this state of being, Don’t bury me with this,
I’m in a state of catalepsy, Can I really exist?”. This is where the adjective “gothic”
starts making sense.
That also means that it is not necessarily true that genre classifications are always
alien to ideological reflections. In fact, it is popular music itself which is perfectly
apt to be analyzed this way (Middleton’s classics have made that clear for decades,
already—see for instance 1990 or 2006). In a genre like punk (which already comes
to life as an ideological statement), we find a significant amount of sub-genres
formulating their artistic paradigm in ideological terms. Anarcho-punk, Nazi-punk,
Christian punk… save the common musical identity (punk, indeed), the real dif-
ference lies in the political, religious, philosophical stands taken by the respective
musicians, through their lyrics, first of all, but also through their attitudes, looks and
public statements. The same applies to many other genres, especially if we do not
confine ourselves to the so-called mainstream. There are also cases when various
musicians organize themselves in groups and platforms of political/ideological
6 1 Definitions and Categorizations

nature: see the neo-Nazi Rock Against Communism or the leftist Rock In
Opposition.

1.2.1 Historical Premises

Once we have accepted that the lyrical content is an important ingredient for a
stylistic categorization, we may approach a more challenging question: can we say
anything relevant about SSPs, in a strictly musical sense? Or do we have to accept
the idea that a song can be called SSP only if it meets certain lyrical requirements?
To begin with, the historical presuppositions of the SSP, in terms of concep-
tualization, are not unlike those of film music, liturgical repertoires or muzak. That
is: SSPs originate from the need to support events and manifestations of social
protest.
It is out of this monograph’s scopes to trace an extensive history of SSPs,2
however, a few notes may be mentioned at this point. The assimilation of SSPs
within the realm of what we nowadays call “popular music”, occurs sometime in
the 19th century, but of course there are various instances of folk tunes addressing
social concerns that date back far earlier. Commonly-mentioned examples include
the 14th century English song “The Cutty Wren” , which has been interpreted as
referring to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, or “The Diggers’ Song” , a 17th century
ballad composed by Gerrard Winstanley and inspired by the proto-anarchic
movement of the diggers (“Your houses they pull down, stand up now, Your houses
they pull down to fright poor men in town, But the gentry must come down and the
poor shall wear the crown”).
In this book, we try to focus on “popular music”, which is a macro-category
often overlapping with folk (and many of the most popular protest singers, such as
Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan, operate within an area that include both) and with jazz
(e.g. Nina Simone’s extensive effort to politicize pop songs through the mediation
of the jazz musical idiom), but which—altogether—should not be confused with
these two (nor with art music, of course). For this reason, we can only historicize
SSPs by taking the origins of popular music itself as point of departure.3

2
Among other things, such history has not yet been written in general, although it must be said that
there are many sources, particularly in relation to the Anglo-American repertoires, where an
attentive intertextual reading may help reconstruct a fairly accurate account. Among these, I would
like to mention Denselow 1990, Fiori 1978, Frith 1989, Street 1986 and 1997.
3
There are, of course, various approaches to the definition of “popular music” as such, to what
makes it a semantic field of its own, and to why the first half of the 19th century should be
considered a key-period in the establishment of the phenomenon. Personally, I find that the most
persuasive one comes from Franco Fabbri:
1.2 Songs of Social Protest as “Genre” 7

However, there is another reason why the early 19th century is a turning point in
the development of the musical repertoires of social protest. Like modern demo-
cratic thinking and—in my humble opinion—civilized societies as a whole, SSPs,
too, owe a great deal to enlightened ideas and achievements. In the US, the
introduction of the First Amendment in 1791 had guaranteed a certain freedom of
speech, and the opportunity was immediately exploited at a musical level as well:
songs approaching themes like inequality, poverty, labor, civil and human rights,
became an increasingly stable presence in folk singers’ repertoire.
Around the late 1830s we find truly popular acts (in the modern and
above-defined sense of the term) devoted to perform and spread songs with an
explicit “opinionated” attitude towards social concerns. A famous example is the
Hutchinson Family Singers (Fig. 1.1), with a repertoire of songs in support of the
abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage. A great tradition of socially and polit-
ically committed songs spread to various parts of the world, with cultural differ-
ences (also contents-wise: topics like slavery abolition were certainly more an issue
in America, as national independentist movements were more a European subject,
and so forth), and—occasionally—different tones (the ironic and sarcastic accents
of certain European—French and German particularly—performers in the early
20th century, such as Bruant, Georgius or Weill, is possibly a less recurrent
rhetorical strategy elsewhere). The tradition that started in these years seems to

(Footnote 3 continued)
Musical repertoires aimed specifically at entertainment have existed, in diverse cultures,
long before the beginning of this history. But it is in 19th century, and then more explicitely
in the 20th, in various parts of the world (first in Europe, then in America, Asia, Middle
East, Maghreb, and then all over the world), that conditions occur for a functional, eco-
nomic, ideological separation between entertainment music on one side and art music on
the other […], and at the same time “commercial” popular music on one side and
“traditional/ritual” popular music on the other. Summarising, and reducing the complexity
of these phenomena to a more sustainable size, one could say that the art versus folk music
dichotomy is replaced by a “trichotomy” that include art, folk and popular music, where the
latter incorporates elements that were previously codified in the other two areas, initiating
also commercialization and industrialization processes. (Translated from Fabbri 2008: 3)

Roy Shuker, too, places an emphasis on the (eclectic) combination of musical and social aspects:

It seems that a satisfactory definition of popular music must encompass both musical and
socio-economic characteristics. Essentially as all popular music consists of a hybrid of
musical traditions, styles, and influences, and is also an economic product which is invested
with ideological significance by many of its consumers. At the heart of the majority of
various forms of popular music is a fundamental tension between the essential creativity of
the act of “making music” and the commercial nature of the bulk of its production and
dissemination. (Shuker 2005: 205)

Let us say, for the sake of this book’s discussion (which, obviously, is not aimed at solving the
problem of the definition of popular music), that Fabbri’s and Shuker’s arguments will be our
terminological, historical and methodological framework.…
8 1 Definitions and Categorizations

Fig. 1.1 The Hutchinson Family Singers in a daguerreotype of 1845 (image of public domain)

operate on identifiable patterns, particularly on a lyrical level (we shall see this in
Chap. 3): SSPs are such because their goal is first to inform (often with details) of
something unjust that happened (or that may happen, if nothing is done to prevent
it), and second that everybody should take action in order to change that state of
things. Also, and quite often (particularly in those days), an SSP is composed with
the intention of being performed, particularly in rallies and demonstrations, to a
crowd that should not only listen but get involved too.
As we shall see in the next paragraph, these tasks cannot be implemented with
lyrics alone. A specifically “musical” strategy is needed too.

1.2.2 Musical Characteristics

While it is true that nowadays we can find an SSP written by a musician who has no
particular inclination to political activity, released on an album that has no other goal
than to be purchased and listened to at home, not the same can be said about the vast
majority of the early SSPs, until at least the 1960s. As a matter of fact, these songs
were appositely written for strikes, labor union’s gatherings, public demonstrations,
sit-in’s, up to more recent charity or awareness-raising events (Fig. 1.2).
1.2 Songs of Social Protest as “Genre” 9

Fig. 1.2 One of the largest (and most iconic) political rallies for civil rights in history: the March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, on August 27, 1963. Among the leaders of the
demonstration, there was Martin Luther King (second from the left on the frontline) (image of
public domain)

As a consequence, SSPs cannot be only a words-set-to-music affair, but, just like

soundtracks or gospels, they have to be a form of functional music, and—as such—
must be subject to some sort of inherently musical codification. A SSP author, for
instance, must keep in mind that his/her song a) might be performed by people
without professional familiarity with music; and b) should be easy to memorize,
with a clear and reproducible message, and with the capacity to create or enhance
group feeling. These are all musical problems, not only lyrical ones (or else it would
be possible to write a simple message like “We shall overcome one day” with a
melody that covers four octaves, is in 5/4 and employs microtones, and still expect
it to become one of the most popular SSP’s of all times). My first contribution to
this discussion (Martinelli 2004) was devoted to those musical elements/strategies
that contribute to a “successful” SSP:
(1) Use of a common and easy-to-carry instrumentation: acoustic guitars, light
percussions (or even improvised ones, such as hand-clapping), harmonicas…
The key, here, is to let these instruments appear also in the recorded version of
the song, in order to let the non-professional musicians know that “this is how
the song sounds anyway”. The reason why a track like “Blowing in the Wind”
10 1 Definitions and Categorizations

is so effective in their purpose lies precisely in the fact that, on record, it

already sounds like an improvised performance on a street, during a demon-
stration. As Tom Lehrer used to say in his concerts, before playing at the piano
his sarcastic “The Folk Song Army” (a parody of SSPs): “I have a song here
which I realize should be accompanied on a folk instrument in which category
the piano does not alas qualify: so imagine that I am playing an 88 string
guitar”;
(2) Use of simple and accessible harmonic structures: no difficult keys like F
sharp or E flat, no complicated chords and not many of them, basic chord
progressions… The prototypical SSP is in D, or G, or C major or E or A
minor; the appearance of an augmented or generally “jazzy” chord is an event
as rare as Halley’s comet; and the usual progressions are of cadenza-type (I-V,
I-IV, I-IV-V-I, I-vi-IV-V, etc.);
(3) Use of basic rhythmic structures: from the supreme synthesis of the
hand-clapping on the upbeats (not downbeats, please: that is for Radetzky’s
march), to the slightly more complex interaction of hands and feet, as in the
case of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” (a very interesting case, because this
song is not a SSP, and yet it is often employed in events of social protest—we
shall see why). Light percussions (tambourines in particular) or whole
drum-kits are of course welcome, too: the point is in the simplicity of the
pattern as such (which means, among other things, an almost untouchable
preference for 4/4 not-syncopated structures);
(4) Catchy hooks and/or refrains: the refrain (in the typical strophe-refrain format,
very often employed in SSPs) or the chorus (in the less recurrent chorus-bridge
setting) are certainly the parts to handle with more care: the impact of the song
on the public largely depends on their musical accessibility. Once those are
taken care of, other choices are possible: a liturgical structure (with a “master
of ceremony” who sings the more complex strophes and the “community” that
joins in the refrains—as in “Give Peace a Chance” ); a choral piece from start
to end (like “We Shall Overcome”), and so forth;
(5) Culturally-connoted (and recognizable) sound: also because of what we have
already listed, a recorded version of an SSP may already feature an “acoustic”
feel, an “ethnic” or “folk” atmosphere, or anyway something that reminds us
of genres and authors that already have a reputation in the SSP field. Many
from my generation will perfectly remember the appearance of Tracy
Chapman, within the panorama of 1980s’ super-productions, alone on the
stage, with the sole support of a folk guitar, singing songs like “Talkin’ about
Revolution” . Her credibility as SSP performer started also (if not mostly)
from the fact that she immediately recalled the likes of Joan Baez, while the
music landscape of those days was filled with synths, drum machines and
Ibanez guitars with tons of effects.
A track like John Lennon’s “[Songs] Give Peace a Chance (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1969) is a perfect exemplification of all five points. Recorded live on
Sunday June 1, 1969, in a hotel room in Montreal (Room 1742, Hotel
1.2 Songs of Social Protest as “Genre” 11

Reine-Elizabeth, to be exact), the song was the culmination of Lennon’s and Yoko
Ono’s famous Bed-in campaign, a Fluxus-style pacifist happening arranged in the
occasion of the couple’s honeymoon which basically consisted in the two artists
spending most of their time in their bed, welcoming visitors and journalists to
discuss (or advertise, as they themselves put it) world peace. Only few days before,
one of the reporters had asked Lennon what he was trying to accomplish with this
performance. The exact wording of his spontaneous reply, “All we are saying is
give peace a chance” became the inspiration for a song, which Lennon composed
right after. On June 1, the Beatle rented a professional recorder, and with the
visitors of that day (a little crowd that included Timothy Leary, Petula Clark and
Allen Ginsberg), he launched into a one-take performance of the song, with the sole
accompaniment of two acoustic guitars (his own, and another one played by
Tommy Smothers, of the Smothers Brothers duo), asking the guests to join in
during the refrain and to mark the tempo with hand claps, tambourines or other
improvised percussions. Rumor has it that, back in England, a few overdubs were
made on the rhythmic part (with Ringo Starr allegedly adding some percussion to
fix the frequent inaccuracies in the beat) and on the chorus (with Lennon himself
reinforcing the catchphrase in order to smoothen some ragged passages), but the
source reporting this information (the very authoritative Beatle scholar Mark
Lewisohn) is also very quick to point out that the rumor is undocumented.
Overdubbed or not, the result, in stylistic terms, is a song with strong references
to the American folk tradition of protest singers, both in sound and in musical
gesture. “Give Peace a Chance” is indeed performed exactly as it is expected to be
performed during a pacifist demonstration: one or two guys play guitar, sing the
strophes and act as cheerleaders; the crowd joins in during the chorus and rhyth-
mically accompanies the song with whatever may serve as percussion. They are all
sitting around in circle.
Musically, the song is impressively simple: the progression alternates only two
chords, C and G7. A progression like this is, at once (a) very easy to perform on
guitar (or any other accompanying instrument, for the matter, including white
key-only piano chords); (b) very easy to remember, if one does not feel like
bothering to carry a songbook along; and even (c) easy to cognitively reconstruct, in
the remote case one may happen not to remember them). The melody is also very
intelligible and undemanding on the refrain (covering a span of just a seventh from
G to F around the middle C), and it is even a “non-melody” on the strophes (which
are in a semi-spoken talking blues form). The rhythm is a basic stomping on the
downbeats. The format of the song is a repeated strophe-refrain that goes on reg-
ularly, with no variations, solos, middle eights or otherwise: once reached the final
strophe, the refrain goes on ad lib. The history of the public performances of the
song, among other things, prove that more often than not, street activists choose to
only perform the refrain, skipping the strophes altogether. That also applies to
professional concert renditions of the track (U2 in various occasions, Paul
McCartney in 1990, 2008 and 2016, Pearl Jam in 2003, Stevie Wonder in 2010,
etc.) There is no doubt that this is perfectly in accordance with the way Lennon
intended the song to be used.
12 1 Definitions and Categorizations

Lyrically, the strategy is similar. The refrain employs exclusively the tagline “All
we are saying is give peace a chance”. It takes no more than one single repetition of
these words to make sure that also the person who hears them for the first time is
able to join in at the next refrain. The strophes, on the contrary, are not very simple
and they are openly intended either to be skipped (as we have seen above), or—like
in the recorded version—to be sung by one single “informed/cheerleading” person.
Or, in fact, there is a third option, that has been employed in numerous live and
recorded performances of the song, including the first live version by John Lennon
himself (in Toronto, September 1969), the first recorded cover (by the Hot
Chocolate Band, in October 1969) and a remake that an all-star group led by Yoko
Ono and the couple’s son Sean Lennon released in 1991 in response to the
imminent Gulf War (the supergroup included big stars such as Peter Gabriel, Lenny
Kravitz, Little Richard, Tom Petty and many others). In these and other cases, the
strophe lyrics are either rewritten or improvised, and generally adapted to the
specific context wherein the song is performed. That is possible (and again
encouraged) by both the mentioned talking blues prosody (which does not pose
metric challenges) and by the structure of the stanzas, which always start with
“Everybody’s talking about…”, followed by a list of words, characters, events: with
this trick, every performer can easily provide his/her own lists, adapting them to the
respective circumstances.
During his “Live Peace in Toronto”, for instance, John Lennon (who was
famous for often forgetting the lyrics of his own songs) announced the song by
admitting “I forgot all those bits in between, but I know the chorus”. He launched
into a rendition of the strophes that had little to do with the original, in most cases
babbling his way into them, and providing an original variation only on the second
stanza, by calling out, among others, a few politicians (Roosevelt, Nixon), the
Beatles’ song “Penny Lane” , and more importantly some of the people on stage at
that moment (John and Yoko, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman), echoing the fourth
stanza of the original recording, where, after “John and Yoko”, several visitors of
the hotel room were mentioned (Allen Ginsberg, Timmy Leary, his wife Rosemary,
the other guitarist Tommy Smothers, and others). Just for the record: besides “John
and Yoko”, the only name appearing in both the original version and this impro-
vised Toronto performance was the comedian Tommy Cooper, to an extent the
most obscure character in the list. Memory works in mysterious ways.
In the 1991 remake, interestingly, Ono and Sean Lennon decided to make a use
of the strophes that would be as socially-meaningful as possible: their careful
selection included this time only “profound” words such as “starvation”, “civil
war”, “education”, “HIV”, “Middle East” and many others. The result is definitely
more “serious” than the original, but—it must be said—loses that tongue-in-cheek
component that Lennon had provided to a rather effective result (if it is true that the
original lyrics include politically-irrelevant items and puns like “banisters and
canisters”, “bishops and fishops”, “congratulations” and others, it is also true that in
such cases the message conveyed was that “everybody is talking about” a lot of
nonsense, while giving peace a chance should really be the topic!).
1.2 Songs of Social Protest as “Genre” 13

Back to the general point, it is fair to conclude that SSPs seem quite suitable for
a musical classification. As we shall see, its identity as “functional music” plays a
relevant role in my reflections. In the following pages I shall attempt to draw an
analytical model for SSPs, which would take into account three crucial aspects:
context, contents and music. Like all forms of categorization, this one too is far too
generic for me to claim that the whole complexity of the problem has been grasped:
the idea, more humbly, is simply that of tracing a few relevant paths into a very
foggy and heterogeneous landscape.

1.3 A Triadic Model: Context, Lyrics, Music

Once I have discussed, and hopefully considered reasonable, these two main issues
in terminology and stylistic categorization, I would like to introduce the main
theoretical novelty of this book, and object of discussion of the next three chapters:
an analytical model that intends to connect (social, historical, political) context,
song lyrics and music as such (Fig. 1.3), as organic and most of all equally
important elements that constitute a SSP. The thesis I defend, per se, is not
extraordinarily original. Obviously, a correct analysis of SSPs (and that includes
most of those displayed in existing literature), cannot avoid a synergic consideration

Fig. 1.3 The analytical model adopted in this book: context, lyrics, music
14 1 Definitions and Categorizations

of these three features. However, and perhaps against the tide of the average dis-
cussions on these topics, I will not establish an undisputable supremacy of the lyrics
over the other two elements (that being the case especially in texts like the men-
tioned Phull 2008; Vites 1998; Fiori 1978; Peddie 2006; Friedman 2013 etc., which
aim to gather and classify these repertoires), and, more specifically, I will try to
emancipate the musical aspects from the role of mere “accompanists” of lyrics and
mere “results” of the context.
More consistent elements of originality in the model possibly lie in its very
contents, pragmatics, nomenclature and specific features. I will have the opportu-
nity to discuss these aspects in detail in the next three chapters, but for the time
being it is important to point out that the main idea is to find analytical categories
that are transversal to the traditional ones. When I talk about contexts, I am not
interested in classifying the various possible spaces/venues in which an SSP may be
written or performed (demonstrations, concerts, recordings…), but rather the most
significant (at least, to my mind) forms of “positioning” of the SSP within any of
those spaces. When I talk about lyrics I will not classify the various verse/stanza
formats or structures, nor the various topics, but rather the different semiotic and
rhetoric approaches to lyric-writing. Finally, when I talk about music, I will not list
the genres or the forms, but rather what I consider the most significant aesthetic
strategies.
As I mentioned, the readers will be exposed to analytical material that is able to
“interact” with the traditional one, hopefully offering a number of lateral insights
that may ultimately enrich the overall discussion.
One last remark: as is true of all forms of classification, the ones I am presenting
here, too, are too simplistic and generic. Very different strategies, styles, attitudes
may be grouped in a single category, without a really convincing reason, and at the
same time different categories may overlap with each other, showing much less neat
boundaries than how they seem to appear here. This will apply to everything I write
in the next three chapters, and I really hope that the readers will keep that in mind
when they are exposed to categories that will appear too vague.
At the same time, however, it is not productive to leave apart the raison d’être of
this kind of work, i.e. to point out the most evident (contextual, lyrical and musical)
characteristics and tactics in SSPs, then group them by common denominators.
Postmodern scholarship has made it customary to avoid too judgmental attitudes, but
I never see a good reason to engage in uncritical and militant relativism. As scholars,
it is our duty to take the responsibility to systematize and categorize knowledge, as
fuzzy as it may look. We may look at a starry sky and post modernly think that every
star is an entity of its own, and there is no point in grouping them in any way. It will
be the safest attitude: no risks, no mistakes. Alternatively, we may take that riskier
and more productive attitude called “science” and start noticing a bit of order among
the chaos: there are after all groups and patterns, there are constellations, there are
galaxies. By noticing them, we also learn a lot about how the universe “works” and
how its constitutive elements relate to each other. This is the spirit of the next three
chapters, and I humbly hope that the reader will tune in with it.
References 15

References

Borthwick, Stuart. 2004. Popular music genres. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Caputo, Sergio. 2000. Sergio caputo official homepage. Retrieved 11 June 2015. http://www.
sergiocaputo.com/italian/it_faq.htm.
Denselow, Robin. 1990. When the Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop. London: Faber and
Faber.
Fabbri, Franco. 2002. Il suono in cui viviamo. Roma: Arcana Editrice.
Fabbri, Franco. 2008. Around the clock: una breve storia della popular music. UTET libreria.
Fiori, Umberto. 1978. Joe hill, woody guthrie Bob Dylan.. USA: Storia Della Canzone Popolare.
Fowke, Edith, and Joe Glazer. 1973. Songs of work and protest. New York: Dover Publications.
Friedman, Jonathan C. 2013. The routledge history of social protest in popular music.
London/New York: Routledge.
Frith, Simon. 1989. World Music, Politics and Social Change. Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press.
Holt, Fabian. 2007. Genre in popular music. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Lynskey, Dorian. 2011. 33 revolutions per minute. New York: Ecco.
Martinelli, Dario. 2004. S for Singalong—Popular music and pacifism. In Semiotics from S to S,
eds. Merja Bauters et al. Helsinki: Umweb.
Peddie, Ian (ed.). 2006. the resisting muse: popular music and social protest. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate.
Phull, Hardeep. 2008. Story behind the protest song: a reference guide to the 50 songs that
changed the 20th century. London: Greenwood Press.
Pratt, Ray. 1990. Rhythm and resistance: explorations in the political uses of popular music.
Westport: Praeger.
Shuker, Roy. 2005. Popular Music: The Key Concepts. London/New York: Routledge.
Street, John. 1986. Rebel Rock: The Politics of Popular Music. Oxford: Blackwell.
Street, John. 1997. Politics and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Vites, Paolo (ed.). 1998. Rock e politica. Roma: Arcana Editrice.
Chapter 2
Songs of Social Protest and Context

Abstract The present chapter focuses on the first variable of the triadic model
(context-lyrics-music) introduced in the first chapter: the various dynamics of
context-positioning in an SSP. Re-elaborating from Stefani (Una strategia di pace:
La difesa popolare nonviolenta. FuoriThema, Bologna, 1993), I suggest five different
types of relations between an SSP and the context/occasion it is performed in or
conceived for: “Specific relation”, “Indirect relation”, “General relation”, “Phatic
relation” and “Paratextual relation”. After that, I suggest that an SSP can also be
written/performed by “positioning” the political action (or lack thereof) in some
particular chronological (“Before”, “During” and “After” the protest) and spatial
(“exposed”, “clear”, “ambiguous/neutral”, “hidden/rejected”) location. I then pro-
ceed to cross this classification with Greimas’s theory of modalization (e.g. Greimas
in On meaning: Selected writings in semiotic theory. University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis, MN, 1987) and separate the modalities of “Doing/Not Doing” from
those of “Being/Not Being”, in order to distinguish between songs whose main
ideological point is to underline the very action of protest (“Doing/Not Doing”), and
songs which instead are inclined to describe a context/situation/character/etc.
(“Being/Not Being”).

2.1 Typologies of Context and Levels of Pertinence

If the analysis of a soundtrack is inseparable from the movie that it accompanies, it

should be equally difficult to keep the distances between a song like “The Preacher
and the Slave” and the Industrial Workers of the World, or between “Bella ciao”
and the Italian Resistenza. On the other hand, we know that, once provided with
certain characteristics, a—say—Sci-Fi theme may be employed not only for the
particular movie it was written for, but for many Sci-Fi movies. No disrespect to the
great composer that he is (on the contrary: I am basically saying that he was able to
create a musical topos), but nearly every theme John Williams wrote for a Sci-Fi or
action movie can be exchanged with one another, without serious collateral effects
in the movie-music relationship of pertinence. Move the Star Wars theme to

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 17

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1_2
18 2 Songs of Social Protest and Context

Superman, or the Superman theme to Indiana Jones and ask anybody who have not
seen those movies (if there are any left) if they feel something strange or inap-
propriate in the soundtrack. Similarly, a song like Gil Scott Heron’s “The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (released in 1970) is not just cast in a specific
time/space frame. It certainly reflects an identifiable historical period (the late
1960s) and geographical area (USA and New York in particular), due to the
mentioning of people like civil rights activist Whitney Young, hurdler Willie May,
songwriter Jimmy Webb (“Jim”, in Scott-Heron’s song) and many others, all
Americans and at their career prime during the late 1960s. However, despite a long
list of names, places, brands and else, the song is relevant to many contexts and
none in particular, and certainly remains extremely current even nowadays, when
several entries in that list may look outdated. It is surely no coincidence that this
song has been quoted, featured or of course sampled (the drum pattern remains one
of the most recognizable in the whole hip-hop sphere), in numerous songs, movies
and other media, including Justin Chadwick’s Long Walk to Freedom, a film about
Nelson Mandela, therefore about another country and a much longer timeframe.
Examples like these show that both the type of relationship and the degree of
pertinence existing between an SSP and the context it is generated within, or
applied to, are important and far-from-obvious issues. Whether a specific event of
protest (a street demonstration, a labor union’s rally, etc.), or a casual occasion (a
concert, a record, etc.), different forms of relation may be established between the
SSP and the given circumstance.
Back in 1993, Gino Stefani (one of the godfathers of musical semiotics as a field,
and a scholar chiefly interested in social and political contextualization of popular
music) had suggested three different types of singing activity to be performed
within an event of social protest: ad hoc (when a song focuses exactly on the
event’s topics), area (when the song related in a more general manner), generic
(when the song—unrelated to the event’s topics—is mostly employed for creating
group feeling). Using that model as template, but with significant variations, I now
propose the following classification (see also Fig. 2.1):
(1) Specific relation—This type of relation qualifies a song that is specific of the
circumstances that originated the given event: the song’s lyrics talk about such
circumstances and exist because of them (not rarely, it may be one of the
event’s participants to actually write the song). If we consider, for instance, an
event of social protest related to (or in memory of) the tragically-famous
Soweto uprising in South Africa in 1976, we know that songs like Hugh
Masakela’s “Soweto Blues” (1977) or Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” (1980) are
“specific” to that context. “Soweto Blues”, indeed, refer directly to the mas-
sacre as a whole (with a particular emphasis on the involvement of small
children: “Children were flying bullets dying, The mothers screaming and
crying”), while “Biko” focuses on one of the key-figures of those events, the
activist (and subsequently martyr of the anti-apartheid movement) Stephen
Biko. In other words, the pertinence of these SSPs to that particular context is
total, and roughly corresponds to Stefani’s “ad hoc” type of song.
2.1 Typologies of Context and Levels of Pertinence 19

Fig. 2.1 SSP and context: relations of pertinence

(2) General relation—In this second degree of pertinence we find SSPs that are
related to the given context in more general thematic terms. If we keep up with
the same example of “Soweto Blues” and “Biko”, we know that these songs can
be, and have been in various circumstances, applied to wider contexts than just
Soweto massacre-related occasions. Any other manifestation against apartheid,
referring to any of the many events in apartheid history, are suitable contexts
for such songs. In fact, even events that are not about apartheid, but still address
questions of racial discrimination, segregation and persecution, are suitable
contexts for these songs. Not by chance, “Biko” was a key-moment (if not the
key-moment) in all the concerts that Peter Gabriel gave in support of Amnesty
International (particularly the Conspiracy of Hope and Human Rights Now!
tours, in 1986 and 1988 respectively). Of course, having said that, there are
songs that are naturally “general”, and may be addressing certain themes
without necessarily pointing the finger on a particular circumstance or char-
acter. Eddy Grant’s “Gimme Hope Jo’Anna” is a general anti-apartheid song
(“Well Jo’Anna [Johannesburg] she runs a country…. She makes a few of her
people happy, She don’t care about the rest at all, She’s got a system they call
apartheid, It keeps a brother in a subjection, But maybe pressure can make
Jo’Anna see, How everybody could a live as one”), as well as Niels Andersen’s
Danish children song “Jeg har set en rigtig negermand” (“I have seen a real
negro”) contains a general message of anti-racism (“Let not the color of skin be
a factor, We must meet with wholesome and honest minds”).
20 2 Songs of Social Protest and Context

(3) Indirect relation—In this third degree of pertinence we find SSP-context

relations that switch from “topics” to “values”. If, let us say, an event is
organized to protest against unemployment and low salaries, and still someone
comes up with a rendition of “Soweto Blues” and “Biko” (against, for
instance, another Gabriel’s song, “Don’t Give Up”, which is in fact explicitly
about unemployment), where is the pertinence? The pertinence exists at the
very moment we transcend the specific contents of these songs, and we realize
that they are about such values as “justice”, “equality”, “freedom”, and others,
which are perfectly applicable to a topic like unemployment. The moment
“Biko” goes “You can blow out a candle, But you can’t blow out a fire, Once
the flames begin to catch, The wind will blow it higher” is a moment that just
any movement of social emancipation, justice and the likes can relate to, with
basically no exception. To my understanding of Stefani (1993), this and the
last category I suggested are grouped into what he called the Area songs: it
seemed to me like a distinction was necessary.
(4) Phatic relation—In this peculiar case, the song may actually not be an SSP, in
a strict sense, but it may become one on the basis of its employment within a
given event. As Roman Jakobson’s well-known formulation of the “phatic
function” of language goes, the idea is that this kind of song serves more a
purpose of enhancing contact among the participants at the event, rather than
describing the latter’s themes. Funnily enough, thus, in the very field where
topics and contents seem to be indispensable, we find a type of SSP pro
tempore where lyrics are almost irrelevant, and what matters is the song’s
ability to create “the right atmosphere”. This is why songs like “Hey Jude” or
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” are not unlikely choices among the participants
at an event of social protest. What we find here, at this point, is an enlarged
perspective of what an SSP is or can be. I certainly do not wish to bring this
notion to an extreme of the “anything goes” type: obviously, songs like “O
Sole Mio” or “YMCA” are hardly ever heard on a political demonstration.
What is relevant, here, is to state clearly that the SSP is a relatively flexible
semantic field that can be restricted or expanded thanks to this element, the
context, that proceeds in parallel motion with music and lyrics. Incidentally,
this, too, is what happens in the field of functional music. Sure, Hermann or
Morricone would write original and specifically-filmic music, but so many
directors (Kubrick, Lynch, Kaurismäki…) are eager to recontextualize existing
music that was created for other purposes. Exactly like film music, however,
one cannot just choose any song, just because it is famous and known by every
event participant. Obviously there is a certain quality in the songs chosen, and
more often than not I find that songs that express feelings and ideas of “em-
powerment” (in the sense defined by Rappaport et al. 1984) are the most
suitable to become this pro tempore SSP’s: it is the idea to “take a sad song
and make it better” or to “take these broken wings and learn to fly” that
probably appeal the most. It is a sentiment of self-growth, self-esteem and
redemption that works very well in its possible “social” application. The “sad
song” can easily be, indeed, racial discrimination or unemployment. In Stefani
2.1 Typologies of Context and Levels of Pertinence 21

(1993), this relation is perfectly correspondent to what he called a “generic”

song.
(5) Paratextual relation—I shall also take the liberty to add another degree of
pertinence, that in a way crosscuts the other four, and that was not really
mentioned in (Stefani 1993). Some songs, either SSPs (like in the first three
types of relation) or not (like in the fourth), may not address a topic of social
protest as such, but may rather focus on the practice itself of demonstrating,
protesting, and so on, or may be re-adapted to serve this purpose. For this
reason, I see them belonging to a “paratextual” dimension of the context.
Examples include Pete Seeger’s “We Shall Not Be Moved”, which describes
the resistance against the police during a demonstration (“We’re young and
old together, we shall not be moved…. We’re women and men together, we
shall not be moved…. We’re black and white together we shall not be moved”,
etc.) or—back to anti-apartheid songs—“Little” Steven Van Zandt’s Artists
United Against Apartheid song “Sun City”, which describes the active deci-
sion, from the part of many rockstars, to boycott playing in the South-African
luxury resort—and symbol of racial segregation—Sun City (“We’re rockers
and rappers, United and strong, We’re here to talk about South Africa, We
don’t like what’s going on…. You got to say I, I, I, Ain’t gonna play Sun City,
Everybody say I, I, I, Ain’t gonna play Sun City”).

2.2 Time-Space Units

However obvious this may read, the construction of contents, in songwriting (and, to
an extent, in performing as well), is not only implemented by the mere development
of a theme, no matter how complex and articulated this development may be.
Contents must be also “positioned” in a conceptual space/time environment that
goes beyond simple narrative choices (that is, when and where the action takes place
in a song): this “environment” is not only an objective/empirical one (as we have
seen in the previous paragraph), but it also has subjective/existential properties.
Engaging into more interdisciplinary work, this notion is not dissimilar to what
in natural sciences is known as concept of “Umwelt”, in the terms postulated by
German biologist Jakob von Uexküll (although, of course, I am now using this
concept on a more metaphorical level). The German equivalent of “environment”,
this word—in Uexküll’s formulation—came to designate a much more complex
notion, usually referred to as “subjective universe” (Sharov 2001: 211) , or also
“semiotic world of organisms” (Kull 1998: 304) . The starting assumption is that
the environment inhabited by an organism is not merely the actual environmental
niche, but is a larger not purely physical ‘environment’, of which the niche is just a
part, that is perceivable and meaningful in its entirety only from the perspective of
that particular organism. Uexküll (1982: 29–30) exemplifies this concept by
describing the completely different meanings that a flower may have to a young girl
22 2 Songs of Social Protest and Context

(an element of decoration), an ant (a path for reaching food), a cicada-larva (con-
struction material), and a cow (fodder). An Umwelt is the result of a Merkwelt,
which corresponds to the specific perceptive field of an organism, and a Wirkwelt,
that is, the field of actual interaction between the organism and the environment.
Perceptual and operational elements come to establish the specific Umwelt of the
given organism, which is exclusive for each species, community, individual, class,
family and so forth. The Merkwelt and the Wirkwelt are constantly in action, as the
organism (also called a “structure”, or a “receiver of meaning”) affects and is
affected by the environment (the “counter-structure”, or “carrier of meaning”). In
that sense, the process is described as an “Umwelt circle”.
Now. Without indulging too much on theories that may lead us astray, what
matters here is that songs, like any work of art, are always in a Merkwelt-Wirkwelt
articulation, in that they may take both the roles of structure and counter-structure.
A song like “Yesterday” is of course (and quintessentially) a song located in a
“past” time Wirkwelt, so it operates in the past, but this location is not limited to the
employment of the past tense and a clear reference to a time that is gone
(“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away”). The temporal positioning is also
a subjective, existential condition of the narrator/author (and consequently, of the
song itself as artwork), who approaches the song with past-oriented feelings and
attitude: he is nostalgic (“I long for yesterday”), he expresses remorse for something
he did (“I said something wrong”) and regret for something he did not understand
(“Why she had to go, I don’t know”), and so forth. Not only does the song talk
about the past: it is conceptually located in it.
On the other hand, songs like Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” or Bob Dylan’s
“Most of the Time” do not present the same continuity, because while the operational
field is now the present, describing an imaginary dialogue between the author and his
prematurely-departed son in the former case, and an assessment of the author’s
current emotional state of the art in the latter, the existential location of both pieces is
again, and very clearly, in the past (both singers are mourning for the loss of a life and
a relationship respectively). Therefore, if the identification of a song’s Wirkwelt is
generally a not-too-demanding task, dictated, as it is most of the times, by the text’s
surface, the existence of a Merkwelt, too, creates a much denser Umwelt.
With this in mind, the main idea I intend to propose here is that an SSP can be
written and performed also with a sense of “positioning” the social/political action (or
lack thereof) in some particular (more or less metaphorical) chronological or spatial
location, that may or may not be coherent with the whens and the wheres appearing
on the surface. For instance, talking about time units, a SSP can ideally take place
“before” the protest (when it addresses something that should, could or will happen),
“during” the protest (when it addresses something that is or is not happening), and
“after” the protest (when it looks back to something that did or did not happen).
Talking about space units, despite the fact that ideological/political elements are
always present in any stage of music-making, in some instances they are more
manifested than in others, creating (or not), specific cognitive/cultural associations
with a given genre/act/repertoire. In this sense, I argue that these degrees of
display/perception may involve specific nuances of “spatial visibility” of the protest.
2.2 Time-Space Units 23

2.2.1 The Time Umwelt

As I mentioned, I propose here three basic existential positions “in time”. Of course,
the issue is more complicated than this, and deserves further scrutiny, but—I dare
suggest—this may be a fair beginning of the discussion (see also Fig. 2.2).
(1) Before the protest. There are forms of protest that are projected in the future,
as something that should, or straight away will happen (or so the authors hope
—needless to say, “We Shall Overcome” remains the prototype), or even—
turning the social concern from “hope” to “fear”—could happen, if no sig-
nificant precaution is taken (the band Wilco hold the peculiar record of having
predicted the 9/11 attacks not once but twice in the same album, through the
songs “Jesus, etc.” and “War on War”) , and this can go as far as to depicting
dystopian scenarios of imaginary futures when things went very wrong exactly
because nothing was done to prevent certain events (like XTC’s apocalyptic
post-atomic conversation between father and son in “This World Over”: “Will
you tell them about that far off and mythical land, And how a child to the
virgin came?, Will you tell them that the reason why we murdered, Everything
upon the surface of the world, So we can stand right up and say we did it in his
name?”1).
In fact, dystopia as such is probably the ideal topic by which to discuss the
complexity of a song’s Umwelt, and its frequent discrepancy between Wirkwelt and
Merkwelt. Also, as it happens, it is arguably the most recurrent rhetorical device,
employed in popular music (certainly within the area we commonly identify as
“rock”), to address one’s own dissatisfaction towards a given social-political situ-
ation, or—better said—“the system”, “them”. The myth of “the system” as an evil,
conspiring force that is distant and in fact opposed to “the people” (in turn a
counter-myth) is a true topos that we find in literally hundreds of songs of political
content. Within this group, a remarkably high percentage employs dystopian sce-
narios as visual and narrative representation. Future hyper-technological,
de-humanized, post-atomic, mind-controlling, Langesque-Kubrickesque depictions
pop up so often that the temptation is to conclude that George Orwell’s 1984 is by
far the most-read literary work by rockstars.
Once more, as one of the main arguments of the present monograph is the centrality
of music per se in SSP, representations of this kind are not something we only detect
from the lyrics. To make just a few examples, songs like Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to
the Machine” (where “the system” appears in the ever-hated disguise of the music
industry), Emerson Lake and Palmer’s “Karn Evil 9” (on the album Brain Salad
Surgery, featuring a cover by H.R. Giger, the dystopian painter by definition), or entire
albums like Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage or David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs (directly

1
It should not be surprising that XTC, the authors of the atheist anthem “Dear God”, would
basically forecast religious matters as the cause for the end of the world. Some may argue that
32 years later (the song was written in 1984) the prediction sounds more likely than ever.
24 2 Songs of Social Protest and Context

Fig. 2.2 SSP and context: the time Umwelt

inspired by Orwell’s masterpiece) create a solid and coherent continuity between

musical and lyrical aspects, via strategies such as futuristic sounds, cacophonies,
Sci-Fi soundtrack atmospheres, pathos-rich performances, etc.
(2) During the protest. Then of course, an SSP can be almost a real time one,
addressing something that is (or is not) happening or being/not being done.
This can take the shape of either a description of negative social/political
events that call for a protest (as in Billy Bragg’s “The Price of Oil”, addressing
the war in Iraq), or the protest action as such (as in the above-mentioned Pete
Seeger’s “We Shall Not Be Moved”, conceived—as we said—to be sung
during demonstrations, as a message to the police).
Needless to say, this particular temporal condition brings us back to the original,
circumstantial and event-bound nature of SSPs, when the role of the context was
possibly the dominant one, and (to reiterate the jargon employed in the last para-
graph) specifically pertinent songs were statistically more likely to be written. Still
commenting on the Wirkwelt-Merkwelt dichotomy, it is interesting here to notice
that songs of this sort, which are consistently situated in the present at the moment
they are written and performed “where they were supposed to be performed”,
introduce once again the discrepancy at the moment when their specific function
ceases to exist (because the context as such is not there anymore), and instead
activate a process of crystallization that make them suitable for other events
(turning from specific to general or even indirect relation of pertinence). The
original contents turn from circumstantial to metaphorical, the hic et nunc becomes
2.2 Time-Space Units 25

a semper. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (from Bob Dylan’s song “Hurricane”) ceases to
be Hurricane and becomes a synecdoche for any Afro-American victim of racist
abuse; the Johnny of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” ceases to be the
symbolic soldier of a specific conflict (the American Civil War) and becomes a
soldier for any war, etc. This is in fact so true that quite often songwriters write
specifically-pertinent songs already in a metaphorical mode, without being too
specific, and—so to speak—investing on the long-term value of the song.
We can notice the difference by describing two songs with similar format and
lyrical solutions: the mentioned Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” and U2’s “Pride (In the
Name of Love)”. The former, as we already said, is a song about anti-apartheid
martyr Stephen Biko, and starts with a pinpointed contextualization of the events, a
sort of cinematic “establishing shot”: “September ‘77, Port Elizabeth weather fine,
It was business as usual, In police room 619”. After that, the song proceeds to name
unmistakably the protagonist of the song, Biko, making no mystery, throughout its
whole duration, on the whos, the wheres, the whens, the whats and the whys of this
song. U2’s “Pride”, in turn, is also a song about a specific character, Martin Luther
King, and it also adopts the strategy of precisely-located verses: “Early morning,
April 4, a shot rings out in the Memphis sky”. However, the huge difference is that
the protagonist is never mentioned, and it takes the listener to know a bit of history
to understand that those verses refer to King’s assassination. U2, instead, prefer to
focus on the universalization of King’s message, love among people of all kinds,
and the pride deriving from the nobleness of such value (a pride that, unlike earthly
life, cannot be killed). Coherently with this choice, I believe, U2 placed the “early
morning…” passage as the concluding stanza of the song, unlike Gabriel, who had
instead used the “September ‘77…” part as the very opening of his own piece. In a
way, U2 are playing Melville here: the “whale” (Martin Luther King) becomes
visible only at the very end of the text, while, throughout the rest of it, the pro-
tagonist exists only as representation (“in the name of love”—and of course it is no
coincidence that the very religious Irish band, singing about a religious figure,
would use a lyrical formulation that is typical of religious parlance, “in the name
of”, equaling love with God).
The result, of course, is that, while it is virtually impossible to dissociate “Biko”-
the-song from Stephen Biko-the-person, rock fans may easily be unaware that
“Pride” is actually a song about Martin Luther King. Now: does this difference
make “Biko” a less suitable song for other contexts of social protest, outside the
(luckily outdated) South-African apartheid? Obviously not: the song is still very
popular in contexts of civil rights and anti-racist demonstrations. In fact, to be
precise, it was Peter Gabriel himself to take the first step of generalization of the
song when, in the mid 1980s, he used it in his concerts as an opportunity to address
apartheid as a whole, and not only the circumstances of Biko’s death.
(3) After the protest. Finally, the SSP can also look back, mostly with a sense of
disillusionment or resentfulness, addressing something that did not happen,
while it should have (as in Paul McCartney’s “Tug of War”, with melancholic
lines such as “We expected more, but with one thing and another we were
26 2 Songs of Social Protest and Context

trying to outscore each other in a tug of war” and “In years to come they may
discover what the air we breathe and the life we lead are all about, but it won’t
be soon enough”). Occasionally, however, the act of looking back may have a
positive connotation, when a past instance of social protest (or characters/
places related to it) is taken as an inspiring example for a current concern (as in
the famous case of “John Brown’s Body”, where the act of mourning over the
famous abolitionist’s death, occurred in 1859—therefore two years before the
song’s composition, becomes an opportunity to inform the listener that the
anti-slavery battle will continue just as “his soul is marching on”, and will get
such results as hanging [confederate president] “Jeff Davis to a tree”).

2.2.2 The Space Umwelt

In the case of existential positioning “in space”, I would like to focus on the
question of the visibility of the political message. If we take the examples that we
have mentioned in the previous paragraph, there are of course plenty of differences
and similarities in the way the respective themes are dealt with and “packaged” into
songs. For instance, we mentioned that a basic difference between Peter Gabriel’s
“Biko” and U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” is the fact that the two characters
they are inspired by (Stephen Biko and Martin Luther King respectively) are easily
detectable in one case and more subtle in the other. Biko is repeatedly called out in
the refrain of Gabriel’s song, while King is never mentioned in U2’s track. Biko, in
other words, is very visible, while King is not. Biko stands in front of the song’s
imaginary “camera”, King stands in a kind of off-screen position, letting the values
he represented get a close-up instead. I use this cinematographic comparison
because the organization of a film shot is very much a question of “space man-
agement”. Actors who have worked with the likes of Luchino Visconti or Sergio
Leone recall endless preparations of single shots where these directors would ask
them to be in one given place, with one given posture, and not one millimeter
further. As exhausting as this process may have been, it led to the production of
visually perfect sequences like the ending of Death in Venice or the showdown in
the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. At the same time (and giving one last filmic
example), every movie enthusiast knows that in order to provide power and
effectiveness to a message, one does not necessarily need to make that message very
evident and outspoken. Sergio Leone may use his trademark “extreme close-up on
the eyes” strategy to highlight the gunslingers’ contrasting feelings; Fred
Zinnemann may think it more suitable to underline the marshal’s loneliness with a
bird’s eye shot (I am talking about High Noon, of course); Federico Fellini may
prefer to almost disguise his protagonists in crowded shots; and finally
Michelangelo Antonioni may come up with one of the best murder sequences of all
times by not showing the murder at all (the long shot at the end of The Passenger).
2.2 Time-Space Units 27

Visibility and presence are thus not in a directly proportional relation, and that
applies also to music as well, SSPs included.
If once more my generalization is excused, I shall underline at least four cate-
gories of spatial visibility. The main point, I repeat, is that ideological/political
elements are always present at any stage of music-making, yet in some instances
they are more manifested than in others, creating (or not) specific cognitive/cultural
associations with a given genre/act/repertoire. These associations may or may not
be intentional, may or may not be culturally-bound and—most of all—may or may
not be encouraged by the creative unit of the song (I say “creative unit” and not just
“songwriter/s”, because in fact this visibility can be established at other creative
levels as well: a mildly political song may be empowered in its message by a certain
production, a certain video, a certain performance, and vice versa). What is
important to keep in mind (and, again, to repeat) is that the relationship between the
“display” and the “perception” stages is not always directly proportional. “More
visible” does not automatically mean “better seen”, although of course there are
more chances in this sense. The four categories are the following (see also Fig. 2.3):
1. Exposed. An explicit effort is made in order to make a given ideology or
political stand visible/audible, so that the audience creates a strong association
with the specific instance. For instance, Bob Marley and The Wailers’ “War”
quotes several passages from a speech given in 1963 by Ethiopian emperor
Haile Selassie I to the UN about the impossibility of having peace in Africa until
disenfranchisement and racial discrimination persist. The openness of the
message is total: Marley gives us a pinpointed message with a pinpointed (real
life) reference.

Fig. 2.3 SSP and context: the space Umwelt

28 2 Songs of Social Protest and Context

2. Clear. A given ideology or political stand is visible/audible by anybody and is

often associated to the specific instance, although there is no active effort to
create (or saturate) such visibility. The difference between this category and the
previous one may be best exemplified by focusing on the sender-receiver (that
is, artist-audience) relationship in the song/album/genre/etc. The “exposed”
message does not require intense cooperation with the audience, as the latter is
given all possible tools not to misinterpret the contents. Of course, as we are
talking about artwork, the interpretation may still remain flexible, and, in
principle, the listener of Bob Marley’s “War” has still the liberty to think that
this song refers—or can be applied also—to another context, but when clear
references (including names, dates, places) are given, the listener is aware s/he
is taking that liberty, while in fact the song has a declared focus. The “exposed”
message is a message that tells the audience “Listen to me: I am saying this and
that”. The “clear” message is, so to speak, less particular: it metaphorically
stands in front of the audience with an open message, but without giving such
details that would confine its interpretation to specific references. The listeners
are therefore invited to cooperate at a certain level, and add a bit of their own
contextualization to the music and lyrics they are dealing with. If they do not do
that, or if—peradventure—they take a bit too many liberties in the interpreta-
tion, misunderstandings may also ensue. A rather notable case was, and is,
Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”, a clear (not exposed) SSP taking a
realistic approach to the effects of the Vietnam war on those that were sent off
“to a foreign land to go and kill the yellow man”, which was however mistaken
(via the famous refrain, particularly) as a “positive” American anthem, up to be
even used by Republican Ronald Reagan in his 1984 presidential re-election
campaign (a major offence for the outspoken democrat Springsteen).
3. Ambiguous/neutral: The message is ideologically charged, but not in a way that
would be clearly identifiable in its constitution, characteristics, political nuances,
etc. That may be either because the message is purposively “neutral” (that is, it
expresses dissatisfaction for the current state of things and intention to change,
but in a way that is openly pleasing to all political views and/or populist, like in
many songs for charity events) or “ambiguous” (ambiguity being either inten-
tional—as in many Bob Dylan’s songs—or unintentional). When we think about
a song like “One Meat Ball” (a universally-acknowledged SSP, no doubt about
that, and mostly known in the version of protest singer Josh White), we hear the
story of a man who is so poor that all he can afford to pay in a restaurant is a
single meat ball, with no bread or anything else (nor any help from the waiter).
There is no passage in which the song launches any direct slogan of the likes of
“end poverty now!”, “give a spare coin to the poor guy”, or “the American
welfare system is so unequal that it creates people unable to afford anything
more than a single meat ball”. This connection is up to us: it is not a difficult
one, because the story offers solid tools of interpretation (for instance, the
characterization of the poor man is very sympathetic, and it is obvious that the
song pities him—as opposed to, say, considering him a parasite of society), but
still the articulation of the political message is unclear. What does the song want
2.2 Time-Space Units 29

from us, exactly? Is it an invitation to change the capitalist system, so that there
are no social discriminations? Is it an invitation to be better people and do more
for charity? Is it an attack to commercial enterprises, which are so focused on
profit that they forget to be a little humane (the waiter in the third stanza turns
out to be rather cruel to the man—he certainly could have offered him some
bread)? Is it (please, excuse the poor humor of an animal advocate like myself) a
subtle pro-vegan parody (the man could have certainly afforded more food, had
he chosen bread and vegetables instead of the more costly meat)?
4. Hidden/rejected. An explicit effort is made in order to reject or hide a given
ideology to the audience. This may happen basically for three reasons: first, the
most common, the artist actively wants to make a point that art and politics
should not mix, so the work is devoid of any possible connection to social
commentaries or the like (except that, of course, one may argue that this active
disengagement is a very sound political statement, nevertheless—but perhaps
we shall leave this discussion for another occasion). Second, a very common
option too, the artist needs to hide his/her political opinion for reasons of per-
sonal safety, or risks of censorship: that has been of course a recurrent instance
during oppressive regimes (the fascist authorities, in Italy, were particularly
active in trying to dig out these “secret” SSPs, which they would call canzoni
della fronda—we shall see that in Chap. 8). The final option, a bit rarer, consists
of the artist trying to make a point against political engagement in music, not
because s/he thinks that arts and politics should not mix (as we have seen in the
first option), but because s/he maintains that the protest artists are cunning
hypocrites who make business out of political commitment: they pretend to be
“better people”, while they are just “in it for the money”, like everybody else.
A famous example, at least in Italy, is the song “Io Canterò Politico”, by the
(predictably rightist) singer-songwriter Bruno Lauzi. Written in the tumultuous
1970s, when there was a sheer explosion of protest singers in Italy (mostly of
leftist orientation), this song is a J’accuse against all those artists who jumped
on the bandwagon of political commitment for personal publicity and profit.
Needless to say, these four categories can be applied to all possible levels of
music-making: from a single song (like the examples we have mentioned), to a
whole album, from artists as such to whole movements/events, from sub-genres to
great stylistic areas. Let us just make a couple of random examples. The difference
between two 1977 albums like Fela Kuti’s Zombie and Pink Floyd’s Animals is that
the former was so openly (exposed) critical of Nigerian government that president
Oluṣẹgun Ọbasanjọ sent soldiers to attack Kuti’s Lagos compound, causing Kuti’s
mother’s death, while the latter is loosely (clear) based on George Orwell’s Animal
Farm, using the rhetorical device of the “political animals” (the ruthless pigs, the
obedient sheep, etc.) to launch a critique against capitalist society.
Exposed artists in Italy include the likes of openly-communist Claudio Lolli, or
openly-fascist Massimo Morsello. In Chap. 6 we shall thoroughly discuss the
Lithuanian band Antis, who adopted a theatrical, sarcastic songwriting strategy to
poke fun at the Homo sovieticus and Soviet life in general. Due also to censorship
30 2 Songs of Social Protest and Context

reasons, their songs had never exposed messages, but the contents were definitely
clear to the local audience. We also mentioned the ambiguous Bob Dylan, a sheer
spokesman for the pacifist and civil rights movement in the early stage of his career,
whose political and social positions, from his fourth album onward (the aptly-titled
Another Side of Bob Dylan), became intentionally ambiguous and controversial. We
shall also have a chance to mention the Bulgarian band Shturcite: though actively
involved in the Bulgarian democratization process in early 1990s (founding
member Kiril Marichkov was also member of the Union of Democratic Forces), the
band wrote only one political song, “Az sym prosto Chovek” (“I’m only human”),
whose message was openly critical of (therefore rejected) ideologies (we shall see
more about this band and this song in Sect. 3.3).
Then of course we could compare the exposed visibility of a movement like
Rock in Opposition, a consortium of progressive bands of openly socialist or
communist ideas (such as Stormy Six, Henry Cow, Univers Zero and others), active
from 1978, mostly in opposition to the music industry, with the rejected visibility of
the Eurovision Song Context, not only an event specifically aiming at light enter-
tainment, but also one that has, among its rules, the interdiction to any political
content in the songs (and it still remain a mystery how—under the disguise of the
merely-historical song—the very political Ukrainian song “1944” managed to
participate to and even win the 2016 edition).
Finally, some examples can be made among genres as well. Given the outspoken
neutrality and/or ambiguity of various mainstream pop genres and sub-genres, we
could mention the exposed Nazi-punk or the so-called NSBM, National Socialist
Black Metal2 (musically similar to other forms of punk and metal, the lyrics of these
two genres are discriminatory of categories such as people of color, Jews, homo-
sexuals, communists and other perceived “enemies”, and of course celebratory of
“white supremacy”, Nazi and fascist theories), the clear Southern rock (through not
outspokenly, it often displays themes of “Southern”—i.e. confederate—pride, white
identity, reactionary/conservative politics, and else), and the hidden/rejected heavy
metal (another typically “white” genre, like Southern rock—and often with similar
macho/conservative themes, heavy metal, through both fans and artists, seems
however to reject any form of political labelling, often displaying a proud
anti-ideological attitude).

2
Perhaps less known than Nazi-punk, NSBM is a worringly-popular sub-genre of metal in the
Northern and Eastern European alternative scene (particularly Norway, Finland, Ukraine and
Poland). Examples include the Ukrainian Nokturnal Mortum (with ultra-nationalist, white
suprematist albums like To the Gates of Blasphemeous Fire, Goat Horns or Weltanschauung,
works that are also filled with the very typical right-wing imagery of Northern mythology, pagan
rites and medieval Lord of the Rings-esque metaphors); the German Absurd (with heavily
pro-Nazi and antisemitic albums like Asgardsrei, Facta Loquuntur and Werwolfthron) and the
Finnish Goatmoon (with the numerous apologies to violence and war in albums like Death Before
Dishonour, Finnish Steel Storm and Varjot).
2.2 Time-Space Units 31

To conclude, we can cross this classification with a specific (and classic) semiotic
one (Greimas’s modalization—see, for instance, Greimas 1987), and separate the
modalities of “Doing/Not Doing” from those of “Being/Not Being”, in order to
distinguish between songs whose main ideological point is to underline the very
action of protest (“Doing/Not Doing”: We shall overcome; We shall not be moved…),
and songs which instead are inclined to describe a context/situation/character/etc.
(“Being/Not Being”: This world over; John Brown’s body…).

References

Greimas, Algirdas J. 1987. On meaning: Selected writings in semiotic theory. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.
Kull, Kalevi. 1998. On semiosis, Umwelt, and semiosphere. Semiotica 120(3/4): 299–310.
Rappaport, Julian, et al. 1984. Studies in empowerment: steps toward understanding and action.
New York: Haworth.
Sharov, Alexei. 2001. Umwelt theory and pragmatism. Semiotica 134: 211–228.
Stefani, Gino. 1993. Canzoni e difesa popolare nonviolenta. In Una strategia di pace: La difesa
popolare nonviolenta, ed. A. Drago, and G. Stefani. Bologna: FuoriThema.
Uexküll, Jakob von 1982. The theory of meaning. Published entirely as Special Issue in Semiotica
42/1.
Chapter 3
Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

Abstract The focus of this chapter is the lyrical dimension of SSPs, that is, the
aspect that tends to be analyzed most often within existing research on these
repertoires. It is claimed here that the historical development of SSPs (which
departs from early 19th century, when an appropriate and modern idea of “popular
music” is established) was brought to completion during the 1960s, with the final
establishment and overall dominance of four main typologies of lyrics: an analytical
type, which discusses a topic in a detailed, focused way (generally during the
strophes) and then generally offers a “tagline”-styled prescription (generally in the
refrain); a spiritual type, which is emotionally involved but operatively passive,
where the main “action plan” is that of asking, praying, waiting or hoping for social
change; a universalistic type, a less analytical type of song, with a general,
metaphorical (and sometimes anti-ideological and nihilist) lyrical approach, that
however gains more on the side of the adaptability to various contexts of the
message; and a satirical type, a category that may use any of the above strategies,
plus specific ones, to a comic, sarcastic effect: as we know from the whole history
of human art, satires and parodies have been among the most effective vehicles for
social protest.

3.1 More Historical Premises

Although, as we already stated in Chap. 1 of this book, there is no possibility here

to articulate a systematic history of SSPs, it still makes sense to add a note or two in
this department, and the present chapter, focused on lyrics, is possibly the most
appropriate opportunity, as questions of lyrical contents seem to be the main engine
behind the historical development of the genre. As we already mentioned in the first
chapter, if the musical semantic field is—as it is in this book—popular music, we
need to wait until the 19th century before we can proceed to adequately historicize
the repertoires of social protest. The fact that (we said that too) some countries had
started enjoying freedom of speech as a result of the crucial evolution of democratic
ideals during the Enlightenment, put musicians (as well as other artists) in the

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 33

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1_3
34 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

position to address more directly and more extensively issues such as social and
economic inequality and discrimination of minorities or socially-disadvantaged
groups.
Around the late 1830s, we begin finding musical acts that we can ascribe to the
area of “popular music” in the modern sense of the term and that are devoted to
perform and spread songs with an explicitly “committed” attitude towards social
concerns. As Western Europe and North America were possibly the quickest to
establish important socio-economic conditions for an actual music industry to
develop (an industry that was initially based on the business of sheet music and of
course performances, and that later was fueled by the invention of mechanical
reproduction devices such as the phonograph and the gramophone), it is no wonder
that the earliest examples of proper SSPs (in the sense we define them in this book)
came from these geographical areas. In order to find at least the embryos for
convincingly popular forms of music in other parts of the world, we need to wait
for the end of the century, or the beginning of the 20th (not forgetting, however,
that several of them existed in early forms that can be ascribed either to folk or to art
music, depending on the cases). Browsing in chronological order through the most
important popular music “schools” outside Europe and North America, we can
shortly mention the following countries/regions: the bases for the Shirei Eretz
Yisrael (“songs of the Israelian land”), the Algerian Raï (“opinion”), the Jamaican
Mento (word of uncertain etymology) and the Taraab (“having fun with music”)
from the Swahili area (Tanzania and Kenya in particular) are set in the 1880s, but
will properly develop only in the early 20th century. The Turkish Kanto (“song”),
the Greek Rebetiko (uncertain etymology), and Tango (a genre that developed in
various parts of South-America and even in Finland) move their first steps in the
1900s, after several decades in which they all existed in early forms not ascribable
to “popular music”. Finally, the so-called C-pop (the popular music of China) and
the Calypso (probably from the word “Kaiso” which means “Go on”) from Trinidad
and Tobago emerge in the 1910s, followed a little bit later by the Egyptian school
(the one most identifiable with “pop”, at least in Western terms) of the Arabian
song. Significantly, many of these genres include, already in their early stages of
development, songs that address social problems, particularly poverty and
inequality.
Back to the first half of 19th century, Europe and America were of course “white
man’s worlds”, and that applied also to the musical repertoires of social protest.
However, there was a solid “black” musical tradition in America, which had stayed
underground for decades, that finally emerged during the second half of the century,
mostly thanks to the social achievements of the American Civil War: I am of course
talking about the “spirituals” (and subsequent derivative genres), whose first col-
lection was published by The Fisk Jubilee Singers (an African-American a cappella
ensemble of a certain notoriety—that, too, an achievement in itself) in 1872,
therefore marking the induction of this repertoire into the realm of “popular music”
(other spirituals had been published before in individual form). As we know, many
spirituals operate on a double content level: religious faith and social protest, with
the latter often disguised as the former.
3.1 More Historical Premises 35

All considered, and following a development that concerns all Euro-American

popular music repertoires, the musical scenario of SSPs was, around the late 19th
century, articulated through three main stylistic roots: the European white folk
tradition (including the one that eventually came to form American folk and country
music), the European white classical tradition (in particular opera and lieder, whose
crossover with folk tunes, operated by songwriters like Stephen Foster or events
like the Piedigrotta Festival in Italy, was essential in making popular music a genre
that had its own stylistic identity), and the American black folk tradition of the
spirituals, that eventually came to form the hardcore of blues, jazz and rock.

3.2 Typologies of Lyrics

Putting aside obvious cultural differences (e.g. topics like slavery abolition were
certainly more an issue in America, as national independentist movements were at
this point more a European subject), and—occasionally—different tones (the ironic
and sarcastic accents of certain European performers in the early 20th century, such
as Bruant, Georgius or Weill, is possibly a less recurrent rhetorical strategy in
American performers), these three musical roots managed to produce four lyrical
templates that have since dominated the SSPs songwriting strategies, with just a
minor (but significant) variation introduced—it is my suggestion—in the 1960s (see
point 3 of the list, or the whole Sect. 3.2.3). Although the connection is not
exclusive, it seems to me there is a causal relation between the three musical school
and the four lyrical templates (see also Fig. 3.1):
(1) European white folk may have had something to do with developing the writing
of SSPs with a strong narrative-descriptive attitude, as a possible derivation
from the storytelling-inclined tradition of the French medieval virelai or
chanson balladée and all the developments that followed. In this type of SSP,
the lyrics appear as a vehicle for accurate and pinpointed social comments and
descriptions, regardless of their strictly poetical inputs (which are often there,
anyway), and particularly oriented towards a realistic depiction of events or
claims. As we hear in Woody Guthrie’s “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos” (a.k.a.
“Deportee”, 1961): “The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning, The
oranges piled in their creosote dumps. They’re flying ’em back to the Mexican
border, To pay all their money to wade back again. Goodbye to my Juan,
goodbye, Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria. You won’t have your
names when you ride the big airplane, All they will call you will be deportees”.
We shall call this particular SSP the analytical type, and we can summarize its
attitude with the following statement: “This thing is wrong in our society: let me
explain you what it is and let us change it!”
(2) American black folk may have had something to do with developing the
writing of SSP’s with a prayer-like attitude, as a possible derivation from
36 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

Fig. 3.1 The four typologies of lyrics and their possible musical roots

African American spirituals and genres that followed. In this type of SSP, the
lyrics convey a feeling of wait and hope, which may or may not be introduced
by a certain description of what one hopes to change (normally, when this
description appears, it is hardly as accurate as in the analytical SSP). There is no
specific call to action, but rather a wish that “something will happen”. As we
hear in “Go Down Moses”, the famous traditional spiritual first published in
1861: “O let us all from bondage flee, Let my people go, And let us all in Christ
be free, Let my people go. Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land, Tell ol’
Pharaoh, Let my people go. We need not always weep and mourn, Let my
people go, And wear these slavery chains forlorn, Let my people go”.
We shall call this particular SSP the spiritual type, and we can summarize its
attitude with the following statement: “This thing is wrong in our society: let us
hope it will change!”
3.2 Typologies of Lyrics 37

(3) European white art music may have had something to do with developing the
writing of SSPs with a particularly symbolic and metaphorical attitude, as a
possible derivation from opera songs and, particularly, German Romantic lie-
der, which were basically poems set to music. In this type of SSP, the lyrics do
not point at any particular problem, nor do they provide recognizable
descriptions: their contextualization is often deduced by the very circumstance
originating the given song. As we read in James Oppenheim’s “Bread and
Roses” (1911): “As we come marching, marching, un-numbered women dead,
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread, Small art and love
and beauty their trudging spirits knew, Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight
for roses, too”. This song was actually only a poem, before Mimi Fariña (Joan
Baez’s younger sister) put music to it in 1970. Its initial inspiration was a
speech delivered in 1911 by labor union leader Rose Schneiderman, in which
the passage “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too”, meant
to underline the need for dignity and respect, not just survival, in a worker, was
singled out as a slogan, inspiring not only the poem but also events like the
textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts during January–March 1912 (the
“Bread and Roses strike”). So, even though the circumstances that generated it
were very recognizable, the poem as such shows no specific attachment to any
particular event (no dates, no names, no places mentioned), and—as an actual
song—it went on to become (as in Fariña’s intentions, of course) a general
anthem for the feminist and the labor movements.
We shall call this particular SSP the universalistic type, and we can summarize
its attitude with the following statement: “There are things wrong in society: let us
change them!”
(4) Finally, a cross-cutting category, that stems from all traditions (in fact, it stems
from humanity as such) is the one that employs satire, sarcasm, irony, parody
and others as tools to convey a given message. These kinds of approaches have
of course been present throughout the whole history of human art, and more
often than not, their main goal was exactly that of emphasizing (and exposing
to ridicule) various social problems. Furthermore, they would often be the best
strategy for avoiding censorship, oppression or general hostility towards
politically-charged opinions that the establishment would not appreciate. “Aalu
Andey” (“potato and egg curry”), a song written by the Pakistani indie band
Bayghairat Brigade (Shameless Brigade), uses the humorous excuse of a boring
dish to take on taboo subjects such as Islamic fundamentalism, social violence
and the Pakistani army and politicians, in ways that are a bit too dangerous for a
country that, officially a Republic, has always had a problematic relationship
with democracy and freedom of speech. The potato and egg curry of the title (a
dish that the song’s protagonist is entirely bored of: “I don’t want to eat it, I find
it disgusting”) becomes a way of lamenting how Pakistani society inflicts the
same old problems and injustices to its people year after year.
38 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

We shall call this particular SSP the satirical type, and we can summarize its
attitude with the following statement: “There are things wrong in society: let us
make fun of them, so we understand them better!”.

3.2.1 The Analytical Type

Let us now see these three typologies of SSP lyrics in more detail. As we said, the
analytical SSP is particularly noted for raising attention around a given subject, in a
process of description and analysis of specific event/s taken place, or about to take
place, in specific times and locations. That is however not the end of the story. In
many cases (it is of course difficult to draw statistics, here, but—by instinct—I
would say in the majority of the cases) the dimension of description is accompanied
by a dimension of prescription/synthesis, that is, an actual claim for social change.
The descriptive stage (normally entrusted to the strophes of the song, tradi-
tionally more narration-inclined) may vary in—so to speak—journalistic accuracy,
going from very detailed accounts to vague, yet recognizable references: a place, a
name, a date or an action are normally mentioned, and the listener has no particular
difficulties in realizing what exactly the song is about. The prescriptive part (usu-
ally, the refrain) may appear in the obvious form of explicit invitation to action
(“Roll it along! Roll it along! Roll it along! Thro’ the nation Freedom’s car,
Emancipation”—as heard in the Hutchinson Family Singers’ “Get off the Track” ,
1844) or also in more subtle disguises, such as the celebration of a given
event/character (“Glory, Glory, Hallelujah … His soul goes marching on”—as
heard in the very famous “John Brown’s Body”, 1861) that “suggests” the listener
sympathizes, and therefore to “join the chorus” with concrete actions.
In earlier stages of my research (such as Martinelli 2013a, b), I called this type of
SSP classic, instead of analytical, because I believed that it can be considered the
most traditional and typical SSP (and I still do, despite opting for a term, “ana-
lytical”, that better embodies questions of contents, and does not misguide the
reader into thinking that there are no contemporary forms of this song type). Since
their establishment, the main goal of SSPs have been first to inform (with details)
about something unjust that happened (or that may happen, if nothing is done to
prevent it), and second to invite everybody to take action in order to change that
state of things. Particularly before the invention of the cylinders and the other
devices that rapidly followed, SSPs were mostly, if not solely, composed with the
intention of being performed in specific events of protest, such as rallies and
demonstrations, or anyway performances where a given issue could be effectively
exposed to the audience. For various reasons, and depending on the situations, thus,
these songs needed a combination of “pro-active” and “educational” elements.
Predictably, the analytical SSP is often a song to which a “specific relation” with
its context is assigned (as we have seen in Sect. 2.1), as it normally refers to a
pinpointed circumstance. It often produces a hic et nunc type of message, though
the latter can of course be generalized and applied to more contexts. Also, as hinted
3.2 Typologies of Lyrics 39

already, the analytical inclination is often better conveyed through a strophe-refrain

structure (including a regular ballad-form—another connection with the European
folk tradition), which allows a thorough description of the theme in the strophes and
a “tagline”-styled prescription in the refrain: in short, the classic SSP wants the
listener to “know” and to “act”.
In order to make a prototypical exemplification, I chose Mojo Nixon’s “My Free
Will Just Ain’t Willin’”, a song that is exactly structured in traditional ballad form,
ABABAB, where the lyrics are reiterated in B, the refrain, and varied in A, the
strophes. Set to a country and western musical style, the song is a ferocious attack
to the US government for the Iraq war, presented from the perspective of a character
who refuses to take part in it (probably a deserter, but of course the refusal could
also be more symbolic). The three stanzas of the strophes describe the decision of
deserting (“I ain’t gonna fight in your stinking war”) and the opinion that the “I”
character of the song has of this war, making sure, as we said, that we get specific
references to times, people and places (“The people of Iraq, they ain’t my enemy,
The Mesopotamians ain’t done nothing to me, I hate this murdering, I hate this
stinking war, I ain’t gonna be George Bush’s whore”).
The refrain, repeated identically after each strophe, has this slogan quality (and a
catchy, simple melody, as we may imagine) that points the accusatory finger to the
institutions and affirms the character’s free will (which, indeed, is not willing to
take part in the “stinking war”): “You can’t make me kill another man, You can’t
make me drop bombs on this land, You can’t make me a part of all your killing, My
free will just ain’t willing”.
This basic template can of course present some variations. First, an analytical
SSP does not necessarily need to be too “wordy” to give, so to speak, facts and
figures. Neil Young’s “Ohio” , a song written in the aftermath of the Kent State
shootings of May 4, 1970, when the Ohio National Guard killed four unarmed
college students who were demonstrating against Richard Nixon’s Cambodian
Campaign, employs only one four-verse stanza to describe the events: “Tin soldiers
and Nixon coming, We’re finally on our own, This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio”. The rest (which consists in another short stanza, in refrain
form) is the invitation to action: “Gotta get down to it, Soldiers are cutting us down,
Should have been done long ago. What if you knew her, And found her dead on the
ground, How can you run when you know?”
Second, the “description-prescription” dialogue may not be so neatly separated,
but rather blended into a unique discourse where the “action-taking” invitation
flows naturally within the more descriptive part. A good example is the Almanac
Singers’ “Talkin’ Union” (so called because it was written in talking blues style),
which was written with the intention of “educating” workers on how to start a union
and/or encourage them to join one. The song lacks an actual refrain (ideal location,
as we have seen, for the prescriptive passage), so what we have is a single, accurate
(“It ain’t quite this simple, so I better explain”, the song warns) monologue where
the singer, Pete Seeger in this case, informs and incites the workers at the same
time: “Now, if you want higher wages let me tell you what to do, You got to talk to
40 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

the workers in the shop with you. You got to build you a union, got to make it
strong, But if you all stick together, boys, it won’t be long (…) Now you know
you’re underpaid but the boss says you ain’t, He speeds up the work ‘til you’re
‘bout to faint. You may be down and out, but you ain’t beaten, You can pass out a
leaflet and call a meetin’.” Such an approach, however, does not prevent a song to
launch memorable slogans anyway: “Talkin’ Union” certainly stands out for its
conclusive verse “Take it easy, but take it”, which became a catch-phrase for
various situations, not just political ones.
Third, that hic et nunc quality we were mentioning may also not apply to
specifically-circumscribed events/characters, but may extend a little bit to more
general social realities or series of events, which, however, still receive the focused,
analytical treatment that this category requires. The Italian singer-songwriters’
tradition (the so-called cantautori) seemed to be quite partial to this approach,
having provided very accurate and pinpointed SSPs about entire phenomena, social
classes and political movements. The more leftist area of the cantautori (which
anyway covers the majority of them), for instance, produced numerous critiques to
the Italian middle-class (“borghesia”), which at some point (particularly in the
period 1960s to late 1980s) appeared as the public enemy n. 1 of any intellectual
with communist and socialist sympathies: examples include Claudio Lolli’s
“Borghesia”, Giorgio Gaber’s “I borghesi” (a song which has also strongly satirical
components, and that—in turn—bears similarities to Jacques Brel’s satirical “Les
bourgeois”),1 Luca’s Barbarossa’s “Yuppies” (another one with satirical elements),
Franco Trincale’s “Banane e Coca Cola”, and many others.

3.2.2 The Spiritual Type

If the analytical, classic, model of SSP shows the heritage that popular music owes
to “white” folk repertoires, this next typology, which we shall call spiritual (not to
be confused with the so-called negro spirituals we are about to mention, and from
which they however derive), is of course a display of the strong genetic connection
that popular music bears with early African American repertoires, starting from
negro spirituals, and continuing with ragtime, gospel, blues and ultimately rock (the
latter being of course a compromise between blues and country—but it would not
be a scandal to give blues a good 60%, if not more, of the chemical compound that
crucially characterized 20th century music).
As we have already mentioned, Negro spirituals were born as songs of religious
nature that slaves in America would mostly sing during work. While there may

1
In fact, the whole I borghesi, of which the mentioned song is the title track, is a concept-album
about the Italian middle-class.
3.2 Typologies of Lyrics 41

have been examples of songs referred to traditional African religions from the
communities these slaves were from, it is known that very soon (slavery was
introduced in America in the 17th century) slaves were either forced or corrupted
into converting to Christianity—Baptist and Methodist churches, primarily. So, by
the time documentations of the Negro spirituals became available, the songs
exclusively bore contents related to Christian faith.
At the same time, as is very well known, these songs were not just prayers of
religious devotion, but rather slaves would employ them as metaphors for their
condition and hope to put an end to it. To sing about Moses liberating Israel was a
direct, unmistakable way to sing about liberating slaves from slavery. In fact, it has
also been suggested that some spirituals were used as coded messages for escape
plans: a song like “Steal Away to Jesus” would indicate a slave’s intention to
escape (“My Lord, He calls me, He calls me by the thunder, The trumpet sounds
within-a my soul, I ain’t got long to stay here”), and one like “Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot” would even provide specific references to the Underground Railroad, the
legendary network of secret routes and safe houses used by slaves in the
19th-century to escape to free states and Canada, with the aid of freedmen and
abolitionists. Moreover, apparently, there was a whole symbology that would relate
the biblical places and characters appearing in the songs to actual places and
characters in America: the omnipresent Jordan River, for instance, would stand for
the Ohio River, and so forth.
Whether this particular employment of the songs is actual history or just folk-
lore, the fact remains that dozens of Negro spirituals were SSPs in all respects.
Because of their very religious nature, however, they were of a different sort, as
compared to what we have called the analytical type. Unlike the latter, spirituals
were richer in metaphors and symbolism, but had no specific “action plan”, except
that of asking (or, indeed, praying), waiting and hoping that things will change.
Little by little, these characters sedimented into a songwriting model that soon
emancipated from the sole connection with Negro spirituals (or even African
American music in general), and came to identify an increasing number of SSPs. As
compared to the analytical one, a “spiritual SSP” has indeed a less material/secular
component (not necessarily in a religious sense); it tends to be richer in metaphors
and symbols, often drawing from sacred texts or even from private relationships (so
many times blues has used the disguise of a love story to actually address the
society). It also tends to be emotionally involved but operatively passive (whereas,
generalizing, one could say that the analytical SSP tends to be intellectually
involved and operatively active). Also, due to this approach, spiritual SSPs tend to
be contextualized in a general, indirect or phatic way (see Sect. 2.1), addressing
wider instances and themes. When it comes to the concept of “Time Umwelt” that
we mentioned in Sect. 2.2.1, the spiritual SSP is more often than not located in a
“future” environment. Finally, even though the strophe-refrain remains a favorite
choice (but this is also due to the fact that, in general, strophe-refrain songs are
statistically the most recurrent lyrical model), the number of chorus-bridge
42 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

templates increases considerably.2 By “asking” and “hoping”, the spiritual SSP

wants the listener to “have an idea” (rather than knowing specifically) and to “have
faith”. Not rarely, in modern examples, a spiritual type of lyric is coherently
accompanied by a “manneristic” (see Sect. 4.1.4) type of music that may remind of
these early African–American repertoires, as in the gospel-like examples of The
Beatles “Let It Be” (which expresses the hope that “there will be an answer”), or,
even more intentionally, Eros Ramazzotti’s “Se bastasse una canzone” (which
wonders “if a song was enough” to make the world a better place).
A typical example of a (relatively) modern spiritual SSP is of course “We Shall
Overcome”, the civil rights anthem that not incidentally finds its roots in a church
hymn, “I’ll Overcome Some Day”, written by the Reverend Charles Albert Tindley
in 1901. All projected in the future (“We shall overcome”, “We’ll walk hand in
hand”, “We shall all be free”… “someday”), the song expresses hope and confi-
dence that things will change at some point. Although most texts erroneously
attribute a strophe-refrain structure to it, “We Shall Overcome” is in fact a perfect
chorus-bridge song, where the “Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe, We shall
overcome some day”, though repeated identically for seven times (and thus
resembling more a refrain than else), serves the role of the bridge, in opposition to
the more exclamatory, catchy and recognizable choruses (starting from the one that
bears the song’s title) (Fig. 3.2).
Another very good instance is Yusuf Islam’s 1971 “Peace Train” (by then, of
course, the singer was still called Cat Stevens), a song whose lyrical construction
seems to be perfectly tailored for our definition of “spiritual SSP”. It is indeed most
significant that the protagonist of that song waits for the peace train, imploring it to
arrive (“For out on the edge of darkness, There runs the peace train, Peace train take
this country, Come take me home again”), and when it does, everybody is invited to
jump on it (“Peace train sounding louder, Ride on the peace train,
Hoo-ah-eeh-ah-hoo-ah, Come on the peace train”). As a rhetorical device, indeed a
train could have been employed in more active ways: one can jump on the loco-
motive of that train, and drive it towards the “peace” station. Stevens opts instead
for the spiritual choice: he waits and hopes. Significantly, the majority of the verbal
forms employed in the song are not verbs of “action”, but rather states of being:
“Now I’ve been happy lately, Thinking about the good things to come, And I
believe it could be, Something good has begun, I’ve been smiling lately, Dreaming

2
A short explanation is possibly called for here, for the few readers who may be unaware of the
difference between the two formats. The strophe-refrain structure is an essentially narrative form. It
tells a story and, in the refrain, presents the listener with a usually catchy musical statement
(rescue, catharsis, or otherwise). It is a “pleasure that comes after hard work” type of structure:
typifying examples for this format are Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” or Elton John’s “Don’t
Let the Sun Go Down on Me”, two songs that really make one wait and long for the catharsis of
the refrain, after an elaborate construction of the pathos in the strophes. The chorus-bridge form is
by contrast more exclamatory, starting right away with the catchy passage, then proceeding to a
more meditative state. In contrast with the strophe-refrain, the structural motto is more like “Seize
the day!”, and good examples are The Beatles’ early hits like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” or Tin
Pan Alley classics like “Blue Moon” (for more details, see Fabbri 2002: 108–131).
3.2 Typologies of Lyrics 43

Fig. 3.2 Pete Seeger made

“We Shall Overcome” one of
the most recognizable and
most often performed SSPs in
world history (image of public
domain)

about the world as one”. Finally, an interesting familiarity with the original Negro
spirituals also exists in Islam’s choice itself to adopt the metaphor of the train and
verses like “Peace train take this country, Come take me home again”. Such choices
suggest the spirituals’ recurrent theme of the journey, plus we are reminded of
specific songs like the mentioned “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (especially if the
latter’s alleged connection with the Underground Railroad is true) and verses like
“A band of angels coming after me, Coming for to carry me home”.

3.2.3 The Universalistic Type

Unlike the first two categories, rooted in the folk tradition, the universalistic3 SSP
has probably more causal connections with art music, and—as mentioned—with

3
I have been hesitating a little before choosing this term. “Universalism”, as a word, is associated
with more than one philosophical doctrine, related particularly to law and to religion. Besides the
meaning of the word itself, which already connotes an ideological inclination “to fit everywhere”,
we can also use the theological application as a metaphor: whereas, indeed, religious universalism
promotes “universal principles” of most beliefs, and assemble all religions in an inclusive manner
(for instance, by maintaining that, in the end of the day, they are all after an idea of “God” and a—
generally post-mortem—salvation of the soul), the universalistic SSP tends to treat all forms of
social struggle as different variants of a common search for justice, truth and love.
44 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

the opera and lied repertoires of European Romanticism. Although the establish-
ment of popular music as a separate entity is primarily bound to the birth and
growth of the music business, we should not forget that around the same time (first
half of 19th century), a novel artistic identity was being developed as well.
Songwriters and/or lyricists like Stephen Foster, Paul Dresser, members of the
Hutchinson Family Singers, early Fado composers (particularly the Coimbra vari-
ant, the most “cultured” one), Filippo Campanella, Raffaele Sacco and even
Gaetano Donizetti (certainly better known as opera composer, but also author of
several songbooks), understood that an accurate, informed synthesis of folk and art
music elements could actually lead to a whole, new form of musical expression:
songs that could be more accessible than arias or lieder, but also more refined and
cultivated than folk tunes: music for middle classes, one could say, and to an extent
that would be true (also in a historical sense, when one considers the acquisition of
a sheer social centrality of the bourgeoisie in those years).
The Hutchinson Family Singers, as we know, was an ensemble devoted to the
performance of SSPs of different contents, particularly civil rights and social
inequalities. Along with accurately-targeted songs (“analytical” ones), the
Hutchinson’s would not despise writing songs like “If I Were a Voice”, setting to
music a poem by Charles Mackay: “If I were a voice, a persuasive voice, That could
travel the wide world through, I would fly on the beams of the morning light, And
speak to men with a gentle might, And tell them to be true, I would fly, I would fly
over land and sea, Whever a human heart might be, Telling a tale or singing a song,
In praise of right, in blame of wrong”.
Songs like this, which were possibly conceived as more “poetically-crafted”
variants to the analytical SSPs, were not rare, and proved that movements for social
change were not only in need of facts and figures, but also of artistic items of formal
beauty (breads and roses, we could say, paraphrasing the song we mentioned
above). What was lost, in the process, was obviously the specificity of a topic and
its contextualization, but the idea of these songs was certainly not that of providing
a pinpointed analysis of a given problem, but rather providing inspirational anthems
that could project the right motivations and proactiveness on the listener. Plus, the
universalistic SSPs had a “one-size-fits-all” quality that the analytical ones obvi-
ously did not have: “singing a song in praise of right and in blame of wrong” was a
line that the social activist could apply to basically anything s/he would care for, in
a way that “The people of Iraq, they ain’t my enemy”, or “Four dead in Ohio” could
never be.
Finally, the more attentive use of rhetorical figures of speech was also notable.
Besides the obvious and abundant use of metaphors, irony, similes, hyperboles and
the likes (all quite granted strategies in songwriting), SSPs started specializing in
schemes like anaphora (e.g. Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”: “You that build all the
guns, You that build the death planes, You that build all the bombs”), epistrophe
(e.g. “War war is stupid and people are stupid…”, in Culture Club’s “The War
Song”), alliteration (e.g. “With all the will in the world…”, in Elvis Costello’s
“Shipbuilding”), etc.; and tropes like rhetorical question (like, typically, each
strophe in Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind”), pun (as in Mojo Nixon’s “My free
3.2 Typologies of Lyrics 45

will just ain’t willin’”), personification (e.g. Johannesburg becoming Jo’anna in

Eddy Grant’s “Gimme Hope, Jo’anna”), periphrasis (e.g. Rolling Stones’ Street
Fighting Man in place of “rioter”, Tears for Fears’ Politician granny with your high
ideals in place of Margaret Thatcher…), and others.
For more than a century, analytical and universalistic SSPs proceeded hand in
hand in SSP repertoires (even within the same author—Pete Seeger being one of the
prototypical examples), in a complementary, and surely not competitive, fashion.
Moreover, the two types, and the spiritual too, followed an organic pattern of
maturation, reinforcing their strengths and refining their style.
Then, quite suddenly, around the mid-1960s, a rupture occurred, and several
instances of universalistic SSPs became almost antagonistic to the analytical ones.
These new universalistic songs were now not just offering an alternative to the
classic description-to-prescription strategy of the analytical SSP: they were now
actively neglecting any analytical contribution, focusing on (and therefore rein-
forcing) the synthetic phase of the refrain with more effective slogans, generally
supported by more memorable melodies and hooks. Occasionally, the attitude itself
of analyzing a problem would be openly dismissed (something that would have
been unimaginable in songs like “If I Were a Voice” or “Bread and Roses”) as an
unnecessary complication of the message that would in fact reach many more
people if kept simple, basic and direct: “Everybody is talking about revolution,
evolution… this-ism, that-ism… All we are saying is give peace a chance”.
The reasons behind the establishment of this new current are more than a few.
An important one is the increasingly fashionable Hippie philosophy, with its uni-
versal (that is, all but specific) message of love and understanding (a feature
strongly enhanced by the use of recreational drugs, which—among other effects—
inhibit the capacity to focus the attention on anything, let alone complex political
problems).
Secondly, popular music in the 1960s became once and for all a territory of the
youth counterculture,4 and that also means that language and themes became more
and more suitable for an audience not older than 30, generally provided with a
strong ideological impulse to “change things”, but—possibly—less inclined to
point their finger against a specific event or character, in a critical-intellectual sense.
Thirdly, it was the whole audience of these songs to be much more crowded and
therefore heterogeneous in terms of social classes and cultural backgrounds. One
dramatic difference between—say—an American protest singer writing a civil
rights song and a rock band of the British Invasion writing a “Peace and Love”
anthem is that the former would perform his/her piece in front of a small audience
that was generally prepared to hear a song like that, while the rock band would be
already a chart-topping act releasing that track after countless love songs, with
millions of fans ready to buy the record anyway, regardless of the song’s contents.

4
For more on the role of youth counterculture in popular music’s consumption, and particularly its
development in the 1960s, see Shuker (2005: 193–216).
46 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

The least one could expect, given the latter case’s conditions, is a simplification of
the language.
Finally, with all due respect, one can witness—so to speak—a different intel-
lectual weight of the respective protagonists: the transition from a Guthrie to a
Lennon is, among other things, a transition from a character with very clear and
militant political ideas to a rockstar who, in various occasions, had declared his
complete lack of interest towards the idea of voting for any of that “bunch of
idiots5” that were politicians.
This new SSP, thus, came to discuss general and flexible themes, that is, themes
that could be contextualized by the listener, rather than by the author. Slogans like
“All you need is love” or “Let’s get together and feel alright” (from Bob Marley’s
“One Love”) were launched, and it would be up to the audience to actually decide
where and when that sort of message was relevant. It was therefore a 180-degree
turn from the path followed by more traditional SSPs, which instead opted for a
discussion and a description of events circumscribed in time and space, from which,
eventually, the listener could abstract a more global meaning (not rarely, after an
explicit invitation of the song’s author). A song about that specific African
American person, who, there and then, was suffering from racial abuse, would
become a metaphor of the whole struggle for civil rights. On the contrary, from the
mid-1960s onwards, people would first feel that all they need was love, and sec-
ondly, case by case, they would apply the golden rule to the Vietnam War, the
murder of Martin Luther King, etc. Such a step is however performed without the
song’s author’s encouragement.
But there is more. There was not just “simplification”. Along with it, came a
general (and very post-modern) opposition towards any analytical approach to any
given discussion, even when dealing with very general topics. One could write a
song about the need for love as an answer to all of life’s problems, or about the
request for peace as the only relevant request, and at the same time define the idea
of “love” or “peace”, and contextualize it within a discourse that could be at least
oppositional (why is peace preferable to war, and so on). Instead, in this case too, a
choice was made towards a simple (or simplistic) argumentation, mostly consisting
on lack of interest, or straight hostility, towards the unnecessary complications of
life, that supposedly make us lose sight of basic and elementary values like love or
understanding (while, on the contrary, Hill, Guthrie and company had sweated

5
Lennon must have held this conviction all his life, if, at the time of his very last interview for the
American RKS Radio Station (on the 8th of December 1980, a few hours before he was mur-
dered), he was still proudly repeating his complete abstention from voting. In addition, although
the current solidity of the “Political Lennon” myth might make it hard to believe it, a thorough
look at the many interviews released by the ex-Beatle and his wife Yoko Ono during the three
years (1969–1972) of their supposedly intense political commitment, hardly reveals anything more
than two hippie artists, fascinated by positive thinking and “the cosmic solution”, who were very
eager to make a post-modern “happening” out of peace. Sadly, when it comes to “making a point”,
the couple would show a frustrating naivety towards the ideas they would promote (including the
opinion, stated in the occasion of their famous Bed-In campaign, that all Yoko Ono would have
needed to stop Hitler was spending a night with him).
3.2 Typologies of Lyrics 47

buckets in proving the opposite, that is, that life is not as simple as it seems, and
that, in order to fight injustices, we first need to analyze them in depth).
What finally emerged was an almost nihilist songwriting model, which would
promote values like peace, love or freedom as a result of a (often populist) refusal of
politics, actions, ideologies, perhaps culture too. It was within this perspective that a
refrain like “All you need is love” was introduced by a list of actions that one does
not need to take or plan (“There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done, Nothing
you can sing that can’t be sung…”); that “Give peace a chance” targets all those
who chat and waste their time about ideologies (the -isms in the first strophe),
intellectuals, revolution, while “all we are saying” is give peace a chance; that
“Gimme some truth” (on Lennon’s album Imagine) portraits a person who is “sick
and tired” of politicians, primadonnas, narrow-minded people, and simply asks for
“some truth”; that Marvin Gaye thinks that “we’ve got to find a way to bring some
lovin’ here today” (from “What’s Going On?” of course), but he has no suggestions
on how that can be achieved; that the hero that comes to rescue the world from “the
crying of humanity” is a man who plays the hurdy-gurdy “singing songs of love”
(from Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man”), and so on and so forth.
Perhaps it is even more worthy of attention that when The Beatles decided to
record the song “Revolution”, in 1968, the result was that they had not really
decided which side were they on (as in the famous verse “you can count me out/in”,
which was left in this state of ambiguity in the first version of the song, the slow,
bluesy “Revolution #1” released on the White Album), so they opted once again for
the hippie cosmic solution “Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright? Alright…
Alright…”.
Among the consequences of the birth of this new sub-genre, we also witness, for
the first time in history, the establishment of a prototypical theme for SSPs, which
ended up overshadowing the others. This theme is predictably “Peace”: by the late
1960s, the pacifist SSP had stepped over workers’ rights, ecology, women eman-
cipation, civil rights, and so on, becoming, to an extent, the SSP by definition, and
creating the first real cliché of the genre. This eventually generated a non-marginal
amount of admittedly “cheap” SSPs, from all possible performers and contexts, on
which we shall comment in the next paragraph.
On the reasons for this status quo, we need once again to recur to different
factors: the Vietnam War had certainly a big role in this: it was the first
highly-televised and generally media-exposed war, and the first one to be unani-
mously perceived as unnecessary and unjust. Also, it was occurring exactly during
the creative peak of the hippie musical generation (when not even anticipated by
prophetic songs such as Dylan’s “Masters of war”).
“Peace”, it must also be said, has in itself a universal appeal, superior to any
other topic of social concern (certainly back then, but possibly nowadays too,
although world famine and ecology are certainly gaining territory in this special
chart): not all countries may have (or perceive) a racial problem, not all audiences
may sympathize with feminism, not all social classes may welcome workers’
claims, not everybody knows (or cares) about the Third World and the environ-
ment, and so on. Conversely, especially in the 1960s (with the Vietnam war, with
48 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

the Cold War at its diplomatic lowest after the Cuba crisis in 1961, with the 6-days
Arab-Israeli war, and with these and other events breaking through the media),
peace was a highly “fashionable” concern. Peace signs (the V hand gesture and
Gerald Holtom’s symbol) and catch-phrases (“Make love, not war”) spread all over
youth and adult verbal and non-verbal interactions. Philosophers like Bertrand
Russell were more read than Aristotle or Kant. Models in beauty contests started
captivating the jury’s attention by declaring that their dearest wish was not anymore
a handsome and wealthy man (or a man who makes them laugh, as they state more
hypocritically nowadays), but, really, just “peace on Earth”. No wonder pacifist
songs (or pacifist references within a song) started abounding in the discographic
output of those days.
Having said all that, I would still argue that terms like “ignorance” or “lack of
commitment” (probably the words readers are thinking of at the moment) are not
the right ones to describe this new sub-genre and authors of SSPs, which—to start
with—exercised (and still do) on the listener a seductive appeal that in most cases
outdo that of the “traditional” SSPs (it is no coincidence that, despite all the
accurately analytical songs that Seeger wrote, people tend to eternally associate him
to “We Shall Overcome” or “Turn, Turn, Turn”—that is, two songs that one may
call any way except analytical). As previously mentioned, it is indeed intrinsic to
this new songwriting model the adoption of a “slogan-based” strategy, with easy
and catchy refrains that are perfectly suitable to be sung in chorus and repeated
ad libitum. The descriptive parts tend to disappear: the listener is invited “not to
waste time” and to “act”.
Helpful to this general musical improvement was the fact this new generation
featured authors and performers who were generally more inventive and committed
musicians than the previous generation (which, in turn, mostly consisted of
inventive and committed poets). Lennon and McCartney might not have known
whether to be counted in or out in a “revolution” , but they knew very well how to
make a chart-topping classic out of it.
A songwriter like John Lennon, indeed, established his ultimate artistic profile
exactly through this type of song (that will ensure him an enduring post-mortem
reputation as spokesman for the pacifist movement): besides the already-mentioned
ones, we shall add at least “Instant Karma” (“We all shine on, Like the moon and
the stars and the sun…”), “Power to the people”, the obvious “Imagine”, “Happy
Xmas” (“War is over, if you want it”) and some others. As a matter of fact, he had
tried to “speak” a more analytical idiom of the genre, but the results were rather
disappointing (with the notable exception of “Working class hero”), and culminated
with a concept-album of SSPs, entitled Sometime in New York City, in which
Lennon’s songwriting, both in musical and lyrical sense, possibly reached the
historical low of his post-Beatles career. It is perhaps not by chance that this album
marked the end of the politically-committed phase of the English singer (the album
was released in 1972, and, from the next album onwards, love and autobiographical
songs became much more recurrent than social statements, up to the family-oriented
final album Double Fantasy that some critics thought was more appropriate for his
ex-partner Paul McCartney than for the author of “Power to the people”).
3.2 Typologies of Lyrics 49

3.2.4 The Satirical Type

The satirical type of SSP is, as we already mentioned, a transversal model rooted in
basically all musical traditions (as much as every form of art has always employed
humorous strategies to convey a given message, particularly one of social dis-
content). I use the word “satire” because it has a recognizable status within the
history and the aesthetics of arts, and because it is a recurrent rhetoric strategy in
artistic manifestations of social protest, but in fact all forms of ridiculization (hu-
morous as well as not-so-humorous—let us not forget that many satires are actually
not meant for laughing) apply here: satire, mockery, sarcasm, irony, burlesque,
macchietta, parody, etc.
As a subgenre of SSPs, this “laughter will bury you” approach has appeared
from the very start of any musical repertoire vaguely meant to raise awareness on a
social problem. Documentations of political satires date back to ancient Egypt and
have been a constant throughout human history, so it is no wonder that when SSPs
appeared, in the modern “popular” format we are discussing in this monograph,
ridiculization was a constitutive element of many of them. The Hutchinson Family
Singers, whom we have already mentioned a few times and who are often regarded
as the first true American protest singers, had already songs like “The Calomel
Song” in their repertoire, a ferocious satire against trickster doctors who would
abuse of expensive “magic potions” (like the calomel, which was a compound of
mercury): “Since calomel has been their toast, How many patients have they lost,
How many hundreds have they killed, Or poisoned with their calomel”.
In both Chaps. 6 and 8, the case studies will focus on a band (the Lithuanian
Antis) and a song (the Italian Alberto Rabagliati’s “Quando canta Rabagliati”) of
highly humorous/satirical contents: moreover, while talking about the so-called
musical “X type” of the SSP in Sect. 4.1.5, I will mention additional cases of songs
with satirical lyrical contents, so I shall just offer one example in this very para-
graph, with the intention of filling a gap that the other instances will not cover: a
parody of an existing song. “The Preacher and the Slave” is a song written by Joe
Hill in 1911, and was indeed conceived as a parody of the religious hymn “In the
Sweet Bye and Bye”. The Industrial Workers of the World, an international labor
union that was founded in 1905 of which Hill was member of and that was com-
monly known as the Wobblies, was very active in organizing migrant workers in
lumber and construction camps (Joe Hill himself was a Swedish migrant, his real
name being Joel Emmanuel Hägglund). An organization the workers were often
dealing with, as they returned to the cities, was the Salvation Army (which they
satirized as the “Starvation Army”), and several songs were written as parodies the
Salvation Army’s hymns, using their melodies and changing lyrics. “The Preacher
and the Slave” was one of them, and among other things, became very famous for
Hill’s coinage of the phrase “pie in the sky” (nowadays used in many contexts to
describe an unrealistic or illusory promise, concept or notion).
If we for instance compare one strophe and one in the original hymn and in
Hill’s parody, we notice that the topic is the same: paradise after death. But while
50 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

the Salvation Army talks about it as a real, beautiful place to aim to while working
hard in earthly life, Hill literally takes the p**s out of it, emphasizing how heaven
does not exist and how the church (servant of those in power) use it as an excuse to
avoid people’s real needs:

There’s a land that is fairer than day, Long-haired preachers come out every night,
And by faith we can see it afar; Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
For the Father waits over the way But when asked how ‘bout something to eat
To prepare us a dwelling place there They will answer with voices so sweet:

In the sweet by and by, You will eat, bye and bye,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore; In that glorious land above the sky;
In the sweet by and by, Work and pray, live on hay,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.

3.3 Conclusions: The Recent Years

and the “Bono-Ization”

Regardless of any “conflict” among SSP styles, none of the four types really had the
power to overshadow the others: they all co-exist in current repertoires, and ele-
ments of complementarity still persist (analytical songs make people think, spiritual
ones make them hope, and universalistic ones give them something to sing on the
streets). The history of popular music has always had room for all, although uni-
versalistic SSPs have possibly gained more territory in the recent years, particularly
via bands like U2 or big benefit events. Still, the torches of analytical and spiritual
songs have been carried by acts of equal fame and global impact, as superstars like
Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson, respectively, prove: a song like “American
Skin (41 Shots)” easily qualifies for a quintessential “analytical” profile, in its
pinpointed reference to the 1999 shooting of 23-year-old immigrant Amadou Diallo
by the New York Police (“41 shots, Lena gets her son ready for school, She says,
‘On these streets, Charles, You’ve got to understand the rules, If an officer stops
you, promise me you’ll always be polite, And that you’ll never ever run away,
Promise Mama you’ll keep your hands in sight’”), as well as “Earth Song” is
arguably the ultimate spiritual song of the last 25 years (“Did you ever stop to
notice, All the blood we’ve shed before, Did you ever stop to notice, The crying
Earth the weeping shores?… What have we done to the world, Look what we’ve
done”). As for satirical songs, they have always existed and always will, either as
single episodes within a “serious” artist’s repertoire (e.g. George Michael’s “Shoot
the Dog”), or as explicit “artistic program” of politically-committed acts (the
mentioned Mojo Nixon, the Canadian Nancy White, etc.)
However, in drawing some conclusions to this chapter, it may be worthwhile to
spend some more words on the aforementioned mainstream-ization (and conse-
quent frequent cheapening) of the SSP, in recent years. Social protest, by the end of
3.3 Conclusions: The Recent Years and the “Bono-Ization” 51

the 1960s, was not only a product of the anti-establishment, alternative environ-
ments: it had become the establishment! From being ostracized or banned by the
system, these songs had become the songs of the system, and the phenomenon
expanded like wild fire all over the world. In 1987, the most followed, institutional
and politically-alien musical contest in Italy, the Sanremo Festival, witnessed the
victory of the all-star trio Umberto Tozzi, Gianni Morandi and Enrico Ruggeri, with
a song called “Si può dare di più” (“We can give more”)—an extremely generic
Live Aidish song which turned out to be the first Festival-winner song with pacifist
contents. Interestingly, the song became (and still is) the official anthem of the
charity project Nazionale dei Cantanti, a football team composed of Italian singers
(including, at the time, the three mentioned) who play fundraising friendly games
with other VIP teams of similar nature.
The Bulgarian band Shturcite, active since the early 1967, had a prominent
cultural role in the democratization of Bulgaria during the Iron Curtain years. The
group (still active) carries a distinctive Beatlesesque quality in their repertoire and
performances6: it is therefore no wonder that, in 1990, at times of great political
changes in Bulgaria, the band released “Az sym prosto Chovek” (“I’m only
human”), a pacifist song faithfully manufactured on the Lennonesque model (from
the musical to the lyrical dimension, the latter proceeding in the same
anti-intellectual—particularly anti-ideological—way of the band’s illustrious col-
league: “I’m not a communist, I’m not a terrorist, I’m not an extremist… I’m only
human”). The song came to be a true anthem of the New Democracy movement,
still regularly sung in political rallies of democratic parties. Incidentally, the same
year Kiril Marichkov (band member and author of the song) was elected member of
the Grand National Assembly with the Union of Democratic Forces party.
To limit ourselves to just three examples, the most recent one—at the time I am
writing—comes from the Latvian singer Aisha, who participated in the 2010 edition
of Eurovision with a frankly pathetic wannabe SSP called “What for?”. The song
displayed one of the most unfortunate set of lyrics I had the chance to be exposed
to: a series of What for’s with a sinister “Blowing in the Wind-crosses-Earth Song”
intention (“What for do mothers cry? What for do people live until they die? Why
does the wind still blow and blood still leaks?”, etc.) that culminated with an
assassination of poetry: “Only Mister God knows, but his phone is out of reach”.
This song, plus some others in recent years (including of course the much more
accurate and poetically-decent “1944”, the Ukrainian entry for, and winner of,
Eurovision 2016) managed to break through the allegedly-inviolable interdiction to
politically-charged song in the famous song contest.
However, no reflection on the commercialization and trivialization of SSPs
would be complete without mentioning the modern massive presence of charity
concerts, such as Live Aid, Knebworth ‘90 or Conspiracy of Hope, and charity
songs, featuring the inevitable All-Star cast trading their microphone verse after
verse (from “Do They Know It’s Christmas” onwards). This kind of initiatives has

It is certainly no coincidence that the band name “Shturcite” means in Bulgarian “Crickets”.
6
52 3 Songs of Social Protest and Lyrics

raised harsh criticism over their “very vague commitment” and their excessive
spectacularization, from the part of hard-core politically-committed intellectuals. In
particular, the Canadian journalist Naomi Klein (whose book No Logo is a bible for
the no-global movement), released in 2007 an interview for CNN (see Delaney
2007), pointing the finger against the “Bono-ization” (from Bono Vox, evidently)
of social protest, that is, the organization of posh events where VIPs show off on the
“catwalk” and the audience wave the plastic bracelets distributed for the occasion
(as the white one of the Make Poverty History campaign): Klein considers this
strategy far less effective (and sincere) than the classic demonstrations and strikes.
Her words (which I here assemble from different bits of the interview) perfectly
encapsulate the point we are trying to make here:
The Bono-ization of protest particularly in the UK has reduced discussion to a much safer
terrain. It was the stadium rock model of protest—there’s celebrities and there’s spectators
waving their bracelets. It’s less dangerous and less powerful than grass roots street
demonstrations. […] What’s complicated about the space that Bono and Geldof are
occupying is that it’s inside and outside at the same time—there’s no difference. […] The
story of globalization is the story of inequality. What’s been lost in the Bono-ization is
ability to change these power structures. There are still the winners and losers, people who
are locked in to the power structures and those locked out. […] What they’ve tapped into is
a market niche. There’s nothing that’s inherently wrong with these initiatives except when
they make radical claims that it’s going to end poverty. […] We have had mass social
movements that are messy—and that leads to some kind of negotiation and some kind of
representation. What I see from the Bono camp is that they dismiss street protest as bunch
as gripers whereas they (Bono) are being constructive because they engage with power, but
if you look at the history of the labor movement its people outside trying to enforce change.
[…] Charity concerts are pathetic, just pathetic and a way to recorporate the issue. It
changes nothing. It’s enjoyable but from a political point of view it’s a waste of time. It
diverts attention away from taking action and protest. Nobody ever changes anything from
attending a concert. […] I think people go to concerts because it’s fun but I don’t get a
sense from anyone I talk to that it’s effective politically. […] The classic model of social
change is that you need people on the inside talking to people in power and people on the
outside shaking up the establishment—a combination of the two getting results. (Klein,
quoted in Delaney 2007)

References

Delaney, Brigid. 2007. The Bono-ization of Activism. http://www.naomiklein.org/reviews/bono-

ization-activism. Retrieved 27 February 2016.
Fabbri, Franco. 2002. Il suono in cui viviamo. Roma: Arcana Editrice.
Martinelli, Dario. 2013a. La canzone di protesta sociale come genere musicale: proposte per una
classificazione semiotica. Lexia 13–14: 227–242.
Martinelli, Dario. 2013b. Popular music, social protest and their semiotic implications. New Sound
42/II: 41–52.
Shuker, Roy. 2005. Popular Music: The Key Concepts. London/New York: Routledge.
Chapter 4
Songs of Social Protest and Music

Abstract This chapter offers a classification of the musical songwriting strategies

of SSPs. Five musical types are emphasized: (i) Simple (simple instrumentations,
catchy melody, etc., usually found in genres like country, world, blues, and various
singer-songwriters schools), (ii) Solemn (mainstream, pop quality, lavish arrange-
ments and big productions, typical of charity events); (iii) Aggressive (usually
emerging from the underground/alternative scene, and normally found in genres
like indie-rock or hip hop); (iv) Manneristic (a rarer type that displays reminiscence
to acts/genres/periods generally acknowledged as quintessentially pertinent to
social protest; (v) X (a black box for all those instances which reflect the specific
artistic paradigm of single authors or genres, an explicit refusal for categorizations,
or songs that simply elude any of the previous four types). The chapter is concluded
with a summary of the whole model presented in the first four chapters of the book.

4.1 Typologies of Music

This present chapter concludes the exposition of the theoretical model, returning,
like in Chap. 1, on the idea of SSPs as a musical genre, that is, as a semantic field
that is characterized not only, as we normally witness in the existing literature, by
lyrical, contents-related, elements, but also by musical traits and musemes. As such,
this chapter represents the third and final corner of our triadic contexts-lyrics-music
model.
Resuming a bit on what we said in Chap. 1, an SSP is often written with some
kind of practical application of political type in mind: a demonstration, a gathering,
an awareness- or fund-raising project, and so on. That makes SSPs a form of
functional music (which we have compared to film music, for instance) that requires
inherently musical forms of codification. For example, we emphasized that an SSP
might be performed by music amateurs and therefore should be easy to memorize
and reproduce; plus, because of its usually collective exploitation, it also has to
have the capacity to create or enhance group feeling. For those purposes, we noticed
that an SSP has a set of “musical” problems to solve, and may be more effective if it

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 53

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1_4
54 4 Songs of Social Protest and Music

uses a common and easy-to-carry instrumentation, simple and accessible harmonic

structures, basic rhythmic structures, catchy hooks and/or refrains, and a
culturally-connoted (and recognizable) sound.
Having said and hopefully accepted that, we can proceed to build up more layers
to the discourse, and consider more complex musical choices and gestures. To
begin with, and we have seen it in the previous chapters, SSPs have undergone a
number of developing processes that involved at least geographical, historical,
social, economic, stylistic and individual variables, and this poses at least the
following problems:
(1) An SSP author may or may not want to compromise to the above-mentioned
rules of simplicity and accessibility, and in fact s/he may not necessarily intend
to have his/her song performed in a typical event of social protest. This can
easily lead to SSPs that do not follow those stylistic “guidelines” that we
mentioned above and more thoroughly in Sect. 1.2.
(2) An SSP may be constructed within an existing, culturally and historically
more codified, genre, and that of course establishes a priority scale by which
the SSP gives way to the more recognizable genre. If, say, a heavy metal band
writes an SSP (e.g. Rage Against the Machine’s “Take the Power Back”), all
chances are that the song will be fully recognizable within the heavy metal
stylistic features.
(3) To issue a statement of social protest means many things. First of all, there are
variations to what we intend to achieve from the protest. From wanting to turn
the world upside down to luring our Facebook contacts to put a “like” on our
statuses is a long, long way, and there are literally hundreds of big and small
achievements in the middle, that range from changing a law to having a place
accessible to PWDs, from increasing a salary to donating some coin to a
charity project. Each and all of these goals require different lyrical and musical
“marketing strategies”, in other words different SSPs.
(4) Also, to issue a statement of social protest means involves different attitudes.
Putting it trivially, an SSP may be written with an angry face, a sad face or
even a laughing one, as we have seen. It may involve passion and/or reason,
hope and/or disillusionment, wish for change and/or wish for preservation, and
so forth. In this case, too, different artistic decisions, in constructing the SSP,
are called for.
For all these reasons, plus several others that pertain to the general
problem-solving process in songwriting, I consider it necessary to attempt a clas-
sification of “musical types” of SSPs that may interact transversally with existing
and more obvious ones (such as other genres themselves). I do not want, in other
words, to compile this chapter by suggesting the existence of, say, “rock” SSPs,
“blues” SSPs, “rap” SSPs, etc., because that would be like reinventing the wheel.
I am much more interested in seeing how those geographical/historical/
economic/etc. variables can be effectively grouped into clusters that generate a
4.1 Typologies of Music 55

classification, as we said, by attitudes, by “marketing strategies”, by autonomy or

dependence from the culturally more codified genres.
Still keeping in mind my disclaimer about the risk for superficiality but at the
same time the scholarly relevance and the necessity of categorizations (Sect. 1.3), I
ended up isolating five relevant musical types worth of attention: The simple type,
the solemn type, the aggressive type, the manneristic type, and the (mysterious) X
type. None of these is mutually exclusive, and it is very possible that within the
same song more than one type co-exists (Fig. 4.1).

4.1.1 The Simple Type

The simple SSP is not just the first type we list here, but it is probably the foremost.
It is often aimed to a direct employment in events of social protest, and tends to fall
into the already-discussed prototype of simple instrumentations, catchy melody,
easy rhythmic patterns, etc.: it is often found in genres like country, world, blues,
and others with a distinctive folk matrix, and it is most of the times the chosen
musical profile for singer-songwriters of various countries.
Similarly to the “analytical type” in lyrics, the simple musical type is probably
the most “classic” one there is, and the one that most listeners are likely to associate
to the expression itself of “protest song”, or to its iconography: a young Bob Dylan

Fig. 4.1 The five typologies of musical strategy

56 4 Songs of Social Protest and Music

with guitar and harmonica, Woody Guthrie’s guitar with the handwritten inscription
“This machine kills fascists” on it, the existential/intellectual looks of a French
chansonnier invariably holding a cigarette or even a pipe (Georges Brassens, bien
sûr). To an extent, the more “complex” an SSP gets, the less credible it tends to
appear to a good portion of the audience. A basic guitar-and-voice, “first-take”,
“plug-and-play” approach is often considered more suitable to an SSP than complex
orchestra-based or electronic multi-tracks arrangements. This of course calls into
question the concept of “authenticity”, which I have extensively discussed in
Martinelli (2010a, 2016), and which would deserve separate treatment. Let us just
say, for the purposes of the present paragraph, that there are not only stylistic
reasons why the simple SSP receives the ethically-sound status of “authenticity”
and therefore political credibility. For instance, in socio-economic terms, the impact
of music on people in terms of social phenomenon and (when it is the case)
financial business generates significant dualisms evaluated in the form of ethical
statements. The “simple” song is often associated to the alternative/marginal/cult
musical environment, while the over-produced one goes with the commercial
mainstream, that is, the “establishment”. The same goes with the opposition
indie/major, referred to small, independent recording companies or studios, as
opposed to big, multinational ones (like Sony, Columbia, EMI…). The equation
simple = alternative/indie becomes a powerful formula for the political credibility
of an SSP, especially when it is accompanied by a certain image: the protest singer
will not dress too “corporate”, or look too tidy, or smile too much in photographs,
etc. The mentioned iconic image of Woody Guthrie embracing the “This machine
kills fascists” guitar remains an antonomasia (Fig. 4.2): casually dressed in a
checked shirt, sailor hat, untidy hair, looking serious and inspired, 2-day beard,
fingers with dirty nails (the hands of a worker) and playing an acoustic guitar (and

Fig. 4.2 A famous image of

Woody Guthrie, or: a crash
course on how to look like a
perfect “protest singer”
(image of public domain)
4.1 Typologies of Music 57

on this guitar, the legendary inscription is handwritten), Guthrie expresses in that

picture all that one comes to expect from a protest singer (in fact, wanting to split
hairs, also the background of that image contributes to the idea: we see a door and a
wall that need renovation, connoting a not-very-posh home environment. Plus, the
vicinity of these items to the subject suggests also a small room).
We have extensively discussed “Give Peace a Chance” in Sect. 1.2.2, and that
song certainly is a prototype of this simple type, so perhaps there is no need to
engage into another analysis, here. One can just recall that literally hundreds of the
most famous SSPs belong to this category: Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind”
(guitar, harmonica, no vocal harmonies, ballad form, three chords in total), Fabrizio
De Andrè’s “La Guerra di Piero” (“Piero’s war”—three guitars, no vocal har-
monies, fourteen musically-identical strophes repeated, five chords in total), Woody
Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” (one guitar, no vocal harmonies, seven
musically-identical strophes repeated, three chords in total), etc.

4.1.2 The Solemn Type

The solemn SSP is the most radio-sexy and chart-friendly kind. It tends to have a
mainstream, pop quality, with lavish arrangements and big productions, and in 99%
of the cases, it is the musical profile chosen by charity songs like “Do They Know
It’s Christmas?”, “We Are the World” and the likes. By no coincidence, when these
projects remake an existing song, and this song happens not to have those
pompous-epic qualities, the production makes sure that it will now acquire them, in
form of an extended length, the traditional microphone-trading among popstars,
tons of extra reverb, more instruments in the arrangement, and so forth. More,
bigger, longer, thicker. A quick confrontation between the quiet, gospel-like
melancholy of The Beatles’ “Let It Be” and the treatment received by this song in
1986 for the Ferry Aid charity project, will immediately clarify the point.
When it takes the guise of the charity-song, the solemn type is, in a way, the
total, ideological, opposite of the simple type, and not only because it replaces the
small with the big, the basic with the fully-accessorized, the alternative with the
mainstream, the indie with the major. Rather, whereas simpler (and more tradi-
tional) forms of SSP challenge the system by emphasizing their faults and injus-
tices, taking therefore a bottom-up approach, the charity SSP is a system-friendly,
top-down, song, exactly for those reasons Naomi Klein was so effective in
describing while talking about “Bono-ization” (Delaney 2007). In a sense, the
solemn SSP, with its mainstream “everybody-will-love-it” quality has a reassuring
nature: it seems to tell the average, politically-indifferent, listener “Don’t worry, this
is not real politics: it’s just about feeling good and perhaps donating some spare
change to charity!”.
However, it would be a mistake to think that solemn SSPs are only manifested in
the form of charity-songs and/or in pro-establishment clothes. As a matter of fact, they
are a very recurrent form of SSP, and an increasingly common one after the 1960s
58 4 Songs of Social Protest and Music

(which, again, turns out to be a key-decade for many of our reflections. In this
particular case, I am convinced that the first solemn SSP, in a contemporary sense,1 is
“All You Need Is Love”, with its pompous intro, its full orchestration, its epic tones,
its singalong finale, and not least the circumstances that inspired it2). Songs like Peter
Gabriel’s “Biko”, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”, “Let the Sunshine In”
from the Hair musical, and many others, are perfect examples of anti-establishment,
bottom-up (and censored, in Hair’s case)—and yet solemn—SSPs.

4.1.3 The Aggressive Type

Usually emerging from the underground/alternative scene, the aggressive SSP is the
kind of song we find most often in genres like indie–rock, rap, punk, heavy metal,
grunge, and others that are—so to speak—naturally inclined to be angry, in both
music and lyrics (Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” is a prototype of coherence in
that respect). However, and more significantly, an act that normally speaks a
quieter/softer musical idiom, may decide to express its anger against a given social
problem, by recurring to more aggressive stylistic features. I must say, this is a quite
typical tactic adopted by Italian singers of the so-called “melodic tradition”: we see
it happening to the likes of Luca Barbarossa (with “Al di là del muro”, “On the
other side of the wall”) or Gianluca Grignani (with “La fabbrica di plastica”, “The
plastic factory”).3 There is probably no specific need to describe what makes a song

1
By this I mean that a “pre-history” of solemn SSPs can of course be traced in various hymns and
in pre-existing SSPs with a certain grandeur-quality (the omnipresent “We Shall Overcome”
comes to mind here).
2
The song was notoriously written for the first world-wide broadcasted program in television
history, “Our World”, in 1967. In that program, every participating country had a 5 min segment
to exhibit something characteristic of their community: it is to the English producers’ credit that
their choice (The Beatles) ended up being the only segment that anybody ever remember from that
program. Facing the opportunity to speak to the whole world, but also in consideration of the fact
that the program was being broadcasted just a little while after the tragic 6 day Arab-Israeli war,
The Beatles opted for a hippie message of peace and love, through a song that, after that cir-
cumstance, gave them an undying fame of spokesmen of the pacifist movement.
3
There are different stories related to these two songs and singers, and they are equally intriguing.
In Grignani’s case, the whole La fabbrica di plastica album (not just the title-track, which is a
classic “attack to the ruthless music industry” type of SSP) represented a stylistic U-turn from his
first album, Destinazione paradiso, which had given him immediate success. Exactly this shift
from melodic ballads to a Radiohead-esque alternative rock (he himself admitted that La fabbrica
di plastica’s songs were musically inspired by The Bends) was a huge disappointment for the fans,
who sanctioned the failure of the album with very poor sales (150,000 copies sold, after the over
700,000 of Destinazione paradiso).
When it comes to Barbarossa, it must be said that the Italian singer-songwriter had been no
alien to SSPs before “Al di là del muro” (which was released in 1989 on an album of the same
name), with incursions in difficult themes (like “L’amore rubato”, a song about sexual abuse,
which he presented nonetheless than in Sanremo Festival), satirical takes to modern society (e.g.
the already-mentioned “Yuppies”) , or more universalistic types like “Mandela” (this, too, included
4.1 Typologies of Music 59

musically “aggressive”, as it may be obvious to most readers averagely acquainted

with the history of popular music. However—at the risk of sounding trivial, and for
the few who may not feel too familiar with the issue—here is an approximate list:
(1) Solid, distorted, dirty, electric (occasionally electronic) sounds, and particu-
larly guitar-based combos, are preferable to clean, acoustic (“simple”) or
too-richly produced (“solemn”) sounds. Similarly, straightforward, loud, 4/4
rhythms (particularly rock and RnB ones) are preferable to soft, exotic
rhythms and irregular time signatures (e.g. Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in a Free
World”);
(2) Moderate-to-fast tempos are preferable to slow ones. An example of a very fast
one is “Revolucion”, by the grindcore Mexican band Brujeria: 3 min and 18 s
of music at over 300 bpm;
(3) Another mediation between the simple and solemn applies also to harmonic
and melodic work: not too elementary, but neither too complicated. In par-
ticular, a certain redundant, hammering and bluesy quality in the melody is
preferable to an excessively rich and wide range. In fact, spoken words (as
opposed to sung ones) are very welcome. Edwin Starr’s “War” is an example
that incorporates both the bluesy melody and spoken parts (emphasis on
“Edwin Starr”, here, because his version qualifies for the “aggressive type”,
unlike the earlier, much softer one by The Temptations);
(4) Dry, direct production work is preferable to distant, resounding productions.
Even more trivially, an aggressive, confrontational attitude in the performance
is also helpful (a rough, angry tone in the voice, harder attack on the instru-
ments…). For example, XTC’s atheist anthem “Dear God” adopts a dramatic
contrast of vocal performances between the first strophe (which is accompa-
nied by a sole acoustic guitar) and the rest of the song (arranged, indeed, in an
“aggressive” manner, with a full rock combo): in the first strophe, indeed, the
melody is candidly sung by a kid, symbolizing the indoctrination of younger
subjects and mimicking the goodnight prayer practice. As the electric guitar
cuts in with a sharp arpeggio, singer Andy Partridge takes the lead with a sour
and occasionally hoarse voice, therefore turning the innocent child into an
adult disillusioned by religion and angry at the many injustices perpetrated in
its name (“Dear God, sorry to disturb you but I feel that I should be heard loud

(Footnote 3 continued)
in the Al di là del muro album). However, in these other examples, he had always chosen his more
usual so-called “Roman school” melodic approach. “Al di là del muro” is an SSP about Italian
society in form of self-critique (“Come siamo seri, come siamo seri, Davanti alla televisione, C’è
tutto anche la droga nei documentari, AIDS e trasgressione”—“How serious we are, How serious
we are, at the TV, We got everything, even drugs, AIDS and transgression in documentaries”): for
the first time Barbarossa was not attacking (or being sarcastic about) a counterpart (rapists,
businessmen or racists, to stick to the three examples provided). This may explain the “aggressive”
turn of the song (with sharp, distorted guitars that the singer had hardly employed in the past, and a
country-rock stylistic approach): rhetorically speaking, Barbarossa is “angry” because he discovers
that the evil is inside.
60 4 Songs of Social Protest and Music

and clear, We all need a big reduction in amount of tears, And all the people
that you made in your image, See them fighting in the street, ‘Cause they can’t
make opinions meet about God—I can’t believe in you”).
And so forth. Very welcome are also extemporaneous added values that emerge
from specific ideas and needs, even in an unexpected manner. Legendary is the
accident occurred during the recording of The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”
(already an aggressive SSP, even without the episode I am about to mention), when
singer Merry Clayton was called to support Mick Jagger’s part in what proved to be
one of the most powerful backing vocals in the whole history of rock. During the
repeated crescendo “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away, it’s just a shot away”, at
about 2:59 into the song, Clayton’s voice cracks out of effort, producing a broken,
desperate quality in the line, and prompting Jagger to shout a “Woo!” of approval
(audible in the recording), as he understood that this was exactly what the song (and
that particular verse) needed to gain power and emotional effect.

4.1.4 The Manneristic Type

Less common and more peculiar, the manneristic SSP follows the postmodern
charm of creating retro pastiches with a recognizable identity. The effectiveness, as
SSPs, of songs like Bright Eyes’ “When The President talks to God”, Daniele
Silvestri’s “Cohiba”, or Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ about Revolution”, lies most of
all in their respective reminiscence of a talking blues, a Latin-American folk protest
song and a combination between a Joan Baez’s song and Nina Simone’s voice, all
very well-known acts and styles easily associated to SSPs.
In other words, this is a case of songs (or acts) that call to mind the common idea
of the values promoted in the song, in the same way these values were expressed in
the past, and crystallized in collective imagination. The listener is invited to identify
him/herself with that idea, through an evocative-emotional process. Most welcome,
in the manneristic SSP, are:
(1) Ethno-folk-ish sounds and songwriting strategies: they not only create a
connection with the mentioned “simple type” of SSP (the most highly
evocative, in this respect), but also to oppressed countries, working classes,
and so on;
(2) References to the 1960s and partly the 1970s: these years tend to be perceived
as the “golden age” of SSPs, and for a reason. Several songs from that period
have a special power to almost become SSPs in principle;
(3) Identification SSP-author: in a way, references to Dylan, Marley, The Beatles,
Seeger, Baez, U2 etc. fit “in principle”, even if the specific reference concerns
songs that are not in fact SSP’s (that is to say, a manneristic SSP that is
reminiscent of—say—“Penny Lane” may still do its job, even if “Penny Lane”
is not an SSP at all: we shall see how another manneristic SSP, “Sowing the
4.1 Typologies of Music 61

Seeds of Love”, hints at various Beatles’ songs that have nothing to do with
social protest, “Penny Lane” included): it is like these authors have already
proved their point as musical spokespersons of social protest, so they are by
default “relevant”.
To make the point clearer, we can take exactly Tears for Fears’ quintessentially
Beatlesesque SSP “Sowing the Seeds of Love” for a more thorough analysis.
Released in 1989 to high critical and commercial success, the song featured an
MTV Award-winning video with psychedelic visual effects that made the reference
to the Fab Four even more explicit. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith (the song’s
authors and performers) designed the song as a huge Beatlesesque Frankenstein, in
which, as much as my colleague and friend Paolo Bucciarelli and I could count (in a
co-authored research that was published in Martinelli 2010: 160–162), there are at
least twenty-four direct references to The Beatles’ repertoire, particularly the work
released in 1967 (not by chance, the year of “All You Need Is Love”, the song that
seems to be the “point of departure” of this Tears for Fears’ effort). Leaving very
open the possibility that more than a few escaped our attention, here is a schematic
list of all the elements we could find, grouped into twelve categories and:
(1) From a rhetorical point of view, the song is a synecdoche, a pars pro toto, for
The Beatles in a general. Many songs are referenced here, some very clearly,
and some in a vaguer fashion;
(2) Stylistically speaking, the song is clearly oriented towards a mixed form of
psychedelia (mixed in the sense that it displays various approaches to it, from
the McCartneyesque artsy references to the Lennonesque bluesy ones);
(3) The vocals present falsetto parts, elaborate harmonies, choral parts, and even
counterpoints;
(4) Among the rhythmic solutions, we have drum fills à la “Strawberry Fields
Forever” (with that particular work on the tom-toms that made Ringo Starr’s
playing very distinctive), the strings operate in an aggressive marcato, in
“Eleanor Rigby” style, while the keyboard part displays accompanies the
song in a repetitive, four-in-a-bar, rhythm reminiscent of “I Am the Walrus”;
(5) Among the harmonic solutions, there is a very distinctive major descending
progression in the refrain that reminds of several songs, “Penny Lane” in
primis;
(6) Among the melodic solutions, we have a half-spoken hammering-on-
one-note Lennonesque vocal style in the strophes, and a McCartneyesque
wide-range melody in the refrain;
(7) The trumpet solo, with Baroque-like fanfare quality, is a direct quotation to
the solo in “Penny Lane”;
(8) There are important dynamic changes in the song, including a middle-eight
of “sudden quiet” (“Feel the peace, talk about it…”), a strategy that The
Beatles employed in songs like “Dr. Robert”;
62 4 Songs of Social Protest and Music

(9) Talking about middle-eight, it appears one-time only (a feature The Beatles
would employ quite often to great effect, for instance—and famously—in
“Something”);
(10) The finale has an intentionally extended “singalong” quality, just like “Hey
Jude”;
(11) The lyrics are a Beatlesesque pastiche of “peace and love” passages, with
occasional surrealistic and/or obscure passages, plus straight political refer-
ences (the song is mostly an attack to Thatcherism, and—as we shall see in
Chaps. 5 and 7—The Beatles were no strangers to mention politicians, even
by name, as in “Taxman” )
(12) Among the sound effects employed, there is an abundant use of backwards
tapes, casual noises, and occasional distortions, all techniques that started
popping up in Beatles’ records, particularly from Revolver onwards.
Of course “Sowing the Seeds of Love” is possibly an extreme example of
meticulous, philological, homage, but nevertheless, even when significantly milder,
the technique of referencing past, acknowledged SSPs or politically-relevant acts,
remains an effective, though not too common, strategy to “legitimate” a new SSP.

4.1.5 The X Type

This last category works as a black box to store all those SSPs which, rather than
following a recognizable style, tend to reflect the personal artistic paradigm of
single authors, the patterns of more clearly-codified genre or macro-genre, or that
anyway “escape” (consciously or not) classifications of sort. As we said in the first
paragraph of this chapter, SSP authors are not necessarily ready to conform to the
“canon” that requires SSPs to be simple, accessible, catchy and so forth. Nor do
they intend to have their songs performed at a rally, or other events of social protest.
Also, we said that an SSP may give way to a macro-genre that is already solidly
codified, and therefore follow its stylistic features.
John Lennon wrote “Give Peace a Chance” with the specific wish that it would
be performed in public demonstrations, and he perfectly succeeded in that, the song
having since become a sheer “standard” in the special category. Someone like
Sting, on the other hand, never really conceived “They Dance Alone” (an SSP
about Chilean desaparecidos) with the intention of having it sung by anti-Pinochet
militants, so there was no compromise on his usual stylistic inclination to jazz
(particularly reflected in the complex harmonic structure of the song), his rich and
neatly-produced arrangements, the virtuosistic performance of the musicians, and
the poetic approach to the lyrics (which, to begin with, switch the focus from the
desaparecidos as such to women who dance the Cueca, the Chilean national dance,
by themselves, with only the photographs of their disappeared dear ones in their
hands). Lennon, in other words, was ready to deviate a bit from his personal
musical paradigm to conform to a canon, Stingwas not. But both “Give Peace a
Chance” and “They Dance Alone” are undisputable, unmistakable SSPs.
4.1 Typologies of Music 63

The ambiguous theatricality of the Lithuanian band Antis (which we shall dis-
cuss thoroughly in Chap. 6); the eclectic crossovers of Rino Gaetano (of whom we
are about to provide an example); the uncompromising anarchy of Frank Zappa or
Elio e le Storie Tese, the soul-jazz poetry of Gil Scott-Heron (including the
legendary “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”) , the deconstructing-and-
political-reconstructing work of Nina Simone… all these, and many others, are the
X types of the SSP’s genre—whenever, of course, these particular authors decide to
write a SSP.
X types, as we said, are also those songs that more or less faithfully follow a
macro-genre with a historically-solid identity. Leó Ferré is arguably the archetype
of the French protest singer (and, to my mind, the most credible heir of Aristide
Bruant), but SSPs, like “Les Anarchistes”, “Beatnik”, “Ont Voté” and many others,
have nothing, musically, that distinguish them from the classic stylistic features of
the chanson française.
To make just one example, Rino Gaetano’s “Nuntereggaepiù” (1978) is a
satirical “blacklisting” exercise on the Italian society of late 1970s. The title is a pun
between the Roman dialect expression “Nun te reggo più” (“I can’t stand you
anymore”, from the Italian “Non ti reggo più”) and the word “Reggae”. The lyrics
consist exclusively on a list of names that were then relevant to Italy: VIP’s
(politicians, business people, athletes, artists…), places, items, verbal expressions,
political parties, events, with nearly each entry interspersed by the expression
“Nuntereggaepiù”. These are the things that Gaetano “cannot stand anymore”,
referring to their power, their over-exposure on the media, and their responsibility
in the moral decay of the Italian society. The music, needless to say, is a cheerful,
danceable reggae (a style that in those years was emerging to general attention,
thanks to the likes of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh), with no melody and no sung
refrain. The latter is replaced by an emphatic brass riff, which is also the only
“traditionally” melodic element of the song. The vocal performance is particularly
remarkable, in the intentional sarcasm of the tones. The entries of the list are in fact
shouted, or anyway emphatically announced, in a fashion that may resemble a street
seller (perhaps a newspaper seller, in any case someone who fills the environment
with noise, trying to sell something that people do not necessarily need—in other
words, the establishment), while the frequent response “Nuntereggaepiù” (which
represents the “private citizen”, the victim of the establishment) is first spoken in a
quiet, bored tone (as if the citizen does not want to be listened, perhaps fearing
repercussions from the system), and then gets shouted right before the brass riff, as
if the citizen cannot hold him/herself anymore.

4.2 Conclusions: Summarizing the Model

Once hopefully provided an adequate illustration of the various musical strategies

behind the composition of an SSP (not forgetting the preliminary reflections offered
in the first chapter of the book, on the idea of SSPs as “musical genre”), I would like
64 4 Songs of Social Protest and Music

to use this paragraph for summing up all the four chapters displayed so far. With the
present one, the general theoretical part is brought to a conclusion, and the next four
chapters will be devoted to specific case studies. It seems thus appropriate, at this
point, to make a little summary of the main pillars of the model I have presented:
1. A semantically-appropriate definition for the musical repertoires in object.
I pointed out that the expression Song of social protest is to be preferred to the
more commonly used, but misleading, “Protest song”. “Protest” may be the only
word that manages to keep, in the same group, descriptions of and prescriptions
for a wrong or just society, songs of revolution, reaction or resistance, etc., but
nobody prevents us from applying the same attitude to private and intimate
matters, unrelated to the conventionally-shared idea of the repertoires we are
here dealing with. A second common denominator, to place along with “pro-
test”, is possibly needed, and I suggested to add the adjective “social”. With
“songs of social protest” (SSP), we are able to underline the equally-important
aspects of the “explicit disapproval” of a given state of things (protest), and the
“social” dimension of the latter.
2. SSPs as “musical genre”. Originated from the need to support events and
manifestations of social protest (songs were/are appositely written for strikes,
public demonstrations, sit-in’s, up to more recent charity events), SSPs are a
form of functional music (like film music or gospel), subject to some sort of
musical codification. Composers, for instance, must bear in mind that their song
a) might be performed by people without professional familiarity with music;
and b) should be easy to memorize, with a clear and reproducible message, and
with the capacity to create or enhance group feeling. These are all musical
problems, not only lyrical ones. A successful, effective SSP needs to take into
account: (i) The use of a common and easy-to-carry instrumentation
(acoustic guitars, light or improvised percussions, harmonicas…); (ii) The use of
simple and accessible harmonic structures (no difficult keys, no complicated
chords and not many of them, basic progressions…); (iii) The use of basic
rhythmic structures (from the supreme synthesis of the hand-clapping on the
upbeats, to an almost untouchable preference for 4/4 not-syncopated tempos);
(iv) Catchy hooks and/or refrains (these two certainly being the parts to
handle with more care: the impact of the song on the public largely depends on
their musical accessibility); (v) Culturally-connoted (and recognizable) sound
(for instance, and typically, “acoustic” feel, an “ethnic” atmosphere, etc.).
3. A classification of the relationships between an SSP and the context within
which it is generated and performed. I suggested five different types of relations
between an SSP and the context/occasion it is performed in or conceived for:
(i) Specific relation—the song is specific of the circumstances that originated
the given event, and thus the lyrics talk about such circumstances and exist
because of them (not rarely, it may be one of the event’s participants to actually
write the song); (ii) General relation—the song is related to the given context
in more general thematic terms; (iii) Indirect relation—the SSP-context per-
tinence transcends the specific contents of the given song, and switches to the
4.2 Conclusions: Summarizing the Model 65

level of general values (e.g. “justice”, “equality”, “freedom”…); (iv) Phatic

relation—the song may actually not be an SSP, in a strict sense, but it may
become one on the basis of its employment within a given event: this kind of
song serves more a purpose of enhancing contact among the participants at the
event, rather than describing the latter’s themes; (v) Paratextual relation—The
song, which may either be a real SSP (like in the first three types of relation) or
not (like in the fourth), focuses on the practice itself of demonstrating,
protesting, and so on, or may be re-adapted to serve this purpose.
The SSP is thus a flexible semantic field that can be restricted or expanded
via an element, the context, which proceeds in parallel motion with music and
lyrics, exactly as we see happening in other types of functional music (in film
music, for instance, a composer can write original music, but a director may also
recontextualize existing music created for other purposes).
4. A classification of the Time-Space Umwelt of an SSP, still in relation to its
context. The construction of contents, in songwriting (and, to an extent, in
performing as well), is not only implemented by the mere development of a
theme, no matter how complex and articulated this development may be.
Contents must also be “positioned” in a conceptual space/time environment that
goes beyond simple narrative choices (that is, when and where the action takes
place in a song): this “environment” is not only an objective/empirical one, but it
also has subjective/existential properties.
Borrowing from Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of “Umwelt”, I have here
argued that songs, like any work of art, are always in a Merkwelt-Wirkwelt
articulation, in that they may take both the roles of structure and
counter-structure. With this in mind, an SSP can be written and performed also
with a sense of “positioning” the political action (or lack thereof) in some
particular (more or less metaphorical) chronological or spatial location, that may
or may not be coherent with the whens and the wheres appearing on the surface.
For instance, talking about time units, an SSP can ideally take place “before”
the protest (when it addresses something that should, could or will happen),
“during” the protest (when it addresses something that is or is not happening),
and “after” the protest (when it looks back to something that did or did not
happen). Talking about space units, despite the fact that ideological/political
elements are always present in any stage of music-making, in some instances
they are more manifest than in others, creating (or not), specific
cognitive/cultural associations with a given genre/act/repertoire. In this sense, I
have argued that these degrees of display/perception may involve specific
nuances of “spatial visibility” of the protest, distinguishing between “exposed”,
“clear”, “ambiguous/neutral”, “hidden/rejected” space.
I have then crossed this classification with Greimas’s theory of modalization
(e.g. Greimas 1987) and separated the modalities of “Doing/Not Doing” from
those of “Being/Not Being”, in order to distinguish between songs whose main
ideological point is to underline the very action of protest (“Doing/Not Doing”),
66 4 Songs of Social Protest and Music

and songs which instead are inclined to describe a context/situation/

character/etc. (“Being/Not Being”).
5. A classification of the lyrical contents. I underlined that the historical devel-
opment of SSPs, brought to completion during the 1960s, brought to the overall
dominance of four main typologies of lyrics: (i) Analytical type: this song offers
a focused approach, discussing a topic in a detailed, pinpointed way. It is often a
song that establishes a “specific relation” with its context, and that produces a
“here and now” type of message. It provides a thorough description in the
strophes and a “tagline”-styled prescription in the refrain; (ii) Spiritual type:
connected with early Afro-American repertoires, this song has a “spiritual”
component (not necessarily in a religious sense), as the main “action plan” is
that of asking/praying, waiting and hoping that things will change. Usually rich
in metaphors, often inspired by sacred texts (as in the actual negro spirituals) or
even private relationships (blues often uses the disguise of a love story to
actually address society), it is emotionally involved but operatively passive;
(iii) Universalistic type: this is a less analytical type of song, often with an
anti-ideological, occasionally nihilist, lyrical approach, and it needs to be con-
textualized by the listener, rather than by the author. Taglines like “All you need
is love” or “Let’s get together and feel alright” are launched, and it is the
audience who decides where the message is to be applied. It tends to establish a
general or phatic relation to its context, and its message can be flexibly applied
to various topics; (iv) Satirical type: a transversal category that stems from all
musical traditions (starting from the most ancient ones) and that employs satire,
sarcasm, irony, parody and other tools to convey a message of social protest.
6. A classification of the musical contents. In this very chapter I distinguished five
musical types: (i) The simple type is often aimed at a direct employment in
events of social protest; this category tends to fall into the prototype of simple
instrumentations, catchy melody, etc.: it is usually found in genres like country,
world, blues, and others with a distinctive “folk” matrix; (ii) The solemn type is
typical but not exclusive of most charity events, it is the most chart-friendly
kind, with a mainstream, pop quality, lavish arrangements and big productions;
(iii) The aggressive type usually emerges from the underground/alternative
scene, and it is the kind that we normally find in genres like indie-rock or hip
hop. It is recognizable from the “angry” attitude of both music and lyrics;
(iv) The manneristic type is rarer and more peculiar, and follows the post-
modern charm of the retro pastiche. Its effectiveness, as an SSP, lies most of all
in its reminiscence to acts/genres/periods generally acknowledged as
quintessentially pertinent to social protest; (v) The X type works as a black box
for all those instances which reflect the specific artistic paradigm of single
authors or genres, an explicit refusal for categorizations, or songs that simply
elude any of the previous four types. The very singular artistic paths followed by
certain artists (Antis, Zappa, XTC…) and the elaboration of SSPs in forms of
parody (Brassens, Gaetano, Hill…) are two good instances for this category.
4.2 Conclusions: Summarizing the Model 67

These six points, I believe, constitute the bulk of the model I developed in this
book, and therefore its main theoretical novelty. No part of it is alien to grey
areas and flexibility, and of course, the three main groups (context, lyrics,
music) are in constant interaction, in ways that are more often fuzzy than
clear-cut. However, keeping in mind that excessive simplifications are never
beneficial in academic discourse, I dare suggesting that this model may help a
little to create a general understanding of the main conceptual and operative
features of the SSP. In the following case studies, that make up the next four
chapters, I shall hopefully be able to give adequate visibility to such features.

References

Delaney, Brigid. 2007. The bono-ization of activism. Retrieved 27 Feb 2016: http://www.
naomiklein.org/reviews/bono-ization-activism.
Greimas, Algirdas J. 1987. On meaning: selected writings in semiotic theory. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.
Martinelli, Dario. 2010a. Authenticity, performance and other double-edged words—essays on
popular music. Helsinki, Imatra: Acta Semiotica Fennica.
Martinelli, Dario. 2016. Arts and humanities in progress: A manifesto of numanities. Berlin, New
York: Springer.
Chapter 5
Case Study 1: On the Left-Right
Dichotomy and Its Musical Manifestations

Abstract The “death of ideologies”, and the perception of the left-right distinction
as something obsolete, have been a dominant discourse in the last few decades,
particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Within popular music, the ide-
ological status of politically-committed songs and songwriters also seems to have
become less relevant than it used to be, occasionally disappearing in a melting pot
of neutrality, disengagement and—most of all—program-based (as opposed to
ideology-based) politics. This case study intends to present ideological commitment
as a vivid process within/through the various phenomena related to popular music
(individual acts, entire genres, etc.) as a still very lively one, particularly when it
comes to the infamous left/right distinction. Indeed, despite a visible crisis at the
level of “political action”, ideologies (even in their clearest connotations) have
never been “dead” as cultural models, and their vitality has been constantly tangible
throughout the whole of popular music history, last decades included.

5.1 Preliminary Remarks

Have ideologies died, after all? Sometime after the fall of the Berlin wall, an Italian
comic-strip artist mocked the cliché of the “death of ideologies” by portraying two
gentlemen meeting in a street and greeting each other as follows: “Ideologies are
dead!”, “Ideologies are dead to you, sir!” (as opposed to exchanging “Good
morning!”, of course). This type of discourse, particularly fueled by
post-modernism, has been dominant for the last 20 years. What we are getting into,
in this chapter, is possibly one of the trickiest subjects related to musical (or in
general artistic) repertoires of (any) social significance. The leading questions of a
topic of this sort are legion: what is political ideology in art? Is the politicization of
musical repertoires a representation, a result or a generator of “ordinary” political
discourses? Is there such a thing as a politically-connoted form of
music/musician/genre…? Besides the obvious cases (e.g. the Italian tradition of
openly politically-aligned singer-songwriters such as the communist Claudio Lolli
and Antonello Venditti or the fascist Leo Valeriano and Massimo Morsello), are

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 69

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1_5
70 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

“left” and “right” (and their various nuances) acceptable frameworks to analyze (at
least part of) the repertoires of SSPs? How relevant is, for instance, the fact that two
similarly-structured independence movements like an anti-fascist (e.g. in Italy
during World War II—see Chap. 8) and an anti-communist one (e.g. in the Baltic
states during the 1980s—see Chap. 6) were animated by ideologically-different
values, when it comes to the repertoires of SSPs generated? To conclude this
skimmed selection of a long list of questions, how much do we take for granted (or
make stereotyped constructions of) the “politics” of popular music (e.g. the myth of
“rebellious” rock)?
This case study intends to present ideological commitment as a vivid process
within/through the various phenomena related to popular music (individual acts,
entire genres, etc.), particularly emphasizing the infamous left/right distinction as a
still very lively one. The main thesis defended here is that, despite a visible crisis at
the level of “political action”, ideologies (even in their clearest connotations) have
never been “dead” as cultural models, and their vitality has been constantly tangible
throughout the whole of popular music history. Incidentally, these reflections are
also meant to “set the tones” for the other three case studies of this monograph: all
of them, indeed, address in a more or less direct manner the question of ideological
oppositions. Even the case study about environmentalism in The Beatles (Chap. 7),
which is possibly the one bearing the loosest connection with the present chapter,
will become an opportunity to discuss some of its topical aspects (e.g. the “working
class” identity of the Fab Four, the cliché of the socialist-Lennon versus the
conservative-McCartney, and so on).
Concluding these preliminary remarks, a discussion on the left-right distinction
within a book about SSPs is also an opportunity to dismiss another stereotype
(heavily encouraged by the community of popular music studies): the idea that
SSPs can basically be written only by “leftist” artists. I discuss this more thoroughly
in Chap. 6 (where the topic, the Singing Revolution in Lithuania, is a perfect
example of rightist musical protest against an officially leftist regime, such as the
Soviet one). As I have never made a mystery of my leftist political preferences, I
attempt to partially fill this gap with a self-critical and hopefully impartial
standpoint.

5.2 Ideologies Are Dead…

The issue of political ideologies in music is—as we said risky—but at the same
time, I dare suggest, unavoidable. It is so, because it almost seems a contradiction in
terms that a treatise on SSPs could transcend a proper discussion on political
ideologies. However, that is what happens in the majority of the cases, as musi-
cological literature (or, for the matter, art research literature in general) tends to
carefully avoid such a direct confrontation, when discussing music and politics. Far
from being a neglected one, this connection has been dealt with in a variety of ways
by musicologists: not infrequently, possibly in an attempt to expand the range of
5.2 Ideologies Are Dead… 71

interests, they ended up activating a process of fragmentation of the discourse that,

for instance, resulted in the distancing of key-terms such as “ideology” and “pol-
itics”. A discourse on “popular music and ideology” would more and more often be
abstracted from strict political implications (see, e.g. the entry “Ideology” in Shuker
2005: 143), and a discourse on “popular music and politics” could easily live
without the ideological aspects (see, e.g. most of Frith 1989 or Bennett et al. 1993).
One possible explanation lies, in my opinion, in the general perception that
political ideologies, as such, “have died”—and this is where the above-mentioned
risky aspect of this scholarly enterprise emerges. In particular, some (perceived as)
obsolete categorizations of the political discourse (such as the notorious “left versus
right” distinction, which clearly dominated the latter for almost a century) are not
really able to reflect society anymore.
Or (an even riskier case, in a way): scholars are afraid that this distinction is too
simple and banal to be true. As we mentioned already, the “ideologies are dead”
discourse has been particularly fueled by post-modernism, an intellectual move-
ment that, by vocation and probably oath, could never surrender to any binary
categorization of socio-cultural phenomena.1 And, as we also said, political neu-
trality and disengagement, or even an active refusal of anything “ideological”, has
become a visible attitude in both popular music repertoires and artists. If, say, the
1970s were populated by musicians who had absolutely no problem in qualifying
themselves as “leftist” or “rightist” (or anything more elaborated inside these two
macro-groups—socialism, liberalism, fascism, communism…) and who addressed
any question of social concern within the political programs of such ideologies (e.g.
The Clash, Phil Ochs, Cantacronache, etc.), nowadays the general attitude is that of
rejecting the ideological part, creating instead the profile of the musician who is
either “above” politics or “against” it.

5.2.1 …Long Live Ideologies!

Not by chance, “anti-political” political (the repetition is intended and simply

emphasizes the contradiction of the sole idea) forces/characters are met with
increasing favor during elections. At the moment of I am writing this, Donald
Trump is still only a candidate to US presidency, but at the time this book is out, he
may actually be the most powerful man on the planet. Whether this depressing
perspective comes true or not, still the fact remains that his growth in popular
consensus has been frighteningly surprising, quick and exponential. In Italy (to
mention the political environment I can assess with most competence), these

1
In fact, not just socio-cultural ones: I have seen post-modernists desperate to prove that a light
bulb cannot just be on or off—it depends how we define “on” and “off”, and that opens up to a
virtually endless amount of variables, not to mention that before discussing what is “on” and what
is “off” there are several theoretical and epistemological problems to solve about the concept of
“light bulb”.
72 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

counter-forces appear in both political activity in a strict sense (with the triumph of
the so-called Movimento 5 stelle, an openly “anti-political” force which by now
Italy’s second biggest party—while of course refusing to be called “party”) and in
the attitudes/discourses that accompany it (the spreading of “qualunquismo”, that is,
political indifferentism, expressions such as “let us vote for the person, not the
party”, “let us vote for the program, not the ideology”, “it is not a political battle,
but a civil one”…). And so forth.
However, there are solid objections to all this. A significant one departs first of
all from the assumption, well illustrated by Rafael Soborski, that this principle and
consequent counter-forces “may only be concluded by engaging with ideological
discourse itself, prior to any speculation about the socio-political circumstances
allegedly eroding the established ideologies in favor of new sets of political ideas”
(Soborski 2013: 40). Or, as we already hinted: you have to be political in order to
be anti-political. Plus, as a result of a typically postmodern way of addressing
socio-cultural issues, this is an objection that has to do with the increasing loss of
credibility of postmodernism as such (I dealt with this subject in Martinelli 2010a:
218–219. The focus in that case was scientific inquiry, but most of the reflections
are easily applicable to political discourse as well, especially when we target the
various forms of relativism and syncretism in post-modernist thought, and partic-
ularly the merging of different “spheres” of life—such as indeed, the political, the
economic, and others—into one single whole).
Secondly, importantly, the survival of ideologies, and specific contrapositions
like the left/right dichotomy, lies in the simple fact that many eminent scholars
firmly maintain that this is the case. To take but few examples: the classic Bobbio
(1994 and subsequent updates), Galli (2010), Madiran (1977),2 Revelli (2007),
Rockwell (2008: “Times change, principles don’t” is the title of its first chapter),
Santambrogio (1998) and the mentioned Soborski (2013). As Galli puts it:
[…] The political landscape keeps on being polarized around the right and the left. This
contraposition may not be based anymore on the ideological constructions of the 19th
century, nor on the subjects’ location within the productive space […]. In any case, exactly
the current financial crisis is proving that politics is attempting to restore its centrality
through new ways of regulating the economy, or new post-liberalist solutions, at both the
social and the cultural/symbolic levels. There is no doubt that, in this new phase, the
meaningfulness of the right and the left is still operative, from the sides of both politicians
and citizens (Translated from Galli 2010: 15).

Finally, there is empirical evidence. Ideological identities, particularly the

left/right distinction, are more than alive as both political points of reference and
cultural models. While some of the values associated with them are changing and
do not correspond to the original formulations (something that the idea itself of
“ideology” never denied, in fact: the question of eternity and undisputable

2
The presence of Jean Madiran (or Jean Arfel, to use his real name) is pretty important in my list:
the general scholarly discussion on the left/right distinction tends to be monopolized by leftist
intellectuals. Madiran is one of the few available examples of a clearly rightist writer interested in
the issue.
5.2 Ideologies Are Dead… 73

coherence of a political ideology is another myth spread by its detractors), many

others still resist as actual “modeling systems” for the social/political discourse.
I would like to mention a little survey I initially made for my own amusement, but
which ended up revealing very interesting data. I took the first 300 Facebook users
of my contacts list (so, with no particular order or preference in mind) and I checked
their “About” page to see if they had expressed any preference in terms of political
and/or religious views (Facebook offers both options). As any reader who is
familiar with this social network knows well, this kind of information is very
seldom compiled by the users, and it takes specific motivation and time to actually
bother. The majority of people, therefore, just do not fill in that information. A few
others tend to prefer provocative/humorous definitions to such entries (like my
semiotician colleague and friend Massimo Leone, if he does not mind me men-
tioning him, who wrote “Ottimista” to the entry Religious views and “Pessimista” to
Political views). So, unsurprisingly, of these 300 contacts, no fewer than 209 wrote
nothing at all in the entry political views, although 16 of them expressed their
opinion on religion (ten believers and six atheists, for the record: that, too, calls for
political reflections, but this is not the place). Interesting food for thought, however,
comes from the remaining 91 contacts I scrutinized, who instead filled in that entry:
(1) I filed eight of them under “Ambiguous declaration”, intending a type of
political view that is difficult to classify in any way. My favorite example of
the category is the label “anarchist”, which I have witnessed being abused in
all possible ways except for the real one (that is, the one stemming from the
likes of Godwin, Proudhon and of course Bakunin). “Anarchist”—if I am
allowed to be a little severe, here—seems mostly to be a word misused by
many who wish to look cool while in fact trying to hide their political igno-
rance, or absolute, uncompromising hedonism;
(2) 19 contacts were filed under the above-mentioned “provocative/humorous
declaration”. These were generally puns (“radical choc”, “groucho-marxist”,
etc.), intended manifestations of mistrust for politics (the aforementioned
“pessimist”, expressions like “don’t get me started”, the insertion of a popstar
or a football teams at that very entry, etc.), or—indeed—mere provocations
with (once again) a post-modern back-taste (“nazicommunist”, “stable”, “pe-
culiar”, etc.);
(3) 18 contacts were very open in their mistrust and/or indifference to politics
(“sceptic”, “impossible-ist”, “ah ah ah”, “mah!”, etc.); and finally
(4) 46 expressed a recognizable, “real”, political preference, and—of these—no
less than 36 openly employed the categories “left” or “right” (26 and 10
respectively, for the record, but this probably only says something about my
own social umwelt), while the others still featured politically-tangible
expressions such as “conservative”, “social-democratic”, “green”, specific
party names, etc.
This means that, even admitting that the first three categories of the previous list
can be grouped under a single whole of “anti-political” comments (and honestly, I
74 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

do not think that should be the case, particularly with some users I perfectly know
to be politically-minded), the confrontation between “political” and “anti-political”
commitment still amounts to a tied score: 46 versus 45. Of the 46
“politically-engaged” users, finally, no less than 36 employed the supposedly
“generic”, “obsolete”, “distant-from-reality” left/right model. To my mind, this
means that—despite any argument in favor or against this classification—we have
to acknowledge that the dichotomy has far from disappeared from everyday
political discourse. If it exists in any “discourse”, it does exist, period. In the same
way as (no irony intended, as semioticians know very well) unicorns do exist, at the
very moment they inhabit our language, our fairy tales, our cartoons, our rhetoric,
etc. In particular, it is exactly this claimed “distance from reality” to be empirically
dismissed: when reality operates, on the contrary, people still prefer to use ide-
ologies (particularly, simple, binary categories) as cultural models and specifically
as maps to orient and verbalize their political ideas. In Martinelli 2010 (54–59),
while in fact talking about something else (musical performance) I employed for the
first time the expression “discourse-_currency”, to describe a certain area, within a
discourse, that the most diverse categories of people use in order to share/trade each
other’s encyclopedia on a larger discourse. On that occasion, I was arguing that
“performance” is the discourse-currency for popular music, exactly because the
former functions as cultural model and mediator to develop a larger discourse on
the latter. Similarly, I argue here that the left/right opposition is the most relevant
discourse-currency within political discourse.
Bringing our attention back to music, it is worth mentioning a sarcastic song
written by the Italian singer-songwriter Giorgio Gaber called “Destra e sinistra”
(“Right and left”) where the two categories are exactly addressed as cultural models
rather than political ideas. Gaber produces a hilarious list of seemingly-irrelevant
objects and actions that, nevertheless, carry a political connotation. Thus, browsing
the lyrics, one finds out that a suspender belt is worn by rightist women while tights are
worn by leftist ones; that eating Swiss chocolate is rightist, while eating the notorious
Nutella chocolate spread is leftist; that wearing jeans is leftist, but matching them with
a jacket becomes rightist, and so forth: obviously, Gaber’s goal is to emphasize the
exaggerations of this distinction, but at the same time the list is not random, and
genuinely refers to fashions, stereotypes and lifestyles that are not alien to the impact
that ideologies have on daily habits and interactions. In Italy, to wear a black shirt, as
elegant as it may be, may still raise some comment or joke related to Fascism, as well
as wearing a so-called “Eskimo” coat (something in between a raincoat, a zip jacket
and a Barbour, usually of khaki green color) has spontaneous “leftist” connotations, as
it was a very fashionable item during the student demonstrations of 1968 (an
occurrence due to the fact that it was a product of mid-1960s “mod” fashion).
Such connections are created on the basis of social, cultural and economic values
(e.g. in Gaber’s song: a more expensive, luxurious, refined object like a suspender
belt becomes rightist—in association with upper classes and capitalism; while the
cheap, popular one, like tights, becomes leftist as a result of its connection with the
working classes).
5.3 The Case of the Political Compass 75

5.3 The Case of the Political Compass

Remaining within the internet, an interesting case to mention is the website

politicalcompass.org, another enterprise whose purpose is to emphasize the con-
struction of political discourse via ideological values. It has been masterfully
developed by the political group Pace News Limited. By responding to a ques-
tionnaire of 61 propositions of different sorts, the users can clarify their own
opinion in matters such as welfare, economy, education, culture and others. The
questionnaire may be general, or tailored to specific events (particularly elections)
and countries, and so far it has offered analyses for the political situation in the EU,
Germany, the US, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Ireland, very often in
relation to more than one event (e.g. the US was assessed in the 2004, 2008 and
2012 presidential elections, and in the state senatorial elections of 2008). The site
has become remarkably popular, with rave reviews from many media and scholarly
sources (to which a whole section of the site is dedicated—see http://www.
politicalcompass.org/profeedback) and, as far as questionnaires go, it is now con-
sidered one of the most reliable sources for assessing political landscapes and
events (up to the point that the team also offers workshops and seminars among its
services).
Two of this website’s features are especially interesting within the context of my
research. Firstly, the fact that the aforementioned 61 propositions converge into a
very simple interpretative model, that is, a Cartesian plane with two basic oppo-
sitions occupying the x and y axes: authoritarian (or fascism) versus libertarian (or
anarchism) on the y axis (in order to rate social politics) and—surprise surprise—
left (or communism) versus right (or neo-liberalism) on the x axis (in order to rate
economic politics).3 The user can therefore find him/herself in one of the four
resulting quadrants, and in a different position within it (the compass itself uses
famous historical characters to illustrate the model: so, for instance Adolf Hitler,
obviously located in the “Authoritarian/Right” quadrant, is placed closely to the
authoritarian/fascist edge, while Margaret Thatcher, on the same quadrant, heads
more on the rightist/neo-liberalist edge). Therefore, once again, “ideologies are not
dead”, and in particular the left/right dichotomy is very much alive and kicking.
Secondly, and significantly, the compass team seems to think that music is a very
suitable environment for illustrating the action and impact of political ideologies.
As mentioned above, in a sample picture illustrating the model, a few historical
characters are placed in the Cartesian plane, as representatives of one of the
quadrants. Now, this is not the only sample picture available on the site, and no
fewer than two are strictly related to music, and in a very intriguing manner. In the
first one (http://www.politicalcompass.org/music), 23 popular and folk songs are
placed in the plane as representations of the four quadrants. They include (to

3
Indeed, the main definition of “left” consists of a wish for economy to be run by a “cooperative
collective agency” (usually, a state, but also other types of community), while “right” stands for
the desire for the economy to be left to the devices of competing individuals and organizations.
76 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

mention the most famous, one per quadrant) Pete Seeger’s “What Did You Learn at
School Today?” on the libertarian-left side (defined as “A witty reminder not to
believe everything that your teacher tells you”),4 the North Korean national anthem
on the authoritarian-left side (“A musically complex assertion of might”),5 Elgar
and Benson’s “Land of Hope and Glory” on the authoritarian-right side
(“Celebrating the power and glory of the British Empire”)6 and George Harrison’s
“Taxman” on the libertarian-right side (“Popular anti-tax song from The Beatles”).7
In other words, the message seems to be that (a) songs may be carriers of
social/ethical/political values, and (b) these values can be summarized into a “co-
herent system” (“coherent system of ideas” being one of the most generally
accepted definitions of “ideology”—e.g. Williams 1977: 55) and result in general,
and tangible, ideological macro-positions (four altogether, the Compass suggests).
In the second exemplification based on musical factors, the Compass embarks
into an even more intriguing challenge: the determination, within the same scheme,
of classical composers’ ideological positions (http://www.politicalcompass.org/
composers), even though, as the site itself states, “mostly for amusement”. The

4
The song sarcastically criticizes the pro-establishment propagandistic education that kids receive
at school. At the question “What did you learn in school today, Dear little boy of mine?”, asked by
the father-character in the song, the child-character replies with lines like “I learned that
Washington never told a lie. I learned that soldiers seldom die. I learned that everybody’s free… I
learned our Government must be strong; It’s always right and never wrong; Our leaders are the
finest men; And we elect them again and again”, and so forth. In fact, the theme of the “school as
tool of political power” is a rather common one, in the repertoires of SSPs. Certainly, Pink Floyd’s
“Another Brick in the Wall, part II” may be the first to come to mind (including the film sequence
of the kids marching towards the mincer), but there are several examples from different countries
worth to be mentioned: the Italian “Cara Maestra” (“Dear Teacher”) by Luigi Tenco, the Chilean
“Al Colegio No Voy Más” (“I don’t go to school anymore”) by Leuzemia, and so forth.
5
This assertion is accompanied by unmistakably “leftist” values, such as labor and masses:
“Embracing the atmosphere of Baekdu Mountain, Nest for the spirit of labor, The firm will,
bonded with truth, Will go forth to all the world. The country established by the will of the
people…”.
6
If, as we have seen in the previous footnote, an authoritarian-leftist patriotic song will base its
discourse on labor and people, the authoritarian-rightist one will opt for values like religion,
tradition and freedom: “Thine equal laws, by Freedom gained, Have ruled thee well and long […],
Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set, God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet
[…], Thy fame is ancient as the days, As Ocean large and wide”.
7
Being anti-tax alone is already a rightist sentiment (as it connects to the basic idea of having more
individual freedom and less duties towards society). In addition, Harrison’s lyrics clearly portray
politicians as (a) all the same (“Ha-ha, Mr. Wilson, Ha-ha Mr. Heat” sing the backing vocals,
naming two prominent politicians of the period, Prime Minister Harold Wilson from the Labor
Party, and Conservative Party leader Edward Heat, as if to say that, no matter who is in power, the
citizen will be anyway harassed with heavy taxation), initiating a leit-motif in his songs that will be
further displayed in various songs, including “Piggies”, which we will discuss in Chap. 7; and
(b) authoritarian “enemies” of the private citizen, money vampires who are ready to rob almost
everything (“Let me tell you how it will be, It’s one for you, nineteen for me,’ cause I’m the
taxman”), including the “pennies on your eyes” when you are dead (referring to the ancient use of
placing two coins on a dead person’s eyes, before burying him/her).
5.3 The Case of the Political Compass 77

assumptions, we are informed, are inspired by a special issue of the BBC Music
Magazine, published in April 1997, otherwise the rationale is the following:
Writers and artists have been generally more engaged in the big political debates of their
day than composers, and their views are often more easily discerned through their works.
So how well can we tell the positions of the great composers?
Woody Allen quipped that every time he heard Wagner, he was overcome with the urge
to invade Poland. The positions of most others are less clear in their work, although we can
hear the difference between the assertive nationalism of Wagner and the gentle folk
nationalism of Dvořák or Grieg. In the case of opera, of course, there are more clues.
Mozart’s, for example, dealt with class war (The Marriage of Figaro) and the liberal values
of the Enlightenment. Biographies often provide helpful political information as well. Some
composers, like Bartók, were known to have championed the underdog and sometimes
clashed with the authorities as a result. Others, like Stravinsky, Mascagni and Puccini,
enthusiastically embraced fascism. Still others, like Smetana and Tchaikovsky, were tol-
erant individualists who kept their distance from mass movements.
Because of the relative paucity of information, our composers’ political chart is largely
for amusement. People like Schubert, Bach, Debussy and Donizetti, who don’t seem to
have left any hints of their politics, have been left out altogether.

19 composers are assessed altogether, ten of which end up in the libertarian-left

quadrant (including the predictable Beethoven, Prokofiev and Shostakovich), one
only in the authoritarian-left area (Schumann), six in the authoritarian-right one
(starting from Wagner and Stravinsky, of course), and two in the libertarian-right
one (Tchaikovsky and Chopin). Is this solely for amusement? Maybe (although the
website already hints that it is not entirely a game), but even acknowledging the
many grey areas of such classifications (for instance, to this day I have absolutely
no clue why Schumann would be an authoritarian-leftist composer), I think that
more than one reader will agree with me that, in checking the composers’ or the
songs’ charts, there are several entries that we find perfectly reasonable in their
locations. I myself though “of course!” in several cases, from the obvious
authoritarian-rightism of Wagner or authoritarian-leftism of communist regimes’
national anthems to more subtle instances like the libertarian-leftist Mozart (who
indeed embraced enlightenment ideas in his works, and in addition made such
moves like becoming one of the very first freelance composers, in open conflict
with the aristocratic control of composers’ work) or the libertarian-rightist song
“The Folk Song Army” (which we briefly mentioned in Sect. 1.2.2), by Tom
Lehrer, which sarcastically criticizes leftist protest songs in a period, 1965, where
they were extremely fashionable (“We are the folk song army, Everyone of us
cares, We all hate poverty, war, and injustice, Unlike the rest of you squares”).8

8
The song also contains a hilarious dig at the likes of Guthrie and Dylan, who tended to write
songs that were musically very simple, but at the same time rich in words, with frequent incursions
in the “talking blues” style, where metrics were not anymore a priority: “The tune don’t have to be
clever, And it don’t matter if you put a couple of extra syllables into a line. It sounds more ethnic if
it ain’t good English, And it don’t even gotta rhyme—excuse me—rhyne”.
78 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

What, I shall repeat, seems relevant in enterprises of this kind is the possibility to
extract a “coherent system” of values, and—as Charles Blattberg puts it—an
assertion of “at least two kinds of things: (1) how the values or goods in question
should be understood (…); and (2) what the proper relationship between them
should be” (Blattberg 2001: 194). Even when the analysis looks more like a game
(like in Compass’ scheme of composers or in Giorgio Gaber’s song), we notice that
its rhetoric is more a hyperbole of an existing condition than an ungrounded cre-
ative exercise.

5.4 The Semiotics of Left and Right

At this point, with perhaps enough ground to launch my own reflections on the
issue, I shall offer a semiotic interpretation of some of the existing theories on the
left/right distinction, still bearing in mind (and aiming at) the particular function of
“discourse-currency” (DC, from now on) that I have discussed. The relationship
between political ideologies and semiotics of course has a long history, and the
general approach is possibly best embodied by the words of Bakhtin (under the
pseudonym Valentin Voloshinov, on this particular occasion)—“without signs
there is no ideology […] Everything ideological possesses semiotic value”
(Voloshinov 1973: 9)—who also underlined the intrinsically social nature of the
concept by adding “The form of signs is conditioned above all by the social
organization of the participants involved and also by the immediate conditions of
their interaction” (Voloshinov 1973: 21). Even though, as I often find myself
pointing out, I see this “bulimic” idea of straight away merging ideology with
semiotics (as Nöth asserts while commenting on Bakhtin—Nöth 1990: 378) a result
of the usual semioticians’ ambition to have their field dealing with just everything,9
one may certainly agree with (a) Hodge and Kress (1988 and 1993), when they
emphasize the great relevance of semiotic theory in analyzing ideologies;
(b) Roland Barthes, when he says that the “common domain of the signifieds of
connotation is that of ideology, which cannot but be single for a given society and
history, no matter what signifiers of connotation it may use” (Barthes 1977: 49);
and (c) Umberto Eco, when he says that semiotics, through its organization in codes
and lexicons, “shows us the universe of ideologies, which are reflected in the
pre-constructed modes of language” (translated from 1968: 95).
My opinion is that, in order to produce connotations as bizarre as Gaber’s
chocolate spread or stockings, political ideologies have to act, within any discourse,
as cultural models, and therefore become DC.

9
To stay within a famous classification, I can definitely see a large part of the indexical
representamen-object relations, and a significant portion of the iconic ones, as being entirely alien
to any ideological connotation whatsoever.
5.4 The Semiotics of Left and Right 79

5.4.1 Values and Structural Oppositions

In a similar manner as Levi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, it is perhaps possible

to approach the left-right distinction in terms of dichotomies of values. As already
stated, going through the works of Bobbio (1994), Galli (2010), Madiran (1977),
Revelli (2007), Rockwell (2008), Santambrogio (1998), Soborski (2013), plus the
monumental—and inevitable—two volumes of the Encyclopedia of Left and Right
edited by Rodney Carlisle (2005), allowed to assemble a number of clearly-defined,
recurrent elements of pertinence (in Prieto’s sense—1975) of the two ideological
macro-groups that would serve as models for the most diverse cultural tokens (se-
rious and semi-serious ones)10 and that, at the same time, would be in reasonable
reciprocal opposition (at least to the extent that a political debate may derive from it).
Both Marco Revelli and Giorgio Galli (e.g. Galli 2010: 22) agree that left and
right may be differentiated according to three types of coordinates:
(1) Values (e.g. diversity or equality across human beings);
(2) Politics (e.g. authority or liberation, hierarchy or autonomy, state or
individual);
(3) Temporality (e.g. conservation or progress).
Bearing that in mind, Carlisle’s remarkable work contains a total of 432 entries,
of which 249 are in the “Left” volume, and 183 in the “Right” one. Carlisle (2005/I:
xi–xiv) suggests that these entries can be classified according to seven categories:
(1) People: here we get 83 entries for the Left (Marx, Lenin, etc.) and 48 for the
Right (Churchill, Hitler…). Besides the remarkable unevenness of the entries
(an issue which we will see repeated a few times in the present list, and it
certainly would be interesting to understand the reasons behind this), the
overall bunch present some rather questionable choices and omissions: e.g. the
Left includes the republican Lincoln but omits the communist Stalin, which
instead appears only as an “issue” (see point 4 of the present list). That may
prompt into a discussion on the difference between “stated ideology” and “de
facto ideology”, which we shall however devote to another time and place.
Briefly put, from a leftist perspective, a figure like Stalin may have “belonged”
to a communist political force, but he equally showed no real coherence with
the latter in his authoritarian and repressive actions. From a rightist perspec-
tive, the two dimensions are perfectly compatible, as Stalin’s actions are
perceived to be exactly what a communist ideology and system leads to;
(2) Countries: in this case, an analysis of the leftist governments of various
countries (or regions) is offered, with 41 cases for the Left and 40 for the
Right;

10
Once again, let us not underrate satire, parody and irony in this enterprise: Giorgio Gaber or the
Compass were not pulling names and objects “out of the blue”, otherwise the joke/game would
have not worked properly, and would instead belong to the realm of nonsense humor or Ionesco-
esque free associations.
80 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

(3) Ideologies, or “-isms”: 27 for the Left (Anarchism, Communism, etc.) and 31
for the Right (Capitalism, Patriotism, etc.);
(4) Political issues: 29 for the Left (Politically Correct, Human Rights…), 32 for
the Right (Globalization, Theocracy…), with—again—some arguable entries
(the concept “Darwinism” appears on the “Right” volume only, not taking into
account treatises like Singer 1999, nor the general controversy of a concept
that has been frequently criticized in its association to Darwin as such);
(5) Laws: 24 for the Left (Abortion, Gun Control…), 11 for the Right (Pro-Life,
Immigration restriction…). This section, too, is noted for its unbalance;
(6) Political parties: 21 for the Left (Labor Party, Black Panthers…), 5 for the
Right (Kuomintang, Republican Party…), and here the unevenness becomes
rather outstanding, as the very low number of rightist parties leaves a lot to be
desired. Only in the Italian political spectrum, one is able to count far more
than 5 very distinguished right-wing parties: from the infamous Partito
Fascista, to the one that gathered its heritage (and people) after the war, the
Movimento Sociale Italiano (in turn, split into equally-recognizable forces
around the 1990s: Alleanza Nazionale, Lista Rauti, etc.); from Berlusconi’s
disastrous (for Italian economy and culture) Forza Italia to the openly-racist
Lega Nord; from the moderate-conservative Partito Liberale Italiano to the
shortly-lived Unione Monarchica… the list is very long;
(7) Political movements: 24 for the Left (Bolshevism, Feminism…) and 16 for the
Right (Laissez-faire, Prohibitionism…).
Summing up and skimming these entries—and, I shall add on a personal note,
with the invaluable help of Bobbio’s extraordinary clarity—it is possible to describe
the articulation of this DC by means of structural oppositions, that generate DC
“units” (DCU), which are exactly the “coins” and the “notes” of the situation
(words, expressions, concepts…):

Condition LEFT RIGHT

of the
subject
Rhetoric Justice: DCU like “rights”, “equality”, Freedom: DCU like “subject”,
“democracy”, etc. “self-determination”,
“enterprise”, etc.
Socio- Public: DCU like “welfare”, “needs”, Private: DCU like “individual”,
economic “people”, etc. “capital”, “merits”, etc.
Geo- Universal: DCU like “world”, National: DCU like
historical “enlightenment”, “interculturality”, etc. “motherland”, “romanticism”,
“family”, etc.
Temporal Change: DCU like “progress”, Continuity: DCU like
“revolution”, “emancipation”, etc. “tradition”, “conservation”,
“nostalgia”, etc.
Perceptive Material: DCU like “secularity”, Spiritual: DCU like “religion”,
“science”, “evidence”, etc. “passion”, “magic”, etc.
(continued)
5.4 The Semiotics of Left and Right 81

(continued)
Condition LEFT RIGHT
of the
subject
Existential Mind: DCU like “culture”, “intelligence”, Body: DCU like “fitness”,
“reason”, etc. “sport”, “strength”, etc.
Semiotic Contents: DCU like “clarity”, “reality”, Form: DCU like “beauty”,
“result”, etc. “aesthetics”, “elegance”, etc.
Artistic From art to truth: DCU like “based on From truth to art: DCU like
true stories”, “realism”, “authenticity”, etc. “l’art pour l’art”, “formalism”,
“fiction”, etc.

Far from reducing the complex galaxy of political discourses to just two groups,
the idea behind this model is to encapsulate the tendencies which associate the
various subjective conditions into a system that—more often than not—shows a
certain coherence at prototypical level. In other words, and following Eleanor
Rosch’s crucial work on the prototypicality of categorizations (1978), the main
point is that the more we find a coherence in the various conditions, the more it is
acceptable to connote a subject (or the discourse s/he develops) on the left or on the
right.

5.5 Songs of Social Protest à la Greimas

To further illustrate this model, and at the same time bring back the focus on
popular music, we can use our good old Greimasian square and frame four
important variables operating within this context. First, when we discuss politics
and political orientation in popular music, as the Compass itself has proved, we may
discuss either the music as such (songs, albums, repertoires…), or their
composers/performers, or both. A musician may be particularly vocal about his/her
political opinions, but not express those through his/her songs. In Italy, there is the
well-known case of Gianni Morandi, an openly communist singer, whose reper-
toire, however, is entirely disengaged from any hint of political commitment, with
very few exceptions, of which only one really famous:11 the anti-war anthem “C’era
un ragazzo che come me amava i Beatles e i Rolling Stones” (Once upon a time,
there was a boy like me, who loved The Beatles and The Rolling Stones), released

11
Other attempts include one of the very few songs he himself wrote (Morandi being mostly a
performer, and never really a songwriter), “Il presidente”. Besides failing to reach the success level
of his various hits, the song also received some amount of criticism for its excessive “buonismo”
(an Italian word that literally means “good-ism”, and that describes, with negative connotations, an
attitude lacking critical verve and displaying excessive preoccupation not to offend anybody. In
part, the concept overlaps with “politically correctness”).
82 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

in 1967. Being an Italian song about a war that Italy was not really fighting, the
lyrics’ main point was to establish a sympathetic connection between a non-Italian
human being (sent to Vietnam and killed in action) and the Italian fellow human
being, who is lucky enough to stay home safe and warm. To this purpose, the song
depicts an American young tourist in Italy (possibly a hippie), who (“just like me”,
the song goes) loved The Beatles and The Stones. He had a guitar and could gather
“thousands of girls around, when he sang ‘Help’, ‘Ticket to Ride’, or ‘Lady Jane’,
or ‘Yesterday’”. The boy was then called to duty to fight in Vietnam and instead of
a guitar, he had to handle a rifle that “only plays the same one note, Ra-tah-tah-
tah”. The song terminates with the death of the boy, to whom (or rather to whose
family) all that is given for his sacrifice is “a medal or two”. Far from being the only
pacifist song in the Italian pop landscape of the period, this particular track managed
to have a bigger emotional impact mostly because of its performer. Gianni Morandi,
as mentioned, had been until then totally alien from any political involvement in his
music: moreover, his popstar image was particularly constructed for inoffensive,
“family” entertainment (the common place, in those days, was that he was partic-
ularly beloved by mothers and grandmothers). The fact that he was communist did
not pose any threat to that image, since the Italian society of those days had a
generally benevolent attitude towards communism: the antifascist resistance (where
communist partisans had a major role) was still fresh in the Italians’ memory (and
let us not forget that, along with France, Italy had the strongest Communist Party of
the whole Western world. To be “communist” was a popular political identity, not a
marginal one). Plus, Morandi’s communism was not of the “aggressive intellectual”
type, but more rustic and simple: coming from a family of peasants in the Emilia
Romagna region (nicknamed the “red region” for the wide predominance of
left-wing inhabitants), Morandi’s way of being a communist was much more
reminiscent of the “Don Camillo and Peppone” saga, than of any of Gramsci’s or
Pasolini’s writing. Now, to have a singer with such a profile suddenly singing about
Vietnam War and young people killed, was a bit of a shock for the Italian audience.
The other way round is also possible, and in fact very common, when we think
of the many SSPs written by authors who are not particularly eager to declare their
political stands. A band like Queen categorically refused being labelled politically.
That rejection however did not prevent them to make political career choices, such
as the controversial concert in Sun City, the symbol of South-African apartheid, in
1984 (in a period when all the major rockstars were actively boycotting the venue),
or much more politically-correct ones, such as their participation at the Live Aid,
which is still remembered as one of the all-time greatest performances of any band.
More importantly, their repertoire displayed a number of (admittedly mild) SSPs:
“Is This the World We Created?”, “One Vision” and “The Miracle” are possibly the
most recognizable of the lot. To this consideration, one should also add cases where
the song is actually not SSPs, and yet political opinions and ideological inclinations
emerge quite clearly. Music, like all forms of art, is never totally detached from
ideological choices. The very moment when a film director decides to “frame” a
given image with the camera, is the moment when an ideological choice is being
made: the decision to put that amount and quality of information is ideological—
5.5 Songs of Social Protest à la Greimas 83

that particular frame is showing certain things and not others, is taken in that
particular moment and not in another, etc. Similarly, musical-lyrical choices are not
ideology-free, no matter how much a songwriter tries to avoid that. Evidently,
however, this is material for another type of discussion, outside the scopes of this
book.
To conclude, of course, we have cases like Phil Ochs, Inti Illimani, The Clash or
Pete Seeger, who are openly political in both their songs and personal statements.
So, two corners of the square will be “musical object” and “musical subject”. The
other two shall be called “displayed” and “perceived”, and refer to the fact that a
political stand, in either a subject or an object, may be assessed by the
addresser/source (e.g. the author declares s/he, or his/her song, is of a certain
political orientation), or by an addressee (music critic, fan, musicologist…), who
interprets the source as representative of a given standpoint (see Fig. 5.1).
Let us provide a couple of examples, A song like “Power to the People” is
commonly regarded as a militant, leftist song, but it comes from an author, John
Lennon, who was generally reluctant in discussing his political opinions, repeatedly
declaring that he would not vote for any politician. Even during his most
politically-committed period (between 1969 and 1972, the years of the “Bed-in”
pacifist campaign, the various activities with New York radical intellectuals, albums
like Sometime in New York City, composed entirely of SSPs) was later dismissed as
the result of a sense of guilt of a now rich formerly-working class man (Borack
2010: 111). For sure, there was no open declaration, on Lennon’s part, that “Power
to the people” is a leftist song (or any “-ism” that can be associated to the left). So:
how do we say it is? We can (safely) say it because both the lyrics and the music
convey a number of DCU that are very clearly associable to the Left: the song
discusses revolution and society in the first stanza (“You say you want a revolution,
You’d better get on right away”),12 workers’ rights and class war in the second (“A
million workers working for nothing”), feminism and emancipation in the third one
(“How do you treat your woman back home?”), openly showing support to all these
causes. And of course the refrain says “power to the people”, and it is also sung
with a massive choir (itself a metaphor for “people”). The contents of the song are
very explicit and direct, and definitely the artwork (a rock song) is employed as a
“realist” means of expression. The song does not refer to any national community in
particular, but aspires to be “universal” in its message. With the exception of the
“existential condition”, thus (the song addresses intellectual topics, but at the same
time is very “physical” musically, in terms of rhythm and suitability to be used in
demonstrations), every single “condition of the subject” has a clear leftist conno-
tation. If we had to suggest the entry “Power to the People” to the staff of The

12
The verse contains of course a nod to The Beatles’ 1968 track “Revolution”, which also starts
with the words “You say you want a revolution”. The difference (and therefore the reason why
Lennon decided to quote that precedent) is that now Lennon is not uncertain that a revolution is
actually needed (“You’d better get on right away”), while back in 1968 he had expressed clear
doubts (“well, you know…”).
84 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

Fig. 5.1 Greimasian square

for political attitudes in music

Political Compass, we would certainly propose to locate it in the “libertarian/left”

quadrant, equally distant from both the “libertarian” and the “left” edges.
For the second example, I will use the exact opposite combination of the square.
Instead of a song, I will use a musical subject, Frank Zappa, and instead of an
“attributed” political stand, I will use an explicit one, as Zappa was repeatedly open
about his ideological positioning within the area of the so-called “anarchic-capitalist
right”. The task, in this case, would be to see if such a condition is apparent in his
musical and para-musical activities. Among the various personal statements, we see
for instance a repeated pattern of social fights against censorship (he notoriously
went as far as to testify before the US Senate against the Parents Music Resource
Center—eventually making an avant-garde musical collage of the interventions
from that occasion in the 1984 track “Porn Wars”), in favor of individual freedoms,
and in support of the free market (e.g. Bowden 2011: 690–691): his frequent
invectives against American politics were always generated from a
proudly-patriotic point of view, as a call to Americans to recover the real values
America supposedly stands for. Musically, we can certainly witness the enormous
(and celebrated) “formal” complexity of his repertoire, the use of aggressive and
goliardic language in his lyrics (including humor of scatological or other “bodily”
forms), the extensive employment of “politically incorrect” sarcasm, parody and
mockery, and—generally speaking, both musically and lyrically—a total inde-
pendence from schemes, that is, an extreme form of artistic individuality. His
reputation as “loose cannon” of rock also got him the Guinness-worth record of
having the first copies of an instrumental-only album (Jazz from Hell, 1986) sold
with the “Parental advisory—Explicit lyrics” sticker on it, before someone must
have noticed the mistake (truth to be told, the track list included titles like
“Massaggio Galore” and “G-Spot Tornado”, which may have not been the most
reassuring).
Needless to say, all these subject conditions bend on the “right” side of the
scheme, and—really—the only unfitting element is Zappa’s notorious atheism and
5.5 Songs of Social Protest à la Greimas 85

general refusal of any form of spirituality. If we had to suggest the entry “Frank
Zappa” to the staff of The Political Compass, we would certainly propose to locate
him in the “libertarian/right” quadrant, very close to the “libertarian” edge.

5.6 Conclusions

I have already mentioned both the problematicity and the instability of a model of
this sort, but at the same time I was hopefully able to convey its pertinence and
perhaps necessity within an appropriate analysis of the music-politics relation. To
reiterate the point, it may not really matter whether or not structural classifications
like “Left” or “Right”, or others of this sort, are still suitable to describe the current,
ever-changing political spectrum: the fact is, they still exist as DC, so they remain a
very valuable form of exchange of political/ideological opinions, information,
arguments, etc.
In other words, I maintain, and especially at the level of casual conversations
where the issue of political choices is not scrutinized in detail (as in “I enrolled to
the X party”, “I voted for the Y politician”, etc.), it is still possible (and widespread)
to use the left-right structural opposition to map someone’s political profile con-
sistently enough. Such consistency across values and DCU, among other things,
allows a set of implications, expectations and abductions that two interlocutors
discussing politics may infer from each other’s “maps”. While discussing, say,
“immigration”, it is legitimate to expect that the leftist interlocutor will support a
more inclusive politics from his/her government, as a result of a coherent combi-
nation of at least rhetoric (it is just that immigrants are allowed to have a second
chance in another country), socio-economic (a state has the duty to help immi-
grants), geo-historical, “universal” (this is not only my country) and temporal (times
are changing, we go towards a multicultural society) elements. For equal and
opposite reasons (this is my country, first and foremost; it is important to preserve
traditional cultures; too many immigrants limit my freedom, etc.), the right-wing
interlocutor can be reasonably expected to champion a more restrictive policy of
immigration.
In addition to this, left and right still serve as the most employed intergroup
dynamic for both specialized and non-specialized political categorizations. Not
only, in the great majority of the cases, are political coalitions and alliances at
institutional level likely to be determined by using the basic dichotomy as point of
departure (and, not rarely, arrival): in various social occasions, particularly during
the process of establishing personal relations, it is also very likely that self-declared
leftists will sympathize with each other and form an “ingroup”, as well as rightists
will form their own. While of course (I’m reinventing the wheel, here) moderation,
diplomacy and/or declared indifference/hostility towards politics will probably
secure a smooth co-existence among acquaintances, the leftist and the rightist
subjects, once become aware of each other’s orientation, realize that they are likely
to clash on, and get irritated by, several issues.
86 5 Case Study 1: On the Left-Right Dichotomy …

Finally, it is also possible (and, again, likely) that many attitudes of refusal or
indifference towards politics will be expressed on the basis of the dichotomy. The
anti-political interlocutor may express his/her sentiments with sentences like “I
think left and right are all the same”, “I’m neither leftist nor rightist”, “Left and
right are very outdated categories”, etc. Only a sentence like “politicians are all a
bunch of thieves” is possibly more popular than the previous ones. Needless to say,
the fact that a person constructs a political identity by denying that particular
dichotomy is one more confirmation of its absolute relevance, at both political and
cultural level.
Within such a framework, it is only natural that a device like a song or a subject
like a musician recur to this currency, and units within it, to address issues that are
normally encoded by more complex devices and more specialized professional
figures. The (many) instances where a musician actively rejects being cast in such
role and position are, to my mind, classifiable in three groups: 1) musicians who
really escape such categorizations, and for whom (even considering that, as we
said, an ideological connotation always occurs in any artistic gesture) we have to
admit that there is no point discussing them within a research like the present one.
I am personally convinced there are not so many of these cases, as I firmly believe
in the unavoidability of the condition of Homo politicus in any person, but of course
I am ready to be proven wrong; 2) musicians who try to escape these classifications,
but the ideological clues displayed in their repertoire are far too many and too
coherent to be dismissed as irrelevant; 3) musicians who simply cheat about their
political identity, for whatever reason (public image, mostly, or because, in certain
times and contexts, it sounds cool to state one’s own indifference or hostility
towards politics and ideologies).

References

Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill & Wang.
Bennett, Tony, et al. 1993. Rock and Popular Music. London and New York: Routledge.
Blattberg, Charles. 2001. Political Philosophies and Political Ideologies. Public Affairs Quarterly
15 (3): 193–217.
Bobbio, Norberto. 1994/2004. Destra e sinistra: ragioni e significati di una distinzione politica.
Roma: Donzelli.
Borack, John. 2010. John Lennon—Life is What Happens: Music, Memories and Memorabilia.
Iola, WI: Krause Publications.
Bowden, Paul. 2011. Telling It Like It Is. Publisher: Author.
Carlisle, Rodney P. (ed.). 2005. Encyclopedia of Left and Right, vol. 2. Thousand
Oaks/London/New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Eco, Umberto. 1968. La struttura assente. Milano: Bompiani.
Frith, Simon. 1989. World Music, Politics and Social Change. Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press.
Galli, Carlo. 2010. Perché ancora destra e sinistra. Roma/Bari: Laterza.
Hodge, Robert “Bob”, and Gunther Kress. 1988. Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity.
Hodge, Robert “Bob”, and Gunther Kress. 1993. Language as Ideology. London: Routledge.
Madiran, Jean. 1977. La droite et la gauche. Paris: Nouvelles Éditions latines.
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Martinelli, Dario. 2010a. Authenticity, Performance and Other Double-Edged Words - Essays on
Popular Music. Helsinki-Imatra: Acta Semiotica Fennica.
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Press.
Prieto, Luis Jorge. 1975. Pertinence et pratique. Paris: Minuit.
Revelli, Marco. 2007. Sinistra Destra. L’identità smarrita. Roma/Bari: Laterza.
Rockwell, Llewellyn H. 2008. The Left, the Right and the State. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises
Institute.
Rosch, Eleanor, et al. 1978. Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Santambrogio, Ambrogio. 1998. Destra e sinistra. Laterza: Un’analisi sociologica. Roma/Bari.
Shuker, Roy. 2005. Popular Music: The Key Concepts. London/New York: Routledge.
Singer, Peter. 1999. A Darwinian Left. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Soborski, Rafael. 2013. Ideology in a Global Age: Continuity and Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Voloshinov, Valentin. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar Press.
Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. London: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 6
Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing
Revolution and the Case of Antis

Abstract This case study aims at looking into the social phenomenon known as
the Singing Revolution, occurred in the Baltic States during the last years of Soviet
domination, with a focus on the case of Lithuania, and one of the leading bands of
the period, Antis. I would like to look at this topic from two angles: the
lyrical-musical one, in accordance to the analytical modes developed in this book,
but also—so to speak—the institutional one, particularly in relation to the way the
Singing Revolution was contextualized and handled at the level of Lithuanian social
and cultural policies. For the latter point, I am particularly interested in applying the
perspective of what, after Joseph Nye (1990 and, more specifically, 2004), has been
called Soft Power.

6.1 Preliminary Notes and Research Questions

Briefly speaking (I shall devote an extensive description later in this chapter),

Singing Revolution (SR, from now on) is the expression employed to group various
events (including musical ones) that occurred in the five years between 1987 and
1991, in support of the independence movements in the Soviet Republics of the
Baltic area: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. For all these countries, the events sur-
rounding the SR have represented the turning point of their struggle for freedom,
and music (SSPs, songs in national language, etc.) was indisputably a (or perhaps
the) most relevant feature in the process. Arguably, Lithuania can claim an even
stronger role for music when we think that, unlike the other Baltic States, several
Lithuanian intellectuals and opinion-leaders were in fact musicians or musicologists
(we shall see that later).
However, despite this centrality, the Lithuanian academic and political institu-
tions have devoted only a minor effort to analyze these phenomena and repertoires.
Moreover, very timid were the attempts to academically promote them at an
international level, often resulting in international ignorance and misunderstandings
(e.g. Roger Parent’s and David Millar’s documentary Cultures in conflict, a
Canadian production from 2004, presents the Singing Revolution as an

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 89

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1_6
90 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

Estonian-only phenomenon, disowning Lithuania—and Latvia, for the matter—of

their historical roles).
What is the position of the SR in the current Lithuanian intellectual and insti-
tutional discourses? Could the phenomenon become an important tool for cultural
and diplomatic promotion of Lithuania abroad? Is Lithuania missing an important
opportunity to reinforce its “soft power” (a concept I am about to describe, for those
readers who may not be too familiar with it)? These shall be the main research
questions that will be discussed in (and inspired the work for) this chapter.
When it comes to music, in the strict sense, I intend to focus on the work of the
band Antis, an act that made anti-Soviet protest the central topic of their first three
albums (released between 1987 and 1989, when indeed Lithuania was not yet an
independent country). As mentioned, I will try to place the analysis within the
theoretical framework developed in the first part of the book. I am hugely indebted
to Antis’ band member Vaclovas Augustinas (keyboard player, backing vocalist,
and main musical arranger of the band), for granting me a long interview on his
band and their role within the Singing Revolution. As I mentioned already, and will
clarify even more during this chapter, the topic of the Singing Revolution is not
dealt with as extensively as it should be, among Lithuanian scholars, particularly
when it comes to international essays (there is practically nothing written in
English: one has to resort to Estonian, Latvian or non-Baltic scholars for proper
contributions). The fact that I could count on such a generous amount of first-hand
material from one of the protagonists of that phenomenon has been of great
help. I will mention several passages of this interview during the chapter, as they
really provide insights that it was impossible to find in the available publications.
I also take the opportunity to thank my student (and brilliant composer himself)
Andrius Laucevičius for assisting me in this task: he filmed the whole interview and
made a beautiful 50-minute long video of it, adding up to the value of this whole
idea.

6.2 The Concept of Soft Power

Not being a specifically-humanistic formulation, the concept of soft power should

perhaps be introduced to this readership. Although originally formulated in Nye
(1990), SP became a fully-defined concept in Nye (2004), where it is defined as
[…] the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It
arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. When our
policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced. America
has long had a great deal of soft power. Think of the impact of Franklin Roosevelt’s Four
Freedoms in Europe at the end of World War II; of young people behind the Iron Curtain
listening to American music and news on Radio Free Europe; of Chinese students sym-
bolizing their protests in Tiananmen Square by creating a replica of the Statue of Liberty; of
newly liberated Afghans in 2001 asking for a copy of the Bill of Rights; of young Iranians
today surreptitiously watching banned American videos and satellite television broadcasts
in the privacy of their homes. […] When you can get others to admire your ideals and to
6.2 The Concept of Soft Power 91

want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them
in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like
democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive. […] But
attraction can turn to repulsion if we act in an arrogant manner and destroy the real message
of our deeper values (Nye 2004: x).

By extension (Nye himself suggests it in several points of his work), soft power
is an expression we can use also in relation (a) to smaller communities, and (b) to
the processes that occur within them. In the first case, we can basically trace an axis
that goes from single individuals to the largest communities, and detect soft power
in all the steps that go from one extreme to another. Of course, single persons can
exercise endless forms of this particular power over other people: their charm, their
elegance, their job, their aesthetic appearance, their social/geographical origins,
their ideas, and so forth. As an Italian, I know very well that in international
contexts, my answer to the question “where are you from?” is always likely to raise
a particular, positively surprised, reaction from my interlocutor: “Wow, Italy…
such a nice country!”, or “Wow, Italy… I was in Rome just last summer”, and other
variants starting with “Wow, Italy”. I also know that my profession will generally
put me in a respected position, within a social occasion: I am the one who “knows”,
who “has studied things”. Moving further on the axis, a family, too, can exercise
soft power, by its name, its social position, its reputation, its history. Then neigh-
borhoods, districts, towns, regions, areas, countries, even continents… Any form of
organization of the social space (starting from the smallest unit—the individual) can
be a source of different types of soft power.
Also, as mentioned, soft power is not just a form of communication, that goes
from an A source to a B destination, where A and B are members of two different
groups (as in the quoted Nye’s example, with America’s various forms of SP, as
perceived abroad). A and B can also belong to one single group, with soft power
operating with specific dynamics that encourage that group to progress in a given
direction. The wealthy, safe neighbourhood with plenty of surrounding nature and
areas for kids is not just a place that people outside that neighbourhood admire and
would like to live in, but it is also a pride for its inhabitants, who become even more
aware and supportive of such themes like nature conservation and child education
(“I wouldn’t live anywhere else… children need direct contact with nature!”). This
characteristic, too, covers the whole spectrum of communities, even including the
special, proprioceptive, case of single individuals, who are certainly inspired by
their successful features to develop them even further (e.g. career achievements,
body fitness…).
To make it clear, we could say that when soft power goes from one group to
another (in its most usual action), it basically serves as promoter of the values of the
former group, it builds a reputation, it attracts and persuades people, etc. When it
goes from one group to the same group, it mostly works as a reminder of the values
of that group, it builds self-confidence, sense of commitment, etc.
Naturally, soft power, as an expression, acquires particular sense when placed in
opposition with “hard” power:
92 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

Hard and soft power are related because they are both aspects of the ability to achieve one’s
purpose by affecting the behavior of others. The distinction between them is one of degree,
both in the nature of the behavior and in the tangibility of the resources. Command power—
the ability to change what others do—can rest on coercion or inducement. Co-optive
power—the ability to shape what others want—can rest on the attractiveness of one’s
culture and values or the ability to manipulate the agenda of political choices in a manner
that makes others fail to express some preferences because they seem to be too unrealistic.
The types of behavior between command and co-option range along a spectrum from
coercion to economic inducement to agenda setting to pure attraction. Soft-power resources
tend to be associated with the co-optive end of the spectrum of behavior, whereas
hard-power resources are usually associated with command behavior (Nye 2004: 7).

Therefore: command, coercion and inducement are the three typical forms of
behavior of hard power, while agenda setting, attraction and co-option are the
typical ones of soft power. Then, Nye continues (2004: 8), when it comes to
resources, hard power will likely use force, sanctions, payments and bribes, while
soft power will mostly operate through institutions, values, culture and policies.
When reading these specifications, one may justly suspect that some of them
(payments, bribes, certain types of sanctions) are not exactly the actions of an
oppressive, forceful structure (as hard power seems to be the expression of—as
opposed to the soft power of a democratic structure): indeed, further on in his text
(2004: 30–32), Nye specifies that the distinction is a bit more complex, particularly
when it comes to modern times. Hard power, in fact, should be distinguished into
“Military” and “Economic”, and the specific actions categorized as “Behaviors”,
“Primary Currencies”, and “Government policies” (again, Nye is referring chiefly to
states’ soft power, but obviously the notion of “policies” can exist independently
from the notion of “government”, when we intend it as “resolutions” and “rela-
tions”). In practice (borrowing from Nye’s scheme at page 31):

Behaviors Primary currencies Government policies

Military Coercion, Threats, force Coercive diplomacy, war,
power deterrence, alliance
protection
Economic Inducement, Payments, sanctions Aid, bribes, sanctions
power coercion
Soft Attraction, agenda Values, culture, Public diplomacy, bilateral and
power setting policies, institutions multilateral diplomacy

Needless to say, soft power does not only work “in positive”. Attention towards
a certain individual/community/country can also occur in terms of negative asso-
ciations with the soft power resources. Such effect, I believe, can be generated by
(and therefore classified according to) at least four conditions: absence of resources,
bad reputation, lack of reputation, loss of reputation. If we take an example like
“Universities”, we can see that these three conditions can all have their negative
impact on a given group (say, a city). When a city has no university (absence), it
may provoke such comments like: “Lousy city! There is not even a university
6.2 The Concept of Soft Power 93

here”. When a university exists but it does not have a good reputation, the effect
may be something like: “Imagine! They have one of the country’s worst univer-
sities, here”. Thirdly, a lack of reputation may be expressed with comments like:
“Really? I didn’t even know they had a university, here!”, which is not necessarily
better. Finally, a loss of reputation can be expressed with sentences like “Poor
devils! They even had a university here, and look at them now!”.
Suffering from this effect may be both small/peripherical communities (which
pay the price of under-exposure—and this, we shall see, is one problem with
Lithuania) and big/central communities (which pay the price of over-exposure—as
in the obvious case of USA, which gathers both positive and negative soft power
inputs in great quantities).
Since I am not particularly interested in problematizing the issue, but rather
applying it in its essential nature, I will not mention the various debates that
followed Nye’s establishment of the concept: obviously—like nearly every theo-
retical formulation in human knowledge—soft power too is subject to a fair share of
criticism and controversies, but for the purposes of this case study we can take
Nye’s reflections as the main point of reference. In any case, one must be at least
aware of the fact that soft power was criticized in its general theoretical usefulness
(e.g. Ferguson 2004), in its interaction with (as opposed to “difference from”) hard
power (e.g. Gallarotti 2010) and in the presence (as opposed to absence) of coercive
and manipulative aspects in its action (e.g. Bially Mattern 2005).

6.2.1 Soft Power and Popular Music

There is no doubt that popular music is an important component of a country’s soft

power. Some of them have pop music as their main source: it is possibly the case
with Iceland and Björk, Argentina and tango (with the likely exception of some
football players like Maradona or Messi), Jamaica and reggae (or, straight away,
Bob Marley), and so forth. Not to mention that specific cities, otherwise not really,
so to speak, at the center of the world may become so as the result of a popular
music act or event: see the cases of Liverpool with the Beatles or Woodstock with
the 1969 festival (incidentally: one may say that the SP of the Finnish town of
Imatra has relied for about 25 years on the fact that the International Semiotics
Institute, and relative Summer School, were there).
The incidence of popular music on soft power calculations can be in fact rather
strong. The Institute for Government in London, UK, is actively committed in
measuring this concept at global level, by using the so-called “Soft power metrics”,
which are fully explained in McClory 2012, but which basically consist of:
International Purpose/Role, Cultural Output, Global Leadership, soft power Icons
(meaning, world-famous VIPs who bring a positive image of their own country,
like—say—Jose Mujica for Uruguay, Roger Federer for Switzerland, etc.), Cuisine,
National Airline/Major Airport, Commercial Brands. A great example of the cen-
trality of popular music in such calculations is the comparison between the 2011
94 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

and 2012 charts (published in McClory 2012, in various web sources and also in the
November issues of The Monocle monthly magazine). At the end of 2011 the first
12 countries were the following:
1. USA
2. UK
3. France
4. Germany
5. Australia
6. Sweden
7. Japan
8. Switzerland
9. Canada
10. Netherlands
11. Norway
12. Denmark
One year later, the result was this
1. UK
2. USA
3. Germany
4. France
5. Sweden
6. Japan
7. Denmark
8. Switzerland
9. Australia
10. Canada
11. South Korea
12. Norway
Of course, one can find a few interesting changes, but, if I may suggest so, the
most outstanding ones are the first place of the UK (against the virtually unbeatable
USA), and the appearance, at 11th place, of South Korea, not exactly the most
predictable country, in charts of this kind (for the record, it was 14th, in 2011).
Then, of course, the fact that Italy, the country with the world biggest artistic
heritage and great reputation in fashion, cuisine, sports and else, is missing in both
cases is only a testimony of how poorly my home country has been performing at
political level in the last couple of decades, during the age of the so-called
Berlusconism. But perhaps we can leave this issue for another occasion.
The UK’s advancement to first place was almost entirely due to the massive
display of popular culture occurred during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and, more
importantly, the Olympic Games, with that impressive opening ceremony that
reminded the world of Britain’s achievements and influence. When looking back at
that ceremony, the importance of popular music in the process is plain to see: how
6.2 The Concept of Soft Power 95

many countries, in arranging a ceremony of that type, could count on a soundtrack

composed of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Imagine”,
“Heroes”, “My Generation”, dozens of others, and wrap it all up with Paul
McCartney (in flesh and blood) singing “Hey Jude” to athletes and audience from
all over the world?
Consequently, when it comes to Korea, if any of the reader is now thinking “No,
it can’t be that!”, the answer is yes, it is that:
South Korea made a significant jump up the rankings after a very good 2012. Korea hosted
a number of global summits, historically outperformed at the Olympics, and—of course—
gave the world Gangnam. (McClory 2012: 12)

Emphasis on “of course”: a global one-hit-wonder like “Gangnam Style” (and a

rather silly one, if we really want to be honest) is indeed able, almost
single-handedly, to produce a three-place leap in a world chart of soft power. In
other words: the role of popular music in the determination of a country’s soft
power is very difficult to underestimate. Matthew Fraser provides an interesting
application of Nye’s concept to the specific environment of popular music (Fraser
2005: 170–221), and—what is most important for the present chapter—there is a
specific passage about musical forms of protest in the Soviet Union or
Soviet-influenced countries (Fraser 2005: 183–184). Mentioned here are the
notorious access to Western pop music via the frequencies of Radio Luxembourg
and Radio Free Europe, the boomerang effect of banning rock in East Germany
(granting it the very attractive status of “forbidden fruit” ), the protest punk songs in
Hungary during the 1970s, and… and just when the Singing Revolution would
appear as the most obvious example of the list, the book turns to a (very laudable,
incidentally) critique to Adorno’s inadequacy to speak of popular music (Fraser
2005: 184–185). Lithuania, the whole Baltic area and the Singing Revolution are
totally missing in the picture, replaced by examples that, though very significant,
were not representative of a structured, organized movement.
This, we shall see, is exactly the problem.

6.2.2 The (not so Well-Known) Soft Power of Lithuania

One of the curses of being an Italian married to a Lithuanian woman, I noticed, is

that in the average Italian’s eyes, the Baltic States are totally interchangeable.
Particularly those of my generation, or older, became aware of this area as an
inseparable trio: Estonia Latvia And Lithuania. One word. We studied them while
they were still Soviet states, so their existence made sense only in the past, before
the October Revolution. Otherwise, they were the USSR, and nothing else. Then,
they became independent, and we got to learn a bit more: their capitals for instance,
but we still make a lot of confusion, so the result is that my wife gets often recalled
as an “Estonian from Riga”, localized with a “Lithuania? I was in Tallinn, once”,
interpreted with a “so, is it Russian she is speaking now?”, and similar.
96 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

Italy, it is no mystery, can be a very provincial country, and needs especially

visible sources of soft power to acknowledge another country’s identity. It takes
pillars like Ikea, beautiful blonde girls, and more recently Ibrahimovic, to recognize
Sweden as an autonomous entity, distinguished from other Scandinavian countries.
For Lithuania, one must admit, this process has not occurred yet.
However, this is not just an Italian problem. The identification of a country
through its soft power sources is something that can be tested in various ways: in
fact, the more banal and superficial the test, the more reliable its results. Soft power,
indeed, is at its most visible when it comes up casually, spontaneously, or anyway
in contexts that are not directly addressing the issue. I can test the soft power of,
say, France not when I specifically ask anyone “Do you like French wine?” (or any
other distinctively-French product), but rather when someone will intentionally
point out that the wine they brought for dinner is French, and that—alone—is
guarantee of its quality (much like the expressions “German car”, “Belgian
chocolate”, or “Swiss watch”). In a similar vein, one can check what kinds of
connotation the words “Lithuania” and “Lithuanian” inspire in those contexts where
these two terms can be used as key-words. For instance, anyone working in aca-
demic or business environments, when compiling their presentations for a meeting
or conference, often need to rely on the so-called clip arts, that is, copyright-free
images (usually in comics style) that can be searched by key-words within any
program like Microsoft Office, Open Office, and the like. Business and marketing
presentations are literally packed with those: usually, a funny little stylized guy
wondering about a certain issue (scratching his head with a big question mark
drawn over his head), then having an idea (with the inevitable light bulb replacing
the question mark), then climbing up a staircase (a metaphor for reaching success),
and so forth. All a bit unoriginal, as we may all agree. But still: the procedure is that
the presenter types a key-word on his/her program (for instance, “problem”) and
gets a few images that may connote the key-word (for instance, the little guy
scratching his head with a question mark). The most recent programs are now
searching clip arts throughout the whole internet, so there are many more images
available for whatever word is typed. But here I would like to refer to the period
when a certain (finite) amount of clip arts was included in the program installation.
Within this finite number, thus, it is possible to detect how much room and how
many options are given for each word (I have that program in an old laptop that I
still own). Now, it happens very often in academic presentations, especially those in
cultural studies, history, political science, sociology, or similar fields, that we need
to find clip arts representing a country or its inhabitants. The ones that we always
get are at least a picture of that country’s flag and at least a picture of its location in
a geographical map. In other words: the main symbolic and the main iconic rep-
resentations respectively. Then, after those, all the others that appear (if they appear)
are, systematically, representations of that country’s soft power. Tokens of its
history, its culture, its architecture, its food, its arts, its music, etc.
For instance, if I type the word “Greece” and “Greek”, my old Power Point
program gives me the results of Fig. 6.1.
6.2 The Concept of Soft Power 97

Fig. 6.1 Clip arts associated to the words “Greece” and “Greek”

As one can see, entries are many (note the scrollbar on the right side of each
picture: there are several more clip arts available: the figures portray only the first
sixteen for each category), and—flag and map aside—are all about Greece’s SP,
with Ancient Greek civilization (in various forms: from architecture to myths to
theatre) being obviously the most recurrent connotation.
Now: would we be able to guess what kind of results we would get if the
keywords were now “Lithuania” and “Lithuanian”? I asked the same question
during my speech at the International Students Week organized by Kaunas
University of Technology in early 2014: my audience was composed of about two
hundred foreign BA and MA students who had arrived in Lithuania not more than a
couple of weeks earlier. Kids of that age are pretty quick in organizing themselves,
making friends, partying and getting to know local customs, so I was not entirely
surprised to learn that their answers were very similar to the ones I would myself
give, after almost four years living in Lithuania and over ten living with a
Lithuanian partner. Like myself, but in just a couple of weeks, my audience had
noticed that Lithuanian beer is particularly good (and easily compete with the more
celebrated Czech and German ones); that Lithuania has an outstanding basketball
team (and has given to this sport’s history world top-players like Arvydas Sabonis
and Šarūnas Marčiulionis); and that Lithuanian girls can be remarkably attractive.
On at least these three soft power sources, there seemed to be general consensus.
After a few years in this country, I probably would have added a couple of more,
98 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

Fig. 6.2 Clip arts associated to the words “Lithuania” and “Lithuanian”

but this is not the point. The point is that, in typing the key-words “Lithuania” or
“Lithuanian”, it may have been reasonable to expect at least the pictures of a pint of
beer, a basketball and a sexy blonde girl. What do we get, instead (Fig. 6.2)? One
flag, one map of the country, one world map with a highlight on the location of
Lithuania (as if to say: “in the very likely case you have no idea where it is”), and—
associated to the word “Lithuanian”—a countryside lady in folk costume (the latter
being the only image that one may refer to soft power: Lithuania as a place of folk
traditions).
Imagine me showing the picture of a traditional costume as a soft power token
for Lithuania in a Technological University, in front of students who came there
attracted by the perspective of becoming IT engineers or the like.
Such poor results certainly call for a bit of reflection. Microsoft is surely an
American company, but—just as surely—one of the widest-spread in the world.
Bill Gates and his associates are not just working for the American market (the
same one that, according to surveys, systematically ignore where exactly most
military interventions of their army are actually taking place: Ukraine, Iraq,
Ex-Yugoslavia… totally exotic names): they no doubt aim to global following. The
fact that they could only come up with a flag, a map and a folk costume, when it
comes to representing Lithuania, speaks volumes about how Lithuanian soft power
is for the most part a “well-kept secret”, to put it nicely.
6.3 The Singing Revolution in Lithuania 99

6.3 The Singing Revolution in Lithuania

“Singing Revolution” (SR) is a conventional name for a series of events (often, but
not only, related to music) occurring between 1987 and 1991, during (and most of
all as a support of) the independence movements in the Soviet Republics of the
Baltic area: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The term was coined by the Estonian
activist and artist Heinz Valk, who employed this expression for the first time while
commenting the spontaneous mass singing of Estonian traditional songs during the
Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, an event that took place in 1988. Music became
during those years the main expressive vehicle for conveying independentist and
nationalist messages, in at least three ways: (1) specific new music was written with
a distinctive (be that direct, metaphoric or even parodistic) political significance;
(2) Traditional national music was sung and performed for the sole fact of being
“national” (as opposed to “Soviet”, or “Russian”), regardless of its contents;
(3) Forbidden music, no matter what, was sung and performed as an intrinsic act of
insubordination (e.g. rock genres, so despised by Soviet authorities).
Although—and the name itself suggests it—the Singing Revolution was mostly
a phenomenon occurring within folk and popular music, it would be a mistake to
underrate the role played by art music and composers, who in fact may have
anticipated the phenomenon (at least in spirit), or simply joined it in a few occa-
sions. One may think at least of:
1. Bronius Kutavičius’s work with the poet Sigitas Geda (in particular: the operas
Kaulo senis ant geležinio kalno, 1976, and Strazdas—žalias paukštis, 1980, and
the cycle of four Oratorios Panteistinė oratorija, 1970, Paskutinės pagonių
apeigos, 1978, Iš jotvingių akmens, 1983—all three employing national folk
poetry—and Pasaulio medis, 1986);
2. Algirdas Martinaitis’s works Cantus ad futurum (1982), Gyvojo vandens kla-
vyras (1983) and Sakmė apie šūdvabalį (1990);
3. Feliksas Bajoras’s works, in particular the opera Dievo avinėlis (1982), and the
oratorio Varpo kėlimas (1986).
Back to the Singing Revolution in strict sense, it must be emphasized that the
phenomenon did not take a coherent shape across the three Baltic states, and that
possibly adds to the charm of it: there was no specific agreement among the three
countries, but rather times were mature for a phenomenon like this to emerge
spontaneously in more than one place with a similar cultural background and
political condition. Nevertheless, a few events (directly or indirectly related to the
Singing Revolution) were organized as a common action. Certainly, the so-called
Baltic Way (another event that would deserve a clipart, to my mind), occupies a
special position, here: a chain of about two million people holding hands for
675.5 km uninterruptedly from Vilnius to Tallinn, during August 23, 1989, in the
occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the
Soviet Union and Nazi Germany (see Fig. 6.3).
100 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

Fig. 6.3 A small segment of the 675 km-long Baltic Way, one of the most impressive displays of
non-violent demonstrations in world history (photo “Baltijos kelias”, by Rimantas Lazdynas,
licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Lithuanian part of the Singing Revolution revolved around the so-called
Sąjūdis (“movement”), a group of 35 intellectuals and artists established in 1988 to
support the perestroika and glasnost processes. Conceived as a way to modernize
USSR and soften its policies, the perestroika had for many Soviet countries the
(boomerang) effect of re-awakening the national consciences, and became an (if not
the) actual catalyst for the various independence movements throughout the Union.
Indeed, after the initial support to perestroika and glasnost, Sąjūdis soon replaced its
action with specific claims on national independence (restoring the Lithuanian
language, conducting campaigns of environmental protection, revealing facts and
documents about Stalinism, disclosing the secret protocols of the Nazi-Soviet pact,
etc.). In the turn of few months, Sąjūdis had become the locomotive of the inde-
pendence movement in Lithuania (for more, see Lieven 1993; Donskis 2002;
Miniotaitė 2002).
What is very interesting for the purposes of this chapter is that, in all this
process, music was an exceptionally central force. Like the other Baltic States—we
have seen it—Lithuania had manifestations of spontaneous singing of old national
songs, and composition of new (even more pinpointed) ones. But there was more in
Lithuania that could not be found in the other two Baltic countries. Firstly, there
were specific musical events, such as the so-called Rock March. Organized three
years in a row, from 1987 to 1989 (and twice more in the mid 1990s, after the
independence), Rock March was a travelling show around the main cities of
Lithuania, with different pop bands performing. As mentioned above, one main
point was not just the performance of “protest” or “national” songs (or anyway
songs whose themes may have been unwelcome by the Soviet authorities): it was
the idea itself of performing “forbidden (that is, typically western) genres” to be
6.3 The Singing Revolution in Lithuania 101

Fig. 6.4 The manifesto of

Fluxus, a movement that was
one of the inspirational
sources for Sąjūdis. Note the
entry “Fuse the cadres of
cultural, social and political
revolutionaries into united
front and action” (image of
public domain)

used as vehicle of protest. On the stages of the Rock March, the Lithuanian
audience could be exposed to heavy metal (through the band Katedra), punk
(through the bands Už Tėvynę and, in a more crossover way, Bix), synth-rock
(through the band Fojė), straight blues (through the Hilda Blues Band), not to
mention the very peculiar case of Antis (which shall be the main focus of my
analysis). Bands from Latvia and Estonia would also appear, and that—too—was a
sign: the three Baltic States were “together” in this enterprise.
Secondly, the uniqueness of music, within the Lithuanian Sąjūdis, becomes even
more evident when we consider that its acknowledged leader, and eventually first
president of the independent Lithuania, was Prof. Vytautas Landsbergis, a pianist
and musicologist, and member of that other well-kept Lithuanian secret, the artistic
movement Fluxus, whose revolutionary ideas for arts and society (Fig. 6.4) have
also been inspiring for the Baltic independence movements (born in America, and
usually known because of Yoko Ono’s and John Lennon’s involvement, Fluxus
was as a matter of fact founded and animated by Lithuanian artists like Jurgis
“George” Mačiūnas and Jonas Mekas). Landsbergis has now become a kind of a
controversial figure, often criticized for his aggressive and distinctive anti-Russian
102 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

attitude (which tends to be considered out of place, in the current political picture),
but in those days he was undoubtedly the most active and representative figure of
the independence movement. As a musician and musicologist, one should not
underrate his strong interest (in both performance and research) for Čiurlionis,
himself a symbol of Lithuanian patriotism.
The list of Sąjūdis members involved in music does not end with Landsbergis:
there were the composer Julius Juzeliūnas, the opera singer Vaclovas Daunoras, and
most of all Algirdas Kaušpėdas, an architect who became singer, author and leader
of the very influential band Antis. A true opinion leader, Kaušpėdas was behind
four important stages of the Singing Revolution:
1. He was a co-founder of Sąjūdis, and one of its most proactive members;
2. He was instrumental in helping out resurrecting pre-Soviet Lithuanian tunes
(including the national anthem, which is the one currently used), by touring
Lithuania and literally asking local inhabitants (particularly elderly people) to
sing them (there is a very nice sequence from Giedrė Žickytė’s documentary
How we played the revolution, which portrays him in this particular activity);
3. He co-organized and headlined the Rock March event (1987-1989); and finally
4. He was the leader of this particular band, Antis—the main focus of my analysis,
here.

6.4 The Case of Antis

Possibly more than any other band that emerged in Lithuania during the mid-1980s,
Antis is the one that provided the independence movement with several of the most
effective original compositions. Through their music and performances, Antis
managed to build a powerful anti-Soviet farce through songs abounding in meta-
phors, allusions, double senses, parody and satire, all packaged in a very theatrical
outfit, dominated by masks and costumes (themselves a metaphor of the Soviet
people, forced to “appear” socially in a certain way, and having totally different
needs and aspirations privately). The name itself, Antis, is a double-entendre. The
word, in Lithuanian, means both “duck” and “mass media scandal/sensation”. So,
officially the band was called “Duck”, but everybody knew that the real name
referred to freedom of speech, censorship, media manipulation. In another inter-
pretation, “Antis” would also stand for Anti-Soviet. Unconfirmed by the band, this
latter pun may just be a fatal coincidence (of the likes of “Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds” and the acronym LSD—an association firmly denied by John Lennon,
who instead insisted in telling that this undeniably-psychedelic song was in fact
inspired by an eponymously-titled drawing by his son Julian).
The innuendo of the band’s own name was made immediately clear via the cover
of the first self-titled album (Antis, 1987) . The image was indeed showing a collage
of newspapers in shape of a duck, placed on a red background, ridden by a small
Kaušpėdas and featuring the letters of the band composed with paper cut-outs.
6.4 The Case of Antis 103

Besides the equivalence “duck = media sensation”, notable are also the red (Soviet)
background and the allusion to the citizen (represented by Kaušpėdas) made smaller
by the media/system oppression.
Also, when directly addressed on the contents of their music (for instance, by the
hosts of some Soviet TV program they were guests of), the band would wear their
“mask” and deliver answers such as that they were perfectly fine as every Soviet
person should be. Once again: people would get the joke, and enjoy that sarcastic
frontal attack on the authorities, gaining increasing confidence that independence
was no longer a utopia.1
Antis were born almost as a joke, during a 1984 new year’s eve party of the
Kaunas architects union: a bunch of architects with a passion for music, led by
amateur singer Algirdas Kaušpėdas, entertained the colleagues with a little concert
consisting mostly of famous songs’ covers and original tunes, mostly with
Kaušpėdas-penned lyrics in Lithuanian and the common theme of making fun of
the Soviet Union. At this early stage, Kaušpėdas was joined by fellow architects
Arūnas Blūšius, on guitar, Gediminas Jurevičius, on bass, Dalius Cijūnėlis, on
percussions, and Arūnas Povilauskas, on keyboards.
The initiative proved so successful that Antis were encouraged to take them-
selves more seriously, and quickly became an underground (and, later,
not-so-underground) musical phenomenon. While Cijūnėlis left the band rather
quickly, followed one year later by Jurevičius and then Povilauskas, Kaušpėdas and
Blūšius came to form the nucleus of the band (which remained as it was until the
end of the band’s activities). It was clear that the band needed first and foremost a
more solid musical input, and that came two months after the party with trumpeter,
guitarist and composer Petras Ubartas (a more prepared musician, though still an
architect by profession, who would become responsible for the musical part of

1
For those who have the chance to watch the mentioned documentary How we played the revo-
lution, by Giedrė Žickytė, one of such peculiar conversations is shown from the 45th minute. After
one performance, the band is supposed to answer questions from the audience (the whole con-
versation is spoken in Russian).
Kaušpėdas (inaugurating the debate): “We are happy state employees. We are driven forward
by a belief in the future. We, along with our wonderful happy people, speak one language that
everybody can understand. This is what life is about!”
Program’s host (before leaving the floor to the audience): “Me and Pavel appreciate the
masterful way you represent the image that your mask demands. However, I think you will be now
asked questions that will force you to drop that mask in order to answer”.
Kaušpėdas (welcoming the questions): “Comrades…”
Young man from the audience: “I only know Russian, and so does this crowd. Why don’t you
sing in Russian? Are you afraid that—as I suspect—your lyrics are not politically topical? Or are
you simply nationalists, mere nationalists? We need to understand against what you are singing…
Nobody understands!”
Kaušpėdas: “I would like to ask this comrade, here: what does ‘nationalist’ mean? It’s the first
time I hear such a word!”
Then, while introducing Antis’ next song of the evening: “To this member of the intelligentsia
who just asked this question with this very difficult word we dedicate the next song, “Ša,
inteligente”.
104 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

Antis’ songwriting, letting Kaušpėdas focus on lyrics) and, in 1987, with a real
professional musician, a choir conductor named Vaclovas Augustinas, who became
the keyboardist and main arranger of the band. The addition of bass player
Gintautas Rakauskas and drummer Linas Būda completed the band in its most
recognizable incarnation (one that continued until the end of the band, despite
Ubartas’s departure in 2007, and the comeback, in the same year, of an early
member named Gediminas Simniškis).
Very importantly, in 1985, the band took a decision that would distinctively
characterize their sound: the introduction of a rich horn section (which in the Soviet
years consisted of Pavelas Kovaliovas, Artūras Luckus, Vytautas Kublius,
Gintautas Kažemėkas and Andrėjus Smechnovas, while in later times was mostly
comprised of session men). Such implementation not only expanded the musical
possibilities of the band (often adding a pinch of jazzy/RnB flavor, and mostly
creating that texture of dissonant, avant-gardesque sounds that one can hear in the
majority of Antis’ songs), but it was also crucial in enriching that theatrical,
circus-like (Fellinesque, to an extent) atmosphere that the band needed in order to
stage their farce.
As their career took off, mostly on a word-of-mouth basis (rumor circulated
among Lithuanians that there was this naughty band making fun of the Soviet
Union in their songs, so their concerts got increasingly crowded), Antis became
prominent artists of the Lithuanian alternative rock scene, which, in those days, was
literally flourishing: bands like the short-lived Hiperbolė (active between 1982 and
1985, until the pre-Perestroika Soviet authorities found them too “western” for their
taste and caused their disbandment) were an early spring for a wave of bands that
had much more the imprinting of western rock than the overly-mediated forms of
popular music appearing beforehand. This wave included Fojė (born in 1983 and
led by a singer-songwriter who is still nowadays one of the most important figures
of Lithuanian popular music, Andrius Mamontovas), Bix, Katedra, SKAT, Ad
Libitum, Už Tėvynę, Hilda Blues Band, and indeed Antis.
An early breakthrough for the band was the second edition of the Music Festival
Lituanika, in May 1986, which saw their performance overshadowing in reception
of some of the celebrated Russian rockstars of the period, particularly Aquarium
and Bravo. At this point, the band were put under contract by the only available
recording company: the infamous (or legendary, depending on the views) Melodya.
Their first, self-titled LP was recorded in Vilnius and released in 1987, quickly
becoming one of the bestselling albums in Lithuanian history.
During this year, Kaušpėdas was among the main organizers of the
above-mentioned “Rock March”, the first of three editions of an unprecedented
musical gathering of Baltic rock bands (mostly Lithuanian, but with appearances
from Latvia and Estonia, too). An itinerant festival that touched six Lithuanian
cities in the first edition, and eight each in the other two, the Rock March was
attended by thousands of people (for a total of ca. 150,000 in the three years). Partly
out of a real intention, and partly as an institutional cover-up, some proceeds from
the concerts went to support public organizations (in 1987, the Lithuanian Culture
Fund, in 1988, the Lithuanian Revival Movement, and in 1989, the Lithuanian
6.4 The Case of Antis 105

Society for the Disabled). In actual fact, the main point of the Rock March was
political, particularly so in the 1988 and 1989 editions. As the Sąjūdis movement
grew in intellectual force and public consensus (and—at the same time—authorities
became less strict), the March became a prominent platform for fueling
national/independentist ideas, or even for more specific political claims (like in
1989, where the closure of the Soviet military bases and plants was demanded).
The follow-up to the Antis album, entitled Ša (“Hush!”: obviously another ref-
erence to censorship and lack of freedom of speech), provoked a litigation between
Antis and Melodya that delayed its release by almost a year. Antis, in fact, wanted
to release the album independently, but the big state label was against it. In the end,
the band managed to record the album in the CSS studios of Warsaw, but could
only release the songs on cassette, in a semi-demo form, lacking post-production.
Six of these songs were completed and released in their next album, Anties
dovanėlė (“Antis’ little gift”, 1989) , again under Melodya, and with the inclusion
of three new songs recorded in Vilnius in early 1989. The rest of the twelve songs
recorded for Ša found place in a 1994 cassette release called Retas paukštis (“Rare
bird”, released by the first independent record company of Lithuania, Zona).
Finally, in 2003, a CD release called Visa Antis (“Complete Antis”, still under
Zona) gathered all the songs of the Soviet period, including the full Ša album.
Meanwhile, Antis also headlined the second edition of the Rock March, con-
solidating their role of musical spokesmen of the independence movement.
Kaušpėdas had a prominent role in the process, and it was just inevitable that he
would become directly involved in the activities of the Reform Movement of
Lithuania (in Lithuanian: Lietuvos Persitvarkymo Sąjūdis), the very political
organization, chaired by Vytautas Landsbergis, which was leading the struggle for
Lithuanian independence. Kaušpėdas became board member of the Kaunas section
of the organization.
Anties dovanėlė was the last album released in Soviet Lithuania. The period
1989-1990 was the most active for Antis, with the third and most
ideologically-engaged edition of the Rock March, and a tour in Italy,2 Austria,
Germany, France and USA (once again possible by an increasingly permissive
political situation). By 1990, due to the intensification of his political work (and
also to a desire to restore his main profession as an architect), Kaušpėdas decided to
quit the band. After few auditions in search of a new singer, the band realized that
Kaušpėdas’s role was just too defining for the band’s identity, and amicably
decided to break up.

2
Thanks to Augustinas (2015, personal communication), I got to learn an interesting episode.
During their visit in Rome, for their concert, the band was approached by a group of expatriate
Lithuanians who were working for the Vatican Radio. Apparently, due to Antis’ intentionally
ambiguous image, these people had suspected that the band was a cover-up for KGB agents, so
they were not sure whether it was wise to meet them or not. They did, eventually, and of course
everybody became good friends. In the end, Antis left Rome with a generous homage from their
new friends: several books on Lithuanian resistance and about fifty bibles that were all hidden in
the band’s luggage, and eventually distributed among acquaintances in Lithuania.
106 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

During the years following independence, Antis shortly reunited in two occa-
sions for highly-acclaimed concerts in 1996 and 2003. Live and anthological
material was also released on CD and DVD. The public’s demand for their music
remained strong throughout the years, until finally in 2007 the album of original
songs Ančių dainos (“Duck songs”) sanctioned the official comeback of the band as
a fully-operative unit—all the way through 2016, when the band decided to retire
for good. Though the Lithuanian musical landscape had profoundly changed, Antis
remained until the very end a hugely successful act, also amongst the new gener-
ation (including fans who were not even born under the Soviet rule). Interestingly,
though no longer in need of pursuing a political purpose, the new songs have not
lost their sharp-tongued thematic approach. There is no Soviet Union anymore—the
new Antis’ songs convey—but there are still many social and political problems in
Lithuania, one of which being a certain loss of those very values that had animated
the Singing Revolution. Coherent with their patriotic-conservative approach to
political commentary (we shall see that later in more detail), Antis still writes
satirical and theatrical attacks to society aimed to promote national pride and
identity: what has changed is the source of the problem. Lithuanians do not need to
fight against Soviet Union anymore, but rather against themselves and their current
indolence and slackness (Fig. 6.5).

Fig. 6.5 Antis in a recent performance (photo “Roko grupė Antis ‘Sostinės dienų’ baigiamajame
koncerte, by Rimantas Lazdynas”, by Andrius Vanagas, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
6.4 The Case of Antis 107

6.4.1 Music, Themes and Performances

Due to the variety of their compositional and performing choices, Antis can be
considered a rather unique case in the musical panorama of Lithuania (and in
general an uncommon one in the world). Their music has been defined in various
ways, ranging from rather common expressions like alternative, new wave, heavy
metal, ska and punk, to more specific ones like “gothic pop” (Ingvoldstad 2007:
100), “post-punk” and “shock rock” (from various sources on the web, including
Wikipedia). In fact, at a close listening, it is also possible to add more labels (e.g.
the more traditional blues of a song like “Mafija”, the arena-pop of “Debesys”, the
rap-rock of “Bomžas”, and so forth), but of course we do not want to enter that dark
route of genre labelling (not to mention that, generally speaking, musicians do not
like to be casted in categories).
There is certainly an element of truth in all these definitions, as Antis’ music
offers an eclectic blend of various genres, particularly those emerged in the late
1970s and established in the 1980s (which is basically the case of all those styles
mentioned in the band’s various descriptions). Such stylistic potpourri is not dis-
played all at once throughout the whole repertoire of the band: it is rather a
case-by-case situation, with each song being given a tailored stylistic identity, not
necessarily related to the song that comes next. One can certainly agree with
Augustinas when he says “Since the very beginning, the question was not ‘What
kind of style should we use in this song?’, but rather ‘What kind of style is needed
to convey the song’s message?’” (Augustinas 2015, personal communication).
Needless to say, the heavily-satirical component of their music puts “irony” at
the center of their artistic project. Most lyrics, we shall see, are of the “satirical
type” (and, through satire, they manage very often to be rather analytical as well).
The music, given what we just said (and are about to say), is mostly of the “X type”,
with frequent incursions in the “aggressive”, the “manneristic” and, occasionally, in
the “solemn” (e.g. “Lietuvos valstybė”) , or, once again, ironically solemn.
For all these reasons, the most recurrent definition for Antis’ style is “post-
modernist rock” (they themselves adopt this formulation in their official website
www.antis.lt). Following the famous 16-point classification provided by Kramer
(2002: 16–17), there are at least six evident postmodern characteristics in Antis’
music: (point 2 in Kramer’s list) the mentioned ironic component; (point 5) the
intentional disrespect for structural unity—Antis’ songs are often fragmentary and
may radically change in style in the turning of few bars; (point 7) the avoidance of
totalizing forms—many songs do not display unified tonal or formal structures;
(point 8) the approach to music within a wider cultural, social and political contexts
(quintessentially so, as we have seen); (point 9) the use of quotations and references
to many cultural traditions (genres, in Antis’ case); (point 15) the presence of
multiple meanings and multiple temporalities (starting from the name of the band,
up to many songs, as we shall see).
108 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

An important addition, specific to popular music and—to an extent—an elab-

oration of Kramer’s 15th point, is provided by Arthur Berger:
In the postmodern worldview, there is no such thing as an essential “me”, no centering
self-identity, no inborn character. There are only roles, images we take up in imitation of
other images. The careers of such postmodern pop celebrities as Madonna, David Bowie,
and Michael Jackson are paradigmatic. Madonna began by playing the role of a “punk”
rockstar in her “Like a Virgin” phase and then redefined herself in the image of an even
more potent TV-age icon, Marilyn Monroe. David Bowie has played every role from Ziggy
Stardust to the title role in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Michael Jackson has gone
from Motown to sadomasochistic black leather, allegedly altering his hair, facial features,
and skin color in the process (Berger 2003: 8).

In Antis’ case, we have seen how central their inclination is to masquerade and
identity deception. The relation between the Soviet establishment and the
Zinovyevian Homo sovieticus, both constantly parodied in Antis’ songs, is most of
all a theatrical one. Both parties wear masks: the mask of deception on one side and
the mask of obedience on the other. Antis stage both farces, either separately or
together: exactly like Berger puts it, “there are only roles, images we take up in
imitation of other images”. Not coincidentally, several of Antis’ songs focus on
specific characters, almost as if the Soviet Union was a huge Commedia dell’Arte
populated by Politburo’s Harlequins and common people’s Pulcinellas: there are
the intellectuals of “Ša, inteligente”, the trolleybus conductress of “Kontrolierė”,
the Politburo officers of “Funkcionieriai”, the cleaning lady of “Salomėja, būk
šlavėja” and so forth, up to one of the best-known songs of the band, “Zombiai”, a
cover of Men at Work’s “Down Under” (itself mentioning zombies in the lyrics).
Partly because of that, but also because of general musical inclinations of the
band members (Augustinas, the main musical brain of the band along with Ubartas,
comes from the art music environment), Antis’ repertoire often showcases what we
may call a “cinematographic” attitude towards song construction, particularly
arrangement. Several songs display introductions, or anyway instrumental parts,
that wink at filmic atmospheres, particularly the thrilling ones of noir and horror.
That forms an ideal triangle with the sarcasm of the lyrics and the theatricality of the
performances (often verging into the Grand-Guignolesque), resulting in an
intentionally-grotesque, provoking and multifaceted musical landscape.
An added value to all this is Kaušpėdas’s voice, an unprofessional singer who
managed to create a very recognizable style, and made a stylistic “edge” out of his
technical limitations. As far as comparisons of this sort may go, his voice may
sound like a more cavernous combination of the histrionic attitude of David Byrne
and the whining qualities of Robert Smith and Morrisey.
Since Byrne was mentioned, two names that are often employed to compare
Antis with are Talking Heads and Frank Zappa (we see those names mentioned also
in the official website of the band). Again, there is some truth in both comparisons:
the Talking Heads gene is very evident, primarily in the new wave roots that also
Antis display, but also in the irregularity of the songs’ construction and—as we
said—in the similarities between Byrne’s and Kaušpėdas’s singing. However,
Talking Heads are probably more attached to the pop song-format, while Antis
6.4 The Case of Antis 109

often do not feel an obligation to remain within the realm of “popular music”. As a
consequence, this leads them more in the direction of Frank Zappa, without how-
ever reaching that complexity, inventiveness, and explicit refusal of just any
musical rule. In a way, thus, Antis can be placed in the middle of these two acts, for
better and for worse (or, in fact, for neither of them: these comparisons are just
general forms of mapping and should not tempt us to indulge into critical
evaluations).
Back to thematic aspects, I would like to share some reflections concerning the
“Soviet period” of the band (which remains my main focus here). Given the cen-
trality of the anti-Soviet protest in Antis’ lyrics, and the necessity to create most of
the time a system of deceptive clues, I would identify at least four typologies of
lyrical disguise, by which Antis would address their political themes, which are not
mutually-exclusive, but may (and often do) operate in a combined fashion. Most of
all, it must not be ignored that there are also more direct and explicit songs in Antis’
repertoire. The fact that they were still released, despite the political situation, says a
lot about both Antis’ courage and, admittedly, the effects of Perestroika, which—
towards the end of the 1980’s—was really loosening up the clamp of censorship (we
shall comment on that in the next paragraph). Provided the (most of the times thick)
veil of irony and sarcasm that enwrap nearly every song, the four categories are:
1. The above-mentioned microcosm of Soviet characters. Antis’ repertoire is
often a grotesque pseudo-Dickensian universe populated by different Soviet
species. Workers, leaders, common people, single individuals or groups, men or
women: in Antis’ tragicomic farce there is room for many characters. Antis’
lyrics, within this category, can take up different forms: the most recurrent one
certainly borrows from his architect’s professional identity, in that it is very
“visual”. Characters are portrayed by images more than by narrative units: the
politburo bureaucrats of “Funkcionieriai”, for instance, are—quite simply
“called names” (“portfolio pilots”, “glamour dandies”, “knights in armor”,
“slogan announcers”, etc.), and from those we understand a whole catalogue of
actions and characteristics. Very often, in taking this approach, the lyricist
(which is usually Kaušpėdas, but not always) recurs to anaphoras, constantly
repeating the name of the songs’ protagonist/s.
On the other hand, in other characters’ songs, Antis may opt for a more narrative
approach, depicting stories where he may get himself involved (like the strict
trolleybus conductress in “Kontrolierė” , with whom the first-person narrator ends
up falling in love “out of fear”).
2. The use of theatrical and/or dreamlike imagery as a metaphor itself of a
society where people have to pretend to be someone else and do something else.
In the song “Klasėj mane kalbina” (“The classmates tell me”), the protagonist is
advised by his classmates and teachers that he should be an actor, because actors
get the applause on the stage and can afford not having a life after the show is
over. In “3-10-52”, the protagonist lives in a “world of illusions” where
everything is perfect and that must be defended by the “small angry words and
110 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

stupid slogans” (of the independence activists, of course). Incidentally, as

asserted in Kaušpėdas (2013: 66), the title of the song was a meaningless
sequence of numbers that was only meant to spur mysterious interpretations (is
it the date of some significant event? A telephone number of some Soviet
authority? A KGB secret code?): keeping up with theatrical/cinematographic
jargon, it was a classic “red herring”.
3. Following the classic tradition of blues, the adoption of private relations as
metaphors for public events. The same way as Afro-American blues singers
would use the excuse of—say—a cruel rejection in love to address the cruel
rejection received by a racist society, so Antis could hide the dynamics of Soviet
oppression behind the events occurring in a private relationship. The refrain of
“Aš išeinu” (“I am leaving”) goes “I am leaving you, I am leaving you, because
I want to live”, and therefore sounds like a typical scenario of a suffocating love
affair that the protagonist wants to end. It goes without saying (and it becomes
also quite clear while reading the strophes), it is not really a girlfriend to be
addressed in the song.
4. The employment of a classic strategy of political protest in rock: dystopian
scenarios. As we have already seen in this book, the inclination to depict a
distorted future that is nothing more than an exaggeration of present conditions
(or, more likely, a consequence of them) is one of the most often employed
rhetorical strategies to address themes of social protest in rock, particularly those
that target power, government and rulers—often in terms of conspiracy and
oppression. When it comes Antis’ repertoire, this Orwellian feeling (and not by
chance 1984 was exactly written in relation to the Soviet Union) is best
embodied by the song “Zombiai”, which evidently employs the Romerian
metaphor to describe a uniformed mass of non-thinking order executors.

6.4.2 Antis in the Context of the Singing Revolution

There is no doubt, to my mind, that a band like Antis managed to survive without
particular problems only because the perestroika process was fully operating. In
other times, we would be speaking of Antis as a group of heroic patriots tortured
and sent to Siberia for life. The same Augustinas, during the interview he gave me,
admitted that the band never really received any specific pressure from Soviet
authorities, nor did any episode of censorship ever occur (Augustinas 2015, per-
sonal communication). Nevertheless, the ability of catching the wave of those
significant historical changes is by all means a merit, and the whole three Baltic
States—not just specific activists—were certainly in the frontline, among all Soviet
countries, in these activities.
Also, there is no doubt that it was also (perhaps mostly) thanks to all the pacific
and/or artistic initiatives promoted by the three independence movements of the
Baltic countries that the international community became increasingly aware of
6.4 The Case of Antis 111

their national claims, ultimately acknowledging their right to exist as independent

States (a point that Miniotaitė 2002 makes very clearly, except that—we shall see—
she fails to mention the SR as such). Iceland, famously, was the first one to
recognize Lithuania as an independent state and nation, in February 11, 1991, then
in September, USA, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Malta, San Marino, Portugal,
Romania, Ukraine, and the same Latvia and Estonia followed in domino effect. On
September 17, Lithuania was welcomed as a member of the United Nations along
with Estonia and Latvia.
In this sense, the SR was one of the most relevant soft power sources for
Lithuania, in its classic sense (from one group to another), promoting the country as
such (and not as a Soviet Republic), with all its values, characteristics, customs and
choices. Being what it was (that is, a mostly musical phenomenon), it certainly was
particularly effective in raising international sympathies. To paraphrase again
Žickytė’s documentary, the revolution was not made, fought, organized or else. The
revolution was played. Few other strategies could have been as powerful as this
one, and once we find ourselves comparing a 3-million-people country against one
that is 260 times bigger and 50 times more populated.
If this sounds like a naive, quasi-hippie, statement, my suggestion is to compare
a “singing” independence movement like this, with—to mention a few—the ter-
roristic ones of some Palestinian, Basque or Irish group (which, technically
speaking, are not even fighting against an anti-democratic counterpart): are these
countries independent yet? Are they even close? Will they ever achieve that
unanimous sense of sympathy and solidarity that the Baltic States achieved at some
point? I do not say this from any particular political or ideological standpoint: the
point is purely strategic.
On the other hand, even more decisive in the independence process was the other
important function of soft power we mentioned in § 6.2, that is, the one that
operates on the same community it is generated within. Possibly more than any
other action taken during the Sąjūdis, the SR was for Lithuanians the strongest
reminder of what they used to and wanted to be: an independent country, with those
values, that flag, that language, that identity. Along with those songs, of course.
Leonidas Donskis, one of Lithuania’s finest intellectuals, goes as far as to define
the SR (and Sąjūdis in general) as the ultimate Lithuanian embodiment of the
“generous and noble-spirited traditions of the Romantic ethos of liberal national-
ism” (2002: 2), up to become the actual highlight of Lithuanian recent history:
Sąjūdis, and its “singing revolution” not only revived the spirit of the epoch of the
springtime of the peoples (whose slogan—“For your and our freedom!”—was raised as the
banner), but also became a litmus test of the Soviet policy of glasnost and perestroika. The
first breakaway republic in the former Soviet Union, Lithuania came to embody the historic
triumph of nationalism over forced internationalism, which is the high point of modern
Lithuania’s history (Donskis 2002: 2).

In the specific of Antis’ position in the process, perhaps Guntis Šmidchens’s

words are the most accurate:
112 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

In the Baltic, rock songs articulated the public’s ideas and feelings, but songs also created
ideas and feelings, generated political action, and shaped ideology […] Antis was not a
passive transmitter of public sentiment. The band shaped the political movement when they
placed core images of Lithuanian nationalism within a nonviolent frame (Šmidchens 2013:
254).

Šmidchens then proceeds to mention the song “Krantas” (the closing track of
Antis’ second album Ša, released in 1988) as an illustration of this role. The song
(which in English means “Shoreline”) is indeed an excellent example of the
co-existence of these two main sentiments: nationalism on the one hand, and the
plea for a non-violent resistance on the other. “Krantas” is also a good summary of
the musical identity of Antis, as it contains nearly all the features that characterize
the band: a sui generis New Wave approach à la Talking Heads, a biting contrast
between a catchy melody (particularly in the strophes) and the large use of disso-
nances, the prominence of the horn section, the abundance of spoken and
semi-spoken parts, and the usual eccentric vocal performance by Kaušpėdas. This
complex musical texture serves as a canvas for the two thematic layers, neatly
separated (as it is often the case with Antis) between strophes and refrains.
Starting from the latter, we have a programmatic statement of the non-violent
ideology of the Singing Revolution:
We march, one-two-three, one-two-three,
On the clean surface of the water
[…]
How weird is our army:
There are no weapons, only young people
Let us reanimate that stiff blood in our veins
Towards a great goal.

Initially suspended, the rhythm becomes very “marcato”, indeed a bit march-like
(as the lyrics suggests), while Kaušpėdas sings in a semi-spoken, declamatory,
public speech-like manner.
The strophes, on the other hand, display a particularly catchy melody (against an
aggressive arrangement and the usual whining, almost-out-of-tune voice of
Kaušpėdas), and are described by Šmidchens as a celebration of the Lithuanian
Fatherland and nature (“a fantastic landscape with linden trees”, “farmers’ integrity
in the forests”, “faces and rivers”, “water and tears, while the Fatherland stays”).
However, what the Latvian scholar did not have a chance to know (possibly
because of lack of first hand sources, like Kaušpėdas 2013, which was in fact
published only after Šmidchens finalized his book) is that those very images are a
poetic but accurate description of personal events in Kaušpėdas’s family, particu-
larly the persecution from Soviet authorities (two uncles deported to Siberia, a third
one joining the partisans’ armed resistance, while his mother was repeatedly har-
assed by KGB). The “integrity of the farmers” stands in fact for the Lithuanian
partisans who found shelter in the countryside, the “water and tears” were shed by
6.4 The Case of Antis 113

the deportees who were forced out of Lithuania (while, indeed, “the Fatherland
stays”). As for the linden trees, they were actually planted by Kaušpėdas’s father in
his countryside village.
As a matter of fact, thus, the real dialogue takes place between two forms of
struggle: the partisans’ armed resistance of the period 1944–1953, and the
then-on-going Sąjūdis of the late 1980s. The spirit is the same: the SR is indeed
reanimating a “stiff blood” (which can be read in two ways: “let us finally do
something!”, after more than 30 years from the last resistance; but also “let us
recover that partisan spirit again!”). The strophes’ Romantic imagery of Lithuanian
national beauty is thus a particularly articulated text: Kaušpėdas mixes his personal
memories with the historical heritage of the Lithuanian resistance, and in general
the national identity (as opposed to the imposed “Soviet” identity). The best
exemplification of this mix is the passage in the song referring to “Vytautas’s
serenity” (“Vytauto ramybė”), which Šmidchens (2013: 255) imagines only as
another patriotic reference to the Grand Duke Vytautas, who had a reputation for
being a very calm leader. At the same time, Vytautas is also the name of
Kaušpėdas’s father, the one who planted the linden trees, so now the serenity is also
that of the Lithuanian countryside, and there is another Vytautas.

6.5 Concluding Reflections: The Many “Politics”

of the Singing Revolution

There are three reasons why I present Singing Revolution in such epic terms: first,
because I personally believe in the historical greatness of this phenomenon (ma-
terial, as far as I am concerned, for at least social sciences, peace studies, musi-
cology and cultural studies); second, because many countries, particularly in their
touristic promotion, sell as “epic” much less relevant events (Lithuania itself has,
for instance, the perverse inclination to treat as key national monuments pieces of
lands where those monuments do not exist anymore, not even a brick);3 third,
because—paraphrasing Tuco (“the Ugly”) in Sergio Leone’s movie—a bigger body
will make more noise when it falls.
It is indeed very, and sadly, remarkable to notice that neither Lithuanian
authorities nor specific scholars have devoted anything more than a minor effort to
study, analyze and promote the events and repertoires of the Singing Revolution.

3
I mean no disrespect, of course, and I am using the expression in a purely joking manner.
Certainly, historical memory should be handled in the most diverse manners that a country’s
government and people deem fit to represent their identity. A “former” monument (like the castle
hills of Kernavė, the medieval capital of the Grand-Duchy of Lithuania), in this respect, is not of
less value than one that still stands. Having said that, my sarcasm emerges at the very moment I
notice that, by contrast, a lively, vibrant heritage such as the SR is almost overlooked. Nearly every
major Lithuanian city has a “Kernavė street” in the map. None of them has even a small alley
named after the SR.
114 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

The whole phenomenon, as such, is very seldom mentioned in books and essays
dealing with SSPs or generally the relation between arts and politics. No Lithuanian
singer or songwriter does ever appear as the “Lithuanian Pete Seeger” or the
“Woody Guthrie of the Baltics”. No edition of the Rock March is ever presented to
the international readership as a “Lithuanian Woodstock”.
Certainly—and I say this from a leftist’s point of view—it is not irrelevant that
the entire movement was animated by a rightist-conservative intelligentsia. The
studies on SSPs (and, to say it all, the whole area of popular music studies) is
literally dominated by leftist scholarship, most members of which still having one
or two issues in admitting that also the Soviet Union was a dictatorship, and that—
therefore—a democratic protest can also originate from the right side of the political
spectrum.
That a band like Antis was providing a commentary of society (whether
Soviet-ruled or not) from the right side of the political spectrum is something
evident from many elements. I have dealt with the notion of left and right as cultural
models in the previous chapter of this monograph, where I isolated eight categories
of discourse (rhetoric, socio-economic, geo-historical, temporal, perceptive, exis-
tential, semiotic, and artistic) applicable to the two ideological poles. It is no
wonder that Antis are perfectly fitting in almost all of the values associated to those
categories. Their music conveys values of freedom, individuality, national identity,
virility, romanticism, conservation/tradition, and, not least, often targets leftist
values as responsible for their negation (“left” being either the Soviet left or,
especially after the independence, the western, European left). Several are, in this
respect, the examples in their repertoire (one may already look at examples ana-
lyzed here—the song “Krantas” above all), but possibly none better than the song
“Lietuvos valstybė” (“Lithuanian State”) makes our case. The song was written for
the third edition of the Rock March (July 1989), and took shape in a very crucial
stage of the independence movement, in 1989. At this particular point, the inde-
pendentist claims of many Soviet republics had been made loud and clear, and “the
West” could no longer ignore them. At the same time, the westerners’ general
perception (particularly the leftist intellectuals, politicians and opinion leaders) was
that Gorbachev’s Perestroika was leading the Soviet Union in the correct political
direction, that is, a progressively democratic one. In this context, the impatience
displayed in the Baltic and Caucasus regions in particular (but, more or less,
everywhere) was seen as strategically untimely, and perhaps even a bit ungrateful
towards a leadership (Gorbachev’s) that looked miles and miles away from
Stalinism.
Yet what Westerners had chosen to ignore was that riots and demonstrations
organized by independence movements, even when perfectly peaceful ones, were
still smeared in blood by the Soviet authorities. Just two months before the 1989
edition of the Rock March, in the night between 8th and 9th of April, the Soviet
army had killed 16 demonstrators in Tbilisi, Georgia, and injured many more. This
circumstance became the main source of inspiration for Antis to write what
Kaušpėdas came to call a “didactic lesson to the Europeans” in matters concerning
independence from Soviet rule (Kaušpėdas 2013: 111). The result was “Lietuvos
6.5 Concluding Reflections: The Many “Politics” of the Singing Revolution 115

valstybė”, a patriotic song mostly aimed at criticizing the unsupportive European

left: to an extent, the whole of Europe is identified with leftist politics—not nec-
essarily in a Soviet sense, but in that politically correct, diplomatic way that
independence movements were considering so distant and insensitive. In the stro-
phes of the song, Antis developed a caricature of the Western Europeans as timid,
effeminate naives (thus, some might say, a classic right-wing form of satire, with a
strength vs. weakness, body vs. mind and masculinity vs. femininity set of
dichotomies):
Hey you, Western citizen, you find Soviet Union so interesting,
Hey you, educated foreigner, this is not Russia: Russia is far away!
Hey you, perfumed European, travelling in a Paris–Moscow train of friendship,4
Can you really claim that maps do not show Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania?
Hey you, great democrat, what do you know about our life?
Hey you, naive aristocrat, the East has fooled you again.
[…]
Hey you, European vegetarians, here is a nice pie of Baltic nations.
Hey you, important members of parliaments, get rid of maps soaking in blood.
Hey you, fast-thinking diplomats, the willpower of humiliated nations is strong.
[…]

The presence of such appellatives like “vegetarian”,5 “perfumed”, “aristocrat”,

have a multiple purpose to emphasize the mentioned lack of virility, but also a lack
of “authenticity” and distance from reality: the aristocratic perfumed vegetarian is
obviously the antithesis of the “real person” (possibly “real man”) dealing with
“real problems”, which therefore becomes the role that the song assigns to
Lithuanians, and in general anti-Soviet movements.
The song, which is a mid-tempo rocker in the strophes (with a guitar riff that
anticipates Genesis’ “I can’t dance” of about two years), gets a distinctively epic,
anthem-like, crowd-pleasing structure in the refrain, where the openly
patriotic/nationalistic contents are addressed to both foreigners and compatriots (as
we saw already, Antis often opted for a neat thematic distinction between strophes
and refrains):

4
The reference here is not only to an existing railway route, but also to a highly-propagandized
event that took place in 1983, when a delegation of the French General Confederation of Labor
activists came by train to USSR to become familiar with the work of Soviet Trade Unions. The
event was documented in a propaganda film by Zoya Fomina called The Train of Friendship from
France.
5
As a Western, European and leftist vegetarian, I get not only the feeling that this song is actually
about me, but I can also recognize the “vegetarian-effeminate” equation as one of the typical
stereotypes about vegetarianism, particularly in meat-based cultures like the Lithuanian one.
116 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

State of Lithuania—try to pronounce it.

State of Lithuania—a Baltic dawn.
State of Lithuania—to die or to live.
State of Lithuania—Lithuania in the world.

“Try to pronounce it” is at the same time an invitation to Europeans to get

acquainted with a language that is not anymore Russian, and to get familiar with the
idea of an independent state that is not anymore a Soviet republic.
In any case, the specific ideological preferences within the community of pop-
ular music studies are not the only problem, here. The second one is that this area is
no less alien to ethnic and cultural biases than traditional musicology, which I
already mentioned this in the preface of this book. If studies on classical music are
infamously euro- and male-centric, popular music studies are glamorously Western-
and particularly Anglo-American-centric. To make a specific example related to
SSPs, Phull 2008, a book significantly entitled Story Behind the Protest Song: A
Reference Guide to the 50 Songs That Changed the 20th Century, analyzes 50
supposedly historically-crucial protest songs (52, in fact), with the suspicious result
that only two of them are not from either UK, Ireland or North America: The
Wailers’ “Get Up, Stand Up” (Jamaica—still an English-speaking North American
country, anyway) and Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” (Germany). The situation gets
even worse in the likes of Vites 1998 (the book is called Rock e Politica), where
simply 78 out of 78 songs are from the Anglo-American area.
Let alone the Baltic States, but the fact that songs like “Senzeni Na?” (the “We
Shall Overcome” of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa) or Inti Illimani’s
“El Pueblo Unido” (which meant so much to the Chilean people during the tragic
years of Pinochet) have to be ignored to give room to Michael and Janet Jackson’s
“Scream” or Pulp’s “Common People”, as they are in Phull 2008 (no disrespect
meant: I am only pointing out the historical relevance of these songs within any
movement of political protest), is only another confirmation that before criticizing
the (many) biases of traditional musicology, popular music studies should take a
serious look at their own.
Having said that, the third problem, and the rest of the responsibilities, fall
entirely on Lithuanian cultural policies and their operators. At national level, there
are a few (not even many) studies written in Lithuanian: in ethnomusicology there
are studies by Rimantas Astrauskas, Regimantas Gudelis, or in Karnes and Braun’s
collection Baltic musics Baltic musicologies. In popular music, there are only
semi-academic cases like few essays in the collection Sąjūdžio ištakų beieškant:
nepaklusniųjų tinklaveikos galia. In art music, there are no systematic studies, but
only specific monographs about given composers, with insights on their role in the
resistance movement. Then, as we move into the field of international promotion
(or, at least, exposure) of such an important phenomenon, emptiness dominates. No
Lithuanian author has ever bothered to publish or release the history (or an analysis)
of the SR in English.
6.5 Concluding Reflections: The Many “Politics” of the Singing Revolution 117

Of the Lithuanian movies that address the topic (all in Lithuanian, of course), at
least two (the mentioned documentary How we played the revolution, and a fiction
film called The Children from the Hotel America) were also presented in film
festivals abroad (therefore, English subtitles do exist!): but when the DVDs were
released, no English subtitles were featured, preventing the items to have any
impact whatsoever on the international market (in other words: taking for granted
that they will not).
Moreover, very timid were the attempts to academically promote the SR at
international level, resulting in international ignorance and misunderstandings.
Thomson 1992 (not exactly a Lithuanian surname, as one can notice) remains the
most evident international exposure of the phenomenon, otherwise the only Baltic
country that really took proper care of this enormous cultural heritage was Estonia
(in particular through such studies as Vesilind 2008). In Estonian cultural policies
and scholarship, the SR is seen as a major event, one that not only contributed to the
country’s independence, but which in fact typifies it. Research and promotion of the
phenomenon take special care in making it internationally visible, with publications
and documentaries in English, plus—what is more significant—the inclusion of the
SR as a founding historical event in nearly any general treatise of Estonian history
and/or culture. There is great distance between two similarly-titled and
similarly-intended books like the mentioned Donskis 2002 (Identity and Freedom:
Mapping Nationalism and Social Criticism in Twentieth-Century Lithuania) and
Subrenat 2004 (Estonia: Identity and Independence). Lithuanian “identity”, in
Donskis’s book, results in one single mention to the SR (the one quoted above,
which admittedly celebrates its importance); Estonian “identity”, for Subrenat, is an
entire chapter called “The ‘Singing Revolution’ and Independence Regained”.
To conclude, if this literature review was an award, the winner in the category
“best missed opportunity to talk about the SR” would probably be Miniotaitė 2002.
The amazing fact, here, is that this book is programmatically written to talk about
the “nonviolent resistance” in Lithuania:
This monograph seeks to highlight the important role that nonviolent action has played in
Lithuania, especially in the reassertion of independence in the 1980s and 1990s. In no way
is it my intention to try to revise or to downplay the troubling, and at times horrific,
infliction of violence in Lithuanian history, particularly in regards to the destruction of the
Lithuanian Jewish community during the Second World War. Rather, I seek only to draw
attention to an often ignored strand of the Lithuanian experience, one that—given greater
understanding and development—could help diminish the prospect of a recurrence of such
destructive national and communal violence (Miniotait 2002: 7).

The book that has the perfect historical and thematic frame to discuss the
Lithuanian Singing Revolution, devotes no more than five (five!) lines in the whole
book (between pages 30 and 31) to any topic related to the Singing Revolution: the
organization of the first “Rock March” (erroneously called “Rock’n’Roll March”,
among other things: as if Bix and Katedra came to play “Tutti Frutti” and “Blue
Suede Shoes” instead of punk and metal).
However, this may not even be the main problem, for the choices of an indi-
vidual writer (especially a great one like Prof. Donskis) have their intrinsic (and
118 6 Case Study 2: The Lithuanian Singing Revolution …

very respectable) legitimacy. What really hurts here (and I am not sure whether to
call it “arrogance” or “inferiority complex”), as a non-Lithuanian researcher
interested in a Lithuanian musical phenomenon, is that there is a widespread idea—
somehow based on similar sentiments as the ones expressed in the Antis song
“Lietuvos valstybė” —that “foreigners” are not really able to understand Lithuanian
history. Research projects on the Singing Revolution proposed by international
scholars to the Lithuanian Research Council (the main national funding institution
for research) are dismissed on the (discriminatory) basis that such kinds of research
would be “at best distorted” (I am quoting from an actual report), when performed
by scholars who are not insiders of Lithuanian culture and language. Which is more
or less like saying that Claude Levi-Strauss did not produce anything significant on
the Indians Nambikwara because he was French; that Paul Gauguin was never able
to capture the essence of the Tahiti people; and that (to mention a Lithuanian
scholar) Jurgis Baltrušaitis was never entitled to speak about any other art culture
than the Lithuanian one.
As a result of all these factors, the last one in particular, little by little the SR is
turning from a Baltic phenomenon into an almost exclusively Estonian one, and,
needless to say, this is also what the international community, by reflex, perceives (I
mentioned, for instance, the Canadian documentary Cultures in conflict, which
focuses entirely on the Estonian Singing Revolution, with basically no mention to
Lithuania and Latvia). Latvia has recently made a significant step, with the publi-
cation of Šmidchens 2013: by now, thus, Lithuania remains the only country not to
have properly presented its contribution to the Singing Revolution to the interna-
tional community.
Is this a coincidence or is there a certain fraud in this peculiar phenomenon? First
of all, it may be important to mention that, as a matter of fact, “peculiar” is not
necessarily the right word. I mentioned the case of the Lithuanian Research Council
and its active refusal of encouraging international scholarship of the SR. As an
Italian, I can relate to this form of institutional narrow-mindedness, when I think of
the autarchic and often mawkish way Italian history, particularly topics like
“Risorgimento” and “Resistenza”, is treated. In 2011, during the 150th anniversary
of Italian unification, quite astoundingly, nearly all of the national celebrations were
arranged by Italians and meant for Italians. Throughout all the festivities, there was
almost no occasion when Italian institutions invited and gave the floor to cultural
figures from abroad, even only to ask how the whole Risorgimento looked like from
another angle. As a young boy raised in a politically-aware environment, and later
as a scholar, I was repeatedly exposed to the lesson that the points of view from
outside are often the most reliable and objective, when it comes to information and
interpretation. I grew up learning that a foreign newspaper will probably give me a
more honest picture of what is happening in the politics and economy of my
country (a notion I treasure nowadays more than ever); I have read foreign books
and watched foreign movies on Italy, and was offered perspectives and details were
revealed that were previously unknown to me.
The additional value of an “international” perspective on history is a perfect
embodiment of that nice sequence in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society, when
6.5 Concluding Reflections: The Many “Politics” of the Singing Revolution 119

Professor Keating asks his pupils to step on his teacher’s desk and observe the
world from there. Particularly when it comes to the founding moments of a
country’s history, to “observe things from another angle” becomes almost a moral,
let alone professional, obligation. Unless we want to opt for a self-indulgent, cel-
ebrative propaganda of our history, as a mythical tale located in a magical land (our
country), defended by heroes (us) and threatened by villains (whoever is in our
way). More or less, in other words, the type of propaganda that SR was fighting
against.
Keeping up with the example of the Italian Risorgimento, it really took inter-
national scholars to interrupt that endless stream of triumphant descriptions of the
“patriotic Vittorio Emanuele II”, the “invincible Garibaldi”, the “political genius
Cavour”. It took Denis Mack Smith, Christopher Duggan, Martin Clark, Lucy Riall,
and others, to finally introduce “other angles”, exposing such taboos as the
involvement of Mafia in the unification process; the legitimacy of the brigands’
claims; the events in Pontelandolfo, Montefalcione and other episodes. If Italians
(or anyone else, for that matter) can now access a rich, balanced and fair histori-
ography on the Risorgimento, it is mostly thanks to these “foreigners”.
It is certainly a lesson that Lithuanian institutions should learn from.

References

Augustinas, V. 2015. Personal interview. Conducted by D: Martinelli and A. Laucevičius.

Berger, A.A. 2003. The portable postmodernist. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Bially Mattern, J. 2005. Why soft power isn’t so soft. Millenium: Journal of International Studies
33(3): 583–612.
Donskis, L. 2002. Identity and freedom: mapping nationalism and social criticism in
Twentieth-Century Lithuania. New York/London: Routledge.
Ferguson, N. 2004. Colossus: the price of America’s empire. New York: Penguin Press.
Fraser, M. 2005. Weapons of mass distraction: soft power and American empire. New York:
St.Martin’s Press.
Gallarotti, G. 2010. Cosmopolitan power in international relations: a synthesis of realism,
neoliberalism and constructivism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ingvoldstad, B. 2007. Lithuanian contests and European dreams. In A song for Europe: popular
music and politics in the eurovision song contest, eds. I. Raykoff and R. D. Tobin. Burlington,
VT: Ashgate.
Kaušpėdas, A. 2013. Antiška. Vilnius: Tyto Alba.
Lieven, A. 1993. The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
McClory, J. 2012. The new persuaders III: a 2012 global ranking of soft power. Retrieved
December 14, 2014: http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/
The%20new%20persuaders%20III_0.pdf.
Miniotaitė, G. 2002. Nonviolent resistance in Lithuania: a story of peaceful liberation. Cambridge,
MA: The Albert Einstein Institution.
Nye, J.S. 1990. Bound to lead: the changing nature of American power. New York: Basic Books.
Nye, J.S. 2004. Soft power. The means to success in world politics. New York: Public Affairs.
Phull, H. 2008. Story behind the protest song: a reference guide to the 50 songs that changed the
20th century. London: Greenwood Press.
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Šmidchens, G. 2013. The power of song: nonviolent national culture in the baltic singing
revolution. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Thomson, C. 1992. The singing revolution: a political journey through the baltic states. London:
Joseph.
Vesilind, P. 2008. Singing revolution: how culture saved a nation. Tallinn: Varrak Publishers.
Chapter 7
Case Study 3: Environmentalism
and Animal Advocacy in the Beatles

Abstract Although better known for their role in the pacifist movement, The
Beatles have been often active in issues of environmental concern, as musicians but
also as private citizens. It is probably fair to state that their ecological conscience
developed during their mediation period in India, in 1968: the album released after
that journey (known as The White Album) had more than one reference to nature,
environmental conservation and even animal rights. More hints of environmental-
ism popped up in The Beatles’ songs until the end of their career, but after their
split, more definite attention to certain topics became more central in the repertoire
and lifestyle of Paul McCartney (who also became a spokesman for the animal
rights movement) and, in a milder way, George Harrison. In the present case study I
intend to analyze the environmentalist repertoire of The Beatles, as a band, and as
solo performers, having in mind the double goal to (a) analyze a portion of the
band’s music that tends to be somewhat overlooked (at least as a category), and
(b) bring to attention the value of environmentalism and animal advocacy within the
realm of SSPs, that, too, are underestimated by existing literature (where, basically,
only The Smiths’ “Meat Is Murder” and very few others get the privilege to be
labelled “protest songs”).

7.1 The Shaping of a Socio-political

Conscience in the Beatles

The acquisition of a socio-political conscience has been for The Beatles a multi-step
process. On top of everything, a relevant role was played by the fact that the band
members belonged to the working class of Liverpool.1 While such a condition
never planted any recognizable seed of purely Marxist or socialist ideas,2 it cer-
tainly helped in developing a critical attitude towards the establishment and social

1
With the sole, ironic, exception of John Lennon, the “working class hero”, who instead lived in an
owned house in the middle-class district of Woolton.
2
The exception, here, should be again Lennon, at least for his “political period” between 1969 and
1973.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 121

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1_7
122 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

conventions, one that managed to emerge at several points of their career, both as a
band and as solo performers. When we think about the catalogue of places, people
and situations created by the authors in their most evocative songs, we hardly find
images of aristocracy or middle class (in fact, we rather find verses like “I don’t
need a castle, they’ve got castles in Versailles”, as in McCartney’s “Beautiful
Night”, 1997). What we find is a street with a barbershop (mind you: barbershop,
not beauty salon), a bus station and “suburban skies” in “Penny Lane” (1967); a
street-band used as alter ego for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (as
opposed to anything fancier, like an orchestra or a string quartet); songs called
“Working Class Hero” (Lennon, 1970), “Power to the People” (Lennon, 1971),
“The Average Person” (McCartney, 1983), etc. In a nutshell, also the way the
songs’ characters tend to behave is very coherent with the authors’ social status.
There are no “special” people or “heroes” in The Beatles’ writing: what they do is
nothing “that can’t be done” (“All You Need Is Love”, 1967). It is significant that,
when McCartney, in 1989, wrote “How Many People?” about a real “hero” (Chico
Mendes, the Brazilian environmental activist assassinated in 1988), he makes it
clear that a most disturbing thing is that an “ordinary person” was killed (“How
many people have died? One too many right now for me, I wanna see ordinary
people living peacefully”). Occasionally, in George Harrison’s songs, the path to
spirituality that marked the majority of his songs (particularly during his solo
career, and anyway from the album Revolver onwards) could lead to the creation of
“elevated” characters, detached from the daily, “material world” (as one of his most
famous albums would have it), however, it is still significant that these characters
place themselves in a very humble position, in comparison to God (“My Sweet
Lord”, 1970, “Life Itself”, 1981, “Wake Up My Love”, 1982, etc.).
Secondly, all of them developed teenage passions for the skiffle craze, the Teddy
boy fashion and finally rock’n’roll, with their general rebellious attitude, the
development of a specific “youth” culture and the interest for Afro-American music
(with its repeated references to sex and transgression). At the same time, thanks to
his father’s semi-professional passion for jazz and the Tin Pan Alley tradition,
McCartney was also exposed to the American classics (an element that will help
shaping the more sophisticated taste that The Beatles had in comparison with other
rock’n’roll bands). If it is no surprise that the TPA experienced lyricists could
elaborate particularly refined sets of lyrics (see names like Oscar Hammerstein,
Lorenz Hart or Ira Gershwin), one should not forget that also rock’n’roll (and its
most important root, blues) could often take particular care with words. Authors
like Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry had shown a remarkable reluc-
tance to the simplistic straightforwardness of the “I love you, let’s rock” formulas of
the genre, opting for a richer imagery inhabited by people with names (“Johnny B.
Goode”, “Peggy Sue”…) and features (“Blue Suede Shoes”, “Brown-eyed
Handsome Man”…).
Thirdly, with the exception of Ringo Starr, who abandoned school at an early
stage because of his health problems, Harrison, Lennon and McCartney all
attended institutes of a humanistic type: Lennon was in an art college, and Harrison
and McCartney in a grammar school. It is my conviction that these choices played a
7.1 The Shaping of a Socio-political Conscience in the Beatles 123

role—we shall see eventually—in Lennon’s inclination to a visually-descriptive

approach to lyrics writing, and McCartney’s preference for a narrative one, while
Harrison was probably less influenced by his education, his real cultural heritage
having matured at a later stage, and thanks to alternative paths (religion and Eastern
philosophies, mostly, but not only). Not incidentally, when it came to literary taste,
Lennon became enamored with the visual inventiveness of writers like Lewis
Carroll (paying homage to him in songs like “I Am the Walrus”, 1967, inspired by
Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter”); Harrison often employed the
imagery of sacred texts (recurrently adopting the strategy of “contemplation” as his
main communicative channel with the world—see “Here Comes the Sun”, 1969, or
its sequel “Here Comes the Moon”, 1979); while McCartney fell in love with great
narratives such as those of Charles Dickens (writing songs like “Jenny Wren”,
2005, based on the character from Dickens’s novel Our Mutual Friend). We shall
see later that Lennon, too, could be capable of dense narratives, as much as
McCartney could take a rather visual/imaginative approach (see “Monkberry Moon
Delight”, 1971 or “C Moon”, 1972). If anything, a subtle difference would lie in
McCartney’s preference for a surrealistic construction of the lyrics, rather than a
visionary one.3 Harrison, too, was not alien to a certain narrative or visual inven-
tiveness (for instance, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, 1968, stands out for the
clever employment of cut-up narrative technique, assembling at the same time a
number of images that became iconic in popular culture, such as—indeed—the
weeping guitar).
Finally, in a more advanced stage or their careers, the four musicians, together or
separately, had the chance to broaden their horizons by making different kinds of
experiences. The biographers’ favorite topic in this respect is of course drugs, and
there is no denial here that the three main drugs of choice of the band (am-
phetamines, marijuana and LSD) played specific roles in their creativity:
amphetamines (assumed during the pre-fame days until more or less 1964) had
possibly an impact on the simplicity and immediateness of the early songs; mari-
juana (which the group was famously initiated to by Bob Dylan in late 1964) was
certainly responsible for the more meditative and edgy attitude displayed from 1965
onwards; and of course LSD (assumed for a limited period, and in totally different
proportions between Lennon and Harrison on the one hand and Starr and

3
Similarly to that artistic movement (of which he is a declared fan), McCartney’s imagery may
look verisimilar in almost everything, except that, here and there, queer or dreamy elements may
appear, exactly like a melting clock or a disquieting muse in a fairly ordinary context. In “Rocky
Raccoon” (1968), for instance, we get a very linear narration of a cowboy seeking for revenge
towards a rival in love, getting wounded in the duel, being checked by a drunken doctor and lying
in a hotel room where a copy of the Gideon’s bible stands by the bed. Everything looks like a
typical country and western story, except that, out of the blue, we hear “And now Rocky Raccoon
he fell back in his room/Only to find Gideon’s bible/Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt/To
help with good Rocky’s revival”. The Gideon’s bible ceases to be the typical hotel bible published
by Gideons International, and becomes a book delivered by the actual Gideon, the bible character,
who apparently was occupying the room right before Rocky.
124 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

Fig. 7.1 The Beatles, just arrived in America in 1964 for their first US tour. It was in this occasion
that the mutually-beneficial meeting with Bob Dylan took place (image of public domain)

McCartney on the other,4 during the second half of the 1960s) had a visible
influence on the most visionary episodes of their repertoire.
Having said that, the picture would be far from complete if we did not add other
key-events. Namely: the personal meeting with Bob Dylan (and the repeated
exposure to his albums) was not only the occasion for the band to smoke their first
joint, but made a significant impact on the development of their songwriting. As
often reported, the Dylan-Beatles summit was a win-win trade for both sides: while
Dylan was inspired to pursue a richer rock-oriented musical direction (inaugurating
his celebrated “electric period”), Harrison, Lennon and McCartney (the second, in
particular) understood that their lyrics could not go on forever with simple,
impersonal love songs like “From Me to You” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, and
became interested in more reflective, autobiographic and inventive writing
(Fig. 7.1).
Also, although in different times and circumstances, the band (minus Starr, who
was anyway a very occasional songwriter, at least during his tenure in the band)
were influenced by avant-garde. McCartney, the only Beatle to live in the center of

4
While Lennon and George Harrison started using LSD from 1965 and in repeated instances,
McCartney reportedly surrendered to the “peer pressure” (as he stated in an interview for The
Beatles Anthology documentary) only in late 1966, and assumed the drug only few times. Starr,
too, was only an occasional user.
7.1 The Shaping of a Socio-political Conscience in the Beatles 125

London, was in the thick of the Swinging London era since late 1964 already. He
was dating a theatrical actress, Jane Asher; attending concerts of composers like
Berio and Stockhausen; meeting people like Bertrand Russell, Michelangelo
Antonioni and Rene Magritte (from whom he purchased a few paintings, including
Le jeu de mourre, which inspired the logo for the band’s Apple company); and most
of all frequenting and supporting the underground movement (he sponsored the
International Times magazine and the Indica Art Gallery, among other things). To
Lennon, the turning point occurred around 1968, and the key to it was his rela-
tionship with the experimental artist and Fluxus-member Yoko Ono, who managed
to forge in her partner a solid interest for avant-garde, situationist art and
post-modernism. Harrison’s relation with avant-garde was a bit ambivalent: offi-
cially opposed to it (he famously stated that “avant-garde” was the French word for
“bullshit”), he indulged into experimental work in at least two important occasions:
the album Electronic Sounds (1968), one of the first solo efforts of any Beatle, and
his unaccredited, but reportedly significant, contribution to the construction of the
only officially-released Beatles’ avant-garde track, Lennon’s “Revolution #9” (on
The Beatles, 1968).
Certainly more visible in music, the impact of these experiences was significant
in the lyrics too. Thematically, the two authors expanded their range of topics,
became able to see artistic potential in a wider number of events and situations (not
rarely following Duchamp’s “found object” principle), and did not mind daring to
deal with less comfortable or socially-acceptable issues. Formally, the poetic
abilities were implemented in various ways, and again became more courageous in
structure and logic (words could now be picked for sound rather than meaning, the
narrative construction would become more complex and multilayered, etc.).
Another key-event, in my opinion, consists of some important changes in life-
style. After a brief period in which they were living together, The Beatles purchased
their own houses, opting for two types of choice: Harrison, Lennon and Starr went
to live in the luxurious residential area of Weybridge (40 km from London), while,
as we said already, McCartney chose to live in the heart of London, in St. John’s
Wood, at walking distance from the Abbey Road studios, and in the perfect position
to attend any of the intellectual/freak-out events available in the very lively London
of the period. Then, suddenly, and around the same period, Lennon and McCartney
diametrically inverted their conditions. In 1972, Lennon moved to the very heart of
New York, diving into city-life (“New York City”, 1972) and hanging out with the
local left-wing intelligentsia (“John Sinclair”, 1972, “Angela”, 1972…). From 1970
onwards, McCartney, though not completely abandoning London, found himself
increasingly attracted by country life (“Heart of the Country”, 1971, “Country
Dreamer”, 1973…). Ringo Starr, after having purchased the very villa that Lennon
owned before moving to New York, chose the most decadent lifestyle of the four
(and mocked it in “No–No Song”, 1974), indulging into the jet-sets of Los Angeles
and Montecarlo. Harrison, finally, increasingly attracted by gardening and again
willful to have his perfect spiritual retreat, purchased the enormous Friar Park in
London, and patiently tailor-made it according to his specifications and needs.
126 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

One more experience applies to Lennon only, and yet had a huge impact on his
songwriting. The psychotherapy sessions conducted with Arthur Janov in 1970,
based on the notion of the “primal scream”, turned a visionary, imaginative lyricist,
as Lennon had been in the second half of the 1960s, into a straightforward,
brutally-honest one. With basically the sole exception of the song “#9 Dream”
(1974), Lennon’s whole solo career is marked by a firm determination to be a
“reporter” of his own feelings and experiences, from the most painful (e.g. “My
Mummy Is Dead”, 1970) to the most ordinary ones (e.g. “Cleanup Time”, 1980).
Harrison, too, would never depart from the autobiographical stand, in writing his
songs (even when he would talk about someone else: “Faster”, 1979, is a song
about Formula One drivers, but the point of departure is clearly the singer’s huge
passion for this sport). The centrality of his persona was so clear, that even in one of
the few times he recurred to singing a cover (“Bye Bye Love”, from the Dark Horse
album, in 1974), he re-adapted the lyrics in such a way that they would fit to his life
events (in this case, his divorce from Pattie Boyd).
On the other hand, even though autobiographical songs are far from rare in
McCartney’s repertoire, there is no doubt that the latter always found it more
comfortable to remove himself, as recognizable character, from a song’s spotlight,
and to convey a message from an impersonal, or straightforward fictional, per-
spective. Not that this may have any statistical relevance, but it is certainly sig-
nificant that, besides all the many “I’s” and “Me’s” that each author may have
employed in their songs, McCartney never used the words “Paul” or “McCartney”
in his songs, while Lennon did use his given name pretty often (“The Ballad of John
and Yoko”, 1969, “Hold On”, 1970, “God”, 1970, “#9 Dream”, 1974…).
Yet another landmark (which brings us closer to the topics of this case study),
inaugurated roughly from 1965, was the band’s interest for the hippie culture and
the acquisition of a certain (not always focused, to be truthful) socio-political
conscience, one that prompted the band into dealing with themes such as pacifism
(e.g. “All You Need Is Love”, 1967), civil rights (e.g. “Blackbird”, 1968), political
riots (“Revolution”, 1968), and—during their solo careers—feminism (e.g.
Lennon’s “Woman Is the Nigger of the World”, 1972, or—in a less direct way—
McCartney’s “Mistress and Maid”, 1993), animal rights (several McCartney’s
songs, e.g. “Looking for Changes”, 1993), environmentalism (e.g. Harrison’s “Save
the World”, 1981), the Irish question (both Lennon and McCartney had a go at
commenting the so-called “Bloody Sunday” in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Give
Ireland Back to the Irish” respectively, both released in 1972), and many others. As
we shall see later in detail, the period of meditation in India, in early 1968, helped
the three authors (and, to a vaguer extent, Ringo Starr too) to open up new thematic
venues, including spirituality (e.g. “Across the Universe”), nature (e.g. “Mother
Nature’s Son”) and environmentalism/animal advocacy (e.g. “The Continuing
Story of Bungalow Bill”).
Interesting too is the development of their socio-cultural personas, particularly in
relation to their public image. In the early years of Beatlemania, indeed, their
manager Brian Epstein had imposed a strict protocol: working class people coming
from a working class city, The Beatles were asked to do their best to hide their
7.1 The Shaping of a Socio-political Conscience in the Beatles 127

origins behind a curtain of a cheerful image, Pierre Cardin suites and that quick,
irreverent humor that was always their forte in public relations and interviews. Of
course, no social or political comments were allowed.
Not entirely happy with these restrictions (but more than motivated to stick to
them, if this was the price for the much desired fame—and facts were proving
Epstein right), the band still managed to deliver one or two witty statements, which
ended up to reinforce, rather than damage, their reputation as “naughty-but-adorable
proletarians”.
For reasons that escape me, their performance at the Royal Command
Performance (a.k.a. Royal Variety Show) in November 1963 was never given
enough importance by scholars and journalists in the assessment of this public
image. Somehow, the social impact of the band is more often measured in
American terms, starting from 1964, with their first American tour, the acclaimed
arrival to the Kennedy airport, the participation to the Ed Sullivan Show and the
likes. On the contrary, a careful look at that edition of the show, which was a yearly
event attended by senior members of the British Royal Family, already traces a
significant picture of all the relevant ingredients of The Beatles’ attitude towards the
establishment (and the latter’s expectations towards them). To begin with, questions
were raised about the opportunity to invite entertainers of humble origins and a
strong Liverpool accent to such an aristocratic context. To this, Lennon replied,
delivering exhilarant comments in an emphatic “queen’s English” accent. Secondly,
preoccupation existed on the “cultural quality” of pop entertainment. The Beatles
reacted by performing a rather varied repertoire, showing that the expression
“popular music” covers in fact a lot of ground: there were their songs, of course
(“She Loves You”, “From Me to You” …), and it was not common in those days
for a performer to be “cultured enough” to actually write his/her own material; there
was middle-class white music from the golden age of Tin Pan Alley (“Till There
Was You”); and there was transgressive Afro-American stuff from the Motown
label (“Twist and Shout”). At least, they could not accuse The Beatles of having
limited musical competence. Thirdly, were these young men educated enough to
stand in front of the royal family? The band found that topic laughable, too, and the
reply came from Paul McCartney, who jokingly introduced “Till There Was You”
as a song previously performed by their “favorite American band, Sophie Tucker”.
Sophie Tucker was, of course, a single performer, so the point was: do these snobs
really think we are that ignorant? Finally, were these young proletarians fit to
interact with the aristocracy without any social(ist) resentment? The Beatles’ sharp
mockery of this last concern is in fact the only episode biographers tend to
remember about that concert, and consisted of John Lennon’s sarcastic introduction
to “Twist and Shout”: “For our last number I’d like to ask your help—will the
people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle
your jewelry”. A roaring laughter followed, and nobody dared raise issues of these
sorts anymore, during the band’s whole career.
The Beatles would keep this kind of witty-but-inoffensive image for about three
years, content with their global superstardom and in fact too busy to even think
about anything else (at this stage, they were giving literally hundreds of concerts per
128 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

year—often two per day—and writing, recording and releasing two albums and
four singles per year). Things started to change in 1965, mainly because of three
factors: (1) the influence of a few charismatic figures (such as the mentioned Bob
Dylan and Bertrand Russell, both personally met by the band); (2) an increasing
participation in the intellectual and underground environments (as we have seen,
McCartney, in particular, became an avid attendant of the Swinging London life);
and of course (3) the involvement with the hippie culture and ideals (illegal
implications included). The band found their social role more and more uncom-
fortable, and signals of disobedience to Epstein’s protocol became more frequent,
and finally regular in the following years. Most of all, 1965 is also the year when
the song “The Word” was released (in the Rubber Soul album): it was the first time
Lennon and McCartney wrote a song about love as a universal value, in the pacifist
sense, rather than within the traditional boyfriend-girlfriend template.
By 1966, Epstein was not “in charge” anymore. An interview could be an
occasion for Lennon to state that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus; an
album (Revolver) could be an opportunity to speak openly against the Government
(“Taxman”), to address not-exactly-cheerful topics like loneliness (“Eleanor
Rigby”) or to describe lysergic experiences (“She Said She Said”, “Tomorrow
Never Knows”…); even an album cover could act as social statement (for the
Yesterday and Today greatest hits compilation, the four musicians posed with
pieces of bleeding flesh and mutilated dolls—what became eventually known as
Butcher sleeve. The cover was eventually censored and replaced by an innocuous
shot of the band standing around a big chest, and a resentful Lennon said that the
cover “was as relevant as Vietnam”—Norman 1981/2003: 270).
Not that the following quotation should be taken too seriously, but it is certainly
intriguing to check some of the answers that John Lennon gave to the magazine
Melody Maker, on the June 30, 1966 issue in the popular column “Pop Think-In”,
where celebrities were asked to give quick associations of ideas to a number of
words and names. I emphasize in bold the answers of most interest for this case
study:
1. Marriage: Just a name.
2. Billy J. Kramer: Where?
3. Chelsea: So what?
4. In crowds: Do me a favor!
5. Reeperbahn: Yeah!
6. War: Terrible. No excuse for it.
7. Harold Wilson: Like the rest of ’em.
8. Power: I haven’t used mine fully yet.
9. Clothes: Useful for taking off.
10. God: Where? You point him out. See marriage.
11. Russia: I like.
12. Television: Love it. Sometimes great, sometimes a joke, but I like it.
13. Weybridge: See marriage.
14. Death: The end, daddy-o.
7.1 The Shaping of a Socio-political Conscience in the Beatles 129

15. Hairstyles: See marriage and God.

16. Gimmicks: I don’t know what they are unless they work. I’ve never employed a
gimmick in my life. Next.
17. Paul McCartney: Just Paul. Just our Paul.
18. Animals: I love.
19. Swimming: Keeps you clean.
20. Sky: That’s where I belong, baby.
21. Paul Jones: Nice idea but he puts them over stupidly and so doesn’t impress
anyone, especially me. What the CND crowd believe in is right, but how they
communicate it lays them open to ridicule.
22. Journalists: Fruitcake.
23. Help! film: Crap.
24. Milk: OK.
25. Politicians: Losers.
26. ‘PS I Love You’: It was a period.
27. Electronic music: I’ve heard a bit and some is crap. Some’s OK.
28. Brain Epstein: Our manager.
29. Drunkeness: Often.
30. Dylan: Good.
31. Police: See politicians. They’re a necessary evil. No, a necessary very evil.
32. Sex: Life.
33. Fans: Harmless.
34. Ray Davies: He’s The Kinks.
35. Cigarettes: Cancer.
36. Hangers-on: Useful sometimes. Not all are drags. They’re people and it’s up to
us to separate the good ones from the drags.
37. President Johnson: No.
38. Flying: No thanks.
39. Vegetarianism: I’ve not come across it. If people want to eat nuts that’s
OK with me. I wish I could do it, the way I feel about animals.
40. The bomb: Should be bombed.
41. Wine: And women.
42. Jagger: A good nut.
43. America: Great possibilities.
44. Life and death: Time I was on stage.
Maybe here and there, Lennon was caring more for the cool answer, rather than
the sincere one, but a questionnaire like this seems rather pertinent to the art of The
Beatles’ thoughts and opinions in those days. We read openly pacifist comments, a
solid hostility towards institutions and politicians,5 and a certain sympathy/
compassion for animals (which will be useful in the next paragraph). What is sure is
that never would any band member have been allowed to dismiss religion or
politics that way two or three years before.

5
I discuss this question more thoroughly in Martinelli (2015).
130 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

1967 turned out to be the key year for The Beatles, in this and other issues. It was, of
course, the year of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and “All You Need Is
Love”, which ensured the band an undying reputation of spokesmen for the pacifist
movement (a reputation constantly reinforced by Lennon’s peace campaigns and
songs, Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, McCartney’s occasional protest songs and
repeated participation in charity events, etc.). But it was also the year when Epstein
died, leaving the band in total possession of their own destiny as artists, but most of all
as social personas.6 The passing away of their manager and friend occurred while The
Beatles were in Bangor, Wales, attending a seminar held by a meditation guru called
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Fig. 7.2). Fascinated by his lectures, and grateful for the
advice he gave them to cope with Epstein’s death, they accepted an invitation to follow
a full meditation course in the wilderness of Rishikesh, India.

Fig. 7.2 Maharishi Mahesh

Yogi had an important role in
raising The Beatles’ attention
to environmental themes
(image of public domain)

6
According to some interpretations, including Lennon’s (Miles 1997: 147), Epstein’s death marked
the beginning of a slow disintegration of the quartet, famously finalized in 1970.
7.2 Discovering “Nature” 131

7.2 Discovering “Nature”

The Indian meditation period was inaugurated at the beginning of 1968 and had
different lengths for each band member: only ten days for Ringo Starr (mostly
because of the various food intolerances he had developed during his sickly
childhood), one month for Paul McCartney (who—workaholic as always—had a
few commitments to attend); six weeks for both John Lennon (who, however, left in
total disappointment and would later criticize the Maharishi through the song “Sexy
Sadie”), and George Harrison, who, already interested in Indian culture, remained
the most receptive of the guru’s precepts.
It is reasonable to assume that the days spent in Rishikesh were the major
contribution in the band’s development of an ecological conscience. Accustomed to
the urban environments of Liverpool and then London, the quartet had never
experienced such a full immersion in nature: they were cut out from civilization,
accommodated in bungalows, exposed to close encounters with exotic animals of
various species (like the two monkeys happily copulating before McCartney’s eyes,
inspiring the song “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?”) and treated to exclusively
vegetarian food—not to mention the meditation course itself, which featured close
contact with nature as one of the prominent topics.
The impact of this experience on the band’s art and mentality can hardly be
underestimated. To begin with, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison wrote numerous
songs related to nature in one way or another, something they had not done before.
As to what shapes this relationship took, I shall devote the next paragraph.
Secondly, their sensibility towards environmentalist causes (including animal
advocacy ones) increased considerably, and left a mark in all of them, to different
degrees. At that point, the only Beatle who had manifested ethical attention towards
these issues had been George Harrison. According to the autobiography of his
then-wife Pattie Boyd, the two of them turned to vegetarianism sometime in 1966
and not (as one would expect from Harrison) for spiritual reasons:
Someone gave us a book that talked about veal farming and how cruelly the calves were
treated. They were kept in tiny crates in the dark, unable to turn round, and photographs
showed them licking the metal bars. It was then that we decided we would eat no more
meat. (Boyd 2007: 79)

As for the others, apparently Starr and Lennon were “on and off” vegetarians
(Lennon would remain so until his death, while Starr became a strict vegetarian
only in the 1980s), while the only full meat-eater, ironically, was McCartney, the
one who would become the most vocal in his animal rights advocacy (he would
turn completely vegetarian in early 1970s, treating his entire family to this lifestyle
and getting increasingly more involved in animal advocacy campaigns and
projects).
At any rate, a distinct sensibility towards the issue of animal cruelty must have
been present in all of them, as we have already noticed in Lennon’s Melody Maker
questionnaire, and as we all know by McCartney’s set-to-music affection for his
dog Martha. There is, anyway, no doubt that the period spent in Rishikesh must
132 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

have reinforced these feelings. Incidentally, Maharishi had been a speaker in the
congress of the International Vegetarian Union back in 1957, just like Gandhi
26 years before.
As for a general love for nature, and sympathy towards environmental issues,
one may even infer that The Beatles were initiated during these weeks. At least, if
that was not the case, one would have expected a little more than just daydreaming
of “a cottage in the Isle of Wight” (from “When I’m 64”, 1967) from authors who
had taken a strong interest in autobiographical songwriting. Even Strawberry
Fields, as depicted in the song, ceases to be a park (as it is in reality, in Liverpool)
and becomes a state of mind. As for the famous walrus, it was simply based on
Lewis Carroll’s poem The Walrus and the Carpenter.
On the contrary, starting from the Indian experience and throughout their solo
careers, The Beatles wrote a remarkable number of odes to nature and manifesta-
tions of contempt for the human damaging it, creating a kind of sub-genre of their
catalogue (at least in McCartney’s solo repertoire), that the various analyses of their
repertoire often tend to overlook (this being the main reason why I chose to deal
with this particular topic, as opposed to the more widely reported pacifism). After
all, one of Maharishi’s encouragements for his disciples was to become
“Cosmically conscious”, which is roughly the New Age version of David Brower’s
environmentalist motto “Think globally, act locally”.
While in India, The Beatles reportedly wrote something like thirty complete
songs (Goldman 1988: 297), to which we have to add one that the sources sys-
tematically forget (McCartney’s “Cosmically Conscious”) and—honoris causa, so
to speak—Lennon’s “Across the Universe”, which was written before the journey
to India but after (and because of) the seminar given by the Maharishi in Wales,
which gave the song its clear mediation-oriented theme.
Most of these songs, nineteen to be precise, went on to be recorded in their 1968
eponymous double-album (better known as The White Album): these were “Back in
the U.S.S.R.”, “Blackbird”, “Cry Baby Cry”, “Dear Prudence”, “Don’t Pass Me
By”, “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey”, “I Will”,
“I’m So Tired”, “Julia”, “Long, Long, Long”, “Mother Nature’s Son”, “Ob-La-Di,
Ob-La-Da”, “Revolution”, “Rocky Raccoon”, “Sexy Sadie”, “The Continuing
Story of Bungalow Bill”, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?”, “Wild Honey Pie”,
“Yer Blues”. The remaining ones had a rather varied destiny: two songs were used
in the 1969 album Abbey Road (“Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam”); one
on Let It Be in 1970 (“Across the Universe”); one got recorded by the singer Jackie
Lomax (Harrison’s “Sour Milk Sea”); five were rehearsed but not used for Beatles’
albums and were eventually released on solo recordings (“Junk”, “Teddy Boy” and
a brief fragment of “Cosmically Conscious” for McCartney, “Look at Me” and
“Child of Nature” for Lennon—though the latter was changed in lyrics and became
the well-known “Jealous Guy”); one was released only on The Beatles Anthology
Vol. 3 in 1996 as a rarity (Lennon’s “What’s the New Mary Jane?”); and three
remain unreleased to this day (Harrison’s “Dehradun”, Lennon’s ironic “The
7.2 Discovering “Nature” 133

Rishikesh Song”,7 and the improvised “Spiritual Regeneration”). Eight of these

songs, or one out of four, had nature or animals as a theme in one way or another
and to different degrees.
Of the songs written after the Indian experience, about five contain recognizable,
but often generic, references to nature and animals: McCartney’s “Martha My
Dear”, Starr’s “Octopus’s Garden”, Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun”, and
Lennon’s “Because”, “Hey Bulldog” and “Sun King”. However, as we shall see,
only a couple of these are worthy of attention in our analysis, as the rest present far
too vague references to be fully pertinent.

7.3 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy

in the Beatles’ Repertoire

The first tangible form of (vaguely) “environmentalist songwriting” in The Beatles

is clearly the one that expresses love for nature in direct relation to the states of
“inner peace” and “spiritual harmony” that Maharishi’s lectures had reportedly
generated in the musicians’ lives.8 In some cases, such as “Across the Universe”,
the connection with transcendental meditation is rather explicit: the refrain “Jai guru
deva” is a Sanskrit sentence that means “Hail to the divine guru” and was appar-
ently used by the Maharishi and his disciples as a mantra (with the typical addition
of the mystical sound “Om”). The lyrics are unanimously considered among the
best in The Beatles’ repertoire, and are among the last ones to contain that highly
evocative and imaginative approach that Lennon used to privilege in the period
1966–69 (with such evocative verses like “endless rain into a paper cup”, “images
of broken light”, and so forth). After that, as we mentioned, he turned towards a
direct, minimalistic and self-referential poetics. There is, however, no doubt that in
the midst of all the metaphors and similes of this song, Lennon had in mind a
celebration of nature’s beauty and grandiosity. When the WWF asked The Beatles
to offer one of their songs for a forthcoming compilation record to raise funds for
the association, there was no hesitation on the band’s part to think of “Across the
Universe” as their most significant statement in that department. The compilation
was released in 1969, and its title ended up taking inspiration from the song itself:
No one’s gonna change our world. This event marks the first official involvement
of any Beatle into an environmentalist charity project. As we shall see, this is far
from the last episode of this sort.

7
It is a pity this song remains unreleased, because it was a nice mockery of meditation: everything
is going fine in the protagonist’s process of meditation, then at some point he has the feeling that
something is missing, so the refrain concludes “Could it be you need a woman?”.
8
I say “reportedly” because, judging from the majority of the songs written in India (which often
address topics like tiredness, confusion, depression and even suicide), The Beatles were all but
relaxed.
134 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

Other nature-loving songs, such as McCartney’s “Mother Nature’s Son” or

Lennon’s “Child of Nature” (whose lyrics went unreleased, as Lennon used the
same melody for his 1971 song “Jealous Guy”), can stand as more “secular” odes to
Nature, as their spiritual dimension is not openly expressed (however, that does not
mean that such a dimension is not present: these two songs were actually written
right after Maharishi’s lecture on the position of human beings as “son of the
mother nature”). It is interesting to compare the two lyrics, because they constitute a
rare example of Lennon and McCartney writing at the same time two different
songs on the same subject. “Mother Nature’s Son” is of course easily available on
record, but “Child of Nature” too can be found on websites like YouTube without
any difficulty.
By comparing the lyrics, it is intriguing that, faced with the same subject and
conditions, the two authors employed their natural inclination to songwriting,
displaying at least three of their most recurrent strategies. McCartney prefers an
approach that is (1) more fictional (the song is in first person, but not entirely
applicable to his life: to begin with, he was not born as a poor “country” boy, but he
lived in a suburban area of Liverpool), (2) general (the song does not have any
specific reference to the context where it was generated) and (3) active (things
“happen” in this song, even if it is a relaxed/meditative one: he sits—as opposed to
standing—in different places, he sings “lazy songs”, he sways daisies).
Lennon, in turn, is (1) autobiographical (the song is clearly about him), (2) cir-
cumstantial (Rishikesh is mentioned, so the connection with the origin of the song
is made explicit) and (3) reflexive (Lennon often prefers to describe his state of
mind rather than his actions—significantly, while he is “on the road to Rishikesh”
he is dreaming, rather than walking): “On the road to Rishikesh, I was dreaming
more or less, And the dream I had was true… I’m just a child of nature, I don’t need
much to set me free…”.
Then, of course, there is the case of “Martha My Dear”, which is more
specifically a pet-loving song (so, in principle, one may argue that it is not an
environmentalist song at all, pet-ownership being only a semi-natural form of
human-nature relation). Martha was an Old English sheepdog that McCartney had
adopted as a puppy and whom he loved dearly: not having met his future wife
Linda Eastman yet, and being one of the most wanted bachelors in town, one can
safely say that Martha was his only stable relationship at that point. That is so much
not a joke that, in writing a song about Martha, McCartney chose to personify her
into a human girlfriend (“Martha my love, don’t forget me”, “Hold your head up,
you silly girl”, “You and me were meant to be for each other”, etc.).
In time, it has been said that the dog’s presence in this song is so vague that
probably McCartney only used her name as an excuse to write another “silly love
song”. This, however, clashes with three facts: (1) the various occasions in which
McCartney himself confirmed that the song was actually about his dog;
(2) McCartney’s approach to songwriting, which, thematically speaking, is almost
never focused on one single topic, and in fact largely prefers to develop several
parallel storylines and allow narrative drifts (including numerous coups de theatre,
like the transvestite turn of Desmond and Molly Jones in “Ob-la-dì Ob-la-dà”, or
7.3 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy in the Beatles’ Repertoire 135

the suggestion to set the house on fire in “Norwegian Wood”9); (3) the habit,
extremely typical of male rock songwriting (and blues before it), to use a “girl-
friend” as interlocutor by default. A bluesman of the early days could blame the
entire American racist society by writing a resentful song towards an imaginary
girlfriend who had dumped him. The Beatles themselves used this practice all the
time, even when the song was specifically autobiographical and the actual pro-
tagonist was in real life a man (the most famous examples are possibly “She Said
She Said”, where the “she” of the song is actually the actor Peter Fonda, and the
mentioned “Sexy Sadie”, a resentful song about Maharishi). In addition, some
verses seem more applicable to a human-dog relation than to a boyfriend-girlfriend
one: “though I spend my days in conversation, please remember me”, for instance,
definitely sounds like an apology for using human language and spending time with
humans and neglecting to give attention to the dog.
Another group of nature-related songs is extremely typical of The Beatles’
songwriting style of that period, and touches the question of nature and animals
only in an indirect way: a kind of hic et nunc inclination to write about particular
circumstances occurring at a particular moment. Some of the songs written in India
were indeed inspired by specific events of those days. I mentioned already the two
monkeys mating before McCartney on the road to the camp, inspiration for “Why
Don’t We Do It in the Road?”. Another example is “Dear Prudence”’s Prudence
Farrow, sister of the better known actress Mia: both were attending the Rishikesh
course, and Prudence had become somewhat reluctant to show herself outside of the
bungalow. Hence, Lennon wrote a song about the rest of the group inviting her to
enjoy the beauties of the Indian nature (“Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to
play, Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day, The sun is up, the sky is blue”, etc.).
Much closer to our purposes is the ideological use of nature and animals in the
band’s repertoire: in other words, what we may define SSPs with an environ-
mentalist theme. Considering official releases, there should be only one case to
discuss in this paragraph, as the other ones belong to the solo years of McCartney
and Harrison. However, I shall count here the song “Junk” too, which—although
released in McCartney’s first solo album—was also written during the Indian
journey. Still, the subjects of the two songs (and the lyrical approach to them) are
highly relevant in our analysis.
The first song is Lennon’s satirical “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”,
and the subject is tiger hunting. Once again, The Beatles had taken inspiration from
circumstantial situations and real people: while in India, they had the chance to
meet the American socialite Nancy Cooke de Herrera, who was then working as
publicist for Maharishi. During the band’s stay, Mrs. Cooke was visited by her son,
Richard A. Cooke III, and the pair, along with some guides, set out upon elephants
to hunt for tigers.

9
“Norwegian Wood” was mainly Lennon’s song, but the idea for the dark, revengeful finale was
apparently suggested by McCartney (McCartney, in Miles 1997: 270).
136 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

They indeed returned with their trophy, reporting that it had been the tiger to
attack them, and they had to kill for self-defense. While most of the camp attendants
seemed to accept the killing as inevitable, Maharishi and Lennon were visibly
disgusted, the latter sarcastically asking “Don’t you think that was slightly
life-destructive?” (Quantick 2002: 89). Cooke’s answer “It was either us or the
tiger” did not impress Lennon, who was instead inspired to put an additional
ingredient for the song (the whole third stanza of the song consists of the characters
trying to justify the killing: “Bill and his elephant were taken by surprise”).
Thinking to both Alex Raymond’s fictional hunter Jungle Jim and to the legendary
Buffalo Bill, Lennon worked out an alias for Cooke, Bungalow Bill, and con-
structed the character of the rich and spoiled American who wants to enjoy the thrill
of hunting.
With “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”, Lennon managed to attack
hunters and hunting on three levels: (1) the ethical, of course: the song is openly
anti-hunting, particularly in the depiction of the hunter, which is mercilessly sar-
castic (plus, Lennon does really not believe that Cooke killed for self-defense, and
in the verse “If looks could kill it would have been us instead of him”, he seems to
suggest that the poor tiger’s only fault was that it looked at the hunters—in other
words that it was unfortunate enough to be there); (2) the social: the Cooke’s were a
wealthy white Yankee family, a combination that Lennon was never too inclined to
forgive (by emphasizing the social status—“He’s the all American bullet-headed
Saxon mother’s son”—Lennon also makes a point on the social typology of people
who go hunting: certainly not the “working class heroes”; (3) the psychological:
Bungalow Bill is a childish, cowardly mummy’s boy, who feels cocky with a gun
(like the popular comics superhero “Captain Marvel”, as the song suggests), but as
soon as things get a bit rough, he seeks his mother’s protection (“In case of
accidents he always took his mom”). Mummy is such a dominant figure that even
when Bill is simply asked a question, she steps in and answers in his place (“The
children asked him if to kill was not a sin/‘Not when he looked so fierce’—his
mummy butted in”). This third characteristic is surely the most effective critique
contained in the song, and also a Freudianesque interpretation that most animal
advocates share about hunting and hunters.
The second song to contain an ethically-connoted environmentalist message is
the delicate acoustic ballad “Junk”. The Beatles tried to record it during the White
Album sessions first, and for the album Abbey Road one year later, but nothing
concrete came out of it, so in the end the official release occurred only on Paul
McCartney’s self-titled debut album as a solo performer, in 1970. A Beatles’
recording of the song is, however, available on The Beatles Anthology, vol. 3
(1996). Depending on how one chooses to look at it, McCartney can be considered
either a master in subtle between-the-lines messages, or an occasional protest singer
who hardly manages to make his point loud and clear. “Junk” is certainly a great
example of this ambivalence, as one needs to pay particular attention to the lyrics’
meaning in order not to confuse the song with a nostalgic ode to antiques and the
good old days. In reality (as emphasized for instance in Russino et al. 2003: 22), the
song is rather a bittersweet lament over consumerism and the fact that so much
7.3 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy in the Beatles’ Repertoire 137

“junk” that might still be used (from “motor cars” to “candlesticks”, from “sleeping
bags” to “building bricks”), or has some personal memory attached to it (“memories
for you and me”), gets wasted in the name of the modern rush to buy new things
(“Buy! Buy! Says the Sign in the Shop Window—Why? Why? Says the Junk in the
Yard”).
To conclude the analysis of The Beatles’ repertoire as a band, I shall refer to all
of those songs that employed nature and animals at the service of some other theme
in the form of metaphor or even simple “excuse”. The question is a bit tricky,
because one could easily counter-argue that such songs do not exactly qualify to be
dealt with here, and that would be a legitimate point. So, the least we can do is to
establish visible boundaries between songs that are clearly not pertinent, as their use
of nature-related images is far too vague and secondary, and those that—on the
contrary—do not lose their thematic identity, even though their employment is
aimed to represent a different topic.
For this reason, as I already anticipated, I tend to exclude extremely famous
songs like “Strawberry Fields Forever” or “I Am the Walrus”. The former takes
inspiration from a real place (a park named “Strawberry Fields” in the Woolton
district of Liverpool, where Lennon used to live as a kid), but already at the second
verse, right after being invited to join Lennon to this place (“Let me take you down,
‘cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields”), we are informed that this place is in fact
imaginary (“nothing is real”) and is actually the musician’s mind in a state of
psychedelic confusion more than anything else (“Living is easy with eyes closed,
misunderstanding all you see”). From the second verse onwards, there is no trace of
that park anymore.
As for the “Walrus”, I already mentioned that it is a character from Lewis
Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, but that is all there is to it. The song, even
more than “Strawberry Fields Forever”, is another psychedelic festival, with all
sorts of images produced by Lennon’s LSD-fueled brain of those days.
For similar reasons, my feeling is that songs like “Here Comes the Sun”, “Good
Day Sunshine”, “Sun King”, “Hey Bulldog”, “And Your Bird Can Sing”,
“Because” and others that actively refer to nature and animals (particularly, as one
can guess from the titles, to sunny outdoor environments), are still not relevant for
this analysis. Just to mention the best known of the bunch, Harrison’s “Here Comes
the Sun”, we know that it was inspired by a nice, spring day spent in the garden of
his close friend Eric Clapton’s house in 1969, but we also know, by the author’s
own admission, that the metaphor of the “long, cold, lonely winter” coming to an
end is expressively related to the sense of relief that Harrison felt in taking a break
from the business and personal problems that The Beatles were experiencing in
those days (Harrison 1980: 144). Similar questions apply to all the other songs
mentioned here.
The songs that instead I find still relevant are three: Harrison’s “Piggies”,
McCartney’s “Blackbird” (both released on the White Album, in 1968) and Starr’s
“Octopus’s Garden” (1969, on Abbey Road). None of these compositions are
directly related to the animals in the titles, but two out of three are songs containing
social commentaries: “Piggies” is a song about politicians (another one of the
138 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

“satirical type”), “Blackbird” (a quintessential case of “universalistic” lyric plus

“simple” music) is about civil rights and “Octopus’s Garden” (not an SSP) is about
happiness and simple life. However, the rhetorical work underlying the thematic
construction of the pieces reveals a solid connection with the anthrozoological topoi
culturally assigned to the species in question. Plus, in one case, “Octopus’s
Garden”, we even witness the specific knowledge of a not-too-well known etho-
gram pattern of the species in question. These topoi are something to which I have
devoted a large part of my zoosemiotic work:
Religion, myth, folklore, literature, art… it is practically impossible to find even one human
community that does not interact with other animals from a cultural point of view. Such an
interaction is either abstract (e.g. tales) or concrete (e.g. sacrifices) […] The non-human
animal can be a significational source for the human being, and vice versa—the transfor-
mation of the non-human animal into an allegory, metaphor, myth, etc. is certainly a
significational process, whose source (not the sole one, though) is the animal in question.
(Martinelli 2010a, b: 130, 133)

From this perspective, the use of animals as topos is not necessarily a process of
Greimasian disengagement, from the real animal to something else, but rather a
thematic dialogue where the animal in question is never completely absent and
keeps on playing at least a cultural role, and occasionally a biological one, too.
In detail: “Piggies” and “Blackbird” use rather conventional associations
between animals and moral values. The pig is always an allegory of dirt and
bleakness, so using it to talk about politicians is evidently a criticism for
immorality, avidity and corruption. However unfair (for the pig) this connection
may be, the animal does not leave the song, thematically speaking, even if Harrison
is talking about politicians. This is the same reason why, in a similar context (which
possibly was an inspiration for the Beatle), the pigs in Animal Farm never leave the
narration, even when it becomes obvious that George Orwell is in fact talking about
the Soviet regime. In addition, Harrison makes it clear that there are two types of
piggies: the “little” ones of the first stanza, the actual animals, who crawl in the real
dirt and for which “life is getting worse” (because it gets dirtier and dirtier and/or
because they will be eventually killed for their meat), and the “bigger” ones of the
second stanza, wearing “starched white shirts”, for whom “dirt” (a moral type of
dirt, now) is rather a source of life’s improvement. Once the transition occurred, and
the song’s focus is clearly on human society, the circle is closed by the “bigger”
piggies going out for dinner to eat the “little” ones (“You can see them out for
dinner, with their piggy wives, clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon”),
leaving no doubt on who are the “bad guys” between the two types.
A second, common, topos is found in “Blackbird”, and that is the idea of
freedom and liberation associated with birds (nearly all of them, excluding the ones
who do not fly, and a couple of the conventionally nasty ones, like vultures and
harpies). McCartney has repeatedly pointed out that his main inspiration was the
civil rights movement in America, and that of the blackbird trying to fly was an
image of encouragement for an Afro-American woman (“bird”, among other things,
is a slang English word for “girl”):
7.3 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy in the Beatles’ Repertoire 139

I had in mind a black woman, rather than a bird. Those were the days of the civil rights
movement, which all of us cared passionately about, so this was really a song from me to a
black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: ‘Let me encourage you to keep
trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.’ As is often the case with my things, a veiling took
place so, rather than say ‘Black woman living in Little Rock’ and be very specific, she
became a bird, became symbolic, so you could apply it to your particular problem. This is
one of my themes: take a sad song and make it better, let this song help you. (McCartney, in
Miles 1997: 485–486)

It is indeed true, and we have seen it already a few times in the course of this
chapter, that McCartney’s songwriting strategy is, more often than not, that of
bringing a specific theme into a general, symbolic realm, where ambiguity, con-
notations and artistic potential increase: in other words, what Umberto Eco has
called the “open work” (1962). At the same time, the blackbird as such is not a
passive presence in the song for at least three reasons: first, as mentioned, birds are
a conventional symbol for freedom (and lightness, dreaminess, elegance, etc.);
second, the track famously uses an archive recording of a Turdus merula singing
(rivaling with the song itself, in terms of beauty and gracefulness); and third, the
lyrics do not isolate the “blackbird” as the only metaphor of the song, but rather
insist on using blackbird-related features and actions (“singing in the dead of night”,
that is in early morning, as blackbirds do; “to fly”, “to arise”, etc.). These factors,
combined, imply at least the following:
1. There is a specific reason why (a) an animal and (b) a particular type of animal
were chosen. It could not have been a black board,10 and it could not have been
a black cat. So, a thematic dialogue is indeed established, unlike any of the
songs I left out of this group.11
2. These factors are clear statements that the author does not want us to lose the
connection with the Turdus merula as such. As McCartney said, “you could
apply it to your particular problem”: it may be civil rights, but it may also be
personal freedom, liberation from pain, from another form of oppression… it
will always work, because the song works around the archetype of the bird, not
of the Afro-American woman. So, once again, the animal is not leaving the
song: as long as it stays in, various interpretations are possible, and that is
exactly what McCartney wants.
The song remains one of the best examples of both McCartney’s lyrical and
musical abilities.
To conclude, Ringo Starr’s “Octopus’s Garden” (which is anyway out of the
scopes of the present case study, since it contains no social or political message of
sort) presents a less conventional array of cultural associations, and certainly not a

10
McCartney himself once jokingly called the song like that, during his MTV Unplugged concert,
in 1991.
11
Lennon used the Strawberry Fields park as a metaphor for his state of mind, but he could have
easily sung “Let me take you down ’cause I’m going to the tower of steel, nothing is real…”
without losing the power of the association physical place-mental condition.
140 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

topos as such. If anything, a topos was created after and thanks to the song: until
then, an octopus was mostly a subject for Sci-Fi fiction or an allegory for mafia
(whose “tentacles” reach many people and institutions). The song gave octopuses a
kinder reputation, and it is yet another proof of The Beatles’ impact on western
societies, the fact that the word “Octopus” makes most people think about the song,
rather than an Italian criminal or one of Spider Man’s enemies.
As widely known (see, for instance, MacDonald 2005: 451), the story goes that
the Starkey family was on holiday in Sardinia and, while being served fried squid in
a local restaurant, were told of the common behavioral pattern of the Octopus
vulgaris to collect crustacean shells and other objects and construct “gardens”.12
Fascinated by the idea of an animal who finds safety (and, by extension, happiness)
with a small garden under the sea, Starr began writing a song that would celebrate
the joys of simple life in a tiny, unpretentious place. The peaceful condition of the
octopus, in the song’s metaphor, becomes also a peace of mind at philosophical
level, particularly in such verses like “We would be warm below the storm” and
“Resting our head on the sea bed”. George Harrison, who had also given a musical
hand to his less expert friend—“Octopus’s Garden” being only the second song
written by Starr, at that point (a short sequence of the Let It Be movie shows the two
of them attempting an early draft of the track)—was reportedly impressed by the
spiritual depth of the lyrics:
I think it’s a really great song, because on the surface, it just like a daft kids’ song, but the
lyrics are great. For me, you know, I find very deep meaning in the lyrics, which Ringo
probably doesn’t see, but all the thing like ‘resting our head on the sea bed’ and ‘We’ll be
warm beneath the storm’ which is really great, you know. Because it’s like this level is a
storm, and if you get sort of deep in your consciousness, it’s very peaceful. So Ringo’s
writing his cosmic songs without noticing. (Harrison 1969: radio interview)

Besides considerations that I have already proposed for the previous two songs
and that I shall not repeat here (particularly the unavoidable “presence” of the
animal in the song), a remarkable aspect in “Octopus’s Garden” is that the author is
not wishing to live in a place like an octopus’s garden, but he actually wants to live
right there, and together with the octopus (“He’d let us in, knows where we’ve
been”), almost asking for his hospitality. On the one hand, this choice testifies of
that ironic component that became typical of many songs written by Starr (noto-
riously, he was never a prolific author, but each of his solo albums normally
contains 3–4 songs written or co-written by him); on the other hand, it constitutes a
more original way to deal with this kind of lyrical work.
Though not the last one to be released, Abbey Road is the last album to be
recorded by the band. Only endless post-production work (including a change of
artistic producer) delayed the release of Let It Be, which otherwise dated back to
the very beginning of 1969. “Octopus’s Garden” was therefore the last
nature-related song to be recorded by the band as a unit. After the break-up, the
only former members who continued this particular songwriting direction were

Biologists use also the terms “den” or “fortress”, as indeed gardens are mostly hiding places.
12
7.3 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy in the Beatles’ Repertoire 141

George Harrison and, to a greater extent (and including social involvement), Paul
McCartney. John Lennon, who (justly) holds the strongest reputation as protest
singer within the group, never considered environment or animals topics worthy of
interest, songwriting-wise. Yet, summing up the four musicians’ repertoires, the
amount of nature-related songs globally increased, and so did the ideological
commitment.

7.4 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy

in George Harrison’s Solo Repertoire

Given the circumstances (the first Beatle to go vegetarian, and the only one to
remain involved in Eastern philosophies and religions), one would have expected
George Harrison’s “green” songwriting production to amount to far more than it
actually turned out to be. In addition, he was the only Beatle to come out publicly in
favor of a political party, when in 1992 he championed the Natural Law Party, a
green, transcendental meditation-inspired coalition, which however gathered only
0.19% of the votes in UK elections, and—after similarly poor results in the sub-
sequent years—finally deregistered with the Electoral Commission in 2003.
Harrison was certainly the member of the band who developed the clearest and
most coherent artistic program (which may or may not be a compliment, since
change and evolution in creativity was by far a forte of the quartet): once embarked
into his mystical journey, Harrison devoted most of his songwriting efforts to write
about God and the spiritual search for truth, leaving the remainder to all the rest (the
inevitable love songs, of course, but also a number of references to his Beatles’ past
and to personal issues of different sorts, including legal ones13). The process cul-
minated in his last, post-mortem, album Brainwashed, where almost every song is
about God and spirituality.
Within this framework, nature is constantly present, but always in the back-
ground, with rare close-ups, as the “place” where this truth operates (“All things
must pass”, 1970) or is manifested (“Here comes the moon”, 1979).
A more militant approach occurs only in three cases, and never in the form of an
entire song. The first one is the song “The Tears of the World”: it is dated 1976, but
it surfaced only in 2004 as a bonus track for a CD reissue of the 1976 album 33 &
1/3. Here, Harrison mentions numerous world’s problems (its “tears”, indeed),
including the environmental one (“Big business calling ev’ry tune, Polluting here
and to the moon, All nations, conservations, Drowning in the tears of the world”).
Five years later, in 1981, on the album Somewhere in England, Harrison sings
“Save the World”. The song, that closes the LP, is an outspoken, albeit bizarre track

Very famous is of course the plagiarism lawsuit over “My Sweet Lord”, which inspired him to
13

write the sarcastic “This Song” (“This song has nothing tricky about it, This song ain’t black or
white and as far as I know, Don’t infringe on anyone’s copyright”).
142 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

(the eclectic, ska-oriented, musical arrangement may remind more of a Monty

Python mockery than a protest song)14 that—much like “The Tears of the World”—
targets several themes, including (and perhaps more effectively than the prede-
cessor) a number of environmental ones (“Rain forest chopped for paper towels,
One acre gone in every hour, Our birds and wildlife all destroyed, To keep some
millionaires employed”, and also “We’ve got to save the whale, Greenpeace
they’ve tried to diffuse it, But dog food salesmen persist on kindly to harpoon it”).
Finally, on the acclaimed 1987 Cloud Nine album, a brief passage in the song
“Devil’s Radio” (“It’s white and black like industrial waste, Pollution of the highest
degree”) makes it clear that the “devil” is also in the ecological crisis.
These songs end up being the only ones to bear pragmatic elements of envi-
ronmental concern, although Harrison’s involvement in the cause remained con-
stant and visible in other forms. We already mentioned his lifestyle and his
involvement in the Natural Law Party: besides these, the most remarkable episode
is probably the 30th anniversary reissue of his acclaimed debut solo album, All
Things Must Pass, in 2000. On the original cover from 1970, Harrison is sur-
rounded by gnomes in the yard of his mansion. In the reissue, Harrison colorized
the cover and on page after page of the booklet superimposed emblems of pollution
and consumerism, such as smokestacks and highways. The liner notes, written by
Harrison himself, read: “I thought I would have a little fun with the package—the
liner notes read—If you haven’t already noticed, our planet has been concreted over
at an alarming rate and let’s hope in another thirty years we don’t have to add Planet
Earth to the R.I.P.s.”.

7.5 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy

in Paul McCartney’s Solo Repertoire

There is no doubt that of all the four Beatles, Paul McCartney is the one who mostly
associated his name and art to environmentalist and animal advocacy causes. Along
with his equally, if not more, committed late wife Linda, and more recently their
offspring (including celebrity fashion designer Stella, whose entire production is
leather- and fur-free), McCartney built a rather strong reputation as an environ-
mentalist persona, lending his image to several associations like Friends of the
Earth, Greenpeace, PETA and VIVA; getting involved in (or even organizing in
first person) endless fundraising projects; and in general being very vocal about his
beliefs in interviews and other public occasions. Vegetarian since the early 1970s,
he started to campaign more intensively from the late 1980s onwards, possibly

14
Harrison was a huge fan of the Monty Python, and famously became their sponsor and producer
for the move Life of Brian.
7.5 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy in Paul McCartney’s Solo Repertoire 143

inaugurating this stage of committed activism by releasing an album featuring

environmentalist title (Flowers in the Dirt), packaging (entirely in recycled paper)
and song (“How Many People”, dedicated to Brazilian activist and martyr Chico
Mendes).
The first traces of such commitment are already apparent in 1970, in
McCartney’s self-titled debut solo album. One, or maybe two, songs there can be
interpreted as environmentalist statements. The first one, “Junk”, is another product
of the Rishikesh days, and we have already discussed it. The second case (but it is
only my own hypothesis) is “Kreen-Akrore”, an instrumental piece that McCartney
wrote after watching a TV documentary on an Amazonian tribe (named indeed
Kreen-Akrore) that was being slowly destroyed by civilization. It is difficult to say
whether or not McCartney wrote the piece out of ethical sensibility towards this
community: if he did, he certainly did not spread the word about it, but, given his
reputation, there is no doubt where his sympathies lied in watching that program.
In fact, the first few years after The Beatles’ break-up had been fundamental in
spurring McCartney’s love and compassion for nature. In an attempt to escape the
chaos of The Beatles’ break-up (a process that was particularly painful for him, as
he was at the same time the least inclined to dissolve the partnership and the one
who had to do it legally, getting everybody’s blame, at least for a while),
McCartney and his family spent the majority of those years in the countryside, in a
cottage located in a Scottish area that would be later immortalized in the hit “Mull
of Kintyre”.
Determined not to make a posh affair out of that cottage, the musician would
spend most of his time renovating the little house, taking care of the animals and
relaxing in a quiet way. From this experience emerged numerous nature-loving
songs (or songs that heavily rely on nature and animals as allegories for other
themes, as we saw already in “Blackbird”): “Heart of the Country” (released in
1971), “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (1972, a re-elaboration of a traditional nursery
rhyme), “Bluebird”, “Mrs. Vanderbilt”, “Mamunia” and “Country Dreamer”
(1973). The trend would decrease, but not too significantly in the following years,
producing important examples like his biggest UK hit “Mull of Kintyre” (1977),
“Winter Rose” (1979), “Summer Day’s Song” (1980), “Footprints” (1986),
“Golden Earth Girl”, “Off the Ground” and “Winedark Open Sea” (1992), “Heaven
on a Sunday” and “Little Willow” (1997), plus specific verses within other songs.
There is no spirituality in these songs, but just a desire to live a simple and healthy
life. Here are some examples:
I want a horse, I want sheep,
I want to get me a good night’s sleep,
Livin’ in a home
In the heart of the country.
(From “Heart of the Country”)
I’d like to walk in a field with you,
Take my hat and my boots off too.
I’d like to lie in a field with you.
(From “Country Dreamer”)
144 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

Down in the jungle living in a tent

You don’t use money, you don’t pay rent
You don’t ever know the time
But you don’t mind.
(From “Mrs. Vanderbilt”)

In a couple of these examples, as I mentioned, the themes get a bit more intense,
and Nature represents more complex values: “Footprints” is a song about loneliness
(a recurrent theme in McCartney’s songs, since the times of “Eleanor Rigby”), and
“Little Willow” deals with the topic of personal loss (McCartney wrote it for the
children of a family friend, who had died of cancer).
Before we turn to the songs that are truly relevant for our analysis here, I would
like to mention a “transitional” one, that is, a song that is not expressing any form of
social protest, but which displays the types of sentiments that are at the basis of
McCartney’s sensibility and compassion towards Nature and animals in particular.
Since the study of environmentalist themes in The Beatles has been scarcely fre-
quented by existing literature, it is no surprise to me that the following song has
been totally overlooked in its significance, within this particular topic. The song is
entitled “Little Lamb Dragonfly”, and was released in the 1973 album Red Rose
Speedway, though written in 1971 and initially conceived for the album Ram. It is a
heartfelt tribute to a male lamb, named Dragonfly, who had prematurely died in
McCartney’s Scottish farm. The song depicts McCartney’s imaginary words to the
lamb, framed between the moments when the animal is dying and when he is
passing on to an imaginary afterlife. During the lamb’s agony, McCartney apolo-
gizes for not being able to explain this tragedy (“I have no answer for you, little
lamb”) and—the way I interpret the lyrics—for having to practice euthanasia to
avoid further pain (“I can help you out, but I cannot help you in”). He then says
farewell to his pet (“My heart is breaking for you, little lamb, I can help you out, but
we may never meet again”), and underlines the transition to another life with a
change of melody and key. From that point, starting from the lamb’s imaginary
ascension to the heavens (“Dragonfly, fly by my window”15), the song becomes a
reflection on the loss itself (“Since you’ve gone, I never know, I go on, but I miss
you so”) and on life, death and “how little we really know” about them.
On why McCartney would react so emotionally to the lamb’s death, I have two
theories. First, the event itself: if my assumption is correct (that is, the McCartney’s
finally resolved to suppress the agonizing Dragonfly to spare him additional suf-
fering), that must have certainly been a particularly traumatic experience, signifi-
cantly different from other lambs or sheep (or other animals, for that matter) dying
of natural causes, however attached McCartney might have been to them. Secondly,
the song was written in the same period when the McCartney’s turned to vege-
tarianism16: the story goes that the decision was taken while the family was having

15
It helped, of course, in using this image, that the lamb was given the name of a flying insect.
16
The exact date of this decision was never disclosed. However, the reasons for the choice, and the
events surrounding it, were already made public by McCartney in a 1971 interview for Life
(Meryman 1971: 58).
7.5 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy in Paul McCartney’s Solo Repertoire 145

lamb legs for dinner and noticed another lamb, a living one, playing just outside
their window. Once the connection was made that the cute little thing in the yard
was not different from what had been killed for their dinner, the historical decision
was taken, one that would forever affect McCartney’s activities, public image and—
as we are emphasizing here—songwriting. So, given the simultaneousness of this
decision and the writing of this song, it is reasonable to assume that, in those days, a
strong sense of guilt might have permeated McCartney’s view on animals, and
lambs in particular.
Incidentally, for some sources (e.g. Rodriguez 2010: 373–374), the song was
actually a specific, albeit metaphorical, description of how McCartney became
vegetarian, but it was the musician himself, during an interview, to dismiss this
version and confirm the one I have described (Smith 1987: 50—although no
mention was made to euthanasia as such, the latter remaining only my assumption).
Having discussed this particular milestone in McCartney’s environmentalist
songwriting, we can finally turn our attention to those songs specifically qualifiable
as SSPs. The first, “Wild Life” (written few months after “Little Lamb Dragonfly”
and released on the Wings Wild Life 1971 album), takes inspiration from an African
holiday in which the McCartney’s noticed a particular street sign picturing a local
animal species and warning the driver to stop should any of them cross the road
(“While taking a walk through an African park one day, I saw a sign say ‘the
animals have the right of way’”). The idea of animals having “the right of way”
prompted McCartney into a reflection on the increasing rarity of such places,
replaced instead by totally anthropized areas where not only does this right belong
exclusively to humankind, but the animals are in fact denied the right to exist
altogether. The structure of the text, in accordance with the bluesy quality of the
music (which however shows significant “aggressive type” features, particularly in
the vocal performance, which remains one of McCartney’s best), is gospel-like, of
the “spiritual” type, using the repeated questions “Whatever happened to wild life?”
and “What’s gonna happen to wild life?” to an effect of growing pathos. The plea is
mostly to stop anthropization for the sake of the many animals threatened to
extinction (“You’d better stop, ‘cause there’s animals everywhere”) or to be caged
in zoos (“What’s gonna happen to wild life? The animals in the zoo?”), and the
blame is mostly laid on politicians and institutions (“We are breathing a lot of
political nonsense in the air”).
The very beginning of the song is also significant, with an introductory phrase
that differs from all the rest in both melody and harmony (it is the only passage in a
major key, possibly underlining the positive connotation of the verse, and then the
whole song switches to minor, as if to underline the sad nature of the situation
described): “The word ‘wild’ applies to the words ‘you and me’”. Possibly, the
verse has two meanings: the fact that the two characters (“you and me” are obvi-
ously Paul and Linda) love nature and a natural lifestyle, and the fact that they are
themselves animals, like the whole human species, therefore remarking that
whatever humans are doing to animals is being done to fellow creatures (the latter
statement being also confirmed by a subsequent verse “and man is the top, an
animal too, and man you just got to care”).
146 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

It took sixteen years before McCartney would use his songwriting skills at the
service of another SSP of the “green” type, “How Many People”, released on the
1989 album Flowers in the Dirt. The song bears a written dedication to Chico
Mendes, the Brazilian environmental activist assassinated in 1988 while fighting to
preserve the Amazon rainforest (Fig. 7.3). For this song, McCartney adopted the
musical language of reggae, not necessarily to get geographically ‘closer’ to Brazil
(why not a Bossa Nova, then, in such case…), but to create a closer thematic
connection with the lyrics, which are indeed a plea to a better world, written in a
manner that was typical of the likes of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh (“I wanna be
happy, I wanna be free” or “I wanna see ordinary people living peacefully”). The
song as such never mentions Mendes or the rainforest, but makes it clear that “one
too many people have died”, and mostly refers to the fact that Mendes was an
ordinary family guy, who just decided to stand up for the deforestation and other
problems. In that sense, we have an interesting example of a “spiritual type” of
lyrics which assumes (or may assume, at the very moment someone employs it in a
given event of social protest) a “specific relation” to the context by means of a
paratextual device (the dedication). Incidentally, the continuity between ordinary
people and private life on the one hand, and society and public life on the other, has
always been a sensitive spot for McCartney, who constantly writes his most

Fig. 7.3 Monument to Chico

Mendes, São Paulo, Brazil.
Mendes was assassinated in
1988 while fighting to
preserve the Amazon
rainforest, and became the
inspiration for Paul
McCartney’s “How Many
People?” (image of public
domain)
7.5 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy in Paul McCartney’s Solo Repertoire 147

socially-aware songs from this perspective (“Peace in the Neighborhood”, “Give

Ireland Back to the Irish”, “C’mon People”, “Tug of War”, “Pipes of Peace”…). In
this case, too, what seems to be inexcusable for McCartney is the fact that an
ordinary person, who does ordinary things, gets killed for simply wanting to keep
on living his life peacefully.
As I already mentioned, 1989 marked the beginning of a more committed
environmentalist and animal advocacy phase in McCartney’s life, a phase that is
still going on and that is displayed through several outlets (ads, campaigns, public
statements, projects, concerts and of course songs). Flowers in the Dirt, as an
album, besides bearing already an environmentalist title and cover (with the flowers
“in the dirt” used as a metaphor for pollution), was printed on recycled paper and
sported the sentence “The people who made this album wish to thank and
encourage the millions of people who are working to save the planet Earth” in the
liner notes. On the subsequent world tour, McCartney championed the association
“Friends of the Earth”, giving it visibility during the concerts, press conferences and
on the tour publicity.
On the wave of this new public image (McCartney was always considered the
most moderate and perhaps conservative of The Beatles), the subsequent studio
album, Off the Ground (released in 1993), brought McCartney’s social commitment
to a peak, producing, among album songs and B-sides of singles, no fewer than
seven songs (or maybe eight, if we count another one—the title track—that could
be interpreted in that direction, for its general feel of hope and encouragement) with
clear environmental and/or political message: “Looking for Changes”, “Long
Leather Coat”, “Big Boys Bickering”, “Mistress and Maid”, “Hope of
Deliverance”, “Peace in the Neighborhood”, “C’mon People”.17 Of these, the first
two address specific themes of animal advocacy: animal testing and the fur/leather
industry, respectively.
The two songs feature a rather unexpected songwriting approach from
McCartney’s part: first, they are “analytical types” of lyrics, in that they point the
finger at specific issues that can be recognized within the songs as such (instead of
allowing wider interpretations, as McCartney normally likes doing) and that are
described with good accuracy; second, they display a type of sharp and angry tones
that the music critics of those days could not help but calling “Lennonesque” (that
applies to both lyrics and music, which indeed, in both cases, can be classified as
“aggressive type”).
Sharp tones, but not very analytical words, appear on “Big Boys Bickering”, too,
a song that refers to politicians in general (in a similarly bitter manner as the
mentioned “Piggies” or Lennon’s “Gimme Some Truth”) that ended up being
banned by some radio stations for the repeated use of the “F word” (as applied to

17
Such a quota is arguably the second highest one of each Beatle’s career, after Lennon’s con-
ceptual protest album Sometime in New York City.
148 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

politicians’ actions). Interestingly, the song is musically “manneristic”, as it is

arranged in distinctively acoustic, folk, fashion.
Back to “Looking for Changes” and “Long Leather Coat”, both songs are
notable for the sense of resentfulness and wish for revenge (Animal Liberation
Front-style, one could say) that animate their discourses. In the former, McCartney
describes three typical forms of animal testing: brain research on cats (“I saw a cat
with a machine in his brain, The man who fed him said he didn’t feel any pain”),
cosmetic testing on rabbits (“I saw a rabbit with its eyes full of tears, The lab that
owned her had been doing it for years”), and study of tobacco effects on monkeys
(“I saw a monkey that was learning to choke, A guy beside him gave him cigarettes
to smoke, And every time that monkey started to cough the bastard laughed his
head off”), concluding each stanza with either a wish that the lab researchers would
get the same destiny as the animals they are torturing (“I’d like to see that man take
out that machine, and stick it in his own brain—You know what I mean”, or “Why
don’t we make ’em pay for every last eye, That couldn’t cry its own tears—Do you
know that I mean?”) or with not-too-complimentary epithets like, indeed, “bastard”.
The other animal advocacy song, “Long Leather Coat”, inhabits a more familiar
lyrical environment for McCartney—that of fictional storytelling. The protagonist is
a female animal activist who invites a guy to her apartment, hinting that she is
looking for an affair (“I’m glad you came, said she. You got my note, you
understood it”). In reality, she just wants to get hold of the guy’s leather coat and
spray it with red paint (in PETA-style, this time), making a point that the coat was
once a living being: “She took a can of really red paint, And she sprayed up and
down on the long leather coat, On the bloody red floor. So long, baby, I took you in
just to show you that your long leather coat is really nothing but a handful of skin”.
Adding to the initiative taken for the Flowers in the Dirt world tour, when he
championed the association “Friends of the Earth”, the tour following Off the
Ground saw McCartney promoting the work of two more associations, PETA
(People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and Greenpeace. On both tours,
before the beginning of each concert, McCartney had replaced the traditional
“supporting acts” with a 10-min video that would warm up the audience with
images and songs from his whole career, from the 1960s onwards. During the Off
the Ground tour, however, 2 min of that video did not include any Beatles or Wings
memoir, but very explicit images of animal killing and abuse. The segment would
start rather traumatically, interrupting cheerful images of flying birds (accompanied
by the evocative song “Bluebird”) with the sounds and images of hunters’ gunshots,
and inaugurating a shocking montage of hunting, vivisection, meat industry, bull-
fighting, and other scenes, closing with the logos of the three supported associa-
tions. During both tours (and all those that followed since), McCartney prohibited
any sale of animal products at the food vendors outside the concert halls.
After Off the Ground, McCartney returned to his more traditional songwriting
with hints and multilayered meanings, abandoning for a long while the more
militant approach of the above-mentioned cases. His activity as spokesman for
animal rights has remained intense, and on a regular basis the news report of some
initiative that received his support or direct involvement. For one of these, the
7.5 Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy in Paul McCartney’s Solo Repertoire 149

“Meat Free Mondays” campaign, he also wrote in 2009 a semi-serious theme song,
consisting of few simple lines repeated ad lib (“Meat Free Monday, It’s a fun day,
And it’s happening all around the world”). In 2014, on the occasion of the 5th
anniversary of the project, he gave the song a more complete strophe-refrain
structure and recorded it professionally (incidentally, in a style very reminiscent of
his early solo efforts, such as McCartney and Ram). Besides directly promoting the
campaign (“specific relation” to the context, of course), the lyrics put a strong (and
in fact exclusive) accent on the environmental damages of the meat industry, not
mentioning at all the question of animal killing: “Think about the future, How the
world will be, If we don’t do something, We face calamity—Think of greenhouse
gases, Melting polar ice, Ocean levels rising…”. One reason for this choice might
lie in the very moderate ideological nature of the Meat Free Mondays project,
which, after all, is simply a suggestion to renounce meat once a week, so the animal
rights argument may have not seemed as appropriate as the environmental benefits
of this gesture.

7.6 Conclusions

At any rate, at the times I am writing these lines (June 2016), “Meat Free Monday”
remains the last musical form of environmentalist commitment from any of the four
Beatles. The band’s reputation, when it comes to issues of social concern, has always
been that of a pacifist band, and there are certainly good reasons for this, given that
some of their best known songs (together or separately) are associated to this
message (“All You Need Is Love”, “Give Peace a Chance”, “Imagine”, “Pipes of
Peace”…), and that some of the pacifist events they organized (or were involved in)
play a crucial part in their image (Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, Lennon’s Bed-
Ins, the animated movie Yellow Submarine… not to mention Ringo Starr’s trade-
mark peace sign salute or his involvement in Little Steven’s “Sun City” all-star SSP).
It is however intriguing that, particularly after the break-up, their endorsement
for environmentalism became in time more central than any other issue of social
concern. All of the surviving members and relative partners (plus most of their
offspring and the Lennon and Harrison widows) are either vegetarian or vegan.
Yoko Ono, herself a supporter of the “Meat Free Mondays” campaign, once said
that if he were alive, John Lennon, too, would have been very concerned about the
environment. Julian Lennon, his first son, himself a singer, had in 1991 a Top Ten
hit with the song “Saltwater”, of strongly environmentalist contents (“…when I
hear about, The hole in the sky, Saltwater wells in my eyes… when I hear of how,
The forests have died, Saltwater wells in my eyes”). All of McCartney’s children
are involved in environmentalist and/or animal advocacy campaigns and actions
and so are Harrison’s son and wife.
The Beatles enlarged “family” had various legal and personal squabbles in the
past, but passion and concern for nature and its inhabitants seem to have been a
constant trait d’union, even in the most difficult days.
150 7 Case Study 3: Environmentalism and Animal Advocacy …

References

Boyd, Pattie. 2007. Wonderful Today: The Autobiography of Pattie Boyd. London: Headline
Review.
Eco, Umberto. 1962. Opera aperta. Milano: Bompiani.
Goldman, Albert. 1988. The Lives of John Lennon. New York: William Morrow and Company.
Harrison, George. 1980. I, Me, Mine. New York: Simon and Schuster.
MacDonald, Ian. 2005. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, 3rd ed. New
York: Random House.
Martinelli, Dario. 2010a. Authenticity, Performance and Other Double-Edged Words—Essays on
Popular Music. Helsinki/Imatra: Acta Semiotica Fennica.
Martinelli, Dario. 2010b. A Critical Companion to Zoosemiotics. Berlin: Springer.
Martinelli, Dario. 2015. Authorship, narrativity and ideology: the case of Lennon-McCartney. In
Music, Analysis, Experience—New Perspectives in Musical Semiotics, ed. C. Maeder, and M.
Reybrouck. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Meryman, Richard. 1971, 16 April. I felt the split was coming. Life, 52–58.
Miles, Barry. 1997. Paul McCartney—Many Years from Now. London: Vintage.
Norman, Philip. 2003. Shout! The True Story of the Beatles, 3rd ed. London: Pan Macmillan.
Quantick, David. 2002. Revolution: The Making of the Beatles’ White Album. London:
Unanimous.
Rodriguez, Robert. 2010. Fab Four FAQ 2.0: The Beatles’ Solo Years 1970–1980. Milwaukee:
Hal Leonard.
Russino, Riccardo, et al. 2003. Paul McCartney 1970–2003. Roma: Editori Riuniti.
Smith, Joe. 1987. Interview to Paul McCartney. Musician 111: 44–54.
Chapter 8
Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian
Jazz Against Fascism

Abstract In this case study I would like to explore the ambiguous and certainly
contradictory relation between jazz and the Italian fascist regime. Appreciated by
many Italians (including fascist authorities and even members of Mussolini’s
family), jazz was however ostracized, due to its connections with Afro-American
“black” culture, particularly after the enactment of the “racial laws”. In such con-
ditions, jazz musicians attempted various strategies to survive as citizens and artists:
the most effective, and institutionally-tolerated, of such strategies turned out to be a
strong stylistic mediation between American jazz and Italian melodic tradition,
which produced some of the most famous acts of the period. One of these, Alberto
Rabagliati, shall be the main focus of this case study, as one of his songs—I shall
argue here—carried a subtle yet clear statement of protest against the regime’s
restrictions.

8.1 Why Jazz in a Book About Popular Music?

This chapter shall start with an explanation. Some readers may wonder why a book
on popular music includes a case study about jazz, which many musicologists
(myself included) would classify as a separate musical sphere to popular music. Such
separation, however, occurs only in the 1940s, with the revolutionary impact of the
bebop movement. Before then, jazz was a perfectly integrated sub-group of the
“popular” universe, in all its manifestations of the time (Dixieland, swing, rag, etc.).
In addition to this, as it will soon become clear in my analysis, the main core of
this case study is a particular “survival strategy” adopted by jazz musicians: an
active camouflage with the Italian melodic tradition which made the national jazz of
those days even closer to what one may call quintessential “pop”. This particular
crossover, incidentally, has characterized the aesthetics of many Italian singers and
singer-songwriters: important artists of the second half of the 20th century,
including Renato Carosone, Fred Buscaglione, Giorgio and Paolo Conte, Sergio
Caputo, Vinicio Capossela and Raphael Gualazzi, have been, or are, devoted to this
particular genre.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 151

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1_8
152 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

So, for both historical and stylistic reasons, the type of music discussed in this
chapter is to be legitimately ascribed to the realm of popular music.

8.2 On the Ambiguous Relationship Between Jazz

and Fascism

One of the greatest Italian jazz players of the 20th century was Romano Mussolini,
son of the more (in)famous Benito. Romano, like his father, has been an outspoken
fascist (identity that he never neglected throughout his whole life), but also an artist
totally devoted to a music genre that his father had—at least officially—banned. In
the co-existence under the same roof of the most vicious statesman and one of the
finest musicians of Italian history, is contained the essence of the very contradictory
relation between jazz and Fascism during the so-called “ventennio” (the twenty
years between 1922 and 1943 during which Benito Mussolini acted as dictator in
Italy).
Romano Mussolini got to learn about jazz already at the age of four, in 1931,
thanks to another of Mussolini’s sons, the older Vittorio, who would soon become
a music critic. Already considered a decadent, “lowering” music, according to the
regime’s values, jazz was tolerated under Mussolini’s rule for another ten years,
before a total ban would be enacted and would continue until the fall of the
dictator.
After the war and Mussolini’s execution, the surviving members of the Duce’s
family received an amnesty, and Romano managed to build a very respectable fame
as jazz pianist, first under pseudonym (his first album was recorded as “Romano
Full”), then by using his real surname (but also maintaining a dignified silence
about his difficult heritage), and finally (thanks to the more fascist-friendly climate
established by the Berlusconi era in Italy, from 1994 onwards1) becoming
increasingly open about his never-rejected ideology and family pride—a period
culminated with the 2004 publication of his memoires book Il Duce, mio padre
(“The Duce, my father”, Mussolini 2004) (Fig. 8.1).
But the contradictions within Mussolini’s house were far from being an isolated
case. It was the whole of Italian society of those years to be in this ambivalent
position, particularly before the infamous “leggi razziali” (racial laws) in 1938,
which made racism a political priority in Italy, in a similar way as it already was in

1
Berlusconi’s, Silvio personal sympathy towards fascism aside (he often expressed admiration for
Mussolini, not to mention the specific ideological nature of many of his political actions), it is
useful to remind that his alliance with the neo-fascist party, led by Gianfranco Fini, allowed the
latter party to occupy seats in the government for the first time after Mussolini’s regime.
8.2 On the Ambiguous Relationship Between Jazz and Fascism 153

Fig. 8.1 A picture of Benito Mussolini (on the right) with his son Romano, taken in 1932, when
the future jazz pianist was five (image of public domain)

Germany.2 It is commonly (or perhaps stereotypically) accepted that the racist and
xenophobic measures taken by the Italian fascist regime were altogether less violent
than those taken by Hitler. Among other things, the philosophical bases of the two
ideologies seemed to speak quite clearly in this regard: if Nazism literally founded a
consistent part of its paradigm in the defense of a race (the so-called “Aryan” one),
for the fascists the real key-word was “Fatherland” (“patria”), a concept that may,
but not necessarily, imply some forms of ethnic discrimination. Only eventually,
and in connection with the alliance with Hitler, Italy elaborated (and started to
firmly believe in) racist laws. Having said that, though, and also to dismiss the myth
of the “soft racism” of Italian fascism (this myth, too, encouraged by

2
Jazz was not the only example of “strange co-existence”, as other forms existed at the level of
interaction between the Italian people and foreign artistic and cultural manifestations (American in
particular). However, none of these (which included cinema, comics, literature, other musical
styles, etc.) invaded the private sphere of Mussolini’s family as much as jazz managed to do.
154 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

Berlusconism3), it would be a serious mistake to think that Italy and Italians were
not intimately racist at that point, just because racism was not a central point in
fascist ideology. One good example is exactly the institutional contempt for jazz, as
musical genre, social context and even terminological problem (as we shall see
later). Such contempt was primarily driven by a widely-promoted wish of economic
and cultural autarchy, which brought to several so-called “battles” (campaigns to
promote the Italian crop, Italian cotton, Italian sugar, etc.), to ban tea in favor of the
Italian “carcadè”, coffee in favor of Italian cicoria-based surrogates, up to the
ridiculous habit of Italianizing foreign terms and even names (active already since
1924, with a specific law): from the spectacular case of Luigi Braccioforte (Louis
Armstrong, “braccio” being “arm”, and “forte” being “strong”), to more subtle (but,
amazingly, still in use nowadays) cases like Renato Cartesio (instead of René
Descartes), Francesco Bacone (instead of Francis Bacon), Trio Lescano (Leschan
trio) and so forth.
However, let us make no mistake, this whole enterprise was not merely a case of
national pride, but an abundant dose of racism was part of the recipe too. Jazz itself
was notoriously labeled as “anti-musica negroide” (niggerish anti-music), and Luca
Cerchiari, in his very interesting essay on jazz and fascism, was certainly right in
remarking that institutions were not only interested in devaluating Afro-American
music in a critical sense, but they were rather engaged into removing the “chro-
mosome” of such music (Cerchiari 2003: 145). The cultural Italianization was the
beginning, but then the process continued in waves, reaching specific peaks of
intolerance in correspondence of some particular event. Among the latter, an article
written by journalist Carlo Ravasio on the national (i.e. fascist) newspaper Il Popolo
d’Italia on 30 March 1928, which was a ferocious attack to the various “ameri-
canate” (which translates to “American stuff” in a not-very-complimenting man-
ner), opposed to the glorious tradition of Italian and European culture: jazz was
the quintessential example employed in the text. After this invective, EIAR

3
The above-mentioned beginning of Berlusconism, in 1994, and in general the access of
right-wing forces to the Italian government, coincided also with a cultural-historical reformation of
revisionist nature, which attempted, at least partly, to rehabilitate fascism in a social and political
sense. To make a particularly significant example, right after winning the elections, Berlusconi
proceeded to a total renewal of the RAI personnel, replacing any progressive officer who would
occupy relevant positions with people perfectly aligned to the new leaders. Among the most
important changes came the appointment of Renzo De Felice (an openly rightist historian, pri-
marily known for his work on fascism and Mussolini in particular) as consultant for historio-
graphical programs. The first De Felice-advised decision, after less than a month from elections
(and in significant coincidence with the Italian Independence Day, on April 25) was the broad-
casting of a series of documentaries known as Combat Films: several hours of footage shot by the
American army in Italy, during the last years of World War II, which were showing—among other
things—a less noble and heroic side of the Italian “Resistenza” (the civil war between the
Italo-German fascist forces and the democratic partisans). Further cultural initiatives of this sort
followed: the writer Giampaolo Pansa published four books devoted to a minutious description of
the partisans’ acts of revenge towards the defeated fascists; TV series like Il Cuore nel Pozzo or
movies like Giuseppe Tornatore’s Malena encouraged a retelling of those years from the point of
view of regime supporters described more as victims of the events rather than villains, and so forth.
8.2 On the Ambiguous Relationship Between Jazz and Fascism 155

(Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche: the national broadcasting company,

which is now called RAI) proceeded to drastically reduce the broadcasting of
American music. Finally, 1938 (the year of the racial laws) inaugurated the darkest
and most violent period of the regime, with an evident impact on the “niggerish
anti-music” too (which, for the occasion, became also “Judaic” music, according to
that typical, idiotic syncretism that racist prejudice needs in order to feed hatred4),
whose related activities got systematically censored, oppressed and punished: no
more radio programs (there was even an official EIAR jazz quartet, not to mention
broadcasting of soloists like Gorni Kramer or ensembles like Orchestra Ramponi),
and no more public places where one could listen to live jazz (those places were
either closed or forced to change their musical programs).
Back to words and terminology, an additional difficulty for “jazz” was also its
problematic translation in other languages. The regime, starting from the infamous
1924 law on linguistic Italianization, had already sweated buckets to translate any
foreign term circulating in Italian daily conversations. I have already mentioned the
pathetic case of foreign names and surnames, but there was more. The bluette color
(a French word) had become a funny “turchinicchio,” the name “Internazionale di
Milano” for the football team we nowadays call Inter Milan could not be tolerated
in its unpatriotic (international) implication, so it became “Ambrosiana” (from
Sant’Ambrogio, the patron saint of Milano); “rugby” became “Giuoco della
Volata”; people were not having a drink in a “bar”, but in a “mescita”, and they
could not ask for a “whisky” or a “cocktail”, but for “acquavite” and (I kid you not)
“bevanda arlecchina” respectively. The list goes on, in a grotesque crescendo.5 The
journalist Paolo g, in 1933, had even published a J’accuse against 500 “exotic
words” (a book entitled Barbaro dominio), compiling what, for years, became the
ultimate list of Italian replacements for foreign words. In that book, the term “jazz”,
after repeated translation attempts such as “rumore” (noise), “fracasso” (blast),
“disordine” (disorder), “musica sincopata” (syncopated music), “ballo” (dance) and
others, ended up being entirely discarded (Monelli 1933: 176): the word, Monelli
sentenced, was impossible to translate, so—for what is worth—Italians could rather

4
On February 19, 1938, Il Popolo d’Italia wrote: “We all know that Judaism aims at the same time
to accumulate money and vulgarize humankind, so that the inexistant qualities of the “elected
people” can stand out. Jazz music is one of the safest and most powerful Judaic weapons. With
four musical notes, an exhausting monotony and a heavy dose of sexual bestiality, the American
Jews managed to destroy the artistic sense of many people and to accumulate millions after
millions. However, it is high time for the Italian people to extend the legitimate racial campaign to
this field, too, and it is necessary that the initiative departs from our radio programs” (translated
from Di Capua 2004: 67).
5
An excellent reading in this respect is Caroli 2003, which also emphasizes how some of these
transformations remain in use nowadays, and have actually lost their cultural connection with
Fascism (meaning that people use these words without actually thinking that their italianization
was the result of that particular process occurred in those days). The word “calcio”, which
designates the national sport (football) is probably the best example, given the massive recurrence
of the word, but several others, too, are completely integrated into the linguistic landscape.
156 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

live without it, since it was anyway “a vulgar term with an ambiguous meaning”
(ibid.: 177).
As one may detect from the above examples, it was the whole Italian cultural
landscape (with remarkable exceptions, of course—there is no doubt that no cul-
tural process in any community can be assessed monolithically, not even under
dictatorship) to be characterized by a generic “provincial” form of racism, if one
may say so. That is: as a society totally alien to cosmopolitism and multiculturalism
(as Italy was at that point—and still is, by the way, to many extents), Italians had an
instinctive hostility towards “the other”. The anthropological and ethnic component
of jazz had already been object of scorn and discrimination before fascism: an
article published by the Roman daily Il Messaggero, in January 1922 (that is, ten
months before the March on Roma, after which Mussolini took power) had defined
jazz as the music of “cannibal tribes”, comparing the listening experience to “being
in a madhouse, a children asylum or a cage with ferocious beasts” (quoted in
Mazzoletti 1983: 58, 59).
In contrast to this, there were numerous episodes that would instead testify a
genuine “musical” appreciation for jazz. We have already spoken about Romano
(and Vittorio) Mussolini, but there was much more. There were concert cafes
(“caffè musicali”, in the tradition of the French café chantant), particularly in Turin,
at a place called Caffè Crimea, where one could hear a young Cinico Angelini (later
to become one of the most eminent Italian jazzists) or where the musicophile
Alfredo Antonino used to arrange “audizioni commentate” (listening sessions with
commentaries) of American jazz recordings. There was Hotel Ambasciatori, in
Rome, where the Ambassadors Jazz Band led by Sesto Carlini had been performing
since 1927. There were even “institutional” events, like the radio program EIAR
Jazz, broadcasted between 1927 and 1929, or the encyclopedic essay Introduzione
alla vera musica jazz, published by Giancarlo Testoni and Ezio Levi, thanks to
Vittorio Mussolini’s sponsorship. Naturally, there was the memorable performance
by “Luigi Braccioforte,” alias Louis Armstrong, in Turin, organized in 1935 by
Alfredo Antonino himself, at Teatro Chiarella (outside which Italy witnessed what
became known as the first traffic jam of its history). As Adriano Mazzoletti wrote,
“Louis enjoyed a success that can only be defined miraculous. Most of the audience
could not in fact understand the music entirely, but they all had this subconscious
feeling of being in the presence of a great artist” (1983: 226, 227).
Finally, as I shall later discuss, the government itself proved to be keen on
occasional concessions to jazz (as well as to other “forbidden” cultures), if the
opportunity for financial or political reward were foreseen. The relationship, one
must repeat, was and remained contradictory, in many senses.

8.2.1 Censorship and Paranoia

Speaking more generally, the penetration of jazz into Italian musical culture had
anyway a remarkable influence over many musicians emerging in that period, and
8.2 On the Ambiguous Relationship Between Jazz and Fascism 157

prepared the ground for a golden age of Italian jazz, right after the war. During
Fascism, I dare arguing, jazz musicians basically split into three categories. To the
first one, belonged those who remained in the shadow (nowadays we would use the
expression “underground scene”), aware that the regime’s restrictions would not
allow them real freedom of expression. Many of these would emerge only after
1945. Possibly, the most famous example of this category is Fred Buscaglione, who
reached wide popularity in the 1950s. In the second category, we may place those
who still attempted to practice their art in broad daylight, but had to clash against
the institutional ostracism and censorship. Famous victims include Gorni Kramer
and Natalino Otto, on whom I shall return later on. Finally, the third category
include those musicians who attempted a mediation between American jazz and
Italian melodic tradition, reaching a stylistic compromise that was “reassuring
enough” for the regime, and nevertheless allowed many “jazzists at heart” to work,
achieving, in some cases, notable success. Among these, a case I shall particularly
focus on in my analysis, the Milanese Alberto Rabagliati.
The general opinion is that the third category was the least “noble”, in both an
ethical sense (these musicians are often referred to as “supporters” of the regime)
and a strictly musical one (their compromise being often labeled as a pale and
commercial imitation of the real jazz). On the ethical/ideological position of these
artists (not only in Italy, but in any dictatorial context), much has been said and
written, and after more than seventy years from the end of the war, controversies
and contradictions are endless.6 Who was guiltier during German Nazism,
Furtwängler, who conducted concerts for the Nazi authorities and shook hands with
Hitler, but at the same time saved the life of several Jewish musicians, or von
Karajan, who was less “institutional” than his older colleague, but did not hesitate
to enroll to the Nazi party just to advance his career? Maybe they were both guilty,
or maybe they were not: but the fact is that Furtwängler was harassed with
aggressive interrogations by the allied authorities and severely damaged in his
reputation (he was offered the conduction of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
after the war, but the offer was withdrawn after the strong disapproval expressed by
some top Jewish musicians, such as Horowitz and Rubinstein), while Von Karajan
got totally away with his past, becoming one of the most celebrated and enduring
conductors of all times.
Moreover, while we are on this topic, was Arturo Toscanini really the antifascist
hero that postwar rhetoric depicted, considering that he abandoned Italy only in 1931,
not because of his antifascist ideas (which had been—to his credit—always explicit,
and never hidden), but after he was physically attacked in Bologna, and it became
clear that he could not work anymore in Italy in decent conditions? What I am trying
to say is that, both dialectically and via the existing documentation, it is possible (and
relatively easy) to manipulate the historical memory in any direction we wish: we can
turn a hero into a coward in just a couple of steps, or the other way round.

6
Among the many texts available on the subject, I shall mention at least Roncigl i-Menuhin 2009,
Kater-Riethmüller 2003 and, on Toscanini—here discussed after a few lines—Sachs 1978.
158 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

Undoubtedly, artists, in order to be artists, do not necessarily require a moral

purity, nor should we demand an active political conscience from them (more
generally, they should not be “overrated” as persons, just because they are able to
create beauty). Much more plausible is to assume that they care for their artistic
freedom more than for any other freedom—speech, opinion, vote, or the likes.
When we browse the endless list of supporters and opponents of any dictatorial
regime of the past, what we find most often is decisions taken on the basis of artistic
opportunity: the less the artists were allowed to work as they pleased, the more we
find them escaping or fighting against the tyranny. In addition, there is also the
option that those who instead accepted the private and professional compromises,
would attempt to pass a message or two of subtle protest/resistance, by exactly
using their art. That was chiefly the case when, indeed, it was their art (more than
their private sphere) to be especially limited by such compromises.
In this sense, when we discuss “protest” and “resistance” in various forms of
cultural expression (as we do in this book, in relation to music), we should always
consider the—so to speak—epistemological dimension of these actions. That is, the
fact that an artist may feel particularly threatened in his/her identity as “artist”,
rather than citizen. In the analysis that I shall later propose, I am going to suggest
that even a “regime-friendly” performer, such as Alberto Rabagliati, in collabora-
tion with his authors (the latter, too, not exactly antifascist partisans), did not resist
the temptation to mock the institutions, when the issue at stake was not really his
personal safety, but his artistic autonomy as jazz singer.
I intend to point out here that “mockery” is a word carefully chosen to describe
this particular case study. I shall not talk about “parody”, “protest”, “satire”, “civil
disobedience”, or otherwise. The very ideologically-charged word that we can add
is only “resistance”: the artist resists against the oppression of his/her artistic
freedom, by becoming a disguised joker who laughs behind the authorities’ back.
A couple of clues here and there are disseminated in his/her art in order for other
people to become aware of the joke (and make the authorities look even dumber),
but there is no real “satire” or “parody” in a literal sense: what we have, instead, is
the equivalent of a kid who sticks a piece of paper with a nasty word written on a
schoolmate’s back, giggling with everybody else. In addition, it must be underlined
that the case study I am about to discuss occurred in 1941, and by this time the
fascist regime (and Mussolini himself, as leader) had lost a lot of consensus among
the Italians, and its intimidatory aura had partly disappeared. Mockeries and jokes,
even more than direct attacks or protests, signify, of all feelings, a loss of respect.
In this sense, musical forms of disrespect towards Fascism had become an actual
genre, partly out of specific intentions of the opposition, and partly out of the
institutions’ morbidness, particularly the infamous Ministry of Popular Culture
(which Italians quickly abbreviated with the goliardic acronym “MinCulPop”,
initial syllables of three pretty naughty Italian words). From 1938 onwards, the
ministry’s censorship started to systematically target the so-called “canzoni della
8.2 On the Ambiguous Relationship Between Jazz and Fascism 159

fronda”,7 that is, songs whose lyrics, behind an apparent inoffensiveness, were
supposedly hiding attacks and criticisms to the regime. In most cases, the censor-
ship was the result of an unjustified paranoia towards songs that were really
inoffensive: the authorities, sensing their constant loss of consensus, began to see
enemies everywhere, and—moreover—needed to mediatically create them, in order
to feed the propaganda. On the other hand, yes, there were a few cases where such
seemingly-innocuous songs were in fact written and/or used as subtle forms of
protest. Many of these songs, genuinely or only apparently inoffensive, received a
number of sanctions, ranging among fines, radio bans or a specific request to
change/delete a few verses.
Although the real fuss around “canzoni della fronda” began in 1938, a few
remarkable cases of censorship had occurred already before then (remarkable also
because they targeted songs above any suspicion, and in fact previously considered
integral part of the fascist cultural heritage).8 Then, in 1938, the censorship episodes
became regular and officially motivated in the above-described way: the first sig-
nificant case was a real “hit” of the period (and a song that is still popular nowa-
days): “Un’ora sola ti vorrei” (“I’d love to be with you, even only for an hour”).
Unmistakably a love song, its lyrics had verses such as “Un’ora sola ti vorrei/per
dirti quello che non sai/Io che non so scordarmi mai/quello che sei per me” (“I’d
love to be with you, even only for an hour/so that I could tell you what you don’t
know/I could never forget what you mean to me”): as Mussolini’s popularity was
constantly decreasing, rumors spread that some people had taken to sing these
verses as an allegory to the revenge they would take, if only they could spend one
hour alone with him.
Other famous cases followed—in fact one could say that the more popular the
songs, the more chances they would be targeted by the MinCulPop (a popular song
is listened to and liked by many people, so the danger of insubordination is greater).
Among the several songs worth mentioning: “Maramao perché sei morto?” (“Why
did you die, Maramao?”—a children song about a cat, itself a very jazzy-swingy
track), suspected to be a reference to the fascist officer Costanzo Ciano, who died in
June 1939; “Pippo non lo sa” (“Pippo doesn’t know”—again a jazz-flavored
record), of the same year, interpreted as an allegory to the Fascist Party’s chairman
Achille Starace (who, at that point, was considered more Mussolini’s puppet than

7
“La Fronda” was an anti-monarchic movement developed in France between 1648 and 1653. By
extension, the term ended up designating any movement or current of opposition within a party or
any other political group. Fronda’s songs, therefore, were for the fascist authorities all the songs
with antifascist contents, including those generated in institutional or quasi-institutional environ-
ments (such as national radio programs, or similar).
8
Possibly, no more significant examples can be made than “La Leggenda del Piave” (“The legend
of the Piave river”, a patriotic song written during World War I, which was edited in 1926 in order
to turn the “betrayal” of the Caporetto defeat into a “tragic event”) and even “Faccetta Nera”
(“Black pretty face”, a racist-colonialist song that became one of the fascist anthems: in 1935 the
lyrics were revised because they were, after all, “too sympathetic” towards the song’s protagonist,
an attractive Abyssinian woman, and that could encourage—God forbid—multi-ethnic marriages
between Italians and black people).
160 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

anything else: therefore, he didn’t know what was really going on); and the
internationally-known (particularly via Marlene Dietrich’s version) “Lili Marleen”,
released in 1943, accused to depress the soldiers’ morale, particularly in its final
verses “Tutte le notti sogno allor/di ritornar, di riposar/con te, Lili Marleen”
(“Every night I dream to come back, and rest by you, Lili Marleen”) : the ideal
fascist soldier was not supposed to wish to come back from the front—he had to be
happy to fight.
As one can notice from these examples, the “canzoni della fronda” had two
important features in common: on the one hand they were rarely, if ever, songs with
political content (the latter being only imagined by the ministry); on the other hand,
as we have seen, it would take really nothing for the regime to get irritated: a vague
verse with a possible vague connotation would do. The simple melancholic senti-
ment of “Lili Marleen” was taken as an attack (there was even another song, the
less famous “Caro papà” —“Dear Dad”—where it was not even the soldier to wish
to go home, but rather his son to ask him to do it: this song, too, was censored: kids,
too, were not supposed to misbehave!). There was no need for a song to contain an
antifascist “message”: a very generic “mood” was more than enough.

8.3 The Case of Alberto Rabagliati

Within such a context of hyper-sensitivity and paranoia, worked the singer, actor
and showman Alberto Rabagliati (Milano, 1906–Roma, 1974). It is my opinion
(and my intention to demonstrate it here) that a “canzone della fronda” that was
surprisingly missed by the censors was the then-very popular “Quando canta
Rabagliati” (“When Rabagliati sings”), opening tune of the quasi-eponymous radio
program Rabagliati sings, broadcasted every Monday evening at 8:40 pm during
1941.9 The song was written by the composer Giovanni D’Anzi who, between 1935
and the late 1950s, wrote extremely popular tunes like “Oh mia bela Madunina”,
“Ma le gambe” and “Ma l’amore no”, and the wordsmith Michele Galdieri, who
had been more active as comedy playwright, but is also remembered for lyrics like
“T’ho voluto bene” (that is, “Non dimenticar”, in a famous remake by Nat King
Cole), and the same “Ma l’amore no”.10 Interpreter of the track, it goes without
saying, was the star Alberto Rabagliati whom, after a period spent in America
(where he had enjoyed modest success as a Rodolfo Valentino’s lookalike, but had

9
8:40 pm was, and still is, prime time in Italian radio (and later TV) broadcasting policies: Canta
Rabagliati was therefore a flagship program for EIAR, which—by 1941—had almost two millions
subscribers. See also Vannucchi-Visintin 2011: 438.
10
One of his first productions, within the so-called “rivista” theatre genre, was È bello qualche
volta andare a piedi (“It’s nice to walk, sometimes”), and the leading actor was exactly Rabagliati.
It was on this occasion that the two of them had a chance to get to know each other and—
according to Galdieri himself (2002: 146)—it was here that Rabagliati impressed Galdieri with his
self-ironic attitude, inspiring the concept and the mood for “Quando canta Rabagliati”.
8.3 The Case of Alberto Rabagliati 161

Fig. 8.2 Alberto Rabagliati

in a promotional postcard of
the early 1940s (image of
public domain)

soon turned his attention to the exciting emerging genres of jazz, swing and scat),
had reached a quick fame in Italy after a successful audition for EIAR (attempted
after suggestion of the same D’Anzi), becoming one of the audience’s best loved
radio personalities. Rabagliati’s success could count on his singing skills (applied
on a repertoire that was indeed often based on the Afro-American genres he had
familiarized with, while in the States), and of course on his looks, indeed remi-
niscent of the legendary Latin Lover from Castellaneta (see Fig. 8.2). Rabagliati
achieved fame both as a singer and as an actor, enjoying an enduring success of
over twenty years after the end of the war,11 contributing—among other things—to
the development of that very Italian pop-jazz crossover that have since influenced
several singers-songwriters, as we have seen at the beginning of this chapter. Like
the great majority of Italian public personalities who had a friendly, if not coop-
erative, relation with the Fascist regime, Rabagliati, too, was never boycotted by the
post-war show business: he perfectly managed to continue his career and maintain
his good reputation, particularly in theatre and cinema.12

11
I shall here mention that the program “Canta Rabagliati” was strongly supported by ENIC, Ente
Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche (the national company for film productions), in the
awareness that Rabagliati’s public exposure in radio programs would have been beneficial also for
his already-high popularity as an actor.
12
In this sense, there is a profound difference in the ways Germany and Italy managed their social
and moral rehabilitation, in the aftermath of the respective regimes. While Germany was (and still
is) very determined to get rid of any ghost of the past, Italy has always been very tolerant towards
those like Rabagliati, who had happily co-existed with Fascism, or even those who had actively
supported it (without even taking trouble of a later public apology). All of them had the chance to
162 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

In a nutshell, Rabagliati’s political opinions were never particularly explicit. What

we know about him is that he never really opposed the regime, but we also know that
he did not enroll to the Fascist Party (a choice that required a certain courage for a
public personality). We also know that, during the famous 1946 referendum that
invited Italians to choose between monarchy and republic, he voted for monarchy (or
so, at least, we are told by the association Unione Monarchica Italiana),13 and, finally,
we know that in 1952, he performed for the Avanti fair, the main mundane event
organized by the Italian Socialist Party, raising a bit of controversy among those
comrades who were expecting, so to speak, more militant performers.14 Should we
take the liberty to sum up these few indications, we might trace the profile of a
not-very-politically-engaged moderate, who is more on the conservative than the
progressive side. Someone who would have never become a partisan during the
Italian Resistance (and indeed he did not), but who certainly did not cry at the news of
Mussolini’s death. As a matter of fact, Rabagliati was the perfect embodiment of the
“average Italian”, an ideological profile that was in fact rather widespread in the show
business of those days. Our description of Rabagliati’s politics fits perfectly to other
Italian stars of the 1940s, including Totò, Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi, the De
Filippo brothers, and others. For the neat, and well-known, leftist connotation of the
Italian entertainment industry we shall wait for the mid 1950s.
Remaining in the popular music and jazz environment, Rabagliati’s position was
more similar to the Leschan sisters (none of whom enrolled to the Fascist Party),
than to celebrated jazz musicians like Cinico Angelini or Gorni Kramer, who even
ended up joining the infamous Repubblica Sociale (Mussolini’s ephemeral attempt
to resuscitate the regime towards the end of the war). The relationship between
Rabagliati and censorship, too, had been rather ambivalent, at least until the
appearance of “Quando canta Rabagliati”. Generally speaking, despite the fact that
the jazz imprinting of the singer’s repertoire was no mystery to anybody, the
MinCulPop officers had not raised any particular issue, mostly because their main

(Footnote 12 continued)
continue their carreer and mantain their success in total serenity. The long list includes some of the
public personalities who chiefly characterized Italian popular culture in the second half of the 20th
century: journalist Enrico Ameri (a radio voice every Italian football fan is familiar with), the
actors Walter Chiari, Raimondo Vianello, Marcello Mastroianni and Ugo Tognazzi, the writers
Ardengo Soffici and Dino Buzzati, and many others. In addition, an even more important role in
this matter was played by the so-called “Amnistia Togliatti”, an amnesty proposed in 1946 by the
then-minister of justice Palmiro Togliatti to forgive certain political crimes. Via that procedure,
meant to speed up the process of social reunification and pacification of Italy, various crimes
related to the Fascist regime (including significant war crimes) were pardoned. Benefiting from
that decision were several public profiles, including members of the Mussolini family of course,
but certainly the most sensational case was the very famous theatre actor Giorgio Albertazzi, who
received the amnesty while serving in jail, charged with mass murder for commanding an
execution platoon against partisans of the resistance.
13
Unione Monarchica Italiana, retrieved December 17, 2015, http://www.monarchia.it/archivio01.
html.
14
Nuova Rivista Storica, retrieved December 17, 2015 http://www.nuovarivistastorica.it/?p=3467.
8.3 The Case of Alberto Rabagliati 163

preoccupation was lyrical contents, rather than musical genres (and the lyrics in
Rabagliati’s songs were generally inoffensive). Also, Rabagliati’s “jazz” was a very
Italianized version of the genre, rich in humor and so-called “macchietta”. Finally,
this Italian-mediated jazz was, as we have seen, a very widespread phenomenon,
and the regime was certainly more concerned to discourage forms of the genre that
were more faithful to the Afro-American tradition.
Talking about lyrics, at this point one may object that this chapter should focus on
Rabagliati’s authors, rather than the singer himself, who was not a songwriter, thus not
directly responsible for certain contents. The observation is in general legitimate, except
that the peculiar nature of the song we are about to analyze (a song which names and
talks about Rabagliati as such, as a public personality and as a musician) brings the
performer on the spotlight of the lyrical and musical choices of this song. “Quando canta
Rabagliati” is not a song “written by” but absolutely “planned with” and “representative
of” Alberto Rabagliati. The fact that the singer, as we shall see later on, resolved to sing
“Ueee” instead of the forbidden “Yeah!” was not just Galdieri’s brilliant idea, but
evidently a metaphor directly connected to the professional and artistic condition (and
relative limitations) of Rabagliati in that particular period.
Back to our point, we were talking about the ambivalent relationship between the
singer and the Fascist authorities. Nothing better than two events that occurred in the
same year (1940) can represent such ambivalence. In the turning of few months,
Rabagliati saw one of his songs (“Silenzioso Slow”) censored and another one (“C’è
una casetta piccina”) employed in a propaganda campaign nonetheless. Significantly,
both songs were not in fact known with the original titles, but with putative ones that
better suggest the reasons why authorities, for better and for worse, got interested in
them.15 “Silenzioso Slow” became soon known as “Abbassa la tua radio” (“Turn the
radio volume down”), and received the paranoid treatment of being considered an
allusion to the regime’s opponents, who, since Italy’s involvement in the war (which
occurred that same year), had famously taken to tuning to the clandestine frequencies
of Radio Luxembourg, to get uncensored war bulletins and political news. That
activity was indeed performed in secret, at “low volume”, to avoid the risk of being
caught or spied upon. In turn, “C’è una casetta piccina” was soon renamed “Sposi”
(“Spouses”), and became the anthem of the demographic campaign launched by the
government (Italy being in growing need of fresh forces for labor and soldiering).

8.3.1 “Quando Canta Rabagliati”

In sum: Rabagliati had been exposed to the very treatment described by Mussolini’s
famous horse breeding-inspired metaphor: a bit of stick and a bit of carrot. Besides,

15
As one may notice, the practice of renaming songs is rather popular in Italy, as the case of the
arguably best known Italian song in the world, “Nel blu dipinto di blu” (indeed, better known as
“Volare”) proves. Generally, the new title is based on a recurrent word/sentence of the refrain or
the opening lines (as also occurs with the two songs I am analyzing here).
164 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

there is no doubt that Rabagliati’s songs were attentively analyzed by the

MinCulPop, due to the singer’s huge popularity. This must have been true also (or
perhaps particularly) for a song, “Quando canta Rabagliati”, that was going to
become the opening theme of a prime time EIAR program. One cannot imagine
why the authorities would give a superficial scrutiny to a song with such outreach
potentials. If the MinCulPop ok’ed the song literally without a single objection,
then we must assume that the track was truly inoffensive.
Or was it?
The thesis I intend to defend here is that “Quando canta Rabagliati” was a sheer
canzone della fronda, with ideological references that are surely very subtle, but at
the same time focused, repeated and pinpointed.
The song, as typically in those years, begins with a long orchestral introduction
that lasts almost half as long as the whole track (1′18″ out of a total of 3′05″), and
that emphatically announces the refrain’s theme (which in turn, lasts for most of the
song). At the end of this intro, a rather daring change of key brings the listener to
the strophe, the latter, too, provided with a (short, this time) intro that would also be
totally instrumental, if Rabagliati would not add an onomatopoetic “poom pom” on
the double-bass part:

Poom pom Poom poom pom pom

Poom poom pom pom Poom poom pom pom

Oggi un gagliardo tenor, Nowadays, neither a brilliant tenor,

Un valente sopran Nor a skilled soprano,
Più non trovan da cantar Can find a suitable singing repertoire

Primi pensieri d’amor As the first loving thoughts appear,

Oggi il pubblico stran The strange audience
Vuol sentire rabagliar Wants to hear the “rabagliar”

Perché, perché Oh why, oh why

Ahimè ahimè … Oh my, oh my …

Although this part is not the main one with politically-charged content, it is
already possible to spot some interesting double-entendres. The song, as one may
have guessed already, plays with the suggestion that this new genre sung by
Rabagliati has become so popular, that traditional Italian songs (represented by the
belcanto of tenors and sopranos), even the best ones (the singers are “brilliant” and
“skilled”), are not played anymore. The “strange audience” (strange, evidently,
because it admires an unusual, non-national, genre) wants to hear the “rabagliar” (a
verbal form stemming from the singer’s surname: something like “to sing in a
Rabagliatesque manner”). That is, the audience wants jazz, or more specifically
swing, but neither words could be used. Among other things, the word
“Rabagliare” is the result of an ingenious idea and a fortunate coincidence. On the
one hand, indeed, it makes an infinite tense out of a name (following a similar
principle as later used by music critics to emphasize Phil Spector’s production
8.3 The Case of Alberto Rabagliati 165

style: “to spectorize” a given song), underlining the strong connection between the
genre and the particular performer. On the other hand, a word like “rabagliare”
sounds like the perfect combination between the braying of the donkey (“ragliare”
in Italian) and the barking (“abbaiare”) of the dog (eventually we shall also see
that the lyrics compare Rabagliati’s singing style to a cat’s meowing). Coupling
the singer’s eagerness to self-irony with the racist descriptions of jazz of those
days (a “bestial” type of music), I have no doubt on the enormous semiotic
potential of that word: there is marketing, there is metaphor, there is irony and
there is self-irony.
Moreover, the fact itself that, against any propaganda or censorship, the listener
receives the information that the audience prefers jazz anyway, is another sarcastic
dig: it does not matter what a regime imposes, the people will still think with their
own head and listen to any music they want, forbidden or not. The “competition”
itself between traditionally melodic tenors and sopranos and Rabagliatesque singers
may be a metaphor for the reactionary Fascist authorities who appear incapable of
understanding the evolution of taste and aesthetics.
Another interpretation for the singers who “cannot find a suitable repertoire”
(literally the lyrics say that the singers “cannot find what to sing”) lies in the
possible reference to how the regime had given an increasingly hard time to many
artists, first professionally and then also personally, up to the saddest cases (like the
above-mentioned “racial laws”, initiated in 1938, and tragically effective by the
times the song was made: victims included excellent and celebrated Jewish musi-
cians like Vittorio Rieti, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Alberto Gentili, Renzo
Massarani, Aronne Guido, Alberto Fano and Aldo Finzi). However, I have some
reservations about such a directly-political reference. “Quando canta Rabagliati”
seems to me a song of “artistic”, not political, resistance: I do not believe (nor do I
see any indication) that Rabagliati and his authors intended to question the regime
as such. Rather, they seemed determined to defend their artistic freedom (that is, the
freedom to do their art, but also the freedom of their art), against restrictions that in
this case were nationalist and xenophobic. Any reference to the many “broken
careers” of Fascism (as they are called in Lopez Nuñes 2013), to the oppressed
artistic movements (such as the Scuola di Via Cavour, a group of Roman
expressionists who had exposed the aesthetic decadence of Fascism through their
artworks, or the Sei di Torino, a group of painter too much—according to the
regime—inspired by foreigners schools such as the French Fauves and the German
expressionists), or to those artists who migrated abroad (such as the mentioned
Arturo Toscanini)—all these were too political messages to be part of the song’s
program.
Let us anyway return to the narrative development of the song. The “sad” news
of the crisis of traditional singers and the rise of the jazz genre are ironically
underlined by various factors, the foremost certainly being the minor key of this
passage (which will indeed turn to major at the opening of the refrain) and the
employment of exclamations like “ahimè” or “perché” (“oh my, oh my”, “oh why,
166 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

oh why”). So, if the audience prefer the “rabagliare”, let us then see what this genre
consists of. We get the full description during the refrain:

Quando canta Rabagliati fa così: “ueee” When Rabagliati sings, he goes “Ueee”
E sui fianchi ben piantati resta lì … “ueeeee” And very firmly he stands there… “Ueeee”
E lo sguardo scanzonato And he makes his light-hearted gaze
Con un lampo fa brillar Twinkle like a thunder

E agitando sempre l’indice elevato
S’ode un canto che somiglia a un miagolar
Quando canta Rabagliati fa così: “ueee”
E gli astanti appassionati di-ri-din-dì
Ragliaba-ba-baciami piccina
Sulla bo-bo-bo-ba-di-ba-bàa
Mentre questo Tito Schipa non
lo fa [×2]
And, as he whisks his stretched index finger,
One can hear a chant that sounds like
mieowing
When Rabagliati sings, he goes “Ueee”
And the engaged attendants go di-ri-din-dì
Ragliaba-ba-baby kiss me
On the bo-bo-bo-ba-di-ba-bà
And Tito Schipa got no business with this [×2]

a
“di-ri-din-dì” and “bo-ba-di-ba-bà” are of course forms of scat-singing

To begin with, therefore, we get the first suggestions that, in order to sing jazz,
one has to sing “Ueee”, which is an Italian onomatopoeia (used mostly in comics)
standing for a baby’s cry. Obviously, however, this “Ueee” is only an incognito
English “Yeaaah!”, so often employed in Afro-American genres (and therefore
forbidden). That lyricist Galdieri was in fact referring to “Yeah” is a fact corrob-
orated by the same Rabagliati in his later performances of the song, after WWII. In
a famous appearance in the 1974 TV program Milleluci (few days before Rabagliati
passed away from a sudden stroke, the program ending up being broadcasted after
his funeral), Rabagliati duetted with the Italian superstar Mina, singing very dis-
tinctively “Yeaaah,”, catching by surprise Mina herself, who—having learned the
original lyrics—kept on using “Ueee”.16
The “rabagliar” style, we learned from the lyrics, consists also of performing
while standing very firmly (“i fianchi ben piantati”), with a light-hearted gaze
(“sguardo scanzonato”), a singing style that resembles mieowing (“un canto che
somiglia a un miagolar”), and—most importantly—whisking the index finger
(“agitando l’indice elevato”). The song, in other words, is faithfully describing a
classic swing performance. Aside from being another sarcastic zoological reference,
the meowing is very possibly a reference to some typical glissandos of
Afro-American song phrasing (the blue notes being the prototypical example). The
combination of “standing firmly” with a “light-hearted gaze”, and the “whisking of
the index finger” is the basic choreography of genres like swing, dixieland or
charleston.17

16
This performance can be easily tracked on the net, for instance at the link https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=OcvzMtrrWrs (last retrieved on 21 January 2016).
17
Rabagliati, writes Camilla Cederna, “is the first singer to sing syncopated phrases in the
American style, whisking the finger” (translated from Cederna 1966: 30).
8.3 The Case of Alberto Rabagliati 167

The equation rabagliar = jazz continues with two references to scat singing
(“di-ri-din-dì” and “bo-ba-di-ba-bà”), another typical technique found in
Afro-American musics. There is also room for another tongue-in-cheek dig, this
time a self-referential one: the song “Ba Ba Baciami piccina” (arguably the greatest
success enjoyed by Rabagliati, written by Riccardo Morbelli and Luigi Astore in
1940) is quoted both lyrically and rhythmically, through a very clever inversion of
the singer’s surname’s syllables (from Ra-ba-glià to Ra-glia-bà).
Finally, the cherry on top of this multilayered network of references is the line
“Mentre questo Tito Schipa non lo fa” (“And Tito Schipa got no business with
this”—or, more literally: “Tito Schipa can’t do this”), which—I believe—is another
stingy comment about the fascist regime, disguised as a strictly musical one.
Schipa, indeed, was an eminent representative of the “melodic” singing, with an
operatic voice that placed him along Beniamino Gigli as one of the most popular
(and skillful) singers of the Italian tradition in pop. In this sense, on the surface,
Schipa is one of those “brilliant tenors” who “cannot find anymore a suitable
repertoire”, since the “weird audience” prefers now the swingy “rabagliar”. On the
surface. Digging deeper, however, one cannot help thinking about the fact that Tito
Schipa was one of the most outspoken supporters of the regime (like Gigli himself,
by the way): a very nationalist and conservative personality, Schipa was also a
personal friend of Achille Starace, one of the “big cats” of the establishment (as we
have seen already), and embodied in many ways the quintessential fascist artist.
When it came to music, in other words, Schipa was the establishment. Therefore, to
underline the distance separating Rabagliati from Schipa was not just a way to
emphasize the difference between swing and melodic tradition: what Schipa “got no
business with” is also a whole artistic project that is alternative to the establishment,
and that the latter firmly oppresses, at least in its most explicit forms.

8.4 Conclusions: Why No Censorship?

What is left to understand, at this point, is how the MinCulPop managed to ignore
(or decided to ignore) this particular “canzone della fronda”. How come the
institution that was capable to catch invisible (and inexistent) nuances in
totally-innocuous songs like “Maramao perché sei morto” missed a repeated set of
sarcastic references that are ten times more evident (let alone “real”)? To make
matters worse, how could they be so superficial over a song that was the opening
theme of a primetime radio program—therefore exposed to a great portion of the
population? Two kinds of interpretation seem to be realistic. On the one hand, yes,
it is possible that the ideological nature of the song was totally missed. As Edgar
Allan Poe put it, the best place to hide something is where everybody can see it: the
regime’s paranoia might have been very zealous in detecting an antiwar feeling in
an unmistakably-romantic line from “Lili Marleen”, but if you smacked your
subversive comments right in their face, they might actually not see them. An
explanation for this lies in the renowned comedy-oriented profile of Rabagliati:
168 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

poking innocent fun on the audience or on a colleague was something that one
could after all expect from a singer who had made of light, amusing entertainment a
recurrent feature of his songs. The “Ueee” was not taken as a “Yeaaah” surrogate,
the “stretched index finger” was not connected to Afro-American performances, the
joke on Schipa was perceived only at the surface level. To imagine “Maramao” as
an alias for the recently-executed Ciano seemed evidently a more obvious
camouflage. Never mind that Mario Panzeri (author of those lyrics) managed to
prove that he actually wrote the song before Ciano’s death. After all, if we put
ourselves into the shoes of a member of such censorship boards, reviewing dozens
of texts (songs, books, articles, films, plays …), it is only natural that in the end we
see evil only when/where we expect to see it: paradoxically, it is easier to dream up
a reference to an executed politician, right after that execution when everybody is
still talking about it, then to spot real, more (and more evident) references to a
secondary (and currently not sensational) problem like jazz musicians protesting for
their right to be jazz musicians.
As a second option, we may assume that, actually, the sub-text of the song was
fully understood, but still considered inoffensive, in its purely-artistic and very
subtle claims (plus, let us not forget it, Italians—fascists included—generally did
like jazz, regardless of how much they were forced to react otherwise). Someone, at
MinCulPop, must have thought that the joke was far too clever for the public to
actually understand it. Would the audience go as far as to guess that to whisk the
finger is a particular performing gesture of jazz musician, and not any of the million
ways one can whisk a finger (particularly in a gesture-rich nonverbal culture like the
Italian one)? The authorities, it may be argued, did not think it worthy to intervene
in cases like this. What would scare them was mainly political contents, that is,
references to the regime as such. Moreover, and that was the case with the likes of
“Maramao perché sei morto?” or “Un’ora sola ti vorrei”, it was preferable to
intervene on more circumstantial situations, rather than general long-standing issues
that people may have even forgotten about. The racial laws and their various
manifestations (and the censorship of pure jazz was far from being the most
glamorous of them) were an issue that was going on for years: on the contrary, to
listen to “Maramao perché sei morto?” right after Ciano’s execution sounded much
more like a direct—intentional—connection.
To say it all, as much as my antifascist convictions would encourage me to depict
the MinCulPop as a ridiculous assembly of paranoid incompetents, it must be said that
the board of the ministry—especially during the 1939–1943 period—was composed
of rather cultured and intelligent people. The president, Alessandro Pavolini, was a
man known for his violent and wicked inclinations (he was, among other things, one of
the main responsibles for the so-called “Rappresaglia di Ferrara”18), but also for

18
Ordered on November 13, 1943, to vindicate the murder of the federal agent Igino Ghisellini, the
“rappresaglia” led to the killing of 65 antifascist militants chosen at random, some executed, some
perished after physical abuse. The tragic irony of this was that, according to some historians,
including the specialist Mimmo Franzinelli (2007: 7), Ghisellini was not murdered by the parti-
sans, but by a group of fellow fascists who had resented him for his moderate politics—in
8.4 Conclusions: Why no Censorship? 169

possessing two diplomas, for being a skillful journalist and essayist, and for earning
the esteem of many intellectuals of the time, including the godfather of Italian jour-
nalism Indro Montanelli (who indeed reacted with great surprise after the Ferrara
events, not believing that refined man like Pavolini could be capable of such brutality).
In this sense, it would not be fair to liquidate the ministry as a bunch of dummies
incapable of reading between the lines of a song like Rabagliati’s.
However, I would dare suggest a third hypothesis (or, if we like, a “2b” one,
since it does not exclude the possibility that the MinCulPop had actually understood
the song). That is, despite the public and institutional exposure of “Quando canta
Rabagliati”, there never was a real interest in “controlling” it, regardless of the
possibility that some ministry officer actually sat down to read the lyrics attentively.
I say this for three important reasons:
(1) War, racial laws and the population’s growing dissatisfaction, plus more cir-
cumstantial episodes (including public events, news items, certain people …),
had established a very clear order of priority in the ministry’s policies. Within
such order, the problem of a song that could or not dig at a musical genre that
was popular in a country, USA, which would become a real enemy only in
December 1941 (when war was declared between the two countries, after
Rabagliati’s radio program), was likely secondary, if not irrelevant. Much more
interesting was to verify whether or not a song could show sympathies for the
“inferior races”, or even “spy” for the enemy: however absurd it may sound,
Eschenazi (2010: 67) reports about the other big Italian “pop-jazz” act, Trio
Lescano, being summoned to a police station to investigate on the possibility
that the lyrics for “Tuli-pan” contained a coded message for the allied forces
(via the repeated refrain syllables “tuli-tuli-tuli-tuli-tulipan”: I can only imagine
the poor three ladies of the Trio struggling not to giggle when questioned by the
police officer. Should history have taken a different, tragic, course, one might
have expected The Beach Boys sitting on those very chairs and questioned about
the secret codes of such lyrics as “Ba-ba-bah-Ba-Barbara-Ann …” or
“Round-round-get-around-I get around …”).
(2) Exactly in the light of the popular growing dissatisfaction, particularly towards
a war that was only bringing bad news for Italy (in 1940, the Italian army had
valiantly managed to be defeated by a twice-weaker Greece and, by 1941, it had
started to lose all its colonial empire, piece after piece), the
entertaining-distracting role played by a song (and related radio program) like
“Quando canta Rabagliati” was quite precious for the authorities, who must
have been rather happy to turn a blind eye, if in return they could get a more
sedated and less unhappy audience. It is true that, even in that period, several
light and inoffensive songs had still been censored: we have mentioned a few
already, we can also add the grotesque case of “Il tamburo della banda

(Footnote 18 continued)
particular his eagerness to bargain with the partisans after the famous September 8 thruce (that is,
after the allied forces had landed in Anzio).
170 8 Case Study 4: The Subtle Protest of Italian Jazz Against Fascism

d’Affori” (“The drum of the Affori band”), which—to its metrical sins—had
ended up having “550 flutes” in the lyrics, when 550 was the exact number of
the members of the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni (the fascist equiv-
alent of the Chamber of Deputies), who were reportedly pretty annoyed to be
compared to an instrument that carried a clear anatomical connotation.
However, let us remember that all these cases (Affori band included) were very
circumstantial and pinpointed, and in such cases the MinCulPop had proved to
be very strict.
(3) The community of Italian jazz musicians was at this point pretty crowded and
in some cases well-placed within the Italian entertainment industry. Pippo
Barzizza was the conductor of the EIAR orchestra (a very important post, also
on a decisional level, including tasks of artistic direction); the popstars of the
period (not just the above-mentioned Rabagliati and Trio Lescano) were hardly
alien to “syncopated rhythms”: Maria Jottini had been the lead singer in
“Maramao perché sei morto?” , Silvana Fioresi had been singing another very
swingy song, “Il Pinguino Innamorato” (“The penguin in love”—quite a
miracle that the MinCulPop did not assume that this song was a sarcastic dig at
an extra-marital affair of some fascist politician dressed in long-tail evening
dress), the emerging Quartetto Cetra was conceived as an Italian response to
The Mills Brothers, and even those who had been really boycotted by the
regime, like Gorni Kramer and Natalino Otto (the latter being one of the earliest
Italian interpreters of American blues, albeit with pretty corny lyric transla-
tions)19 still enjoyed a significant following among the public. By this, I do not
intend to suggest the existence of a conspiring Masonic jazz lobby against the
fascist government, but rather that—at this particular point in history—jazz was
far from being the regime’s main concern. Plus, and perhaps more importantly,
the genre, via its many interpreters, had been so “Italianized” that possibly
nobody felt concerned about its “negro-beastly” roots anymore. Not coinci-
dentally, the only people who really had problems with the authorities were the
likes of Kramer and Otto, definitely more engaged into proposing an “au-
thentic” jazz. Rabagliati, possibly more than any of the other Italian musician,
had no specific problem in—so to speak—dressing his own jazz with tomato,
basil and parmesan, although (and this goes entirely to his and his authors’
credit) his songs and performances never lost a single gram of energy and
groove, as compared to his colleagues on the other side of the ocean.
In conclusion, Rabagliati, and his authors, do not stand out as antifascists, that is
for sure. More accurate would be to describe them as “extra-fascists” (outside
fascism, but not against it) or even (when we think of their participation to a
national radio program) “para-fascists” (that is, co-existing with fascism). At the
same time, I would find it very unlikely that all the references contained in “Quando

19
Examples are many, but, in order to rest the case, it is enough to say that “St. Louis Blues”
became “Le tristezze di San Luigi” (“The sadness of Saint Louis”—meaning the saint, not the
Missouri city).
8.4 Conclusions: Why no Censorship? 171

canta Rabagliati” were mere coincidences. I believe the song expressed a feeling of
disagreement towards the regime’s restrictions: such restrictions had hit Rabagliati
himself, on one occasion (the mentioned song “Silenzioso slow”), and—more
hardly—a few of his colleagues who had been equally interested in bringing jazz
repertoires to Italy. Both Otto and Kramer (who remain the most famous musicians
to have been severely persecuted in this particular category) were banned by EIAR,
and yet managed to still have a successful career (particularly thanks to the label
Fonit, which persisted in releasing their and other jazz/blues records), also as
authors for other musicians (suffering censorship also in the latter role, as in the
mentioned case of Kramer’s “Pippo non lo sa”) .
Rabagliati, D’Anzi, and Galdieri, on the occasion of “Quando canta Rabagliati”,
did not suffer from this strictness, and I am confident that the great success of the
song and the whole program was a good compensation for the artistic frustration
they had accumulated thus far. Certainly there must have been a great satisfaction in
the three of them when this compensation occurred exactly when they decided to
symbolically show the middle finger to the regime, via a song that is an anthem to
the pleasure of playing jazz, anywhere and anyhow, regardless what any boss may
impose.

References

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Index of Names and Musical Acts

A Bennett, Tony, 71
Absurd, 30, 169 Benson, Arthur Christopher, 76
Ad Libitum, 48, 104 Berger, Arthur, 108
Aisha, 51 Berio, Luciano, 125
Albertazzi, Giorgio, 161 Berkmanienė, Aušra, viii
Allen, Woody, 77 Berlusconi, Silvio, 80, 94, 152, 154
Ameri, Enrico, 161 Berry, Chuck, 122
Andersen, Niels, 19 Bially Mattern, Janice, 93
Anderson, Laurie, 4 Bialobžeskis, Martynas, viii
Angelini, Cinico, 156, 162 Biko, Stephen, 18, 19, 24–26, 58
Antis, 29, 49, 63, 89, 90, 101–112, 114, 115, Bix, 104, 117
118 Björk, 93
Antonino, Alfredo, 156 Blattberg, Charles, 78
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 26, 125 Blur, 4
Aquarium, 104 Blūšius, Arūnas, 103
Aristotle, 48 Bobbio, Norberto, 72, 79, 80
Armstrong, Louis, 4, 154, 156 Borack, John, 83
Asher, Jane, 125 Borthwick, Stuart, 3
Astore, Luigi, 167 Bowden, Paul, 84
Astrauskas, Rimantas, 116 Bowie, David, 23, 108
Augustinas, Vaclovas, 90, 104, 105, 107, 110 Boyd, Pattie, 131
Bragg, Billy, 24
B Brassens, Georges, 56
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 77 Bravo, 104
Bacon, Francis, 154 Brel, Jacques, 40
Baez, Joan, 10, 36, 60 Bright Eyes, 60
Bajoras, Feliksas, 99 Brower, David, 131
Bakunin, Michail, 73 Brown, John, 26, 31, 37
Baltrušaitis, Jurgis, 118 Bruant, Aristide, 7, 35
Barbarossa, Luca, 40, 58 Bucciarelli, Paolo, 61
Barthes, Roland, 78 Būda, Linas, 104
Bartók, Bela, 77 Buscaglione, Fred, 151, 157
Barzizza, Pippo, 170 Butkevičienė, Eglė, viii
Bayghairat Brigade, 37 Buzzati, Dino, 161
Beach Boys, The, 3, 169 Byrne, David, 108
Beatles, The, 12, 42, 47, 48, 51, 57, 58, 60–62,
70, 81–83, 93, 121, 122, 124–133, C
135–137, 140–144, 148, 149 Campanella, Filippo, 44
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 77 Cantacronache, 71

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 173

D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1
174 Index of Names and Musical Acts

Capossela, Vinicio, 151 Dresser, Paul, 44

Caputo, Sergio, 151 Duchamp, Marcel, 125
Cardin, Pierre, 127 Duggan, Christopher, 119
Carlin, George, 4 Dvořák, Antonín, 77
Carlini, Sesto, 156 Dylan, Bob, 6, 22, 24, 28, 29, 42, 44, 47, 55,
Carlisle, Rodney, 79 57, 60, 77, 124, 128, 129
Caroli, Menico, 155
Carosone, Renato, 151 E
Carroll, Lewis, 123, 131, 137 Eastman, Linda, 134
Carter, Rubin, 24 Eco, Umberto, 78, 139
Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Mario, 165 Elgar, Edward, 76
Cederna, Camilla, 166 Elio e le Storie Tese, 63
Cerchiari, Luca, 154 Ellington, Duke, 4
Chadwick, Justin, 18 Emerson, Lake and Palmer, 23
Chapman, Tracy, 10, 60 Epstein, Brian, 126–130
Chiari, Walter, 161 Eschenazi, Gabriele, 169
Chopin, Frédéric, 77
Ciano, Costanzo, 159, 168 F
Cijūnėlis, Dalius, 103 Fabbri, Franco, 6
Čiurlionis, Mikalojus Konstantinas, 102 Fano, Alberto, 165
Clapton, Eric, 12, 22, 137 Fariña, Mimi, 36
Clark, Martin, 119 Farrow, Mia, 135
Clark, Petula, 11 Farrow, Prudence, 135
Clash, The, 2, 71, 83 Federer, Roger, 93
Clayton, Merry, 60 Fellini, Federico, 26
Cole, Nat King, 160 Ferguson, Niall, 93
Colonnari, Davide, viii Ferré, Leo, 63
Conte, Giorgio, 151 Finzi, Aldo, 165
Conte, Paolo, 151 Fioresi, Silvana, 170
Cooke, Richard A., 135, 136 Fiori, Umberto, 6
Cooper, Tommy, 12 Fisk Jubilee Singers, The, 34
Costello, Elvis, 44 Fleet, Lucy, viii
Fojė, 101, 104
D Fomina, Zoya, 115
D’Anzi, Giovanni, 160, 171 Fonda, Peter, 135
Daubarienė, Audronė, viii Foster, Stephen, 35, 44
Daunoras, Vaclovas, 102 Fowke, Edith, 1
Davies, Ray, 129 Franzinelli, Mimmo, 168
Davis, Jeff, 26 Fraser, Matthew, 95
Davis, Miles, 4 Friedman, Jonathan C., 13
De Andrè, Fabrizio, 57 Frith, Simon, 6
Debussy, Claude, 77 Furtwängler, Wilhelm, 157
De Felice, Renzo, 154
Demandt, Silvie, viii G
Denselow, Robin, 6 Gaber, Giorgio, 40, 74, 78, 79
Descartes, René, 154 Gabriel, Peter, 1, 2, 12, 18, 19, 24–26, 58
Di Capua, Giovanni, 155 Gaetano, Rino, 63, 66
Dickens, Charles, 109, 123 Galdieri, Michele, 160, 162, 166, 171
Dietrich, Marlene, 160 Gallarotti, Giulio, 93
Donizetti, Gaetano, 44, 77 Galli, Carlo, 72, 79
Donovan, 47 Gates, Bill, 98
Donskis, Leonidas, 111, 117 Gauguin, Paul, 118
Index of Names and Musical Acts 175

Gaye, Marvin, 47 J
Geda, Sigitas, 99 Jackson, Janet, 116
Genesis, 115 Jackson, Michael, 50, 108, 116
Gentili, Alberto, 165 Jagger, Mick, 60, 129
Georgius, 7, 35 Jakobson, Roman, 19
Gershwin, Ira, 122 Janov, Arthur, 126
Ghisellini, Igino, 168 John, Elton, 42
Giger, Hans Rudolf, 23 Johnson, Lyndon B., 129
Gigli, Beniamino, 167 Jones, Paul, 18
Ginsberg, Allen, 11, 12 Jottini, Maria, 170
Glazer, Joe, 1 Jurevičius, Gediminas, 103
Goatmoon, 30 Juzeliūnas, Julius, 102
Godwin, William, 73
Goldman, Albert, 131 K
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 114 Kant, Immanuel, 48
Gramsci, Antonio, 82 Karajan, Herbert von, 157
Grant, Eddy, 19, 45 Katedra, 101, 104, 117
Greimas, Algirdas, 17, 65, 81, 138 Kater, Michael, 157
Grieg, Edvard, 77 Kaurismäki, Aki, 20
Grignani, Gianluca, 58 Kaušpėdas, Algirdas, 102–105, 108–110,
Gualazzi, Raphael, 151 112–114
Gudelis, Regimantas, 116 Kaušpėdas, Vytautas, 102–105, 108, 112
Guido, Aronne, 165 Kažemėkas, Gintautas, 104
Guthrie, Woody, 3, 35, 46, 56, 57, 77, 114 Kederys, Vytautas, viii
King, Martin Luther, 10, 24, 25
H Kinks, The, 129
Haile Selassie I, 27 Klein, Naomi, 52, 57
Hammerstein, Oscar, 122 Kovaliovas, Pavelas, 104
Harrison, George, 76, 121–126, 130–132, 135, Kramer, Billy J., 128
137, 138, 140–142, 149 Kramer, Gorni, 155, 157, 162, 170, 171
Hart, Lorenz, 122 Kramer, Jonathan, 107, 108
Henry Cow, 29 Kravitz, Lenny, 12
Hermann, Bernard, 20 Kublius, Vytautas, 104
Herrera, Nancy Cooke de, 135 Kubrick, Stanley, 20
Hilda Blues Band, 101, 104 Kull, Kalevi, 21
Hill, Joe, 4, 46, 49, 66 Kutavičius, Bronius, 99
Hiperbolė, 104 Kuti, Fela, 29
Hitler, Adolf, 46, 75, 79, 153, 157
Hodge, Robert, 78 L
Holly, Buddy, 122 Landsbergis, Vytautas, 101, 102, 105
Holt, Fabian, 3 Laucevičius, Andrius, 90
Holtom, Gerald, 48 Lauzi, Bruno, 29
Horowitz, Vladimir, 157 Leary, Rosemary, 12
Hot Chocolate Band, 12 Leary, Timothy, 11
Hutchinson, Judson, 44 Lehrer, Tom, 9, 77
Hutchinson Family Singers, The, 7, 8, 37, 44, Lennon, John, 10, 12, 48, 62, 83, 101, 102,
49 121, 127, 128, 130, 141
Lennon, Julian, 46, 149
I Lennon, Sean, 12, 46
Ibrahimovic, Zlatan, 96 Leone, Massimo, 73
Ingvoldstad, Bjorn, 107 Leone, Sergio, 26, 113
Inti Illimani, 83, 116 Leuzemia, 76
Islam, Yusuf, 42 Levi, Ezio, 156
176 Index of Names and Musical Acts

Levi-Strauss, Claude, 79, 118 Montanelli, Indro, 169

Lewisohn, Mark, 11 Morbelli, Riccardo, 167
Lieven, Anatol, 100 Morricone, Ennio, 20
Little Richard, 12 Morrisey, 108
Lolli, Claudio, 29, 40, 69 Morrissette, Alanis, 2
Lomax, Jackie, 132 Morsello, Massimo, 29, 69
Lopez Nuñes, Sandro, 165 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 77
Luckus, Artūras, 104 Mujica, Jose, 93
Lynch, David, 20 Mussolini, Benito, 152
Lynskey, Dorian, 1, 3 Mussolini, Romano, 152, 153, 156, 159, 163
Mussolini, Vittorio, 156
M
MacDonald, Ian, 140 N
Mačiūnas, Jurgis, 101 Navickaitė-Martinelli, Lina, viii
Mack Smith, Denis, 119 Nena, 116
Madiran, Jean, 72, 79 Nixon, Mojo, 39, 44, 50
Madonna, 108 Nixon, Richard, 39
Magritte, Rene, 125 Nokturnal Mortum, 30
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 130–135 Norman, Philip, 128
Mamontovas, Andrius, 104 Nöth, Winfried, 78
Mandela, Nelson, 18, 58 Nye, Joseph, 89–93, 95
Maradona, Diego Armando, 93
Marčiulionis, Šarūnas, 97 O
Marichkov, Kiril, 29, 51 Oasis, 4
Marley, Bob, 27, 46, 60, 63, 93, 146 Ọbasanjọ, Oluṣẹgun, 29
Marmion, Brian, viii Ochs, Phil, 71, 83
Martin, Steve, 4 Ono, Yoko, 12, 46
Martinaitis, Algirdas, 99 Oppenheim, James, 36
Martinelli, Dario, 56, 129 Orwell, George, 23, 24, 29, 138
Masakela, Hugh, 18 Orzabal, Roland, 61
Mascagni, Pietro, 77 Otto, Natalino, 157, 170, 171
Massarani, Renzo, 165
Mastroianni, Marcello, 161 P
May, Willie, 18 Pansa, Giampaolo, 154
Mazzoletti, Adriano, 156 Panzeri, Mario, 168
McCartney, Paul, 11, 25, 48, 70, 95, 121–132, Parent, Roger, 89
134–139, 141–149 Partridge, Andy, 59
McCartney, Stella, 48, 70, 122–125 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 82
McClory, Jonathan, 93 Pavolini, Alessandro, 168, 169
Mekas, Jonas, 101 Pearl Jam, 11
Mendes, Chico, 122, 143, 146, 147 Perkins, Carl, 122
Menuhin, Jeremy, 157 Petty, Tom, 12
Messi, Leonardo, 93 Phull, Hardeep, 13, 116
Michael, George, 50, 116 Pink Floyd, 23, 29, 76
Middleton, Richard, 5 Pinochet, Augusto, 62, 116
Mikalkėnas, Arnas, viii Pitkienė, Aida, viii
Miles, Barry, 130, 135, 139 Polato, Leonardo, viii
Millar, David, 89 Povilauskas, Arūnas, 103
Mills Brothers, The, 170 Povilionienė, Rima, viii
Mina, 166 Pratt, Ray, 1
Miniotaite, Grazina, 100, 111, 117 Prieto, Luis Jorge, 79
Monelli, Paolo, 155 Prokofiev, Sergei, 77
Monk, Thelonius, 4 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 73
Index of Names and Musical Acts 177

Public Enemy, 40, 58 Simon, Paul, 1, 2

Puccini, Giacomo, 77 Simone, Nina, 6, 60, 63
Pulp, 116 Singer, Peter, 80
Pundzienė, Asta, viii Siouxie and the Banshees, 5
Sirppiniemi, Ano, viii
Q Šiugždinienė, Jurgita, viii
Quantick, David, 136 SKAT, 104
Quartetto Cetra, 170 Smechnovas, Andrėjus, 104
Queen, The, 9, 82, 94, 127 Smetana, Bedřich, 77
Smidchens, Guntis, 111–113, 118
R Smith, Curt, 61
Rabagliati, Alberto, 49, 151, 157, 158, Smith, Joe, 145
160–167, 169–171 Smith, Robert, 108
Radiohead, 58 Smothers Brothers, 11
Rage Against the Smothers, Tommy, 11, 12
Machine, 54 Soborski, Rafael, 72, 79
Rakauskas, Gintautas, 104 Soffici, Ardengo, 161
Rappaport, Julian, 20 Spector, Phil, 164
Ravasio, Carlo, 154 Springsteen, Bruce, 28, 50, 58
Raymond, Alex, 136 Stanevičiūtė, Ruta, viii
Reagan, Ronald, 28 Starace, Achille, 159, 167
Revelli, Marco, 72, 79 Starr, Edwin, 59
Riall, Lucy, 119 Starr, Ringo, 11, 61, 122, 123, 125, 126, 130,
Riethmüller, Albrecht, 157 139, 149
Rieti, Vittorio, 165 Stefani, Gino, 17–20
Rockwell, Llewellyn, 72, 79 Steponavičiūtė, Aldona, viii
Rodriguez, Robert, 145 Stewart, Gavin, viii
Roncigli, Audrey, 157 Sting, 4, 62
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 12, 90 Stockhausen, Karl Heinz, 125
Rosch, Eleanor, 81 Stormy Six, 29
Rossini, Gioacchino, 4 Stravinsky, Igor, 77
Rubinstein, Arthur, 157 Street John, 6
Ruggeri, Enrico, 51 Subrenat, Jean-Jacques, 117
Russell, Bertrand, 48, 125, 128 Suede, 4, 117, 122
Russino, Riccardo, 136
T
S Talking Heads, 108, 112
Sabonis, Arvydas, 97 Tarasti, Eero, viii
Sacco, Raffaele, 44 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, 77
Sachs, Harvey, 157 Temptations, The, 59
Santambrogio, Ambrogio, 72, 79 Tenco, Luigi, 76
Schipa, Tito, 166–168 Testoni, Giancarlo, 156
Schneiderman, Rose, 36 Thatcher, Margaret, 45, 75
Schubert, Franz, 77 Thomson, Clare, 117
Schumann, Clara, 4, 77 Tindley, Charles Albert, 42
Scott-Heron, Gil, 18, 63 Togliatti, Palmiro, 161
Seeger, Pete, 4, 6, 20, 24, 39, 43, 45, 60, 76, Tognazzi, Ugo, 161
83, 114 Tornatore, Giuseppe, 154
Sharov, Alexei, 21 Toscanini, Arturo, 157, 165
Shostakovich, Dmitri, 77 Tosh, Peter, 63, 146
Shturcite, 29, 51 Tozzi, Umberto, 51
Shuker, Roy, 6, 45, 71 Trincale, Franco, 40
Silvestri, Daniele, 60 Trio Lescano, 154, 169, 170
Simniškis, Gediminas, 104 Tucker, Sophie, 127
178
U Wailers, The, 27, 116
U2, 11, 24–26, 50, 60
Ubartas, Petras, 103, 104, 108
Uexküll, Jakob von, 21, 65
Univers Zero, 29
Už Tėvynę, 101, 104
V Wilson, Harold, 76, 128
Valentino, Rodolfo, 160
Valeriano, Leo, 69
Valk, Heinz, 99
Vannucchi, Guido, 160
Varankaitė, Ulrika, viii
Venditti, Antonello, 69
Vesilind, Priit, 117
Vianello, Raimondo, 161
Visconti, Luchino, 26
Visintin, Franco, 160
Voloshinov, Valentin, 78
Voorman, Klaus, 12
Vox, Bono, 52
W
Wagner, Richard, 77
Index of Names and Musical Acts
Weill, Kurt, 7, 35
Weir, Peter, 118
White, Nancy, 50
Wilco, 23
Williams, John, 17
Williams, Raymond, 76
Winstanley, Gerrard, 6
Wonder, Stevie, 11
X
XTC, 23, 59, 66
Y
Young, Whitney, 18
Z
Zappa, Frank, 4, 23, 63, 66, 84, 108, 109
Žickytė, Giedrė, viii, 102, 103, 111
Zinnemann, Fred, 26
Index of Songs and Albums
Note: In parenthesis are indicated authors and year or release for the songs, and
performers and year of release for the albums.
.#9 Dream (J. Lennon, 1974), 126
1944 (S.Džamaladínova-A.Antonyan, 2016),
29, 51
3-10-52 (A. Kaušpėdas-J. Mačiukevičius,
1994), 109
33 & 1/3(George Harrison, 1976), 141
99 Luftballoons (U. Fahrenkrog-Petersen-C.
Karges-K. McAlea, 1982), 116
A Back in the U.S.S.R. (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
Aalu Andey (A. Saeed-D. Malik-H. Malik,
2011), 37
Abbey Road(The Beatles, 1969), 125, 132, 136,
137, 140
Across the Universe (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1969), 126, 131, 132
Al di là del muro (L. Barbarossa, 1989), 58
Al di là del muro(Luca Barbarossa, 1989), 59
All things must pass (G. Harrison, 1970), 141
All Things Must Pass(George Harrison, 1970),
142
All You Need Is Love (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1967), 46, 47, 58, 61, 66, 122,
126, 130, 149
American Skin (41 Shots) (B. Springsteen,
2001), 50
Amore rubato, L’ (L. Barbarossa, 1988), 58
Anarchistes, Les (L. Ferré, 1969), 63
Ančių dainos(Antis, 2007), 106
And Your Bird Can Sing (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1966), 137
Another Side of Bob Dylan(Bob Dylan, 1964),
29
Anties dovanėlė(Antis, 1989), 105
Antis(Antis, 1987), 102, 104
Aš išeinu (A. Kaušpėdas, 1994), 110
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
D. Martinelli, Give Peace a Chant,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1
Asgardsrei(Absurd, 1999), 30
Average Person, The (P. McCartney, 1983),
122
Az sym prosto Chovek (K.Marichkov, 1990),
29, 51
B
Ba Ba Baciami Piccina (R. Morbelli-L. Astore,
1940), 167
1968), 132
Ballad of John and Yoko, The (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1969), 126
Banane e Coca Cola (F. Trincale, 1970), 40
Beautiful Night (P. McCartney, 1997), 122
Because (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1969), 132,
137
Bella Ciao (trad., ca. 1943), 17
Bends, The(Radiohead, 1995), 58
Big Boys Bickering (P. McCartney, 1993),
146, 147
Biko (P. Gabriel, 1980), 18, 19, 24, 26
Blackbird (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968),
126, 132, 137–139, 143
Blowing in the Wind (B. Dylan, 1963), 9, 44,
51, 57
Bluebird (P. McCartney, 1973), 143, 148
Blue Moon (R.Rodgers-L.Hart, 1934), 42
Blue Suede Shoes (C. Perkins, 1955), 117, 122
Bohemian Rhapsody (F. Mercury, 1975), 95
Bomžas (A. Kaušpėdas-V. Diawara, 2013),
107
Borghesi, I (G. Gaber-S.Luporini, 1971), 40
Borghesi, I (Giorgio Gaber, 1971), 40
Borghesia (C. Lolli, 1972), 40
Born in the USA (B. Springsteen, 1984), 28, 58
179
180
Bourgeois, Les (J. Brel, 1962), 40
Brain Salad Surgery(Emerson, Lake & Palmer,
1974), 23
Brainwashed(George Harrison, 2002), 141
Bread and Roses (J.Oppenheim-M. Fariña,
1970), 36, 45
Brown Eyed Handsome Man (C. Berry, 1956),
122
Bye Bye Love (F. Bryant-B. Bryant, 1957),
126
C Earth Song (M. Jackson, 1995), 50, 51
Calomel Song, The (J.J. Hutchinson, 1843), 49
Caro papà (G. Filippini-T. Manlio, 1941), 160
C’era un ragazzo che come me amava i Beatles
e i Rolling Stones (M. Lusini-F. Migliacci,
1966), 81
C’è una casetta piccina (M. Valabrega-C.
Prato, 1941), 163
Child of Nature (see Jealous Guy), 132, 134
Cleanup Time (J. Lennon, 1980), 126
Cloud Nine(George Harrison, 1987), 142
C’mon People (P. McCartney, 1993), 146, 147
C Moon (P. McCartney, 1972), 123
Cohiba (D. Silvestri, 1997), 60
Common People (N.Banks-J. Cocker-C.
Doyle-S. Mackey-R. Senior, 1995), 108,
109, 116
Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, The
(J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968), 126, 132,
135, 136
Cosmically Conscious (P. McCartney, 1968),
131, 132
Country Dreamer (P. McCartney, 1973), 143
Cry Baby Cry (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 132
Cutty Wren, The (trad., 1776), 6
D 1963), 124, 127
Dark Horse(George Harrison, 1974), 126
Dear God (A. Partridge, 1986), 23, 59
Dear Prudence (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 132, 135
Death Before Dishonour(Goatmoon, 2004), 30
Debesys (A. Kaušpėdas-V. Augustinas-G.
Rakauskas, 2013), 107
Dehradun (G. Harrison, 1968), 132
Destinazione paradiso(Gianluca Grignani,
1995), 58
Devil’s Radio (G. Harrison, 1987), 142
Diamond Dogs(David Bowie, 1973), 24
Diggers’ Song, The (G. Winstanley, 1649), 6
Don’t Give Up (P. Gabriel, 1986), 19
Index of Songs and Albums
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me (E. John-B.
Taupin, 1974), 42
Don’t Pass Me By (R. Starkey, 1968), 132
Do They Know It’s Christmas? (B. Geldof-M.
Ure, 1984), 3, 51, 57
Double Fantasy(John Lennon & Yoko Ono,
1980), 48
Down Under (C. Hay-R. Strykert, 1981), 108
Dr. Robert (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1966), 61
E
Eleanor Rigby (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1966), 61, 128, 144
Electronic Sounds(George Harrison, 1968),
125
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido (S.
Ortega-Quilapayún, 1973), 116
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for
Me and My Monkey (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1968), 132
F
Fabbrica di plastica, La (G. Grignani, 1996), 58
Fabbrica di plastica, La(Gianluca Grignani,
1996), 58
Faccetta Nera (R. Micheli-M. Ruccione, 1935),
159
Facta Loquuntur(Absurd, 1996), 30
Faster (G. Harrison, 1979), 126
Fight the Power (C. Ridenhour-E. Sadler-H.
Boxley-K. Boxley, 1989), 58
Finnish Steel Storm(Goatmoon, 2007), 30
Flowers in the Dirt(Paul McCartney, 1989),
143, 146, 148
Folk Song Army, The (T. Lehrer, 1965), 9, 77
Footprints (P. McCartney, 1986), 143, 144
From Me to You (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
Funkcionieriai (A. Kaušpėdas-P. Ubartas,
1989), 108, 109
G
Gangnam Style (Park J.-Yoo G., 2012), 95
Get Off the Track (J. Hutchinson, 1844), 37
Get Up, Stand Up (B. Marley, P. Tosh, 1973),
116
Gimme Hope Jo’Anna (E. Grant, 1988), 19
Gimme Shelter (M. Jagger-K. Richards, 1969),
60
Gimme Some Truth (J. Lennon, 1971), 47, 147
Give Ireland Back to the Irish (P. McCartney,
1972), 126, 146
Index of Songs and Albums
Give Peace a Chance (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1969), 10, 11, 47, 57, 62, 149
Goat Horns(Nokturnal Mortum, 1997), 30
God (J. Lennon, 1970), 43, 126
Go Down Moses (trad., first published in
1861), 36
Golden Earth Girl (P. McCartney, 1993), 143
Good Day Sunshine (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1966), 137
G-Spot Tornado (F. Zappa, 1986), 84
Guerra di Piero, La (F. De Andrè, 1964), 57
H Andersen, 1970), 19
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (J. Lennon, 1971),
48
Heart of the Country (P. McCartney, 1971),
125, 143
Heaven on a Sunday (P. McCartney, 1997),
143
Here Comes the Moon (G. Harrison, 1979),
123, 141
Here Comes the Sun (G. Harrison, 1969), 123,
132, 137
Heroes (D. Bowie-B. Eno, 1977), 95, 122
Hey Bulldog (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968),
132, 137
Hey Jude (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968), 20,
62, 95
Hold On (J. Lennon, 1970), 126
Hope of Deliverance (P. McCartney, 1993),
147
How Many People? (P. McCartney, 1989),
122, 147
Hurdy Gurdy Man (Donovan, 1968), 47
Hurricane (B.Dylan-J.Levy, 1975), 24
I 1902), 76
I Am the Walrus (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1967), 61, 123, 137
I Can’t Dance (T. Banks-P. Collins-M.
Rutherford, 1991), 115
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (M. Jagger-K.
Richards, 1965), 95
I Want to Hold Your Hand (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1963), 124
I Will (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968), 132
I’ll Overcome Some Day (C.A. Tindley, 1901),
42
I’m So Tired (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968),
132
If I Were a Voice (C. Mackay-J. Hutchinson,
1850), 44, 45
Ils Ont Voté (L. Ferré, 1967), 63
181
Imagine (J. Lennon, 1971), 48, 95, 149
Imagine(John Lennon, 1971), 47
Instant Karma (John Lennon, 1970), 48
In the Sweet By and By (S. Bennett, 1868), 50
Io Canterò Politico (B.Lauzi, 1977), 29
Is This the World We Created? (F. Mercury-B.
May, 1984), 82
J
Jazz from Hell(Frank Zappa, 1985), 84
Jealous Guy (J. Lennon, 1971), 132, 134
Jeg Har Set en Rigtig Negermand (N.
Jenny Wren (P. McCartney, 2005), 123
Jesus, etc. (J. Tweedy-J. Bennett, 2001), 23
Joe’s Garage(Frank Zappa, 1979), 23
John Brown’s Body (J.E. Greenleaf-C.S.
Hall-C.B. Marsh, 1861), 26, 31, 37
Johnny B. Goode (C. Berry, 1958), 122
John Sinclair (J. Lennon, 1972), 125
Julia (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968), 132
Junk (P. McCartney, 1970), 132, 135–137, 143
K
Karn Evil 9 (K. Emerson, 1973), 23
Klasėj mane kalbina (A. Kaušpėdas, 1987),
109
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (B. Dylan, 1973),
20
Kontrolierė (P. Ubartas-E. Morkūnas, 1988),
108, 109
Krantas (A. Kaušpėdas, 1988), 112, 114
Kreen-Akrore (P. McCartney, 1970), 143
L
Land of Hope and Glory (E. Elgar-A. Benson,
Leggenda del Piave, La (E. Gaeta, 1918), 159
Let It Be (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1970), 42,
57, 132, 140
Let the Sunshine In (J. Rado-G. Ragni-G.
MacDermot, 1967), 58
Lietuvos valstybė (A. Kaušpėdas-P. Ubartas-G.
Rakauskas-V. Augustinas, 1989), 107, 114,
115, 118
Life Itself (G. Harrison, 1981), 122
Like a Rolling Stone (B. Dylan, 1965), 42
Like a Virgin (B. Steinberg-T. Kelly, 1984),
108
Lili Marleen (H. Leip-N. Schultze, 1939), 160,
167
Little Lamb Dragonfly (P. McCartney, 1973),
144, 145
182
Little Willow (P. McCartney, 1997), 143, 144
Long Leather Coat (P. McCartney, 1993), 146,
148
Long, Long, Long (G. Harrison, 1968), 132
Look at Me (J. Lennon, 1970), 132
Looking for Changes (P. McCartney, 1993),
126, 146, 148
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1967), 102
M Octopus’s Garden (R. Starkey, 1969), 132,
Mafija (P. Ubartas-A. Kaušpėdas, 1988), 107
Ma l’amore no (M. Galdieri-G. D’Anzi, 1943),
160
Ma le gambe (A. Bracchi-G. D’Anzi, 1938),
160
Mamunia (Paul McCartney, 1973), 143
Maramao perché sei morto? (M. Consiglio-M.
Panzeri, 1939), 159, 167, 168, 170
Martha My Dear (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 132, 134
Mary Had a Little Lamb (P. McCartney, 1972),
143
Massaggio Galore (F. Zappa, 1986), 84
Masters of War (B. Dylan, 1963), 44, 47
McCartney(Paul McCartney, 1970), 25, 70,
125, 126, 128, 130, 144
Mean Mr. Mustard (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1969), 132
Meat Free Monday (P. McCartney, 2014), 149
Meat Is Murder (S. Morrisey-J. Marr, 1985),
121
Miracle, The (J. Deacon, B. May, F. Mercury,
R. Taylor, 1989), 82
Mistress and Maid (P. McCartney-D.
MacManus, 1993), 126, 146
Monkberry Moon Delight (P. McCartney,
1971), 123
Most of the Time (B. Dylan, 1989), 22
Mother Nature’s Son (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 126, 132, 134
Mrs. Vanderbilt (P. McCartney, 1973), 143,
144
Mull of Kintyre (P. McCartney, 1977), 143
My Free Will Just Ain’t Willin’ (M. Nixon,
1995), 39, 45
My Generation (P. Townshend, 1965), 95
My Mummy Is Dead (J. Lennon, 1970), 126
My Sweet Lord (G. Harrison, 1970), 122, 141
N Premature Burial (S. Sioux-S. Severin-J.
Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu (F. Migliacci-D.
Modugno, 1958), 163
New York City (J. Lennon, 1972), 83, 125
Index of Songs and Albums
No–No Song (H. Axton, 1974), 125
No one’s gonna change our world(Various
Artists, 1969), 133
Norwegian Wood (J.Lennon-P.McCartney,
1965), 135
Nuntereggaepiù (R. Gaetano, 1978), 63
O
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1968), 132
137–140
Off the Ground (P. McCartney, 1993), 143
Off the Ground(Paul McCartney, 1993), 146,
148
Ohio (N. Young, 1970), 39, 44
O mia bela Madunina (G. D’Anzi, 1934), 160
One Love/Get Ready (B. Marley-C. Mayfield,
1977), 46
One Meat Ball (H. Zaret-L. Singer, 1944), 28
One Vision (F. Mercury-B. May-R. Taylor-J.
Deacon, 1985), 82
Ora sola ti vorrei, Una (U. Bertini-P. Marchetti,
1939), 159, 168
O Sole Mio (G. Capurro-E. Di Capua-A.
Mazzucchi. 1898), 20
P
Peace in the Neighborhood (P. McCartney,
1993), 146, 147
Peace Train (Y. Islam, 1971), 42, 43
Peggy Sue (B. Holly-J. Allison-N. Petty,
1957), 122
Penny Lane (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1967),
12, 60, 61, 122
Piggies (G. Harrison, 1968), 76, 137, 138, 147
Pinguino Innamorato, Il (N. Casiroli-M.
Consiglio-N. Rastelli, 1940), 170
Pipes of Peace (P. McCartney, 1983), 146, 149
Pippo non lo sa (M. Panzeri-N. Rastelli-G.
Kramer, 1939), 159, 171
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (W.Guthrie-M.
Hoffman, 1961), 35
Polythene Pam (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1969), 132
Porn Wars (F. Zappa, 1985), 84
Power to the People (J. Lennon, 1971), 48, 83,
122
Preacher and the Slave, The (J. Hill, 1911), 17,
49
McKay-K. Morris, 1979), 5
Presidente, Il (G. Morandi, 1992), 81
Price of Oil, The (B. Bragg, 2002), 24
Index of Songs and Albums
Pride (In the Name of Love) (U2-Bono, 1984),
24–26
R Songs from the Labyrinth(Sting, 2006), 4
Ram(Paul & Linda McCartney, 1971), 144
Red Rose Speedway(Paul McCartney & Wings,
1973), 144
Retas paukštis(Antis, 1994), 105
Revolution #1 (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 47
Revolution #9 (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 125
Revolution (J. Lennon-P.McCartney, 1968),
47, 48, 80, 83, 111, 126, 132
Revolution Will Not Be Televised, The (G.
Scott-Heron, 1971), 18, 63
Revolver(The Beatles, 1966), 62, 122, 128
Rishikesh Song, The (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 132
Rockin’ in a Free World (N. Young-F.
Sampedro, 1989), 59
Rocky Raccoon (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 123, 132
Rubber Soul(The Beatles, 1965), 128
S Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (W. Willis, ca.
Ša(Antis, 1988), 105, 112
Ša, inteligente (P. Ubartas-A. Kaušpėdas,
1988), 103, 108
Salomeja, Buk Slaveja (P.Ubartas-A.
Kaušpėdas, 1988), 108
Saltwater (J. Lennon, 1991), 149
Salut, Beatnik (L. Ferré, 1967), 63
Save the World (G. Harrison, 1981), 126, 141
Scream (J. Harris-T. Lewis-M. Jackson-J.
Jackson, 1995), 116
Se bastasse una canzone (E. Ramazzotti-P.
Cassano-A. Cogliati, 1990), 42
Senzeni Na? (author and year unknown), 116
Sexy Sadie (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968),
130, 132, 135
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band(The
Beatles, 1967), 122, 130
She Loves You (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1963), 127
She Said She Said (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1966), 128, 135
Shipbuilding (E. Costello, 1983), 44
Shoot the Dog (G. Michael-P. Oakey-I.
Burden, 2002), 50
Silenzioso Slow (A. Bracchi-G. D’Anzi, 1940),
162, 163, 171
Si può dare di più (U. Tozzi-G. Bigazzi-R.
Riefoli, 1987), 51
183
Something (G. Harrison, 1969), 62
Sometime in New York City(John Lennon &
Yoko Ono, 1972), 48, 147
Sour Milk Sea (G. Harrison, 1968), 132
Soweto Blues (H. Masakela, 1977), 18, 19
Sowing the Seeds of Love (C. Smith-R.
Orzabal, 1989), 61, 62
Spiritual Regeneration (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1968), 132
Steal Away to Jesus (W. WIllis, ca. 1862), 41
St. Louis Blues (W.C. Handy, 1914), 170
Strange Fruit (A. Meeropol, 1939), 95
Strawberry Fields Forever (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1967), 61, 137
Street Fighting Man (M. Jagger-K. Richards,
1968), 45
Student Demonstration Time (J. Leiber-M.
Stoller-M. Love, 1971), 3
Summer Day’s Song (P. McCartney, 1980),
143
Sun City (S. Van Zandt, 1985), 20, 149
Sunday Bloody Sunday (J. Lennon, 1972), 126
Sun King (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1969),
132, 137
1862), 41, 43
T
Take the Power Back (T. Commerford-Z. de la
Rocha-T. Morello-B. Wilk, 1992), 54
Talkin’ about Revolution (T. Chapman, 1988),
10, 60
Talkin’ Union (M. Lampell-L. Hays-P. Seeger,
1941), 39, 40
Tamburo della Banda d’Affori, Il (M.
Panzeri-N. Rastelli-N. Ravasini, 1943), 170
Taxman (G. Harrison, 1966), 62, 76, 128
Tears in Heaven (E. Clapton-W. Jennings,
1992), 22
Tears of the World, The (G. Harrison, 1976),
141, 142
Teddy Boy (P. McCartney, 1970), 132
The Beatles(The Beatles, 1968), 12, 42, 47, 58,
61, 70, 76, 82, 83, 93, 121, 122, 124–128,
130–133, 135–137, 140, 143, 144, 146, 149
The Beatles Anthology, vol. 3(The Beatles,
1996), 132
They Dance Alone (G. Summers, 1987), 62
This Land Is Your Land (W. Guthrie, 1944), 57
This Song (G.Harrison, 1976), 141
This World Over (A. Partridge, 1984), 23, 31
T’ho voluto bene (M. Galdieri-G. Redi, 1952),
160
184
Till There Was You (M. Wilson, 1959), 127
Tomorrow Never Knows (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1966), 128
To the Gates of Blasphemeous Fire(Nokturnal
Mortum, 1998), 30
Train in Vain (G. Stevens, M. Jones, 1980), 2
Tug of War (P. McCartney, 1982), 25, 146
Tuli-pan (M. Grever-J. Lawrence-R. Morbelli,
1938), 169
Turn, Turn, Turn (P. Seeger, 1959), 48
Tutti Frutti (L. Richard-D. LaBostrie, 1955),
117
Twist and Shout (P. Medley-B. Berns. 1961),
127
V Wild Life (P. McCartney, 1971), 145
Varjot(Goatmoon, 2011), 30
Visa Antis(Antis, 2003), 105
W Winter Rose (P. McCartney, 1979), 143
Wake Up My Love (G. Harrison, 1982), 122
War (C.Barrett-A.Cole, 1976), 160
War, 59
War on War (J. Tweedy-J. Bennett, 2001), 23
War Song, The (R. Hay-B. George-M. Craig-J.
Moss, 1984), 44
We Are the World (M. Jackson-L-Richie,
1985), 3, 57
Welcome to the Machine (R. Waters, 1975), 23
Weltanschauung(Nokturnal Mortum, 2005), 30
Werwolfthron(Absurd, 2001), 30
We Shall Not Be Moved (trad.), 20, 24, 31
We Shall Overcome We Shall Overcome (of
uncertain authorship, the song was
copyrighted by Z. Horton, G. Carawan, F.
Hamilton and P. Seeger in 1960), 58
We Will Rock You (B. May, 1977), 9
What Did You Learn at School Today?
(P. Seeger, 1963), 76
What for? (J. Lūsēns-G. Račs, 2010), 51
What’s Going On? (A. Cleveland-R.
Benson-M. Gaye, 1971), 47
Index of Songs and Albums
What’s the New Mary Jane? (J. Lennon-P.
McCartney, 1968), 132
When I’m 64 (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1967),
131
When Johnny Comes Marching Home (trad.),
24
When The President talks to God (C. Oberst,
2005), 60
While My Guitar Gently Weeps (G. Harrison,
1968), 123
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?
(J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968), 130, 132,
135
Wild Honey Pie (J. Lennon-P. McCartney,
1968), 132
Winedark Open Sea (P. McCartney, 1993), 143
Wings Wild Life(Paul McCartney & Wings,
1971), 145
Woman Is the Nigger of the World (J. Lennon,
1972), 126
Word, The (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1965),
128
Working Class Hero (J. Lennon, 1970), 48,
121, 122, 136
Y
Yer Blues (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1968),
132
Yesterday (J. Lennon-P. McCartney, 1965), 22,
82
Yesterday and Today(The Beatles, 1966), 128
Y.M.C.A. (J. Morali-V. Willis, 1978), 20
You Oughta Know (A. Morissette-G. Ballard,
1995), 2
Yuppies (L. Barbarossa, 1988), 40, 58
Z
Zombiai (C. Hay-R. Strykert-A. Kaušpėdas,
1986), 108, 110
Zombie(Fela Kuti, 1977), 29