Reflecting on the (political) season: 4 songs
Reflecting on the (political) season: 4 songs
There are just a few weeks until election day in the United Staes in the first week of November. Early voting, voting by mail, and voting for US citizens based outside the country begin even sooner.
The US presidency is on the ballot. So are elections which will determine composition of the US Congress.
In every US state, the are elections which will have effect both regionally and nationally.
Whether you live in the United States or not, whether you are a citizen of the US or not. the results of these elections will have global resonance.
What, you may ask, does all this have to do with music?
Musicians think about these things to -- and the tradition of that goes back as long as people have been making music.
It is not about songs of protest. They have their place; this story, at this moment, is not that place.
The music I offer you here is meant help you reflect and consider.
Carrie Newcomer is based in Indiana. A few years back, she and four other central Indiana songwriters, Tom Roznowski, Krista Detor, Michael White, and Tim Grimm, used to get together to work on their writing. They’d often come up with challenges: write from this point of view or that one, use a specific set of words, or something else they found creative and interesting.
One day Tim Grimm came across a book by Nature writer and scholar Scott Russell Sanders. It was a book of short stories, imagined from a time in the early nineteenth century when Indiana and northern Ohio were frontier country.
Grimm saw stories of all kinds of people in all sorts of situations. He heard songs in them, and brought them to the group.
The four other musicians did did too. One result was the album they made, called Wilderness Plots, after the book. Eventually the idea also became a concert, individual songs the musicians recorded on their own albums, and a dvd.
This song One Woman and a Shovel, comes from that project. In this video of the song, you will also hear Carrie talk briefly about the story that inspired her to write it: a story of a woman, and idea, taking risks, and community.
In addition to the Wilderness Plots album, Carrie has recorded a version of the song on her album The Geography of Light.
Eliza Gilkyson lived for many years in Austin, Texas, where she was a vibrant part of the songwriting community. A few years ago, she decided it was time to return to the place she grew up, northern New Mexico.
Gilkyson has a fine hand with writing loves songs; she also has insightful and incisive skill at writing songs of social justice. At times, she brings both intot play in one song.
With the range of ideas, promises, uncertainties, and conversations going on just now, her song Promises to Keep is well worth the listen.
You will find it recorded on her album called 2020.
The word revolution holds ideas of change. It is a word that can have, if you stop to think about it, many meanings.
Those many meanings -- the peaceful and hopeful ones, that is -- come into the song Revolutions, which Ewan Robertson wrote and for which he chose that title. He’d been to visit a windfarm near where he lives in Scotland, and that got him thinking...
Ewan is a member of the band Breabach. Band member James Lindsay edited this video, which really carries out those uplifting ideas and offers much to think on.
Ewan sings lead, and you will hear other members of Breabach Calum MacCrimmon, Conal McDonagh, and Megan Henderson join in (and see some of them in the video, too, along with friends and family members). The song is recorded on Breabach’s album Fàs. That’s a world in Gaelic which means growing or developing.
Turning a bit more directly to US political events, there a song that seems right to point you to just now. Keb’ Mo joined up with his songwriting friends John Lewis Parker and Beth Nielsen Chapman to write a song to honor his mother not long after she had passed away.
This was a few years back. It’s recorded on Keb’ Mo’s album called Oklahoma, and Beth has recorded her take on it on her album called Crazytown.
Rosanne Cash joins on on the video.
The song is called Put a Woman in Charge. Do stay around to see the last few frames of the video…
You may also wish to see:
Breabach Celebrates nature with album Fàs
Music and Mystery: a conversation with Carrie Newcomer
Carrie Newcomer has a Substack. It is called A Gathering of Spirits.
Another album from Eliza Gilkyson
Signposts: Music of Hope from the Music for Shifting Times series at Wandering Educators
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