Sing Political
During the lockdown we are setting up online sessions using Zoom - please
email if you would like to get the links. The next one will be on Wednesday 14 October. We have also put all editions of the Political Songster online, containing songs to cheer and sustain us. There are now 8 issues and the latest one is a
bumper issue published in April, May, June and July 2020 with many songs relating to lockdown. Here are the links to the previous issues:
We are preparing the next issue and would like to add your songs if you can send them along.
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Following on from past ventures such as
A People's Cabaret we now present a monthly Political Song Session at the Prince of Wales in Moseley from 8:30pm to 10:30pm on the second Wednesday of each month except August. Come along, raise your voices, let the songs be heard, whether they were written yesterday or hundreds of years ago, let us learn from them and take heart from them. There are similar events in London (
Unity Folk Club) and Glasgow (
Union Song Club)
Our
Political Songster is published and sold at the sessions whenever we have enough songs to bring out a new issue.
We also present occasional concerts featuring the best political singers and songwriters around. Here's a list of some past events:
It is easy to give up, to get disillusioned, disenchanted, despairing. It is easy to blame the dream and say it is unachievable when it is really the dreamer at fault. We have heard it said by many that protest singers are just singing to the converted. Even if this were so, what's wrong with that? Do not the converted need encouragement and sustenance as we batter our minds and bodies against the walls of the system? Who brings this accusation against those who gather weekly in churches to sing of their hopes and beliefs? We strengthen each other by singing together and express our single purpose in song. The converted do have the solace of group activity: demonstrations, meetings, jail. We also find ourselves alone and still need reminders of that group. When you are on your way home, going shopping, taking a bath, putting the kids to bed, cooking, washing, sitting at your computer, whatever: it is good to remember that song, that chorus. The converted need to remember that the powers of creation are on OUR side, because it is those powers that are going to bring about the change that is coming. If we can create songs we can bring about a good and fair society. If we can beat the sense of isolation we can beat Cameron and his banker cronies. Those that sing together can fight together.
“Day and night I sing my latest songs to my comrades. They write down the words. Then they come a group at a time to learn the tunes. They are avid and impatient: this music makes them free, as free as me. Art – this art which is ours – is our trump card. Our oppressors have chains. We have songs.”
Mikis Theodorakis, from Greek colonels’ prison, 1968
