Bruce Springsteen appeared on a New Jersey stage in a surprise appearance at a charity benefit last week and roared out into the audience, across the nation and into the halls of the White House. He was angry, righteously angry.
“We are living through incredibly critical times. The United States, the ideals and the values for which it stood for the past 250 years is being tested as it has never been in modern times,” he said.
“If you believe in the power of the law and that no one stands above it, if you stand against heavily armed mass federal troops invading an American city using Gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens, if you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, then send a message to this president.”
He was condemning the mass deployment by the Trump administration of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers across the United States and, in white-hot excoriation, the killing of unarmed woman Renee Good in Minneapolis, who was doing nothing more than photographing in her car said deployment of agents onto the streets of the city.
Springsteen dedicated his song The Promised Land to her. The song deals with someone hoping to build a better life. “This one is for you, and the memory of mother-of-three and American citizen Renee Good,” he said.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson responded: “Unfortunately for Bruce, no one cares about his bad political opinions. And if he actually believed in the power of the law, he would understand that criminal illegal aliens should be deported, that impeding federal law enforcement operations is a crime, and that officers have a right to act in self-defence if an individual is using their car as a deadly weapon.”
So what has Springsteen’s outrage achieved? Indeed, what do the words and songs of artists achieve beyond the initial blast? Is it an impotent rage or unstoppable fury?
First, it delivers the artist’s message to the fans, and then, if it catches the ears of newsrooms or social media, it can be transported many kilometres and to many countries. It can go global. And then it peters out, much like a song fade out, unless it is attached to a mass movement that uses it as fuel for its cause, such as the civil rights movement did in the US last century by attaching certain songs to its aims, and marching to their beat.
The songs, such as We Shall Overcome and Blowin’ in the Wind were adopted to strengthen solidarity. But in, and of, themselves, they are not the prime movers of change. They are the seeds or sparks.
The outpourings of rage against Donald Trump and his actions, such as those by Springsteen, Neil Young and Tom Morello are seeds. Two years ago, Springsteen, who had endorsed Kamala Harris for president, labelled Trump the “most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime”. America was “in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration”. Trump, never one to let criticism slide by, retorted that Springsteen should keep his mouth shut. Springsteen kept going.
At a show in Manchester in May last year, Springsteen said on stage: “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.
“The last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed are the people, you and me. It’s in the union of people around a common set of values now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. At the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other. There’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous shit going on out there right now.
“In America they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.”
To which Trump replied: “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK . . . Springsteen is dumb as a rock.”
So then on those parameters is Neil Young, who Trump has said he likes musically (though one wonders if he knows he is originally from Canada).
Young recently posted in an editorial on his Neil Young Archives website that Trump was “destroying America. We need to take Trump at his word. Make America Great Again. It won’t be easy while he is trying to turn our [cities] into battlegrounds so he can cancel our elections with [martial] law and escape all accountability. Something has to change this. We know what to do. Rise up. Peacefully in millions.”
Young is no stranger to entering politics. Twenty years ago, he blasted president George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq.
Songwriter and guitarist and co-founder of Rage Against the Machine Tom Morello has taken the fight to Trump, generally, however he has attacked the president over the killing of Renee Good, and the deployment of agents and troops into American cities.
If his words weren’t enough, we can just look at his guitar. It has “F— Trump” written on it, which is an echo of protest singer Woody Guthrie who wrote on his guitar: “This machine kills fascists”.
Morello came out swinging on social media recently after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared at a lectern to speak on the Good shooting with the motto, “One of ours, all of yours.” The motto is often referred to in relation to Nazi reprisals on villages that fought back against fascism in the Second World War. Last year Morello released the song Pretend You Remember Me in protest at Trump’s mass deportations.
For every action there is a reaction, and for every action by the Trump administration, there has been a reaction across America. For artists, it has most commonly taken the form of loud condemnation and cease and desist notices (the list of musicians to object to Trump’s use of the music is a long ranging from the likes of Sabrina Carpenter and Rihanna through to 1980s stars such as Kenny Loggins and Aerosmith legend Steven Tyler) to stop the Trump office from using songs that erroneously align themselves with Trump.
For the people in the street, it is as mass demonstrations. Have the words and/or songs had a direct causal effect on resistance? Only inasmuch as they carry a message of unity, that one is not alone, that in effect, if a seed is planted, a forest will grow.
The Playing for Change movement is an example of unity through music. It is political at a grassroots level. There are Australian plantations, too. The impact of Midnight Oil’s advocacy cannot be denied. The level of love for the band, which surfaced this week when drummer Rob Hirst, died, is palpable. Their songs, which created awareness of Indigenous affairs and foreign interference in the Australian way of life, did flow off the record and into minds. They, Redgum and Shane Howard, for example, for Australia were the seeds.
The English folk and protest singer Billy Bragg, who has released an album, with Wilco, of Woody Guthrie’s unpublished lyrics, is of similar mind. Bragg told this masthead: “In my experience, music cannot change the world – songs have no agency. However, music can make people feel that they are not alone.
“Say you go to see Springsteen live, he condemns Trump and many in the audience cheer. If you, too, oppose Trump, you’ll feel a sense of solidarity that stiffens your resolve to keep on fighting. You can’t get that feeling online. So the power of music lies not in its ability to change the world, but in its ability make you believe that the world can be changed and that you can play a part in that change.”
Redgum singer-songwriter John Schumann told this masthead that he believes songs can create a national conversation. Certainly, I Was Only 19 (about Vietnam vets who died) did; as Fishing Net in the Rain (about veteran suicide) is now doing.
“To a greater or lesser extent, the songs that I write and the stories that I tell are designed to make this world a bit better – directly or indirectly,” he said.
“That’s my overarching philosophy on the role of art in society, in particular Western democratic capitalist society. It’s a bit more complicated than that, though. While laws and policy are made in parliament, real cultural change often begins with stories, songs and images that get under the public’s skin.
“The artistic toolkit, if you are lucky enough to have one, comes with a capacity for telling the truth and engendering empathy. The artist/songwriter, in a few moments, can put an audience into the shoes of someone they’ve never met – and it’s that emotionally driven, paradigm shift where political and social change often starts. I Was Only 19, Solid Rock (by Shane Howard) to name a couple that spring to mind … There are more, obviously.”
But social change is more than having a microphone. “It requires meeting with community groups, engaging with politicians and bureaucrats. It demands running soup kitchens, delivering food, organising marches etc.
“Music can start a bushfire but, on its own, it’s just a spark from a piece of farm machinery against rock on a dry and windy day. Maybe it’ll be a bushfire. Maybe it won’t. There is an argument to suggest that the stage is not a substitute for activism but a platform to drive it forward and to amplify it.”
Shane Howard confirms this. “If the artists don’t speak out, particularly as we watch moral decay unfolding in the USA, who should? Can artists change anything? Probably not, directly. But at a time of such moral cowardice and anxiety in the community, artistic courage can provide the moral leadership that is lacking. I’ve seen some terrible and dangerous times in my lifetime but I can’t remember a time as bleak and terrifying as this. I could never understand how Hitler came to power. Now I can.
“The artists mightn’t change people’s minds but they can encourage bravery to the indecisive free thinkers. They can muster our courage with a rousing song and some poignant words. What’s more, the artists can still change the minds of the people who do make the big decisions.”
That is the power of the song. Its message can go to the convictions of those who hear it. When an artist speaks their convictions, the amp is turned to 11. As folk protest legend Pete Seeger once sang, How Can I Keep From Singing? But then, the real work starts for change.
