Music

Mutual Aid And Mosh Pits

October 18, 2024 Briana L. Urena-Ravelo, In These Times. Organize! Chicago, Illinois, Immigrant Rights, Music, Mutual Aid

Chicago — On the Fourth of July, a group of punks and appreciators gather around the canal on the South Side for a mutual aid benefit show. They’re raising funds for Comedor Comunitario (“Community Dining Room”), a weekly Tuesday dinner run by Venezuelan migrants at a community church. With keffiyehs and Palestinian flags throughout the space, curious holiday revelers watched from their passing boats as folks slammed to the bands Hide and Stress Positions, their lyrics decrying American settler-colonialism and nationalism in a defiant take on the holiday. All told, we raised over $3,000to support the comedor.

Gig Organizing 101

October 6, 2024 David Rovics, This Week with David Rovics. Organize! Aaron Swartz, Art, Community, culture, Music, Organizing

The great Seattle-based songwriter, Jim Page, was coming to the east coast back in the mid-1990's. I was living in Boston then, and offered to organize a gig. I was already well into my twenties, but I had never done such a thing before. Jim was and is fairly well-known in Ireland, with one of Ireland's most revered musicians, Christy Moore, having recorded a number of his songs, one brilliant example of which became a real anthem for anti-nuclear sentiment in Ireland, "Hiroshima-Nagasaki-Russian Roulette." Boston had (and has) a large population of people who were born and raised in Ireland, and a much larger population of people of Irish descent.

Band Walks 870 Miles On Tour To Promote More Sustainability

November 9, 2023 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Create! Music, Music industry, Sustainability, United Kingdom (UK), Wales

Filkin’s Drift, a band of two based in Birmingham, UK, have been highlighting sustainability in their latest tour by walking about 870 miles along the coast of Wales. Musicians Seth Bye and Chris Roberts walked between stops for their 60-day tour, carrying the instruments they needed and just enough clothing to walk and perform each day. Bye and Roberts each carried a 33-pound bag on their journey, the BBC reported. “We’re not at all suggesting that everyone should give up driving and walk to all their gigs because it has completely taken over our lives, but things like choosing more sustainable routes (should be considered),” Roberts said, as reported by the BBC.

Musician Cooperativism At Groupmuse

September 23, 2023 Mosa Tsay, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, Music, Worker Rights and Jobs

I am a cellist and worker-owner of a cooperative. As an ICDE fellow, I hop out of my usual action-oriented work to reflect on why cooperativism is an alternative to the status quo for freelancing musicians. As a professional cellist, I witnessed the infrastructural fractures that musicians in the United States have to navigate. In 2020, I returned to the U.S. from a year of studying in France, after contemplating during quarantine about the economics of working as an artist. One important question I wanted to solve: Rather than competing with my colleagues for limited paid gigs, how can I generate new opportunities and resources with them?

Employees At Epic-Owned Bandcamp Form Union

March 18, 2023 Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch. Organize! Bandcamp, Music, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

U.S. employees at Bandcamp, an online audio distributor, have announced their formation of a union. Last year, the platform was acquired by Epic Games, the multibillion-dollar company behind games like Fortnite and the Unreal gaming engine. According to the union, known as Bandcamp United, a super-majority of workers are in favor of forming a union. They have authorized The Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU)’s Tech Workers Union Local 1010 division to represent their 62-person unit; this is the same group that supported Kickstarter United to form a historic first union among U.S. tech employees.

This Is Not A Drill’: The Music And Politics Of Roger Waters

October 2, 2022 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Activism, Art, Music, Wars and Militarism

Roger Waters, the British rock legend and co-founder of Pink Floyd, is in the midst of his “This Is Not A Drill” tour. In his concerts he weds his musical genius to the most pressing social issues of our day, including permanent war, police violence, the crimes of Israeli occupation against the Palestinians, the killing of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and the imprisonment of Julian Assange. Waters has been an outspoken opponent of the NATO-fueled war in Ukraine, and a vocal supporter of contemporary social movements such as the Water Protectors at Standing Rock and global protests against police violence from the United States to Brazil and Britain. He joins The Chris Hedges Report for a wide-ranging conversation: from his youth and musical career to the political worldview that undergirds his provocative ‘This Is Not A Drill‘ tour.

Hundreds Of Musicians Sign Onto Boycott Letter

May 29, 2021 In Palestine Today. Resist! BDS, Israel, Music, Palestine

Hundreds of musicians, including members of Rage Against the Machine, have signed on to an open letter that asks other artists to boycott performances in Israel until it ends its occupation of Palestine.

Anne Feeney, Folk Singer And Political Activist, Dies At 69

February 4, 2021 Scott Mervis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Educate! Activism, Anne Feeney, Music

Anne Feeney, the legendary Pittsburgh folk singer-songwriter and self-described rabble-rouser, has died of COVID at age 69. Her daughter, Amy Sue Berlin, shared the news in a Facebook post on Wednesday night, writing, in part, “It is with a very heavy heart that we must announce the passing of our courageous, brilliant, beautiful mother, Anne Feeney. We were very lucky that she fought hard enough to open up her eyes, and give us a couple days to be with her before she finally decided it was time to let go.” "It is with a very heavy heart that we must announce the passing of our courageous, brilliant, beautiful mother, Anne..."

No Music For ICE! Musicians: Pull your Music From Amazon This Holiday Season

November 29, 2019 Staff, Medium.com Resist! Art, ICE, Immigration, Music, Protests

In an escalation of our NoMusicForICE campaign, we just issued takedown notices to pull our music from Amazon’s digital platform, and you can too. We’re calling on musicians & labels who oppose ICE’s human rights abuses to join us during the holiday season. Read on for why, and how, you can join us in a collective digital takedown, in solidarity with groups fighting Amazon’s support of ICE nationwide. Mass takedowns will begin on Black Friday and continue throughout Amazon’s all-important holiday shopping season.

Oklahoma’s Working Class WoodyFest2019: Second Wave Of The Sixties

August 2, 2019 Mark Maxey, AmericanHighways.org. Organize! Music, Oklahoma, Socialism, Woody Guthrie

(Okemah, Okla.) The hot humid days of July annually in Okemah rallies around their hometown socialist, Woody Guthrie. Okemah, a rural town of about 3000 citizens in northeastern Oklahoma. July 10-14, 2019 the 22nd Woody Fest[1]celebrated, remembered, cried, and rallied behind the songs of the working class. Songs were written over 80 years ago of the working class, unions, and immigration is just as relevant today as it was then. Woodrow Wilson (Woody) Guthrie[2]was born to Charley and Nora Belle Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma on July 14, 1912. Woody’s parents, who were staunch Democrats, named their son after the man who had been elected President that year. In the 1930s, Woody joined thousands of others who migrated to California during the Dust Bowl Era, becoming known as the Dust Bowl Troubadour.

AfGJ Reviews Year’s “Best” Albums For Activists

January 1, 2018 James Patrick Jordan, Afgj.org Resist! Art, Music, Political Education

It’s that time of year when we look back on the old year while entering the new. On the music front, there were many releases in 2017 to pique the interest of the socially and politically conscious. With the plethora of best album lists coming out right now, the Alliance for Global Justice has given me the thumbs up to put out our own. I hope this little guide will give you some good material to explore. This is rather long, so no need to read it all as one big piece. Glance it over and if you see something that catches your eye,check out the review, and then give the album a listen and see if you agree! Enjoy – and Happy New Year! You can support these artists best by buying your own copies of their music.

Chilean, Trained By School Of Americas, Guilty In Murder Of Singer

June 29, 2016 Linda Cooper and James Hodge, www.ncronline.org Educate! Activists, Chile, Latin America, Murder, Music

By Linda Cooper and James Hodge for National Catholic Reporter - Nearly 43 years after the assassination of a famed Chilean folksinger, a Florida jury has found a former Chilean lieutenant liable for his grisly murder in the days after a U.S.-backed coup brought dictatorAugusto Pinochet to power. A six-member Orlando jury found Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nuñez liable Monday (June 27) for the torture and murder of Victor Jara, rejecting the main defense argument that Barrientos never stepped foot in Chile Stadium where the folksinger was held with 5,000 others immediately after the coup.

Republican National Convention Perfect Place To ‘Cause Ruckus’

June 5, 2016 Chad Childers, www.loudwire.com Resist! 2016 Elections, Music, Politics, Revolution

By Chad Childers for Loudwire.com. Prophets of Rage have played their first show in Los Angeles, with their second scheduled to take place Friday night (June 3) at the Hollywood Palladium, but what happens after that? Determined that their music is needed now more than ever, the collective of Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk, Public Enemy’s Chuck D and DJ Lord and Cypress Hill’s B-Real will take their music to where it’s needed most. When asked about what the band was doing in July, Morello told Bloomberg Politics (in the video interview above), “Well there a thing called the Republican National Convention in July and that’ll be a perfect place for a band like Prophets of Rage to cause a ruckus and we will be there on the streets in the fields and in the concert hall.”

Morello On Ferguson: ‘Not A Humanitarian; I’m A Hell-Raiser’

September 28, 2015 Atlanta Jobs with Justice, www.facebook.com Resist! Ferguson, Music, police brutality, Racial Justice

By Brittany Spanos in Rolling Stone - Yeah, there are thousands of cases, countless cases of white police officers murdering unarmed black people and getting off scot-free. What happened in Ferguson was that the community reacted in a way that was newsworthy on a global scale. If there had been one prayer circle and everybody singing "Kumbaya," that would've been completely swept under the rug. The outrage of there being no indictment really cast a global light on the kind of racism that is America's original sin. The Michael Brown case was the first domino in the 21st Century that we've seen. I don't need to remind you how; all you have to do is turn on the news every two to three days. Horrendous incidents. But now people have their cameras. If there had not been an uprising in Ferguson, there would not have been indictments in Baltimore. There's a greater vigilance.

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