Songs documenting the genocide of the Palestinian people, written since the autumn of 2023 to the present.  At the top are songs written with my AI band, Ai Tsuno.  All the rest involve human collaborators such as Chet Gardiner, Kamala Emanuel, Lorna McKinnon, Laura Love, Gregg Weiss, and others.

Notes From A Holocaust

This is my new podcast series, A History of the World According to David Rovics.  In this series, I take on history, starting with what we Americans call the Colonial Era, then working our way forward, tightening up the timeline as we go.

I'll upload new episodes every so often, gratis, here and on other platforms, including at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld.  You can find notes about each of the 16 episodes there now.  Eventually the whole series will be available for free download by anyone.
All of the episodes should be FCC-friendly for radio broadcast in the US, except for episode 11, because of the song, "Iceland, 2008."

For paid subscribers, 16 episodes are already up.  They can be found in the Everything folder -- if you're a CSA member, whether you signed up through Substack, Patreon, Bandcamp, or at davidrovics.com/subscribe, you should have gotten a welcome email with the link to the Everything folder, but feel free to contact me if you need that again!

A History of the World According to David Rovics

Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer

All the tracks in this playlist are a collaboration between David Rovics, who is the lyricist, prompt engineer, and producer, and his AI band, Ai Tsuno.  You can find Ai Tsuno on all the usual music streaming platforms, and you can read more about the project at davidrovics.com/ai-tsuno.

Best of Ai Tsuno

In addition to doing songs for grownups, I do songs for kids, too!  These songs all appear on one of two albums -- Har Har Har and Ballad of a Dung Beetle.

Children's Music

Our Al-Qaeda allies would never launch a chemical attack against civilians, would they?

This is a song from the album, Spies Are Reading My Blog, which you can download or stream in its entirety at:  www.davidrovics.bandcamp.com

Syria, 2013

Lots of free music, videos, CDs for purchase and more at www.davidrovics.com/kids! Sign my email list to find out when I'm coming to your town -- and maybe even organize a show yourself!

Punk Rock Baby

Roller Coaster Train

The Fruit That Got Away

The Pirate Song

Walking On The Ceiling

The danger of ignoring obvious historical parallels to unfolding events is the prospect of repeating them.

Just Like the Nazis Did

This song is a public service announcement, to thank the Houthi Army for their service to the global public.

Song for the Houthi Army

On June 8th, 1967, during the course of the Six-Day War, the Israeli military tried to sink an American ship and kill all the crew -- knowing full well that's exactly what they were doing.  The attack left 34 Americans dead, hundreds maimed, and a ship destroyed.

The Ballad of the USS Liberty (When Israel Attacked the USA)

This episode explores events that took place between 1492 and the 1840’s.

The Alhambra Decree of 1492
The Golden Age of Piracy
Shays’ Rebellion
The War of 1812
The Merthyr Tydfil uprising
The Tolpuddle Martyrs
Colonization of Australia by capitalists and refugees
The Opium Wars in China
The Rent Strike Wars
Colonization of America by capitalists and refugees

Book recommendations that cover some of this history include A Peoples’ History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Villains of All Nations by Marcus Rediker.

A History of the World EPISODE 1

This episode covers events that took place between 1846-1916.

The Mexican-American War and the St. Patrick Battalion
The Fugitive Slave Act in Wisconsin
The Eureka Stockade uprising in Australia
John Brown and the abolitionist movement against slavery
The settler-colonial project in Oregon
Use of Egyptian mummies in the paper mills of Maine
Little Crow’s uprising of 1862 in Minnesota
The Highland Clearances in Scotland
The life and death of Joe Hill and the rise of the IWW
The Easter Rising in Ireland

Book recommendation for some of this history would be An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States as well as Loaded, both by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

A History of the World EPISODE 2

This episode covers events that took place from 1917-1921.

The rise and fall of the Working Class Union in Oklahoma
Danish syndicalism and the Battle of the Borso
World War 1 and the Pandemic of 1918
The Russian Revolution and US invasion of Russia
The Winnipeg General Strike
The Industrial Workers of the World and the lynching of Wesley Everest
The Palmer Raids
Kelly Butte and the use of prison labor in Oregon
The Tulsa Race Massacre
The Battle of Blair Mountain

There's no need to start at the beginning, necessarily, but all the episodes out so far can be found at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld, along with notes on each of them.

A History of the World EPISODE 3

1933-1941

The rise to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler
The International Brigades and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War
Anti-immigration laws and sentiment in the west and the turning back of Jewish refugees
The kindertransports — rescuing Jewish children while leaving their parents to die
The SS Winnipeg and Pablo Neruda’s rescue of the Spanish refugees in France in 1939
Henry Ford and the popularity of fascism in the US
Ram Mohamed Singh Azad and resistance to colonialism in India
The US-imposed oil blockade on the Japanese Empire
The internment of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans in the western US
Chiune Sugihara and the rescue of thousands of European Jews by “the Japanese Schindler”

On the Lincoln Battalion and the Spanish Civil War I recommend Carl Geiser’s Prisoners of the Good Fight.  On the rise to power of Hitler I recommend Berlin Diary by William Shirer.



A History of the World episode 4

1943-1949.  Listen to everything from the beginning at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld or just start with this one!

The arrests and executions of German communists such as Hamburg city councilor, Franz Jacob
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The boatlift of the Danish Jews to Sweden
The Dutch resistance and the killing of Henk Streefkerk
The Normandy landings
The liberation of Katharina Jacob and other Ravensbruck prisoners by the Red Army
The US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine, the Naqba
The Berlin Airlift of 1948-49

Book recommendation for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising would be The Bravest Battle by Dan Kurzman.  On Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Empire and the Bomb by Joseph Gerson.  On the Naqba, the Absence of Peace by Nicholas Guyatt.

A History of the World episode 5

I had a good time chatting the other day with the hosts of the podcast, Unfinished Business with Paul & Rob. We talked about Gaza and music and other things.  The interview with me begins 12 minutes in.

Unfinished Business interviews David Rovics

Throughout 2024 and early 2025, in between writing songs and essays, touring and raising kids, a side project has been another memoir project.  I declared it finished, and recorded the whole thing.  The memoir is in the form of an audiobook.

My Life as a Protest Singer is my third or fourth effort at writing a memoir.  This may seem ridiculous, but those who have engaged in the practice of memoir-writing know it’s not.  There is so much to write about, and so much that will inevitably be left unwritten.  There are so many angles, so many approaches.  The vast majority of whatever it is will never make it in.

The full production of My Life as a Protest Singer consists of 11 episodes of about an hour each, or about 11 hours of me wagging my jaw.  In its full 11 episodes it’s available exclusively for members of my Community-Supported Art program.  Whether you’re a paid member via my website or via Patreon, Substack, or Bandcamp, you’ve been given a link to my Everything folder.  It’s in there, within the “Extras” folder.  If you’re a CSA member and don’t have the link to the Everything folder handy, just email me for it.

What I have made available for free to the general public is the very abridged version, Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer, which is a 3-episode series.

Starting with Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer EPISODE 1.

Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer EPISODE 1

My Life as a Protest Singer is an approximately 11-hour audiobook, available exclusively for members of my CSA (davidrovics.com/subscribe).  This is the 2nd of 3 Selections from the audiobook, available for anyone to check out.

Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer EPISODE 2

This is the 3rd of 3 Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer.  The full 11 episodes of My Life as a Protest Singer are available in the Everything folder that all members of my CSA have access to (that's at davidrovics.com/subscribe).  If you appreciate my musical (and/or other) efforts, have disposable income to speak of, and might be willing to part with a few bucks a month to keep me on the road, making recordings, etc., please feel hereby encouraged to sign up!  A few dozen more people joining my CSA could vastly improve my family's currently fairly precarious finances.  Let's keep the protest music going.  Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer EPISODE 3

Everything else happening in the world aside, we are at a fascinating juncture in the history of humanity.  Assuming we live long enough to witness it, many people would say we're on the cusp of a new reality, represented by the three words, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).  Ai Tsuno's fourth album gracefully explores this theme.  For this special edition of This Week with David Rovics I bring you Where the Algorithms Rule:  a guided tour.

Where the Algorithms Rule GUIDED TOUR

Kamala and I were guests for the better part of 2 hours on Graham Dean's Common Sense Songs show on Berkshire Community Radio a few days ago in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, along with our good friend, Massachusetts-based singer/songwriter Ben Grosscup.  The live talk and music starts about 25 minutes in.

Common Sense Songs interview

This track is a collaboration between David Rovics, who is the lyricist, prompt engineer, and producer, and his AI band, Ai Tsuno.  You can find Ai Tsuno on all the usual music streaming platforms, and you can read more about the project at davidrovics.com/ai-tsuno.

From the River

Ban Israel Too

Camping in the Graveyards

Christmas in Gaza

Gaza Riviera

Ai Tsuno's latest song #NoContractNoCoffee is in solidarity with the striking Starbucks workers across the USA.


No Contract No Coffee

Empire of Vampires

We Say Cease, They Say Fire

Jeffrey Epstein

The Rent is Too Damn High

Round Up All the Billionaires

Little Orange Toys

When YouTube Music deleted all of my albums from their platform the other day because my very existence apparently violates their terms of service, Ai Tsuno wrote a fairly blistering song about 1984/2025.

They Deleted David Rovics

In the Age of AI

Ode to Hard Fork

As fake ceasefire takes so much of the western world's attention away from Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, in the Occupied West Bank, the daily pogroms carried out by Israeli settlers and soldiers also continue.

Pogroms of the Occupied West Bank

Here and Now

Just a Vigil to Bear Witness

From the album, Make the Planet Earth Great Again

The Apocalypse Will Be Televised

As The Bombs Rain Down

If A Song Could Raise An Army

For the volunteers of the YPG.  This is a track from my 2017 album, Ballad of a Wobbly, which can be downloaded or streamed in its entirety at www.davidrovics.bandcamp.com.

Rojava

I wrote this song to alienate all of my friends, but most of them ended up having a sense of humor so it didn't work very well.

This is a track from my album, Big Red Sessions, which can be downloaded for free or by donation here:
http://davidrovics.com/big-red-sessions/new-album.php

I'm A Better Anarchist Than You

The San Patricios -- the international brigade you've probably never heard of (half a century before the Spanish Civil War).  This version is from Live in Rostrevor (2016) with Lorna McKinnon on harmonies.

St. Patrick Battalion

Behind the Barricades

After the Revolution

They had to destroy the city in order to save it.  That's Professor D from the Dope Poets Society in there.

Fallujah

Written after an incident with a fanatical George W Bush supporter I encountered at the Whole Foods Market on Kirby in Houston, Texas one day.

Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Song for Irish Republican Francis Hughes, who died on hunger strike.  He was known as a man of few words, among other things.

This is a track from my album, Big Red Sessions.

Up the Provos

2017 album recorded at Big Red Studio with Billy Oskay, Elona Planman and others.

13. Failed State

Lorna McKinnon and I did a tour together, culminating in a concert in Rostrevor, County Down, in Ireland, in the autumn of 2016.

10. Send Them Back

2015 recording project at Big Red Studio featuring Billy Oskay on violin, Spank and Janice Hopkins on harmony vocals, and Arcellus Sykes on bass.

03. Liberty And Justice For All

Singer/songwriter, writer, podcaster (on Spotify, Substack & Patreon), libertarian socialist, dad, lover of life.  I also write songs as part of Ai Tsuno, which you can look up on all the streaming platforms.

davidrovics

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