From the Ashes is an album consisting of 10 songs I wrote between November, 2024, and January, 2025.

One of the songs is about a historical event -- the burglary of the FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971 conducted by the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI that revealed Cointelpro to the world.

The rest of the songs are about recent, or ongoing, events, including Israel's genocide in Gaza, riots in Amsterdam, fires in LA, an assassination in Manhattan, the death of Cornelius Taylor, Antony Blinken's last press conference, and Trump's second inauguration.

The woman singing with me on many of the tracks is Kamala Emanuel.  Other than the guitar or mandola I'm playing, all the other instruments are from Chet Gardiner in his studio in Hawai'i.  The process is I record at home, or if on the road with Kamala, in a random location with a smartphone, and then send that recording to Chet, to work his magic.

Cover photo also taken with a smartphone, by Jeffrey St Clair.

From the Ashes

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

Just Like the Nazis Did

UNICEF says 35 children per day on average have been killed by Israeli bombs, snipers, or other such means since October 2023.  Now the numbers will grow exponentially in the ongoing famine Israeli forces are imposing.

35 Children A Day

There were some ugly scenes in Amsterdam that went down while Kamala and I were in the Netherlands in early November.  Pretty much the entire mainstream western media completely distorted what actually went on, unlike this song.

In Amsterdam

On March 8th, 1971 antiwar activists in Pennsylvania burglarized an FBI office, ultimately revealing to the world the Bureau's long-standing campaign of disinformation, infiltration, dirty tricks and assassinations known as Cointelpro.

The Citizens' Commission To Investigate the FBI

In what has been standard operating procedure since the Palestinian Holocaust began in October, 2023, during the last few days of 2024 the Israeli occupation forces systematically destroyed and then burned every inch of a massive hospital complex that used to serve the needs of the population.  Once destroying the building, the standard procedure is they arrest and torture the staff, which is what everyone is certain is now happening to the hospital director, as happened to hospital directors, doctors, and other staff at every other hospital in Gaza that the Israelis have systematically eliminated in the course of their genocidal war against the people, which the western media misrepresents (when they mention it at all) as a "war between Israel and Hamas."G

The Siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital

Ashes of LA

Last Thursday, at Secretary of State Antony Blinken's last press conference, journalist Sam Husseini asked such pointed questions that they had to drag him out of the room.

Blinken's Last Press Conference

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

The words "collateral damage" have come to mean dead civilians. This song puts those words in context.


Collateral Damage

you loved your sweet country for all of your life
like your mother and father before you
the land runs deep, so deep in your blood
your flesh and your bone and your sinews
descendants and ancestors, deep as it goes
a relative circle as far as your eye
it can all be undone in the flash of an instant
mechanical thunder that bruises the sky

(chorus)
goodbye to my relatives, all of my life
never again will I see
you won't have a name when they fly the big airplanes
collateral damage is all you will be

from a faraway place where the language is strange
they come with their angry machines
and the clouds rain a metal that hurts when it falls
and it shatters the ground, making everything scream
and the children run crippled, the old people hide
the babies are caught in the rubble debris
but the strangers don’t know you, you are only a number
and how can they respect what they can’t even see

(chorus)

a mother is more than a number to a baby
who now has to grow up on it’s own
and a grandfather blinded and crippled at his age
is more than just a statistical drone
all of these people are human beings
and deserve to be more than a footnote
this cynical language of killing is killing us
caught like a bone in humanity’s throat

(chorus)

so if you see a ghost in the lonely wind blowing
like shrapnel the sound of the rain
and it’s speaking a language you don’t understand
but you know what it means just the same
it’s too late for innocence, all of that’s over now
don’t say that you didn’t know
when they come to collect for the damages owed
the collateral may be your own

(chorus)

Collateral Damage

Hammer

This piece was inspired by Conlon Nancarrow; not that I'm very familiar with his work, but his method was enough to inspire me to create a piece in a similar style to his own. It was made using one note, replicating it and dragging it to exactly the right place as many times as I needed, for both piano and harpsichord. That is, until I added in a new sound at the end, giving a lot of distortion to it.

I did not expect it to become as popular as it has, given that it was a rather momentary, on the spur, and random creation, and it is less conventionally accessible than many of my other pieces. My only regret may be that this has overshadowed my other work in terms of popularity.

I've created a sequel, and am currently working on a third Conlon Nancarrow inspired piece, but so far they've not measured up to the original. However, there are some interesting and exciting twists in the second piece, 'The Next Level', and I've put the third piece to the side, 'Piano Madness: The Spirit of Conlon Nancarrow Returns', having been unsatisfied with it, though I may attempt it again at some point.

Conlon Nancarrow Tribute

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

Episode 1: Tolpuddle Martyrs Part 1

There are various causes of deadly new novel viruses, as I have recently learned, along with many of you.  One of them is climate change, so we can be sure we'll be seeing more of them.  But whatever the reasons for the fatality rate of Covid-19, we do know why the last global pandemic, the so-called "Spanish Flu" in 1918 was so extremely deadly.  It was a pandemic caused by the particular conditions of the trenches of World War 1, and the movements of troops around the world at the end of the war.  This war virus ultimately killed more human beings on planet Earth in six months -- in every corner of the globe -- than the carnage of World War 1 caused in four years.

Recorded live as part of the Viral Solidarity Concert project at Big Red Studio on April 2nd, 2020.

The Pandemic of 1918

This trailer has been superseded. Please go to https://soundcloud.com/tayo-aluko/paul-robesons-love-song-by-tayo-aluko-the-trailer/

Paul Robeson's Love Song (trailer)(superceded)

Singer/songwriter, writer, podcaster (on Spotify, Substack & Patreon), libertarian socialist, dad, lover of life.

Ashes of LA

davidrovics

Related tracks