This song is ever so moving.  Sugihara, like Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, consul in Bordeaux when the Nazis took France, sacrificed his career to save Jews and other refugees from the Nazis.  Both suffered after the war, in De Sousa Mendes' case not only from the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship but even after the Portuguese revolution of 1974; the diplomatic service remained for a time under rightists and elements who said a diplomat should obey instructions.  Something similar seems to have happened to Sugihara.

Songs related to war, peace and empire, now and through the ages.

War & Peace

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

Just Like the Nazis Did

Sleep For Weeks

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

David Rovics 8/11/2008 gig at Beginnings, Briceland, CA produced by Andy Caffrey

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

A song for Bob Steck and all the other veterans of the international brigades in Spain.

This is a track from my album, Big Red Sessions, which can be streamed or downloaded at www.davidrovics.bandcamp.com

The Last Lincoln Veteran

The Dying Firefighter

Promised Land

They really used that name for a little while, no joke.  From my 2004 album, Songs for Mahmud.

Operation Iraqi Liberation

The "Japanese Schindler," but not as well known.

This is a track from my album, Big Red Sessions, which can be downloaded here:
davidrovics.bandcamp.com

Sugihara

A rhetorical question, and a vitally important one.

How Far Is It From Here to Nuremberg?

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.

Sugihara

davidrovics

Recent comments

Mark

Related tracks