When I write a new song, especially if it's about current events, I usually make a primitive recording of it and put it up here in this playlist.  (Eventually the song will usually get recorded better, and put out on an album.)

Broadsides

A little background to the refugee crisis on the US/Mexico border.  These refugees were "made in the USA."  The least we could do is let them in to the country that destroyed theirs.  Also international law is on their side, but the Constitutional law professor in the White House and most members of both parties of Congress don't seem to care about that.

From the album, When I'm Elected President:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

Lyrics:

US Embassy

There was a coup in Guatemala, the CIA sent planes
To assist the Guatemalan generals in tightening the chains
Two hundred thousand Indians killed in thirty years
As butchers of their people, the generals have no peers
Where did they get their guns up to this very day
From the men of the CIA

There was a coup in Chile 'cause the US couldn't stand
A democratic government that might give a helping hand
So the generals took over after they had made a pact
With their friends in Washington, and that's a simple fact
This is what we look like when you scratch away the fuzz
This is what America does

But there's never been a coup in Washington, DC
Because they don't have a US embassy

There was a coup in Haiti that overthrew the priest
Who was representing those who had the very least
They were almost self-sufficient, standing on their feet
When the generals insisted on democracy's defeat
The CIA headed south and the lifeboats sallied forth
This is why the refugees go north

There was a coup in Tegucigalpa, I promise I'm not lying
As a consequence of this people are leaving and dying
Gunning down democracy is the USA's MO
It could be called Hypocrisy if it were a TV show
But this is not a fiction, these are bodies full of lead
And thousands and thousands of refugees on the border dead

US Embassy

A high-quality studio version of this song can be found on this album:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

It's a pattern, ever present in the places that don't strictly regulate the abilities of the rich to make more money at the expense of everybody else.  Currently one of many cities that the wealthy developers are trying to destroy is my latest home town of Portland, Oregon.

Lyrics:

Gentrification Town

I've moved out of three cities 'cause I couldn't pay the rent
Folks like me weren't welcome so I packed it up and went
It's always the same story, I find a place I wanna be
And soon enough I'm joined by all the other refugees
Then watch the websites warble, this is the hippest place to hang
Hey check out Division, it's the sweetest thing since Tang
Then watch the millionaires come in and build a luxury hotel
Sipping coffee on the sidewalk, saying isn't this place swell

Rents are going up and the neighborhood's going down
Here in Gentrification Town

See the families leave the city, watch how they accept their fate
Except the ones who had the timing right and bought some real estate
The ones who had the timing and the ones who had the credit
The ones who paid attention to whoever it was who said it
This is a nation that won't suffer utopians or fools
He who has the gold rules
He who has the gold, he who bought the stock
He who is the landlord who owns your block

They say you can't blame the yuppies, they're just responding to the will
Of the market and the strength of the US dollar bill
But the dollar's only strong if you have some to your name
Otherwise you're on the business end of the game
The end that just stays home 'cause they can't afford the show
The end that has to pack their things and find a place to go
The new hip place to be, for a little while, then
The wrecking balls move in and chase us out again

Gentrification Town

A high-quality studio version of this song can be found on this album:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

Turning away refugees is unfortunately a long tradition in the US.  But the propaganda represented by the Statue of Liberty is really lovely stuff.  If only it were much more real.

Lyrics:

Statue in the Harbor

Give us your huddled masses yearning to be free
That's what it says on the Statue of Liberty
And here they come, from the other side
Across the southern border, across the great divide

And now they're told that they should go away
But the statue in the harbor says "stay"

Give us your cold and hungry, let them come by land or sea
Let them all find solace in this land of refugees
Escaping persecution, just trying to survive
And they worked as hard as Guatemalans as soon as their ships arrived

Give us your persecuted, but only if they're white
It doesn't say that on the statue that holds aloft the light
What did you think would happen in the lands you overthrew
Where should all the children go after the coup

Statue in the Harbor

A high-quality studio version of this song can be found on this album:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

Although I wrote it during the current (July 2014) Israeli invasion of Gaza, this is a song about how life in Gaza is under "peacetime."

Lyrics:

Gaza

One point eight million people surrounded on all sides
Refugees since '48, since '67, occupied
The only reason they're not starving is down to the UN
Most have never left there, stuck in the lion's den
The most crowded place on Earth, and there they'll stay
They can't visit friends or cousins a half hour's drive away
Drones overhead constantly
Who will die tomorrow, a daily mystery
In Gaza

The settlers moved out, fighter jets moved in
In Gaza there's just no way you can win
You can't take out a copter with an antiquated gun
You're just a target sitting in the sun
Waiting for your death to come raining from the sky
Where the end really is nigh
You can hear a sonic boom and see a flashing light
Every hour of the day, every hour of the night
In Gaza

There are no shelters, nowhere you can hide
Life is nothing like it is on the other side
There's nothing post about the traumatic stress
There's never more, usually less
And still some people wonder, they insist on asking why
Anyone would be so mad as to reply
So mad as to think that it might make sense
To lob some missiles over the fence
From Gaza

Gaza

A high-quality studio version of this song can be found on this album:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

RIP Michael Brown.  Unarmed teen executed in broad daylight by racist cop.

Lyrics:

His Hands Were In The Air

The town is mostly black, almost all the cops are white
You can see it right away, something isn't right
There's no funding for the schools and they're being shut down
The powers that be don't give a shit about the town

They were walking in the street, it's the safest place to be
In case someone comes shooting, you got a better view to see
They were walking in the street, they weren't hurting anyone
Then came a white man with a badge and a gun

His hands were in the air (4x)

“Get the fuck off the sidewalk,” that's what the cop said
He cut them off in his car, fat face, blood red
The cop says he was attacked, and from a cursory check
It seems his fingers were assaulted by Michael Brown's neck

There were witnesses who saw it, it was recorded on a phone
But the police couldn't handle the light that would've shone
She was forced to hand it over so they could try to hide away
A racist execution in the middle of the day

He had just finished high school and was off to college next
Instead he was shot and killed with no pretext
The media joined in, called the community a mob
A cop called them animals while Michael's mother sobbed

His Hands Were in the Air

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

Just Like the Nazis Did

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.

US Embassy

davidrovics

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