Free Speech: De Gedachten zijn Vrij * Judy Collins, Mon. 03 and Tue. 04 April 2017 [2017-12]

NIEUW / NEW:  JUDY COLLINS: In My Life  ** REPEATED  HERHALING: Collette Magny: Vietnam 67 ** Civil Rights, Black Pride ** Two Wars: Hell No, We Won’t Go + No Pasarán  **  [2017-12]

THE PLAYLISTS
NEW SHOW
1 JUDY COLLINS In My Life  + EDUARD RODES ** CHRIS FARLOWE  **  JACQUES BREL * ROYAL SHAKESPEARE Co. * LOTTE LENYA * BOB DYLAN * HAPPY & ARTIE TRAUM * THE BEATLES *
REPEATED SHOWS
1 COLETTE MAGNY: VIETNAM 67:
COLETTE MAGNY: VIETNAM 67  (full album)  + SHADEY SCANDALS (see ‘BACKGROUND’), JOHN FIDDLER, MIKE ZITO, GRAHAM BOND, COUNTRY JOE McDONALD.
3 CIVIL RIGHTS, BLACK PRIDE
CURTIS MAYFIELD & THE IMPRESSIONS, SLY & FAMILY STONE (Stand!), CHI-LITES, JEFF BECK (Live⁺), GENE McDANIELS, COLETTE MAGNY, GIL SCOTT-HERON, THE LAST POETS (1st LP), LES McCANN & EDDIE HARRIS LP, 1971), THE STAPLE  SINGERS, THE ISLEY BROS.
4 TWO WARS
1 SPAIN 1936-39  SONGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADES with PAUL ROBESON & ERNST BUSCH * SPAIN IN MY HEART with PETE SEEGER & ARLO GUTHRIE, JOHN McCUTCHEON, SHAY BLACK & AOIFE CLANCY
VIETNAM: STOPPING THE WAR with JIMMY CLIFF, ERIC BURDON, STEPPENWOLF, HENRY FLINT & THE INSURRECTIONS, COVERED WAGON MUSICIANS, DONOVAN, TOM PARROTT, BARBARA DANE

THE SCHEDULE * HET UITZENDROOSTER

ACHTERGRONDINFO ** MORE INFORMATION

JUDY COLLINS: IN MY LIFE

“’Released in 1966, ‘In My Life’ features songs by artists who didn’t ring a bell – yet. There are the first appearances of songs by Leonard Cohen on record. And though Randy Newman had been covered by some pop artists, he was yet to release his own album. Jacques Brel had given a show at Carnegie Hall, but could hardly be called a household name in the USA. Peter Brook’s play “Marat/Sade” bore no relation to the popular music business at all, but it was a revolutionary piece of work, also stylistically, and Collins let herself inspire by it.
Whereas this isn’t an album of protest songs, some tunes quite explicitly reflect the values that were soon to define the sixties, such as pacifism (Brel’s ‘La Colombe’), or directly point towards revolutionary lyrics (like Brecht and Weil’s ‘Pirate Jenny’) and even to the French Revolution itself (Marat/Sade, after Peter Brook) “ (© Eddy Bonte)

“In My Life was the album most crucial to Judy Collins’s astonishing evolution from traditional folk singer to an artist not limited to any category. While folk music was certainly an element of this extraordinarily varied set, it was just one ingredient of a record that also drew from classical music, the theater, rock, and more. Some critics did try to classify the sound as “baroque folk” at the time, and if that’s an actual genre, In My Life is certainly the keystone baroque folk album. But the album transcends labels, testifying to her skill at interpreting material by an amazing array of writers in remarkably eclectic musical settings” (…)  (by Richie Unterberger http://www.richieunterberger.com/inmylife.html)

COLETTE MAGNY: VIETNAM 67 

A propos de “Vietnam 67” :

A l’occasion de la réimpression de son disque “Vietnam 67” en 1983, Colette Magny écrivait sur sa pochette du disque :
« Avec le recul du temps, je me dois de dire que je suis frappée par la présence, déjà, dans ce disque de musiciens de haute qualité – je veux dire : la chance que j’ai eu d’en bénéficier très tôt et que cela n’a pas cessé.

En 1967, nous criions “Victoire au Vietnam”, “F.L.N. vaincra”. Et c’était juste, je suppose, à ce moment là. Aujourd’hui, après les témoignages parus dans “Le Monde”, bouleversée, je dois accepter que les “cages à tigres” sont de nouveau pleines.

Et j’essaie de comprendre :
Que peut signifier le mot “cruauté” pour des femmes et des hommes cernés par l’horreur, engloutis dans un quotidien de terreur imposé par les U.S.A., enfants, en pleine guerre, sur les routes s’amusaient à sauter, rebondir sur le ventre d’un cadavre (Vietnamien, l’un des leurs) pour en extraire des bruits d’oesophage qui les faisaient rire ? Que sont ces enfants devenus ? Quelles femmes ? Quels hommes

Quoi qu’il en soit, je maintiens mon admiration pour la détermination, l’intelligence et l’endurance du peuple vietnamien dans le combat pour sa liberté. Après un éveil politique tardif (fin de la guerre d’Algérie), j’enclenchai un intérêt passionné et passionnel pour les “événements”. D’où ces chansons braquées sur l’actualité (certains textes élaborés à partir de coupures de journaux, par ex. : “A Saint Nazaire”).  Je ressens encore l’urgence, mais la difficulté, de crier; oui, toujours, tous les jours, depuis la naissance. Mais comment, où, avec qui et qui croire ? Quand récemment, par exemple, j’entends dire au Journal Télévisé qu’une sélection des informations est inévitable : sur cent reçues, les journalistes politiques doivent en choisir dix. Lesquelles et pourquoi ?

Jusque très récemment, je n’ai su résister ni aux courants de pensée d’une histoire réduite, sinon travestie, peut-être même trahie par lesdits mass-media, ni aux pressions incessantes de groupes politiques à vérités changeantes et différentes.

Si ma passion de comprendre et de témoigner demeure, elle est désormais animée de vigilance ».

Colette Magny, septembre 1983 http://colette-magny.over-blog.com/page-1754864.html

SHADEY SCANDALS
Brian Brockie, formerly of David Garrick’s backing band, let me know this: “I have been very busy musically at present and have been depping and recording with a local band called ‘Shadey Scandals’ –  and we have just completed a ‘single’ in a  pro-studio session.
The song  was written by lead singer Alex Askew who served with the RAF Regiment in Afghanistan. The song  reflects his return to the UK and finding it hard to settle into a worthwhile job when he has so many ambitions to fulfil.  It doesn’t glorify or support war  – it is just a reflection of one man’s return to the normality of civilian life.
It was written and performed as an acoustic piece – but Alex asked me to add some guitar parts to ‘rock it up a bit’.
All download proceeds are going to a registered charity for  ex-servicemen (SSFA)”.

CIVIL RIGHTS, BLACK PRIDE

CURTIS MAYFIELD and CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
“We’re believing very strongly in equality and freedom for all, but especially we people who are darker than blue… we’re not trying to offend anyone, but basically telling it like it is” (Curtis Mayfield).

These humble but confident words spoken by Curtis Mayfield during a 1971 gig neatly encapsulates the soul of a musician that came to define the music of the civil rights movement. While Marvin Gaye and James Brown were more famous names that penned politically charged songs, Mayfield was the indisputable forefather of radical soul music. As SNCC organiser Stanley Wise said “you could see his records on every movement turntable”. It was “warrior music” in the words of activist Gordon Sellers, the “soundtrack of the movement” according to Craig Werner.

Growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green ghetto, the marriage of music and politics that would distinguish his career came naturally to Mayfield. “With everything I saw on the streets as a young black kid, it wasn’t hard during the later fifties and sixties for me to write [in] my heartfelt way of how I visualised things, how I thought things ought to be.”

This intimately felt attachment to the social conditions around him helped Mayfield, with his band The Impressions, give expression to the spirit of the civil rights movement with the classic ‘Keep On Pushin’. Having been intensely affected by the Martin Luther King-led demonstrations in Alabama, Mayfield wanted to, in his words, “write something that maybe could help motivate the people.” In time, ‘Keep On Pushin’, along with ‘People Get Ready’ ‘We’re A Winner’ and ‘Meeting Over Yonder’, would become ubiquitous on the demonstrations, mass meetings and marches of the equality movement. (…) SOURCE: http://anticapitalists.org/2012/06/03/music-and-politics-of-curtis-mayfield/

TWO WARS: Hell No, We Won’t Go + No Pasarán

Radio 68 presents songs about two wars: the Spanish Civil War and Vietnam. In both cases we have included a number of songs and artists that are not / no longer widely known – to say the  least.  One such artist is PAUL ROBESON.  This  black American activist visited Spain during the Civil War and recorded several songs about that struggle against fascism.  In Europe, his involvement and his of body of work are largely forgotten.

“Paul Robeson’s concerns about fascism in the 1930s—military aggression, racial injustice, civilian bombings, and forced population displacement—remain issues of our own times. Seven decades later, ALBA’s magazine, The Volunteer, published a comic titled Robeson in Spain, detailing Robeson’s activism and dedication to the Spanish cause.  It is ALBA’s hope that this work of art, history, and research can be embraced and appreciated by students of history and by the public as a way to convey the progressive ideals of Paul Robeson and the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. By the mid-1930s, Paul Robeson had achieved international acclaim as an actor, singer, and public personality who criticized racism.  The rise and expansion of fascism in Germany and Italy and other parts of the world intensified his concerns about the precarious state of democracy, freedom, and social justice. After the Spanish Civil War began in 1936, Robeson threw his support behind the elected government. “The artist must take sides,” he announced. He sang often to raise funds for children displaced by the war and appealed for assistance to the Spanish Republic. (…)
SOURCE: http://alba-valb.org/resources/robeson

REFERENCES
V.A. Canciones de las Brigadas Internacionales, Roots Collection, www.discmedi.com
V.A. Spain In My Heart , Appleseed Recodings (Songs of the Spanish Civil War)
YOU TUBE CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/user/VietnamSongProject