AS a kid, I loved the ‘60s protest songs such as Dylan’s ‘Times they are a-changin’ and ‘Hard Rain’s a-gonna fall’.
At the time I thought they were seriously profound, but in reality the sole redeeming feature of Dylan’s songs is a catchy tune with beautiful but incoherent poetry.
Also, without being picky, not one of Dylan’s ‘deep’ predictions has come true, apart from observing that times change.
They always will, duh. (I’m ducking as I write this knowing that multiple missives from Dylan devotees are flying my way.)
However, to my eternal mystification, many of the best protest songs are about issues that don’t exactly chime with my sentiments.
Take ‘Beds Are Burning’ by the Aussie band Midnight Oil. It’s a genuine rock classic, first appearing on a LP with an equally great title, Diesel and Dust.
The song is about giving land back to the Pintupi tribe from Australia’s western deserts. It was written in 1987.
However, the Pintupi had founded a homeland called Kintore on ancestral lands in 1981 – so what was there to give back?
Okay, I assume Midnight Oil was referring to the entire Western Desert, which is quite a chunk of real estate when you consider that Australia is actually a continent.
Also, there is no doubt that the Pintupi suffered massive abuse at the hands of the authorities and the treatment of indigenous people is indeed a blight on Australia’s history.
But by the time Midnight Oil jumped on the bandwagon, the tribe had in fact obtained their own designated homeland, which, if pub talk in the East End of London is anything to go by, is more than the indigenous Cockneys believe they have.
Then there is ‘Sandinista’ by one of my favourite singers, Kris Kristofferson.
Kris is a great artist, but I reckon he would be an absolute bore at a dinner party. He espouses unadulterated luvvie politics, and any guy who believes that anarcho-syndicalist Noam Chomsky is the foremost philosopher of modern times must smoke a lot of weed. Which Kris, by his own admission, does.
Anyway, ‘Sandinista’ is a compellingly beautiful paean about the … well, Sandinistas, who overthrew the brutal Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, 1979.
At the time hopes were high and maybe that’s why Kris sang: “Sandinista … You have given back their freedom … May your spirit never die.”
So, how did that work out?
Not so good if you were an ordinary Nicaraguan. President Daniel Ortega’s hero was Fidel Castro and soon all property was nationalised and those who disagreed were detained or killed.
The indigenous Indian population was then forcibly relocated into ‘collectives’ in a typically Marxist experiment. Unfortunately for them, there was no Midnight Oil to sing about their plight.
According to the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists, the Sandinistas had carried out over 8 000 political executions within three years of taking power. By 1983, the number of political prisoners was estimated at 20 000. Torture was institutionalised.
But to give the Sandinistas their due, they eventually allowed a free election. To the surprise of few, in 1990 they were booted out.
However, 16 years later they took power again and – almost unheard of in the Marxist world – they reformed. Nicaragua is now a democratic country with a reasonably free economy.
But it didn’t quite happen the way Kristofferson’s song predicted. On the contrary.
However, my favourite protest song and one that I actually identify with is by another Aussie group called Redgum.
Called ‘I was only 19’, it’s about the Vietnam War and is one of the most haunting songs ever written. It vividly depicts the tragedy of young men going to war not knowing the true meaning of the word.
Funnily enough, my son Paul introduced me to the song, even though it was written 18 years before he was born. And as Paul said, only an Aussie could write these lines: “Frankie kicked a mine the day mankind kicked the moon. God help me … he was going home in June.”
Those words are now engraved on the Australian Vietnam Forces Memorial in Canberra.
They’re also engraved in my head.
