Blood - Algiers

Algiers

A month or so ago I heard an interview with Mavis Staples. She was asked if she saw the younger contemporary musicians reflecting the kind of political protest, unrest, and call for change in society like the music did of her era. She stated she did not.

I think Algiers attempts to reflect a call for change, and protest in their music in such a song like Blood. The lyrics and video get the message across in a powerful way. I think this band is pretty amazing, and I'm certain we will be hearing more from them in the future. Lyrically, and the creative musical mash up are both a powerful voice for protest, social change and hope.



Blood

For all your love of soma
All my blood's in vain
You say your history's over
All of my blood's in vain
Your television coma
All my blood's in vain
It's gone too far to change
All of my blood's in vain

Flash across your screen
They got you in their hand
Fifteen minutes of freedom
Still 3/5 a man
Sterilize your conscience and
Disgrace your name
A healthy simulation
All my blood's in vain

For all your love of soma
All my blood's in vain
You say your history's over
All my blood's in vain
Your television coma
All my blood's in vain
It's gone too far to change
All of my blood's in vain

Liquor stains your table
Women change you bed
You rise on Sunday morning
Just like the living dead
Your Hell is fornication
Your Heaven is the same
But master is complacent
So all my blood's in vain

For all your love of soma
All my blood's in vain
You say your history's over
All my blood's in vain
Your television coma
All my blood's in vain
It's gone too far to change
All of my blood's in vain

Four hundred years of torture
Four hundred years a slave
Dead just to watch you squander
Just what we tried to save
Now death is at your doorstep
And you're still playing games
So drown in entertainment
Cause all our blood is in vain

Politics

Well here we go again with another election. I am a rather apolitical person with a social conscience. I have heard it said as an artist and a human being everything we do is political in some way. I tend to believe this to be indeed true. Even apathy is a political statement.

As an artist and a citizen living within society I can't afford to be complacent or apathetic.
I have no desire to be the guilty bystander. It is difficult to reconcile oneself to this when it comes election time in Canada. People are cynical and fed up with the inaction of politicians and their inability to relate to the common working man or women as they generally appear to live in ivory towers, squabbling among them selves about who is right or wrong and taking the moral high ground. When it comes to politicians I think most folks would see this description of politicians taking the moral high ground as being an oxymoron.

So the inevitable question I am left with once again, is who to vote for and as an artist and a struggling student when I think about it, I have to consider the lesser of four evils or the one that comes close to my concerns as an artist and as a Canadian.

All I have to say is, I will once again vote.

God help me and our country.


“It is true, political problems are not solved by love and mercy. But the world of politics is not the only world, and unless political decisions rest on a foundation of something better and higher than politics, they can never do any real good for men. When a country has to be rebuilt after war, the passions and energies of war are no longer enough. There must be a new force, the power of love, the power of understanding and human compassion, the strength of selflessness and cooperation, and the creative dynamism of the will to live and to build, and the will to forgive. The will for reconciliation.” - from Introductions East & West. The Foreign Prefaces of Thomas Merton