‘WHAT DOES POLITICAL SONG MEAN TO YOU?’

Answers to this question were gathered quickly at a Glasgow Council reception for Scottish C.N.D, at singing weekends in Fife and Aberdeenshire Cullerlie, and in the course of detailed interviews.

Political song is the voice of the people, not the voice of the media or the establishment. In a lot of societies political songs were banned, and the songwriters were shot – the ultimate compliment you can pay a songwriter – shoot him! Like all social or political comment or songs they act as a banner for people to rally behind. Eric Bogle, songmaker, Australia

Basically it is about songs concerning the subjects that are controversial, that are thrown up by every-day life, that pose people problems, that throw up a response of various sorts. Responses either of protest, and / or of attempted solutions to problems, to encourage people, to make them feel they can do something in a world that seems unequal. There are many ways of looking at politics, but political song is about giving people the spirit to resist and / or change the world. Rob Gibson, musician and MSP, Easter Ross

What it means to me is a song that comments on people's way of life, ordinary people's way of life quite simply. It's not a soapbox thing, an aggressive thing. It's just simply a comment on the price of bread, or that people arny workin, women's position in society for example - and men's position. One song last night, a new one by a chap from the North East, about unemployment. Or there's a lot of old ancient political songs, about women being pregnant and not knowing what to do about it, or raped. About women's position in society, and depending on whether the chap's gonna come across with some support or not. Ellen Mitchell, singer, Glasgow

Political song is a reflection of political culture. I think it is essential to know yourself, know your country, know what it is that you’re campaigning for.There has to be a cultural connection with the politics. It’s not just about ideas, it’s not just about campaigns, it’s about a sense of who you are, where you are, what you bring to make sure you’re well grounded in what you want to achieve. The obvious song is ‘The Freedom Come-All-Ye’, which has always been magical to me in many ways. It’s one of the few modern songs that said to me Scotland is an international country, that being a nationalist means being an internationalist, and it also has the social values of caring for humanity that are part and parcel of Scotland. Sometimes songs can stand up and reflect who you are, but sometimes they can stretch you.
The wee Rebel Ceilidh book is part and parcel of the SNP’s heritage and culture. It was a different generation from mine, but it was extremely creative. Now we’ve got Facebook, political song was maybe the equivalent of that in the 1970s. Humour is one of the best ways to prick at authority. At an anti-war demo I was at it was the older people who had the songs. How can we make sure that political song is not just about the past? The next generation of political song is yet to be discovered. I think it will come though the internet. Fiona Hyslop, MSP for Lothians, SNP, Culture Minister

Initially I think of the anti-nuclear stance. But in fact I think even the older songs, especially bothy ballads, had quite a political slant to them, because they were quite anti, they were protesting in their own way about the conditions on the farms at the time. The hard conditions then. Even some of the ballads. Have you ever heard a ballad that hasn't got a toff, it's almost all toffs, or workers trying to get to become toffs or to marry a toff. I think almost every folk song's a political song. Jimmy Hutcheson, singer, Fife

Ah was brocht up on a fairm, an politics didny mean an awfy lot. My auld man used tae vote Tory, an that wis aa politics meant to me. And of course ah consciously learned aa these bothy ballads, which ye ken on reflection is just full a political statement - and of course aa the songs, they aa look intae this cry oot for help, or there was some statement bein made aboot the conditions an 'at.
Ah dinna ken if that affected what I thought of as my politics. Ah wis just brocht up on the fairm, ma faither, he wis maybe the bad employer, as the fairmer. But I was part of that system, which ah didny really recognise. I mean, I had to work as hard as the rest of them - my work ethic, when I then got a job it just came natural, you just got stuck in owre there and worked away with the rest o them. I wis nivver aware until ye start readin things and ye became aware of how the system was set up. But when ye're growin up wi it, it's just how things are. Geordie Murison, singer, Aberdeenshire

I have difficulty in separating politics frae life, I canna see a separation. The way of life is involved in aa the struggles, ye look to social and economic side of things, ye canna separate. There was an element in the folk scene that was against the influences the Communist Party had, and MacColl. They had a mission, not just about song, but others felt you shouldn’t sing political songs in folkclubs. Danny Couper, singer, Aberdeen

'A Man's a Man For Aa That' - I think that there is nothing that has been written subsequently that is any better than that. I think the principle of universality, and everybody's right to be an equal member of a society, is the socialist principle that we're all looking to do. And while there's been great songs written subsequently, I don't think anything has the power of that song. Davey Stewart, singer, Kirkcaldy

If you took an extreme Marxist viewpoint, you could argue that everything - all songs - reflect political realities directly - some are more overt than others, some are layered, but there's a political component. A song like ‘The Dowie Dens of Yarrow’, where the lord becomes a ploughman, it's egalitarian, it's about class. People today pretend class doesn't exist - it's sort of non-U to talk about class. I don't know what they substitute for it, but it's a reality still, and divisions between the status levels. So we can have that very wide definition.
But there are the songs which have a very specific overt bias, saying a direct unequivocal message. It can be done very seriously, like a song I remember Pete Seeger singing ‘The Little Child of Hiroshima’, which is emotional, sentimental to the extent that it is designed to arrest your attention and try to reflect, in so far as any song can reflect reality, the horror of being engulfed in a nuclear holocaust.
And then there are songs like the one you wrote yourself, which always comes to mind, ‘Goin Up in Smokey’. That's something I don't do much in my own songwriting, using that humour which is - OK it's black humour, but it's effective. Although it's a CND song if you like, an anti-nuclear war song, it goes beyond its context, it goes beyond its period.
But there's a narrower definition of these agit-prop songs, which are very very specific, and do date. ‘Ye'll No Sit Here’. 'Doon at Ardnadam’ is out of date. A song, unlike a poem, goes out there and it has an immediate effect. If you sang something like ‘Ye'll No Sit Here’ without knowing the background and the context, it's lost. But there are songs like ‘The Man With The Dreadful Knob’ by Enoch Kent, a reworking of ‘The Man That Waters the Workers' Beer’, which is brilliant, it can transcend its period and live on. They cease to be agit-props just because of their structure.
And then there are those squibs that are only written for the occasion, and they date. I wrote an agit-prop one in the sixties, inspired by information I was receiving from Helen Fuller, who was a trained scientist. I knew nothing about ecology, and she gave me the first copy of ‘The Ecologist’, published I think in 1964. I'd no idea, ecology wasn't part of the language, of the general knowledge. I wrote this wee song called 'The Weekend Song', which was very specific, it was based on things that she'd told me. How hedgerows were being removed and biological controls of pests were no longer operating. I was not aware of this at all. She talked about acid lakes. We saw this more recently in Chernobyl, where air contamination and pollution is no respecter of class or creed or wealth or status. It applies to all.
That body of information encouraged me to write the song, and I linked it up to people going away for the weekend into the countryside, escaping the smoke of the city, and yet the countryside is contaminated. Peggy Seeger said to me the song should really have a hard-hitting conclusion. I said, "No, I'll leave it open". I deliberately left it open. But the interesting thing is, it's not an agit-prop song, because sadly it's actually still relevant. The last verse goes "Where else can we run to? The answer none can tell. If acid rain drips down, and poison wind blows snell. When will this weary winter pass? What will the future bring? Will our children see a cornflower grow, or hear a robin sing?"
At the time, in the 1960s, there was an article in ‘The Scots Magazine’ by the late Tom Weir, asking where have so many of the species of birds gone. The quantity of birds had diminished dramatically even then, and that was a background to the song. I didn't say, "I am going to write a political song". I just had to express that, asking the listener, "What are you going to do about it, are you going to be passive, or active? Are you going to be concerned?
At the same time, the songwriter who concentrates on political songwriting, they want to engage an audience, they want to entertain at the same time. There's a balance to be struck. If it's too didactic, too heavy handed, maybe they should leave that to prose. A song has to be really well crafted to get a particular message over. But it's actually designed, at least in theory, to try and change people's behaviour or outlook, so to that extent they're biased, there's a point of view being presented. Geordie McIntyre, singer and songwriter, Glasgow

I wouldn’t think right away of political song as a separate category of song, because my first experience of getting directly involved in real folk and popular song was not until the 70s. I felt that it was all political, recovering the old ballads for example in the voices and language of the culture they belonged to, and allowing that to be heard was a hugely important political thing. Donald Smith, storyteller and organizer, Edinburgh

It seems to me to come from people who were outraged by the fact that people are still incapable of solving things by any means other than bombs and bullets. Particularly, from people fighting for justice, who saw enormous injustices perpetrated in their name. The big example in my experience was Vietnam, the way that song could help turn the tide, with Joan Baez and many others.
Political song is not just to do with war, but with the voice of people, epitomised by the bard expressing that, trying to make a difference both to the consciousness of the world, and the opinion of politicians. It’s a way of shifting consciousness, and doing it through the heart. When the heart feels something, it can creep into the mind and generate an action.
Political song for me means that galvanising way that people who feel deeply want to shift and improve the world. There are the other enormities, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the world is ruled by a crazy acquisitive capitalism, a perpetual grab and growth and greed that is a downhill road to nowhere.
Political song is nearly always motivated by a kind of vision, by heart and by idealism, sometimes by religious belief, but frequently by a great sense of humanity. In our country it was epitomised very vividly by Robert Burns. He felt the enormity of betrayal in ‘Parcel of Rogues’, but still this positive sense of the reaching out of hands to one another in ‘A Man‘s a Man’. David Campbell, storyteller, Edinburgh

Political song is a way of bringing people together. It's quite strange, I imagine it happens in other political organisations, in the SNP at the end of the night everyone coming together and spontaneously bursting into song. Nobody has a control over it, it just happens. That's a good thing. There are songs that belong to a movement, to organisations. It's part of each party or organisation's politics. It brings people together.
In the SNP it can be any number of songs - 'Scots Wha Hae', 'Flower of Scotland', 'The Freedom Come-All-Ye'. There's always somebody, a couple of people, know the words to something and can lead it in, kick it off, and everyone joins in and then it gets passed down. Somewhere in the SNP songs have always been passed down in that way.
I don't know why, it's kind of part of the heritage of the whole thing, the history, it's a lesson in some cases, a need to know the things, the history, to take you forward. It lets you reflect on what's been before. You go home and reflect, if you don't know the songs you look into the history of the song. Councillor Alison Thewliss, SNP, Calton Ward, Glasgow

Political songs mean for me songs of resistance, of struggle, of injustice. Songs from anywhere, songs of solidarity are very important to me. Eileen Penman, singer, Edinburgh

I was part of a group called Local Heroes, part of Ploughshares, not part of a song group, but definitely a supporter around affinity groups, and ad hoc actions at Faslane, primarily anti-Trident. There was no singing in our particular actions, but I have joined singing groups that have turned up at Faslane. There's one called Raised Voices in Edinburgh. One musical thing I did do at Faslane was an anti-Trident oratorio. [It was] performed first at the High Courts in Edinburgh. We all kind of dressed up as lawyers, and managed to get into the building by stealth, and take over a hall and sing it, about three years ago, when the ruling on Trident came out. It had gone up to the High Court, whether our Law Lords deemed whether it was legitimate, whether there was a case in international law to fight against nuclear weapons.
What does [political song] mean to me? Strengthening my faith, and if I'm involved in something. [Her young son Shonny then interjected "Goodness to me', and she responded "It means goodness to Shonny"]. It's a way of getting through bad times and dark times as well. And because it comes from the voices of people, quite often people who have gone before, and you know that song has been sung by people before you, and hopefully by people after you, it is part of that historical continuum that's really important in terms of social justice, and movement for social change. Babs [Barbara] McGregor singer, of Stornaway, now living in Glasgow

It takes me back to [an Eden] time, when possibly I was just coming up into the folk scene, and I got tapes from people, recordings of people. Things like the campaign down on Clydeside, songs like 'Ding Dong Dollar', all that sort of stuff, that immediately rings a bell, that was to me the ultimate time of protest songs. Then you have the American side, songs about Vietnam, "All the years of growing up are wasted now and done". About the young girl that was killed on a Vietnam demonstration. These songs, they don't let us ever forget that the impact of a song, it can make a difference, because people heard about this girl that was shot. Also, it helps the situation where political pressure can downplay an incident or an event, and somebody writes a song about it. Even a generation later, I hear it and say, "What the hell was all that about? I never heard about that. My god, did that happen?" It's probably still happening today, because there's suppression of free speech all around the world, and on our doorsteps still. I don't think that the writers are around now with quite the same power as there used to be in think that generation, the Vietnam war, anti-nuclear demonstrations, which you [the author] were very much a part of. You had your hand in it. Dougie MacKenzie, singer, Inverness

I think there's maybe three strands of this for me. One of them is I think people sing political songs as a declaration of what team they belong to. "This is me and my beliefs." It's a kind of alignment and a belonging thing. It's about somewhere to put your rage. What else can you do? You can go and you can sing the song. Maybe it's an extension of that old thing about flyting. And it's also, if you're somebody who doesn't live too easily with powerlessness, as I don't, then there's maybe an illusion of being less powerless.
The one that gets me impassioned the most is one I've been singing a long time. 'I didn't raise my son to be a soldier'. Unfortunately it continually becomes relevant, and I have three sons. The whole idea of any of them ever putting themselves and me through all of that just would be appalling, so that would be the biggie for me.
Another thing, it's not just a declaration of the tribe that you belong to, to the people who are in the same tribe, it's to the people who are not. But there's also something that's just an extension of what I think singing is about. I think singing - you could use the word communication and that's as clear as anything - I used to say 'Me too' because - I like songs about pain anyway - I've been there, I've got that T shirt, and so there's a sense of less isolation, an emotional thing. And now I would express it as, "Let's you and I talk, let's say 'Who are you, who am I?'" And of course the other person isn't talking - but they are in their response. Whether it's about the conversation they come up and have with you, or the look or body language or anything else. We're talking. So, the political song is that kind of conversation.
There's two that are important for me. There's the one about the pain, which might not be about politics, might be about abandonment, rejection, those kind of things. And the political one is about all the things that make you angry about the world that you live in, you think are unfair, and "Do you think that too?" Chris Miles, singer, Fife

I think the most political songs I know are songs where people have a really rum do in employment, if you understand me. They don't necessarily mention trade unions, they don't mention labour history, they mention how they've been done wrong in their job.
I was thinking of one about a navvy, just five minutes ago. He ended up killing his ganger, and the ganger's name was Green, and it's 1840/41, on the New Western Railway in Glasgow - Bishopbriggs. He murdered his boss because his boss charged him four and fourpence for breaking a wheelbarrow, so the song goes.
That's the sort of labour song that I think about. I also think about soldiers' songs in that bracket as well, the sort of soldiers' songs that took the mickey out of their bosses, like "Bless em all, the long and the short and the tall", and 'When This Bloody War Is Over', and this sort of thing. They're sort of linked in with labour songs, although we named our son after a labour song, because his name is Joe, named after Joe in the labour song ‘The Ballad of Joe Hill’. Hillstrom was his proper name. "I dreamed I saw" - that's associated with him, although Joe Hill's actual song was a parody of ‘The Sweet Bye and Bye’ - "We'll get pie in the sky when we die". But the song people associated with Joe Hill was "I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night." Ian Russell, Director of Elphinstone Institute, Aberdeen

I would differentiate between songs of protest and political songs. Songs of protest are aimed at all politicians and political songs are either for or against a political party or ideal. Archie Fisher, singer and songmaker

Much political song is a form of activism. The recorded history of activism as such is very much missing, because the people who would be best capable of doing it, and most motivated to doing it, are the activists themselves. And most of them are too busy being engaged in these activities to be involved in recording about it. It’s not an unknown problem. Activists often do discuss the absence of that. I don’t really distinguish between political song and any form of art. I think there is danger of seeing these things in a category, some of the greatest politics is about survival, and most great art is about survival or existence in one way or another. I see some great political songs as not having anything overtly about politics in them. That would be a danger to say that songs have to be issue related, I don’t see it in that sense at all.
A song like ‘Joe Hill’ has an obvious political sense to it, but there’s something else going on besides that, maybe a function of who is singing it. Joan Baez at her best, or Paul Robeson, will do something different singing it, but at the same time the aesthetic quality is not absent from the song. It’s not just a song to try and motivate a political struggle, it’s also about the life of a man gone who was a really committed human being.
Some songs are very much of their period and time, made for immediate use and using existing melodies. But Freddie Anderson [an Irish writer who lived in Glasgow] for example was capable of both making lyrics for the event, and of showing a great sensitivity in some of his really fine poems.
There are some great Gaelic songs. I don’t even know the words but I would regard the very act of singing them as political because it’s a language that has been proscribed. What if it’s a Kurdish song? People have been executed in Turkey for singing a song in Kurdish. So that the very act of singing in a forbidden language is a political act. It might be the equivalent of ‘To A Daffodil’ by Wordsworth in translation, but the very act of doing it is political.
The opinions people have about it are obviously to do with the people themselves, where they are coming from. Those who tend to put [songs] into boxes maybe have options, a choice in their lives. Other people don’t have a choice, it’s almost like the very act of survival is a political act.
That would be the case of people working in prohibited languages for example, like the use of Gaelic. You can bring that argument to songs being sung in a Glasgow voice, that in itself is a political act, because you’ll be punished for it, when a child does that, it doesn’t matter if they’re singing ‘Eeny Meaney Minie Mo’, that in itself becomes a political act. For people to dismiss that as non-political indicates that they don’t have that experience in their personal background. They’ve never seen their children belted by a teacher because they’ve spoke in their own voice. That categorisation is really a function of one’s own often economic and cultural background. Jim Kelman, novelist

I remember singing many years ago at a Morning Star concert. It was the first political gig I had done. Dick Gaughan was the main attraction. I sat down and had a cuppa with him before our performances and told him I was a tad nervous - I was shaking. He asked why and I said that I really didn't know any political songs. He came straight back at me and said "Listen hen, they're aa political." That made me stop and think. From that day to this I've looked for the political connections in the songs I sing and the connections are there whether overtly political or at a more personal level. Politics to me is integral to folk song - no matter what culture it comes from. Gordeanna McCulloch, singer

I must admit when you first mentioned it I was thinking of Billy Bragg and that vein of political song, which I've got a lot of sympathy with. [Then] songs about people's situations in the working class, their lives. Like "Shift and spin, warp and twine", that's a political song, in a way. And Mary Brooksbanks' song 'Oh Dear Me', about women's politics. Mary Russell, organizer, Aberdeen

I think it’s a way of telling a story, it’s much easier for people to listen to, to encourage people to reflect on the words and their own views, it’s a really good way of getting a message across. Cathie Peattie, Singer, MSP, Grangemouth

A lot of things. There is the argument that the personal is political, and the political is personal. The first thing to come to mind is the notion of a song that aspires to make a difference, either by alerting people to something they didn’t know, or by gathering them to fight something they did know but put them together as a unit, a group. But I think you could also say that these amazing recordings that Alan Lomax did on US prison farms, where the singer is doing a wordless moan, and all his heart is in it, that cannot but be political, when you hear it and you’re not in that situation. So political song can be direct, it can be very indirect, it can be very personal. Ann Neilson, Singer, Rutherglen

t's one of those questions that can have two meanings, because I would contend that songs being by and about people, then they're all political. But if you mean in a more precise sense, I suppose it means generally songs that tell me what I know already. For that reason really, since I was about thirty I suppose, I've been less and less interested in them. In my teens and twenties I loved that stuff. I have a sort of theory that probably Bob Dylan was responsible for the opening of many more folk clubs than a lot of people realise. I certainly know that when I heard the second Dylan record I'd learned all the songs within a fortnight, and wanted nothing else than to sing them with and to people who had also learned them and enjoyed them. In the local folk club. And if there wasn't one, which there usually wasn't in the early or mid 60s, you started one. You started one yourself in the local pub, and it was where people came together and sang the songs they were desperate to sing, because presumably there was something that was inside you and needed expression, and you hadn't had any way of doing that before, really.
[Bob Dylan is a political songwriter] because most of his songs address political issues, albeit obliquely. I know there are a lot of what I consider his better songs didn't. He wrote some wonderful ballads, but a lot of the popular ones, the protest songs, address political issues, and yes, are political songs.
In my experience most overtly political songs in the 60s were telling me to believe something I already believed. ['The Freedom Come-All-Ye'] is still relevant, and will be as long as there are people on the planet I should think. But most of the CND songs that were in fashion then were incredibly simplistic and naive. Even quite a lot of Leon Rosselson's songs, who I feel is one of the best of that sort of writer, there are exceptions but so many of them are incredibly naive and simplistic, and for me don't stand the test of time. [They were] simplistic in their approach to the problem. The 'Freedom Come-All-Ye' is a simple song, but immensely rich, deep, call it what you want. Rod Stradling, Editor, Musical Traditions web magazine, London

Political song is anti-establishment and anti-war. It depends what you’re fighting against. There is a wonderful anti-war song in Gaelic, ‘Gillein Uibhist, the Men of Uist’, it is anti the last war. It speaks of Hitler and Himmler and Goebbels and all, and the boys of Uist striking them with iron rods to their death. Oh, it’s the most powerful anti-war song in any language I know. Dolina MacLennan, singer, Edinburgh

I could interpret that question in two different ways, so I will - and answer them both. 'What do I mean by political song' first of all. Well, in the field of music that I work in, folk music, for me it means a song that interprets society as structured along class-based lines and in some way comments on that society and sometimes, though not always, seeks ways to reshape it. If we understand folk music as the musical and poetic expression of the labouring classes, ie.'the folk', then there is a real sense in which all folk music is political. It is the music of a certain class and reflects how that class perceives itself in relation to the rest of society.
Many of our ballads, the Muckle Sangs, are intensely class conscious. We often find the ploughboy laddie or the serving man, the collier, weaver or whatever, pitting his wits or locking in struggle against the masters. I'm thinking here of our 'big songs' like ‘The Dowie Dens Of Yarrow’, ‘MacPherson's Rant’ etc. and also the later lyrical compositions such as ‘The Collier Laddie’, ‘The Four Loom Weaver’ and so on.
Other times it can be women who are defending themselves as best they can in a male dominated society. ‘The Knight and The Shepherd’s Daughter’ or ‘Bruton Town’ for instance. Even bawdy ballads such as ‘The Broomfield Wager’ or ‘Home Boys Home’ are political in this sense. These are all political songs to me, as are the ballads of poachers, sailors taken by press gangs, recruited colliers, female highwaymen and drummer girls.
Even our bothy ballads are filled with a very partisan class-consciousness, pro-labourer and anti-farmer. I've often thought you could do a set of entirely traditional ballads and songs, and by contextualising the songs in this way, it would be a highly political statement. Then, of course, there is the outright political repertoire, both traditional and contemporary we would all instantly recognise. Irish rebel songs, Jacobite songs and the industrial-era strike and disaster songs.
Okay, so what do these songs mean to me, personally? Why is the political nature of folk song important in the modern age? Well, for a start, these songs of antiquity remind us that inequality and oppression have been around for as long as class society itself. The world that gave rise to them may seem on the surface to be greatly altered nowadays, but when we look closer, we see that the same social relations still persist today. Even if the social conditions we live in at the lower end of the economic spectrum are far less deplorable than they once were, the level of inequality between the classes remains as great, if not greater than before. And the cruel wars that slay the young men in our folksongs are far more lethal now than in the days of muskets and cannons. For me, folk songs are political because by singing them with understanding, we develop our class consciousness and that increases our political awareness and reinforces the need to reshape our society. Alistair Hulett, songmaker, Glasgow