Category Archives: Music

German government targets anti-nazi pastor instead of nazis

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This is a video about German Protestant preacher Lothar König, speaking at an anti-racist demonstration in Jena.

By Martin Nowak in Germany:

State prosecutors in Dresden, Germany, target anti-Nazi protesters

26 April 2013

The state prosecutor in Dresden is systematically targeting opponents of Nazi groups, in a region that is one of the centres of right-wing extremism in Germany. Along with Mecklenburg-Pomerania, Saxony is the only state where the neo-fascist German National Democratic Party (NPD) is represented in the state parliament. The party also has representation in all city councils and many community councils. Saxony was the epicentre of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a right-wing terrorist group responsible for at least nine murders between 2000 and 2006.

The trial against a youth pastor from the town of Jena, Lothar König, which began on April 4, is the high point of the campaign by the state authorities in Dresden. König has been accused of serious breach of the peace, obstruction of justice and resisting police officers. He supposedly incited demonstrators to attack the police at an annual demonstration against right-wing extremism in February 2011.

König, who is almost 60, has been involved for years in protests against the extreme right and Nazi groups. With his young followers, he supported protests in the 1990s against right-wing extremism and anti-immigrant chauvinism. At these events, he was known for opposing any sort of violence and intervening to de-escalate situations. His work among youth in Jena is well-regarded, and he has received awards from several anti-racist foundations.

As he has done every year, König travelled to Dresden on February 19, 2011, to demonstrate with a broad coalition of political parties, trade unions and victim-support groups against a march held by neo-Nazis to commemorate German victims of the allied bombing of the city during WWII. In his renovated Volkswagen (VW) bus with loudspeakers, nicknamed “Noisy”, he accompanied roughly 20,000 demonstrators, who protested against some 3,000 neo-Nazis.

In the course of the protest, clashes took place between demonstrators and the police, which according to police sources resulted in 118 severe injuries to officers. In reality, only eight police officers were hurt, while others suffered only minor injuries as they waded in against demonstrators.

Countless eyewitnesses and recordings have confirmed that König sought to de-escalate the situation, even when the police closed off all routes for the protesters. He used the loudspeakers on his vehicle to play music, show demonstrators where to go, and call for peaceful protest against the neo-Nazis.

Nonetheless, the state prosecutor has accused him of encouraging violence, either with declarations he apparently made or merely by his presence. According to officials, with the aid of “Noisy”, König acted as a “communications point and coordinator of violent acts.” “From his vehicle”, they claim, “he called upon leftists to commit violence.” The prosecutor alleges König’s vehicle issued a call to “cover the pigs with stones” and attempted to force a police vehicle off the road.

All of the available video and sound recordings of the demonstration directly contradict the accusations made against König by the state prosecutor.

In a video extract that the prosecution has used against him, König says, “Come on people. There are a lot of us here. Just move on. Go further on. The police have no shields, no weapons.” Then he turned his vehicle around and called for everyone to follow him.

The claim by the prosecutor that König called at this point for violence against the police is absurd. In an interview with ZDF television, Professor Martin Kutscha, an expert on constitutional law who had seen the video, declared, “I have the impression that the pastor tried to encourage moderation among the demonstrators by turning his vehicle around and calling upon them to stay with his car, and certainly did not attempt to incite people to throw stones or something similar.”

The prosecutor is even trying to use the fact that König played music against him. The prosecutor’s office refers to the “aggressive and inflammatory” character of the music—i.e., “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones and “Kein Macht für Niemand” (“No Power for Anybody”) by the German group Ton Steine Scherben—which supposedly promoted violence.

The trial of König is such a blatant travesty of basic constitutional principles and democratic rights that no fewer than four human rights organisations have denounced it as a “political trial.”

The lead-up to the trial and the course it has run so far make clear that the prosecution of König is aimed at criminalising all opposition to the annual neo-Nazi march in Dresden.

The trial was first postponed from its original start date of March 19. The defence requested this after discovering just a few days earlier that there were up to 170 pages of documents and a CD in the evidence files of which they had not been aware. The prosecution and a spokesperson for the court falsely claimed that this was insignificant material.

The first day of the trial focused on the accusations against König. The defence argued that the indictment should not be read out at the start, stating it was vague and suggestive, and did not even contain a concrete charge. Nevertheless, the charges were read out, after which König and his defence lawyer gave statements in which they accused the prosecution of suppressing evidence, sloppiness, laziness and making allegations damaging to König.

The Dresden state prosecutor has initiated thousands of investigations targeting participants in demonstrations against neo-Nazis. The police collected data from more than a million mobile phones through illegal surveillance. Thousands of charges were brought against opponents of neo-Nazis, including 1,500 alone for alleged offences against a law covering demonstrations.

Special forces commandos have stormed and searched the homes of suspects, in some cases without any permission, including König’s office in Jena. When König was away on a trip to the Alps, police officers broke into his home without any authorisation and confiscated a computer, some CDs and his VW bus, which was parked in front of the house.

The raid on August 10 of last year came just days after König gave an interview to the news magazine Der Spiegel, in which he criticised the authorities in Saxony, comparing their actions to the notorious Stasi security forces in the GDR (former East Germany), and denounced the police for their brutal methods.

The close ties between the authorities in Dresden and the extreme right are so evident that even the bourgeois press has published critical articles. Der Spiegel commented on the large-scale measures taken by the police against anti-Nazi demonstrators at the protest last year. “In fact, it seems like the authorities and the judiciary in Saxony seek to hound citizens who oppose the Nazis with full force, while the extreme right are able to do what they like”, noted the newspaper.

The Dresden district court intends to make an example of König. Just a few months before the beginning of his trial, another anti-Nazi protester, Tim H, was sentenced to 22 months imprisonment without bail for a severe breach of the peace, grievous bodily harm and verbal abuse. In this case, too, neither the court nor the prosecution was able to prove the alleged offences or even any general involvement in criminal activities on the part of the defendant.

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Singer Richie Havens dies

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This music video from the USA is called Richie Havens, Freedom, (Woodstock).

From Wikipedia:

Richard P. “Richie” Havens (January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013)[1] was an American folk singer and guitarist.[2] He is best known for his intense, rhythmic guitar style (often in open tunings), soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. …

Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children.[2] At an early age, he began organizing his neighborhood friends into street corner doo-wop groups and was performing with The McCrea Gospel Singers at 16.[2] At age 20, Havens left Brooklyn, seeking artistic stimulation in Greenwich Village. “I saw the Village as a place to escape to, in order to express yourself,” he recalls. “I had first gone there during the Beatnik days of the 1950s to perform poetry, then I drew portraits for two years and stayed up all night listening to folk music in the clubs. It took a while before I thought of picking up a guitar.”[citation needed]

Havens’ reputation as a solo performer soon spread beyond the Village folk circles.[2] After cutting two records for Douglas Records, Havens signed on with Bob Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, and landed a record deal with the Verve Forecast label. Verve released Mixed Bag in 1967, which featured tracks like “Handsome Johnny” (co-written by Havens and future Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr.), “Follow”, and a cover of Bob Dylan‘s “Just Like a Woman“. By 1969, he had released five more albums. Something Else Again (1968) became Havens’ first album to hit the Billboard chart and also pulled Mixed Bag back onto the charts.

Havens’ reputation as a live performer earned him widespread notice. His Woodstock appearance proved to be a major turning point in his career.[2] As the festival’s first performer, he held the crowd for nearly three hours (in part because he was told to perform a lengthy set because many artists were delayed in reaching the festival location), and was called back for several encores. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual “Motherless Child” that became “Freedom”. The subsequent Woodstock movie release helped Havens reach a worldwide audience. He also appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival in late August 1969.[3][4] …

Increasingly, Havens devoted his energies to educating young people about ecological issues. In the mid-1970s, he co-founded the Northwind Undersea Institute, an oceanographic children’s museum on City Island in the Bronx. That, in turn, led to the creation of The Natural Guard, an organization Richie describes as “a way of helping kids learn that they can have a hands-on role in affecting the environment. Children study the land, water, and air in their own communities and see how they can make positive changes from something as simple as planting a garden in an abandoned lot.” …

Havens died of a heart attack on April 22, 2013. He was 72 years old.

See also here. And here.

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‘Heavy metal music helps plants’

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This music video is called Black Sabbath playing Paranoid in Paris in 1970.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Friday 19 April 2013

Plants ‘love rocking out to a bit of metal’

Garden guru Chris Beardshaw recommended a new technique for bigger blooms today: blast your plants with heavy metal.

The broadcaster and gardening expert told Radio 4 listeners that a constant diet of Black Sabbath worked wonders on a greenhouse full of plants.

But he warned the audience of Gardeners’ Question Time that exposure to Cliff Richard proved a total disaster and killed every plant in a horticultural experiment.

This music video is called Cliff Richard, The Day I Met Marie.

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Equal marriage rights in New Zealand

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This video fropm New Zealand says about itself:

Pokarekare Ana – Full version with lyrics, translation and story

I couldn’t find the full version to this anywhere on youtube so I decided to post it myself, the lyrics are there to sing along to, along with a translation; with a gorgeous picture of a Kapiti sunset in the background. Also a link to the story behind one of the world’s most beautiful love songs, enjoy :)

in this version they sing Tua whati aku pene, instead of whati whati aku pene, tua basically meaning 2, don’t worry it has the same meaning.

Translation:
Pökarekare ana (They are agitated)
ngä wai o Rotorua(The waters of Rotorua/Waiapu)
Whiti atu koe hine (But when you cross over girl)
marino ana e(They will be calm)

Chorus:
E hine e (Oh girl)
hoki mai ra(Return to me)
Ka mate ahau (I could die)
I te aroha e(of love for you)

Tuhituhi taku reta (I have written my letter)
tuku atu taku rïngi(I have sent my ring)
Kia kite tö iwi (So that your people can see)
raru raru ana e(That I am troubled)

Chorus

E kore te aroha (My love will never)
e maroke i te rä(Be dried by the sun)
Mäkükü tonu (It will be forever moistened)
I aku roimata e(By my tears)

chorus

Tua whati taku pene (My pen is shattered)
ka pau aku pepa(I have no more paper)
Ko taku aroha (But my love)
mau tonu ana e(Is still steadfast)

Chorus

Link to the story: here.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

New Zealand MPs vote to legalise same-sex marriage

Thursday 18 April 2013

The New Zealand parliament echoed with a traditional Maori love song on Wednesday after MPs made it the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to legalise same-sex marriage.

Supporters of the Bill, including hundreds of gay-rights advocates, stood and cheered after the 77-44 vote was announced.

Then as MPs tried to move to next business, someone started singing Pokarekare Ana in the Maori language and soon nearly the whole room joined in.

Before the vote, MP Maurice Williamson mocked a claim that the Bill would set off a “gay onslaught.”

“The sun will still rise tomorrow,” he assured the Bill’s opponents.

Same-sex marriage is recognised in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina and Denmark.

MPs in Uruguay approved a law last week that President Jose Mujica is expected to sign.

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Arabic, other poetry and music

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On 7 April 2013, there was a poetry and music afternoon.

Part of it was a celebration.

Because in 1613, so 400 years ago, Leiden University established one of Europe’s first chairs of Arabic language and culture.

When I entered, Gerdi van der Poel read one of her poems about capitalist society.

After her came Hans Roest. He read his poems in public for the first time ever. One of them was about a tulip.

Then came Roel Weerheijm, born in Middelburg, later in Utrecht.

This is a video about Roel Weerheijm at a poetry slam.

Then, Erwin Mulder from Amsterdam.

Then, yours truly; with poems on the Iraq war, the Yugoslavia war, a bee-eater, a beetle and an umbrella.

Then, Peter Brouwer‘s poems.

Then, poems by A.C.G. Vianen, living in Eindhoven now.

And Leiden poet Paul Groenendaal.

After a pause, Jos van den Broek, presenting his new book.

Petra Sijpesteijn

Then, Petra Sijpesteijn, Professor of Arabic Language and Culture; about the four hundred years of Arabic at Leiden University.

After her, Ali Rida Rizek from Lebanon read an Arabic poem by a Palestinian poet.

Petra Sijpesteijn then translated that poem into Dutch.

Tijs Huys told an Arabic fairy tale.

Rian Evers sang Arabic songs.

Finally, after another pause, Peter Brouwer, yours truly, and the other poets who had already read their poems, had their second chances.

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British Thatcher fans mistake satirical song for tribute

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After the death of British Conservative ex-Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher, a rapid rise up the British charts of the 74-years-old song “Ding Dong! The witch is dead”, from the musical The wizard of Oz, was one of the signs that many people in Britain strongly disliked the late Lady Thatcher and her policies.

Conservative British politicians wanted to counter this musical dislike by putting a song in praise of their heroine high into the music charts.

Well.. err … WAS the song which they chose for this really in praise of Margaret Thatcher?

It is this song.

It says about itself:

NOTSENSIBLES – I’m in Love with Margaret Thatcher b/w Little Boxes, Garry Bushell‘s Band of the week.

Classic two-fingered salute to Margaret Thatcher courtesy of Burnley’s NOTSENSIBLES. Lots of scarce Notsensibles pictures.

Metro daily in Britain writes:

The irony of the campaign is that the original song – despite its seemingly praiseworthy lyrics – is actually believed to be a sarcastic dig at the former prime minister by the punk band from Burnley, Lancashire.

According to Wikipedia:

band member Steven Hartley commented that it had been written as a satirical swipe at her. … singer Michael “Haggis” Hargreaves …said: “I find it hilarious that Tories have adopted it.”

Maybe Thatcher fans have adopted a punk rock satire as a song of praise because no-one able to write music has ever written a real pro-Thatcher song.

The Conservative politicians failed in their aim to get I’m in Love with Margaret Thatcher higher up the charts than Ding Dong! The witch is dead. Maybe because there are fewer Thatcher supporters than Thatcher opponents in Britain. And maybe because Conservatives, even if unable to distinguish between satire and tribute, hate punk rock, or any music which is not a military march, so much that they will not buy it, even with supposedly Thatcherite lyrics.

This is not the first time that British Tories don’t understand the meaning of a song.

Meaning this song.

It says about itself:

Strawbs – Part of the union 1973

Now I’m a union man
Amazed at what I am
I say what I think
That the company stinks
Yes I’m a union man.

When we meet in the local hall
I’ll be voting with them all
With a hell of a shout
It’s out brothers out
And the rise of the factory’s fall.

Oh you don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die.

As a union man I’m wise
To the lies of the company spies
And I don’t get fooled
By the factory rules
‘Cause I always read between the lines.

And I always get my way
If I strike for higher pay
When I show my card
To the Scotland Yard
This what I say.

Oh you don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die.

Before the union did appear
My life was half as clear
Now I’ve got the power
To the working hour
And every other day of the year.

So though I’m a working man
I can ruin the government’s plan
Though I’m not too hard
The sight of my card
Makes me some kind of superman.

Oh you don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die.

Wikipedia writes:

The song was unofficially adopted by the trade union movement, and it is widely considered to be a proud folk anthem for the working man.

The Free Online Library writes:

The rousing sing-along “Part Of The Union” was embraced by unions but was vilified by the Conservative Party, which assembled Parliament to vote for banning the song. In spite of, or because of, the controversy, the song rose to #2.

However, other Tories thought the song was a satire of trade unionism; no matter how often Strawbs band members denied that.

Apartheid’s victims will shed no tears about Thatcher: here.

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Cleotha Staples, United States singer, RIP

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Thisd music video from the USA is called THE STAPLE SINGERS -”Freedom Highway” (1965).

By Hiram Lee in the USA:

Remembering Cleotha Staples and the Staple Singers

10 April 2013

Cleotha Staples, a member of the popular gospel, folk and R&B group the Staple Singers, died recently at the age of 78. Staples passed away at her home on the South Side of Chicago on February 21. She had been struggling with Alzheimer’s disease for some 12 years.

Perhaps best known today for their hits of the 1970s, including “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself,” the group’s career spanned almost half a century. Their most successful artistic period, lasting from the late 1950s through the 1960s, was bound up with the struggles of the civil rights movement and the fight to end the Vietnam war.

Roebuck “Pops” Staples formed the Staple Singers with daughters Mavis and Cleotha and son Pervis in 1948. Daughter Yvonne would also join the group in the late 1950s. Cleotha, a soprano, would play a vital role in providing the richly textured harmony vocals that gave support to the lead lines of Mavis and Pops.

The Staples were a working class family who knew something of real life. Prior to her career in music, Cleotha had trained as a dressmaker at the Dunbar Trade School, eventually getting a job sewing shoulder pads into coats for the Hart, Schafner and Marx clothing company. Family patriarch Pops Staples (1914-2000) grew up on a cotton plantation in Mississippi, before finding work in the steel mills and stockyards of Chicago in the 1930s. These experiences counted for something. There was a sense in which the Staples’ gospel music had its feet planted on the ground as much as in the heavens.

The family made their first appearances as a music group in Chicago churches and would make their first recordings by 1953. Listening to their early recordings, one is struck by the shimmering, blues-influenced guitar of Pops (he had studied with blues pioneer Charley Patton as a younger man), the warm harmonies of Pervis and Cleotha. Mavis’s sensibilities as a lead vocalist seemed to reach beyond her young age.

The 1959 album Uncloudy Day is certainly worth hearing . The single of the same name was enormously popular, selling a million copies. The hypnotic “This May Be The Last Time,” later adapted by the Rolling Stones for their 1965 hit “The Last Time,” is another standout.

Galvanized by the struggle against official segregation then underway in the South, the Staples’ music began to change. The fight for equality became the central concern of their work. Songs like “Freedom Highway” or “Why Am I Treated So Bad” movingly expressed the anger and hopes of masses of black workers and all those outraged by inequality in the southern US.

The latter song was among the Staples’ best. Easy-going, “cool” even when angry, the song slinks its way forward with a kind of unshakeable determination. “This old world is in a bad condition,” says Pops, recalling the mistreatment of black youth breaking through the segregated schools system. The song urges the students forward. Reportedly a favorite of Martin Luther King Jr., the Staples would perform the song at several civil rights rallies at which King spoke.

Departing from the gospel music world, the Staples associated themselves with more politicized folk music circles and would give memorable performances at the Newport Folk Festival. They came to know Bob Dylan when he was making his most compelling and oppositional work, and recorded his startling “Masters of War” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” “Even Jesus would never forgive what you do,” sang the top-selling gospel group to the “masters of war.”

Following their increasing shift to “secular music,” the Staples in 1968 began recording for the Memphis-based Stax Records label, home to such remarkable Soul and R&B artists as Otis Redding, Carla Thomas and Sam & Dave. In addition to the recordings made with her family, Cleotha would at this time also share lead vocal duties with the talented Eddie Floyd on the song “It’s Too Late.”

The Staples’ recordings for Stax are among their most popular today. The hit singles “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself” continue to find an appreciative audience decades after they were recorded.

These and other later Staples recordings, however, seem slight compared with much of their earlier work. An inability to go beyond the limited, reformist perspective of the civil rights movement had its consequences for the Staples’ music. They had reached a kind of artistic impasse.

The end of Jim Crow was a victory, but one which did not guarantee social rights and an end to oppression for the masses of black workers, or any other section of the working class, in the US. That would have meant a break with official political channels and a fight against capitalism. Instead, a black middle class layer was cultivated and permitted entry into official life, while the living standards of black and white workers alike continued to come under attack.

The Staples—and not just they—were unable to dig further down into the more fundamental questions of class and social life. In this context, the moral appeals for “respect” and the songs of self-empowerment the group continued to turn out, however well-intentioned, felt increasingly weak.

In spite of these difficulties, the Staples continued to be a popular group throughout the 1970s and would continue to have hits in the decades that followed. They disbanded following Pops Staples’ death in 2000, just one year after their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

At their strongest, the Staple Singers, gifted with a powerful and moving stage presence, communicated the democratic aspirations felt by millions. They placed those concerns at the very heart of their work. Their contribution deserves to be remembered and revisited.

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