When I was starting out in the Puma Blues days, I was really the very model of the "angry young man". I suppose it comes with the times I was raised in and the coming of age of my desire to really be an artist come hell or high water. I listened to angry music when I was in school, though like all things I burned out on it when the "art" thing got more serious and I drifted into what can only be called experimental, mostly European sounds. But by the time Puma came around, I'd drifted back into the angry thing once more. This was the Reagan Years basically. I'd been trickled down on enough to get pissed off at a lot of things.
Then, it happened again, that drifting into space music.
Ah, but these days, as the artistic restraints have been lifted once more, and probably reflecting something of the times, I've re-discovered my anger. The big difference this time being it's tempered with a deep sadness and feelings of compassion. Age has not really dampened the outrage at the senseless system that flays my heart on a daily basis, but it has brought with it a wider, more holistic understanding of the moral and ethical black hole at the center of the world we make for each other.
This song, this angry song by Bruce Cockburn was remembered this morning.
"They call it democracy"
padded with power here they come
international loan sharks backed by the guns
of market hungry military profiteers
whose word is a swamp and
whose brow is smeared with the blood of the poor
who rob life of its quality
who render rage a necessity
by turning countries into labour camps
modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom
sinister cynical instrument
who makes the gun into a sacrament
--the only response to the deification of tyranny
by so-called "developed" nations'
idolatry of ideology
north south east
west kill the best and buy the rest
it's just spend a buck to make a buck
you don't really give a flying fuck
about the people in misery
IMF dirty MF
takes away everything it can get
always making certain that there's one thing left
keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
see the paid-off local bottom feeders
passing themselves off as leaders
kiss the ladies
shake hands with the fellows
and it's open for business like a cheap bordello
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
see the loaded eyes of the children too
trying to make the best of it the way kids do
one day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
to find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
they call the revolution
IMF dirty MF
takes away everything it can get
always making certain that there's one thing left
keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy.
I'm glad I remembered it.
It's hard to believe it was written twenty, twenty-five or more years ago.
Same as it ever was.
M.Z.
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