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I've been uncomfortable with the "celebration" of Remembrance Day for several years now, which I guess getting raised on folk music and being deeply creeped out by displays of nationalism will do to a person. I support what it was supposed to be, when it was established as Armistice Day: an annual reminder to never do that again. It couldn't be that after they did do it again, and again, and again; it had to become a festival of pants-creaming over the glorious sacrifice of the courageous dead and, as years passed and dominant culture moved further away from remembering just how horrible the "Great War" was, the final stanza of "In Flanders Fields" became the important bit and screw the rest of it. This year with all of the expected fuss about the centenary (of the beginning of the war, not the armistice) and then the unexpected violence in Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu on October 20th and on Parliament Hill on the 22nd people are talking about how it is extra important that we Remember, now more than ever, and it makes me want to gag. Not that I want to make light of those events, I don't, I just can't see how sticking red poppies and "We Remember" signs on everything and holding a public holiday praising the idea of military service is all that deeply different from NRA slime crying for more guns as an answer to mass shootings. Couldn't that money and energy be better used supporting actual human veterans, for example addressing their physical and mental health needs? (*coughfuckoff NDP petition to make RD a legal holiday nationwide*) I recognize the privilege involved in advocating pacifism, in being in a position where pacifism looks like an option, but I don't think it's paradoxical or disrespectful to question the pro-war messages built into contemporary rhetoric around Remembrance Day--or did you want me to believe that any of those "brave men and women who gave their lives" did it so there would be more wars?
Not an especially subtle or nuanced playlist but neither is all that Canada Remembers propaganda.
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Pete Seeger
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Eric Bogle
(Kind of ableist, saying that losing limbs is shameful and worse than death, but a poignant song otherwise.)
Crow on the Cradle
Judy Collins
Like Soldiers Do
Billy Bragg
Lives in the Balance
Richie Havens
Stonecutter
James Keelaghan
(The only specifically Canadian story in the mix and, I don't know why, the one that most reliably makes me cry.)
Medusa
Karine Polwart
(Co-written by Polwart and Keelaghan, actually; he's recorded it too but it sounds better in her accent.)
The Things I Have Seen
Richard Shindell
Man O'War
Stephen Fearing
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Buffy Sainte-Marie
(What I said about privilege: as a colonizer I get to mostly ignore the fact that colonization never stops and I am ultimately complicit in the ubiquitous flouting of jus in bello perpetrated by my cohorts. Also "Universal Soldier" really would have been obvious.)
Sally Was a Cop
Alejandro Escovedo
(Closely related tangent: people in power maintain power by exercising control over what does and doesn't get called war and when, e.g., using the rhetoric "war on drugs" to legitimize mass incarceration and glaringly racist disproportionate sentencing as well as to instigate, prolong, and manipulate overtly violent conflicts like the active Mexican Drug War.)
I Had No Right
Dar Williams
(Daniel Berrigan.)
What Did You Do in the War?
Jon Langford & Skull Orchard
Postcards from Cambodia
Bruce Cockburn
(Could fill an album-length anti/war playlist with just Bruce Cockburn--"Rocket Launcher", "Burn", "This Is Baghdad", etc.; here I wanted something a little less obvious.)
Student Visas
Corb Lund
Fiddle or a Gun
Oysterband
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Armistice Pals
(Found this centenary project EP while looking for a version of "Flowers" that had all the verses--Seeger wrote the first three, Joe Hickerson added the rest--but didn't screw the words or tune up too badly, and this one didn't meet my impossibly high standards but was still kinda neat.)
The Last Post
(Found this recording on the Australian War Memorial website, dunno where they got it from.)
Not an especially subtle or nuanced playlist but neither is all that Canada Remembers propaganda.
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Pete Seeger
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Eric Bogle
(Kind of ableist, saying that losing limbs is shameful and worse than death, but a poignant song otherwise.)
Crow on the Cradle
Judy Collins
Like Soldiers Do
Billy Bragg
Lives in the Balance
Richie Havens
Stonecutter
James Keelaghan
(The only specifically Canadian story in the mix and, I don't know why, the one that most reliably makes me cry.)
Medusa
Karine Polwart
(Co-written by Polwart and Keelaghan, actually; he's recorded it too but it sounds better in her accent.)
The Things I Have Seen
Richard Shindell
Man O'War
Stephen Fearing
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Buffy Sainte-Marie
(What I said about privilege: as a colonizer I get to mostly ignore the fact that colonization never stops and I am ultimately complicit in the ubiquitous flouting of jus in bello perpetrated by my cohorts. Also "Universal Soldier" really would have been obvious.)
Sally Was a Cop
Alejandro Escovedo
(Closely related tangent: people in power maintain power by exercising control over what does and doesn't get called war and when, e.g., using the rhetoric "war on drugs" to legitimize mass incarceration and glaringly racist disproportionate sentencing as well as to instigate, prolong, and manipulate overtly violent conflicts like the active Mexican Drug War.)
I Had No Right
Dar Williams
(Daniel Berrigan.)
What Did You Do in the War?
Jon Langford & Skull Orchard
Postcards from Cambodia
Bruce Cockburn
(Could fill an album-length anti/war playlist with just Bruce Cockburn--"Rocket Launcher", "Burn", "This Is Baghdad", etc.; here I wanted something a little less obvious.)
Student Visas
Corb Lund
Fiddle or a Gun
Oysterband
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Armistice Pals
(Found this centenary project EP while looking for a version of "Flowers" that had all the verses--Seeger wrote the first three, Joe Hickerson added the rest--but didn't screw the words or tune up too badly, and this one didn't meet my impossibly high standards but was still kinda neat.)
The Last Post
(Found this recording on the Australian War Memorial website, dunno where they got it from.)