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Music in a Time of War

Music Trumps Journalism Again
Danny Schechter, <www.MediaChannel.org>
October 10, 200
posted on <www.alternet.org>

It was September 23, in the same month that would years later go down in
infamy-plus. Battery Park City was a pit of sand then, not from fallen
towers as it is today, but because that corner of Lower Manhattan, next door
to the World Trade Center, was still a landfill site on which a city within
a city would soon rise.

The year was 1979, and 250,000 people converged in the shadow of the Twin
Towers for a giant No Nukes rally headlined by Jackson Browne and other
musical superstars. That rally was the culmination of five days of the MUSE
(Musicians United for Safe Energy) Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future at a
packed Madison Square Garden.

Jackson Browne sang his big hit that Sunday afternoon alongside the majestic
Hudson River. It was prophetically called "Before the Deluge" and contained
the line: "And let the buildings keep our children dry." He and his
counterparts had come to sing against the dangers of an energy policy built
around nuclear plants. Many others had come to hear the stars sing, to sing
along, to stand with them against a corporate threat that seemed to promise
only destruction. In those years, there was a strong intersection between
popular culture and movements for change. I helped anchor coverage for a
national string of commercial FM rock stations, coverage a political rally
would never get today.

Back then, years before we'd heard the term globalization, the World Trade
Center was considered a symbol of greed. "Do you lie down and let those
corporations roll over you?" Browne asked, "Can you leave your life in the
hands of those people?"

That 1979 event, and events like it, slowed (and some think stopped) the
momentum of nuclear plant construction. The nuclear industry was put on the
defensive and lost billions in the following years after some of the
problems critics warned against surfaced in places like Three Mile Island
and Chernobyl.

Oil's Role

None of us then could have foreseen the events of September 11, 2001, or how
the politics of energy and oil would become the backdrop for conflicts and
wars to come. Many of us still don't recognize that the "new war" most
Americans support as a just campaign to wipe out a band of evil terrorists
may morph quickly into a war to control the oil fields dominated by Iraq and
the Saudis, whose society produced Bin Ladin and funds Islamic extremism as
a counterweight against political radicalism and democratic change. As the
world economy shrinks and corporate profits decline, there will be pressures
for more intervention in other lands in a fight over resources.

For many in the desperately poor and developing world, the America they hate
or call the great Satan is experienced through the presence of the oil and
energy industries. Many of their opposition movements are aware of the power
and influence of multinational corporations as the wedge of U.S. influence,
even if they aren't much investigated or reported either abroad or here. I
have so far seen only one thorough-going analysis, for example, about the
oil aspect of this conflict in an American newspaper, a report by Frank
Viviano in the San Francisco Chronicle, republished by Global Exchange. "The
hidden stakes in the war against terrorism can be summed up in a single
word: oil," he writes. ""Rather than a simple confrontation between Islam
and the West, [these energy sources] will be the primary flash point of
global conflict for decades to come."

Most Americans are not exposed to much coverage of the interests that shape
our policies or the problems they exacerbate. At the same time, the people
who rally against our country overseas are not terribly well informed about
the Other America. Their media are rarely objective nor do they feature the
views of critics and dissenters. This is a shame because it is important to
know that the interests of the majority of working people are often at odds
with those in control. How many readers and viewers in other countries know
that an attack on a symbol of financial power also took the lives of 1,000
members of trade unions? Unhappily, the media in many countries keep their
cultures in a bubble of insularity and ignorance.

As Benjamin R. Barber makes clear in his thoughtful study, "Jihad vs.
McWorld", much of the world is locked in a battle between two
fundamentalisms that are equally at odds with the spirit and demands of
democracy. Islamic fundamentalism and global market capitalism share more in
outlook than is commonly recognized, he says. Both want to silence the
voices of ordinary people and impose forms of control from above; both use
media shamelessly and all too effectively to promote their ideological
mission and values.

Flashing Forward

Today, Jackson Browne is still at it, this time joining as many as 200 other
artists, athletes and others in recording another musical anthem, "We Are
Family," a song that originally came out in the year of the No Nukes rally
at the World Trade Center. "We Are Family" has been remade by one of its
original producers, Nile Rodgers, as an anthem of our common humanity, a
song to help promote a sense that we are all part of a global family that
has to stand up against the intolerance and hate crimes that have crawled
out of the rubble of September 11. I documented the 10-day production and
recording sessions for a "making of and meaning of" film, Spike Lee is
producing the music video.

Other artists have been very visible in this crisis. A telethon broadcast on
35 U.S. networks and in 156 countries featured top musicians singing
powerful songs of social concern (and raised $150 million for disaster
relief). A long-scheduled John Lennon tribute was also turned into a
fund-raiser. Both events featured renditions of Lennon's anthem "Imagine,"
which was on the list of songs that Clear Channel communications seemed to
want to censor from the radio. Music still has the power to do what
journalism does so rarely: reinforce empathy, caring and a sense of a world
with other possibilities.

Ten years ago, on the eve of the Gulf War, I produced a documentary on the
making of another message song, a remake of "Give Peace A Chance" by John
Lennon's son Sean and Lenny Kravitz, with 37 other artists from every
musical genre. That song was powerfully done but totally suppressed by the
media at the start of the Gulf War. No outlets would play a peace song then.
It was considered traitorous. Today, Yoko Ono has posted a billboard with
the words "GIVE PEACE A CHANCE" on a billboard affixed to our office
building in Times Square. It is not signed or identified in any way.

Today, as what CNN calls "America's New War" cranks up, as the flags fly in
the news and on the sets of newscasts, will the loving vibe of "We Are
Family" get a proper hearing? Let's hope so, even as we seem to be in for a
new period of censorship, self-censorship and the muzzling of dissent. It is
a message we need more than ever as bombs and missiles crash down on their
targets.

Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org, is also executive
producer of Globalvision. His most recent book is "News Dissector: Passions,
Pieces and Polemics" (Akashic Books).