Powerful songs, stirring performances mark 2nd 'Freedom Sings' concert
By Craig Havighurst
Special to
The Freedom Forum Online
07.27.00
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| Greg Trooper |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Lest anyone doubt that songs can still shock the conscience, move the spirit, and rattle the powerful, Bruce Springsteen and Greg Trooper have proven it anew.
Springsteen, international rock star, penned a song recently about last year's shooting of West African immigrant Amadou Diallo by four New York City police officers. And this week, Trooper, a Nashville singer/songwriter, performed "American Skin (41 Shots)" with a focused passion for two audiences gathered to celebrate the power of music and the vitality of the First Amendment.
Trooper's rendition of the chilling song, in which the mantra-like lyric "41 shots" refers to the number of times police shot Diallo in purported self-defense, was a highlight of "Freedom Sings," the second annual concert at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe.
The July 25 concert, sponsored by the First Amendment Center to raise awareness of the connection between music and the First Amendment, included more than two dozen singers and musicians giving their time to perform songs that, in the words of FAC Executive Director Ken Paulson, "had been banned by government, censored by radio, or offended a significant percentage of the American public."
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| Joy White |
Springsteen's song certainly offended a New York police union. As Trooper told it from the stage, the head of the NYPD Patrolmen's Benevolent Association said on a television talk show that "we cannot have songwriters coming to town that will create a civil disturbance." The same police official urged his colleagues on the force to refuse to work security at the concerts in their off-duty time, a customary practice. "He doesn't get it," Trooper said, before performing the song with a band that included Springsteen's bass player Gary Tallent.
The evening's songs, split into two shows, fell into rough categories. Some songs raised the ire of lawmakers, even recently. Joy White, a figurehead in the Nashville alternative country scene, coursed through the long and complex "Living in the Wasteland of the Free" by Iris DeMent. DeMent's recording of that song, which skewers everything from the campaign-financing system to executive pay, became a favorite of a Florida public radio station. A Florida legislator nearly succeeded in getting $104,000 of the station's state funding rescinded over the station's playing of the song.
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| Tommy Womack |
Some songs, like the Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together," performed by Duane Jarvis, could only get on 1960s television and radio by having their lyrics changed. (Mick Jagger sang, "let's spend some time together" on CBS and winked at the camera.) Some, like Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women," performed by local songwriter Tommy Womack, had been banned by radio stations. Dylan's song, famous for its refrain, "Everybody must get stoned," became a target of programmers in 1966, Womack said.
Other songs pointed to the fever pitch of paranoia reached among some conservatives in the 1960s, who at times seemed able to find illicit references even when they weren't there. Steve Forbert delivered a tender "Puff the Magic Dragon," and '70s pop star Andrew Gold offered up the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." Both songs were suspected of references to drugs; both were written for or inspired by children.
One song, "Louie Louie," even earned the dubious distinction of having its lyrics investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (The agency concluded ultimately that it couldn't understand the words).
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| Beth Nielsen Chapman |
The most moving moment of the night belonged to Beth Nielsen Chapman, a leading Nashville songwriter, who performed "Strange Fruit," a brutal portrait of lynching written by a schoolteacher named Abel Meeropol and made famous by Billie Holiday. Chapman said it was "a difficult song to grasp and learn, because it was obviously written from such a deep place in someone's soul." The song shows, she added, that "we can paint with words and move people to see things differently." That's something Holiday understood; she would silence the room before performing it as the last song in her set, and it crystallized the racism she experienced throughout her career. Chapman didn't need to silence the room. Her delivery was almost painfully poignant.
Other striking performances came from ex-New Yorker Amy Rigby on Bob Dylan's "Hurricane," from Brooklyn Cowboys front man Walter Egan on Neil Young's "Ohio," from Bill Lloyd, the event's musical director, on Stephen Stills' "For What It's Worth," and from Nitty Gritty Dirt Band veterans Jeff Hanna and Jimmy Fadden on "One Toke Over the Line." That song was banned on many radio stations after the Federal Communications Commission issued a notice warning broadcasters that they had a responsibility not to glorify drug use.
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| Bill Lloyd |
It was little surprise that most of the songs performed at Freedom Sings dated from the 1950s and 1960s, when the gulf in understanding and tolerance between America's older, conservative establishment and its younger, more hopeful generation was at its widest. In many ways, the event chronicled the consolidation and transcendence of rock 'n' roll, a genre that, during those years, marshaled the power of song to challenge prevailing notions about race, class, drugs and even truth. Though rock, as lamented by Womack in his original song "Big Money," may have been "ruined" by commercial, corporate culture, it proved itself for a time to be a force of nature that had its way with detractors, prudes and bureaucrats.
Two performances may have best captured lyrically the spirit of the event and the spirit of unfettered expression in song. Aashid Himons, a world music veteran, delivered the famous opening song from Woodstock, Ritchie Havens' "Freedom/Motherless Child." That song's mantra-like chant of the word "freedom" resembles the fervent prayer of a generation, shot through with the lyrics of an archetypal American folk song. And Don Henry's original "New Old Song" kept returning to its chorus: "Let's sing a new old song/ of peace, love, and understanding./So freedom marches on/ and all the world can dream along./Let's sing a new old song." It reminded an appreciative crowd that freedom, even more than love, may be the oldest song subject of all.