I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone else’s posts so far on a topic that has become increasingly of interest and important to me throughout my time at Oberlin – resistance, through music, to dominant cultural ideas that are sometimes (often) harmful and oppressive. My final paper for my class on American social movements is tentatively titled “The Role of the Protest Song in American Social Movements, 1950-1980,” and I can’t wait to do more research on the songs that were important emotional components of some of these movements including civil rights, feminist, and gay rights.

I was overjoyed when Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential elections. I really felt like the whole world changed on that night….at least, the whole world as I see it, for such an immense better. Obama’s campaign team used this song by the National, “Fake Empire”, in the famous video that was on the home page of Obama’s website for the months leading up to his victory…I get goosebumps every time I hear it. We’ve talked in class about Obama’s use of songs like “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours” at his rallies, songs that don’t necessarily have a distinct political message but that people have positive associations with. This song is different, though – the repeated line “We’re half awake in a fake empire” seems to express a poignant observance of a common people who are not as fully cognizant of the political situation that they live in as perhaps they could be.

I was very happy to be in Washington, DC for the inauguration festivities, including the “We Are One” concert, to witness a bunch of artists who are famous for their songs that call for political change. But now I’m wondering whats going to happen now that the music of change is being sung by the administration of one of the leaders of the US government, an institution that the singers on January’s concert have so often wanted to denounce. In a New York Times Article about a concert held last Sunday on the event of Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday, author Jon Carminca notes that some of the songs that were once sung to encourage political unity and resistance to the dominant power structure “no longer sound defiant or expectant, but matter of fact.”

I’m lucky that I’m writing this blog post a little late. I just went to see Billy Upski Wimsatt give a talk in West Lecture Hall. He’s an organizer whos worked with the League of Young Voters and now does work promoting green jobs with an organization called Green For All in New York City, and gives speeches about organizing at campuses around the country. He told us that he thought we (being the good people Oberlin activist students that we are) have a moral obligation to get power. I agree with him, and also that Obama is the best president we could have at this moment, and so I wonder if I’m getting carried away with social agitator, mover and shaker joy. You know when you get so excited about something that you can’t even remember exactly what it is you’re excited about? Feeling excited about being part of a movement when you can’t remember or articulate what the movement is for, all you know is that you like it and it’s for the public good?

Now that Obama is in power, how is change coming at a mainstream level? Why are songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “This Little Light of Mine” now “matter of fact”? And why does that make me a little nervous?

For so much of my life, the power structure was what I was socialized to rebel against. And for so much of history (and now), gaining power has been about oppressing people. Glancing over Ullestad’s article on Native American rap and reggae, I notice his assertion that the fact that so many Native American artists are more popular on the margins then they are in the mainstream reminds the reader of “past and present treatment of the first inhabitants of the Americas and their descendants.” (346) But a president has been elected and a great number of people mobilized by the idea that power really does come from the public community as a whole. In the USA today, according to the Obama administration, power is not intended to be unjustly thrust onto anyone.

The Native American musicians that I read about in Ullestead’s article maintain their dual consciousnes as Native Americans and citizens of the United States, which means they “are not afforded much airplay” because they “have made a choice to be more relevant to their own communities…than to the broader consumer society.” (342) But the broader consumer society is responsible for electing Barack Obama and his politics of acceptance, hope and change to the office of President of the United States. A minority is now in charge of the majority.

This is my favorite youtube video of this very famous song of our parents…

and this is a band that had a top 40 hit last year (with “Apologize”), OneRepublic, covering that song (the quality’s not good but you only need to watch the first 30 seconds or so)…

I must be over the word limit by now. I feel like everyone’s speaking a similar language. We just all need to get together and start having conversations. I do very much want everyone to retain their pride in their heritage and everyone to be cogniscent of history. But I believe that, eventually, for the better of everybody, everybody working together is going to lead to an overall more positive world than everybody focusing all of their efforts on asserting their pride only on their own. Right now, I don’t feel a need to resist a federal government that I know feels very accountable to me and my family and friends, and THAT is a radical change from what I have ever felt. And if that’s the effect of the mainstreaming of resistance politics, making ideas of positive change more accessible to as many people as possible, then I’m ok with that.

Not everything is so good on this whole Earth yet, though, and I know that. I’m also always reminding myself that people are legally allowed in this country to discriminate in some ways by who they choose to associate with and to disagree for whatever reasons they may have with whatever mainstream policies they may disagree with, thanks to the rights guaranteed by our First Amendment. I wouldn’t ever want to forget that.

BUT.

I hope that I will remain the eternal optimist and believer that I am now, and that with hard work, maybe some day the word “resistance” won’t be in use to protest an unfair, oppressive, or problematic governmental, societal, economical, or any other kind of institution.

The end of the video I posted for The National’s “Fake Empire” made me think of this song, and I’m just going to go ahead and end this post with it to represent that kind of spirit that I have right now.


(This is kind of silly, but I want to thank my mom and dad and Billy Wimsatt for helping me write this post, even though they didn’t know they helped me.)