From a scream to a whisper
Agit-prop star David Rovics kicks against the pricks while Radio Ulster DJ and songwriter Eamon Friel beguiles.
Eamonn McCann, 15 Aug 2006
When you are watching the news from the Middle East and feeling as low as Tony Blair’s moral standing, David Rovics may be the only medicine, man. A secular shaman with hard-hitting songs for hard-hit people.
One night only at Sandino’s, wide open amidst the smothering warmth to balmy breezes’ blow.
Kovics isn’t a singer of political songs but an activist whose activity is political singing. He’s recently played Jenin and Nablus.
I was watching CNN a few weeks back and saw people marching in millions along the canyons of the crystal cities of America, demanding the right to live frugally where their work generates wealth, and the song ringing out on the soundtrack was Rovics’.
Will we open up the borders
Tear down the prison walls
Declare that no one is illegal
Watch the giant as it falls.
Andy Kershaw said: “If Phil Ochs came back to life today, people would say he was the new David Rovics.”
Ochs was the last man deported from Ireland for political reasons, which everyone will agree is a considerable accolade. That was in 1968. Rovics had been born the previous year so as to be ready to take over, in New York City, whence he moved to Berkeley, named after Bishop Berkeley, Dean of Derry, 1724 to 1734, which I’d say entitles him to dual-citizenship of California and Carnhill.
He writes from close-up to the causes he chronicles. Rachel Corrie died under an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in March 2003.
As your Caterpillar tracks
Upon her body pressed
With twenty tons of deadly force
Crushed the bones within her chest,
Could you feel the contours of her face?
He has made it his mission to appear at every summit mobilisation since Seattle. I last heard him on the road outside the Gleneagles Hotel, on the day in July ‘05 when, on the inside, Sir Geldof and Lord Bono were serenading the parasites of the earth as they planned their next murder assault on places where children swallow shrapnel for the crime of throwing rocks.
“David Rovics – just listen,” advises Pete Seeger.
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