Floyd Red Crow Westerman https://floydredcrow.bandcamp.com/album/custer-died-for-your-sins
David Rovics https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/say-their-names
While multi-faceted singer, actor, and activist from the Sisseton-Wapheton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota Floyd Red Crow Westerman died in 2007 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Westerman ,his recordings still pack much incisive and inspiring power beyond the grave. Earlier in April, a two CD set of Custer Died For Your Sins (a 1991 CD version of a 1982 re-recording of his 1969 debut LP also with this title ) and 1982 LP The Land is Your Mother on Full Circle Productions was offered on Bandcamp. Unfortunately, outside of his appearances in movies such as Dances With Wolves and tv shows including the The X-Files, his music is almost forgotten.
He didn’t aim to be a cult hero like Jandek https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jandek or George Brigman https://www.scaruffi.com/vol3/brigman.html with hermetic production and distribution overlaps with occult bookstores. Floyd collaborated with Buffy Sainte-Marrie, Kris Kristofferson, Harry Belafonte, Willie Nelson, Sting (!), etc. However, the state of current commercial country radio and other media reflects some of the historic structural American style racism he sang about in 1969 onwards.
The music industry reflects all industry. “Woke Capitalism” is a successful PR strategy throughout the corporate citadels and online platforms. The perimeters of capitalist psuedo equality groom current spectacular stars and remind them their celebrity is backed with contractual agreements. Mickey Guyton gets to sing a heartfelt song based on daily racism but she neither attempts uprooting anti-blackness nor calls for race and class unity against the bosses and bureaucrats that play us against each other. Instead, we must “love” each other including the cops just doing their jobs killing Black and Brown youth and adults. Bourgeois moralism wins again and everybody loses as it is still a force used in all contemporary protection rackets.
In addition to the authorities and industry moving the scene of the crime to our “suspect” minds for daring to want more egalitarian concessions from capitalism which it won’t deliver and/or delivered as worse compromises than expected, Mickey and other younger Black country artists also become wrapped up in controversies with “woke” white peers https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/explanation-owed-on-why-highwomen-disinvited-mickey-guyton/ while being played against other fellow Black singers (ex Lil Nas X vs. Mickey).
At the same time, the silence grows louder with commercial radio erasure of indigenous country and recommended historic Black country ( by websites like this https://www.insidehook.com/article/music/a-beginners-guide-to-black-country-music)Black country singers.
Floyd fired off weary and confrontational yet soulful vocals encased in song projectiles shot at European colonization, assimilation, social separation, etc. I’ll let some of his lyrics do the talking: “Custer Died For Your Sins”(“For the tribes you terminated /for the myth you keep alive/for the land you confiscated /for our freedom you deprived”), “Here Comes The Anthros” (one of the few country songs which deals wittily with Eurocentric/white anthropologists that care more about Native Americans ancient history than their present conditions) ; his song “Wounded Knee” (with Buffy Sainte-Marrie on backing vocals and crickets collaborating on outdoors ambient noise), and “The Land Is Your Mother” sounding almost like Leonard Cohen with a bilingual male and female choir, etc. Contemporary country radio spares little room for cutting lyrics which also call for solidarity minus white washing indigenous culture in the process. Instead of scanning media , hopefully you will be able to hear more of the spirit of Floyd’s music in younger peoples music at protests and interventions that supercede DAPL( your President so far isn’t dealing with other pipelines equally as bad and maybe some even worse ). Check out these CDs as well.
David Rovics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rovics is another singer-song writer/musician that practices what he sings about. As a fellow anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian, he has freely distributed his music since the 90s while speaking out against websites and programs such as iTunes charging for his recordings. Rovics often plays sets at protests and demonstrations as well as at DIY spaces, record stores, and venues owned by New Left vets such as the now defunct Heartland Cafe in Chicago.
Say Their Names came out in October. Another more current release with bass and drums , Rebel Songs, was posted on Bandcamp in March. However, his solo recordings can be more powerful at times. As a topical folk performer, he is always updating songs to match current events. “Say Their Names” mentions many of the Black brothers and sisters cut down by the Thin Blue Line which this recording front graphic also lists. David sounds real weary after decades of chronicling the murders and oppression capitalism and the State serve up daily. Despite it all, he still is reinvigorated time after time(this of course is the perceptual battle between the reductionist Statist historic file of a citizen/victim VS. a more multi-dimensional rememberance and celebration of their strengths, contributions, and influences in social circles).
Official history downplays, modifies, and even erases memories of collective struggles while spectacular garbage on celebrities, consumer fads, State propaganda, loyal reactionary opposition disinformation floods our senses when awake.
You could say if you heard one protest folk singer you heard them all. Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Odetta, etc. as well as oral history carried down for centuries globally before this land became the real estate of European bourgeois / petit bourgeoisie/ pragmatic bigots. However, the solo folk singer still remains vital for capturing the moment as an alternative to the dominant electronic overload of corporate news since they catalyze communication (i.e. two or more people acting together not merely conversation) minus some of the mediation of money, high tech, cultural capital(sure Alain Badiou https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou is problematic but a lot of people outside academia are familiar with social status and power contingent on education, intellect, style of speech, dress, etc. and you can build your own revolutionary self theory https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/larry-law-revolutionary-self-theory#:~:text=Self%2Dtheory%20is%20a%20theory,that%20alienation%3A%20thinking%20for%20 yourself with useful tools from celebrated fools.
Communication is intertwined with community. One can come before the other. Let’s leave the chicken and egg quandary behind as we try to unmake official history with our collective seizure of time and space from the grips of rotten protection rackets and psycho-ideolgical toxicity. David Rovics with Say Their Names is one of multiple anti-tollbooth attendants reminding us in person collective connectivity generates healthier options and even one voice can trigger an avalanche of amazing immediate liberatory acts.
screemz 