Melodic Memories

In February 2004, two years after the tragic death of his wife and children, Vitaly Kaloyev murdered the air traffic controller he deemed responsible. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 8 years in a Swiss prison and after two years he was deported to his native Russia where he was hailed as a hero.
Why does any of this matter? The truth is it probably wouldn’t if Brooklyn based band Delta Spirit hadn’t dedicated the closing track of their album History From Below to this bizarre story. It’s through the “Ballad of Vitaly” that this real life Shakespearean tale passed into our memory. The emphasis here is on “our”. In making this song, this Howard Zinn-esuqe album, Delta Spirit explored one of the essential functions of music: memorialization in the most literal sense.
Before there was prose and written word, there was poetry and the oral tradition. Some of the oldest works in our cannon – e.g. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and The Anabasis – were sung long before they came to be written down. The story telling tendency of song did not die with Homer and Xenophon, or begin again with Delta Sprit almost three millennia later. Every major era in our history can be defined by the music that has accompanied it and the memories the songs preserve.
“It Seems I Hear Harry Moore…”
From November 18,1905 to December 25, 1951, Harry T. Moore lived and (eventually) worked in Florida. That Christmas Day he was killed and his wife was fatally injured by a bomb placed below their bedroom floor. Moore, a prominent civil rights activist and member of the Florida NAACP had made one too many enemies in his investigation of a racially tinged rape case. Moore was 46 years old and his killers were never found.
Already prominent, the Moores became more famous in death. Within weeks the Moores became a symbol of the plight of African Americans in the South; the investigation into their deaths later became a reminder of the race related failures of criminal justice system. It’s in the context of this elevated profile that Langston Hughes, speaking weeks after the bombing at an NAACP rally in New York, debuted his elegiac “Ballad of Harry Moore”.
If the Moores are the first martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement then it follows that “Ballad of Harry Moore” is one of its first songs. Captured forever in Hughes’ lines is the indignant resolve that materialized in the wake of the bombing so poignantly captured in his lyric “no bombs can kill the dreams I hold — for freedom never dies”. It’s this idea of the transcendence of freedom and justice that became the defining undercurrent of the Civil Rights Movement, the sentiment that “this too shall pass”.
It never really did pass: the message of the failures of justice was as relevant then as it was 10 years ago when musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock revived the “Ballad of Harry Moore” and continues to be today. Still, the idea that the failures and cruelty of humanity would eventually be overcome by the potential for kindness and justice remained an integral part of the struggles of the Twentieth century. Logically, the next question in everyone’s mind was “when?”.
An answer to this question was never quite possible, but the posing of this question came to define the discourse. Tired of being told to wait by those in power, members of the Civil Rights Movement began to ask “if not now, then when?”.  Tired of the message of Booker T. Washington, activists turned toward the path laid out by W.E.B. Dubois, and this shift is clear in the music of the time. Men and women the world over became obsessed with the “when” of it all and Bob Dylan was no exception.
“The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind.” So Dylan sings in his 1963 release “Blowin’ in the Wind”, a song written just months after the death of Harry Moore and Hughes’ memorial poem. With its negro spiritual musical roots and probative lyrics, “Blowin’ in the Wind” quickly moved African Americans across the country. The song’s power laid in its sincerity and the ability of an outside observer to so accurately sum up the zeitgeist within the African American community. Preserved forever here is the calm restlessness for a change that many were unsure would ever come.
Sam Cooke was not one of those people, and a year after hearing Bob Dylan’s civil rights track Cooke released one of his own: “A Change is Gonna Come.” For years Sam Cooke was known for his upbeat pop music: he had become famous for hits like “Twisting the Night Away” and “Cupid”. In October 1963 a few things changed and Hughes, inspired by the accidental drowning of his 18 month old son and a racially motivated police incident while on tour, penned and recored his sleeper hit a few months prior to his death.
Cooke died at 33. Still, his relatively young age did not preclude him from the harrowing experiences of an African American living in twentieth century America. The best way to describe the voice in “ A Change Is Gonna Come” is weary, the sound of a man who’s seen the world and envisions better for it. Its this tone that made “A Change is Gonna Come” such a hard sell to radio executives, and while the original recording was released on vinyl, the radio version edited out one of the song’s more problematic lyrics: “I got to the movies/and I go downtown/somebody keeps telling me, ‘don’t hang around.’”
It’s no secret that racial segregation (among other racist policies) existed in the 1960s, and in a pre-Brown v. Board of Education South codified racial discrimination touched every African American who happened to pass through the area. Sam Cooke was no different. Still, while this fact was not unknown in America, no mainstream artist had ever sung about it. People raced to the shelves to pick up “A Change is Gonna Come” with its (slightly inappropriately) upbeat B-Side “Shake”. Slowly but surely Cooke’s parting musical reflection gained traction and eventually his musings on change became a part of the cries for it.
The relevance of Cooke’s song did not die with the end of The Civil Rights movement, and this song, frequently voted one of the best in history, remains a testament to the exhausted idealism of activists across eras and causes. “A Change is Gonna Come” both heralded a change and helped to bring it about. Even with its watered down lyrics “Change” brought pain to our collective doorstep, once again burned the burden of being black in the “Land of the Free” on our brains. Interestingly enough, at the same time Cooke’s last song was playing on our radios, images of Vietnam were playing on our television sets.
“They Gave Us Bob Hope”
According to the State Department, US involvement in the Vietnam war began in August 1964 with the passing of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. From the start Vietnam was an unpopular war, but the use of the draft and its role as the first “televised” war only made matters worse. For twelve years American Soldiers, volunteers or otherwise, fought on soil eight thousand miles away from home. With each passing day resistance to the war grew stronger.
From Sacramento to Saratoga, Americans were protesting against United States involvement in Vietnam. With their families torn apart and futures forever altered, men and woman across the country found themselves lost, seemingly betrayed by their country and left up a creek with their paddle taken away. Once again, the question on everyone’s mind was “why?”
Jimmy Cliff is not a performer to mince words and the third track of his 1969 self titled album was unmistakably about America’s unpopular military engagement. Rumor has it that Bob Dylan called Cliff’s “Vietnam” the best protest song he ever heard. True or not, Jimmy Cliff’s look at a soldier’s death from the point of view of his loved ones at home packs a wallop.
Incredibly simple, the repeated refrain of “Vietnam” in Cliff’s song, coupled with repeated entireties for somebody to “please stop that war now”, works to surround Cliff’s story with the confusion and desperation expected from those within it. Disguised by the song’s upbeat music is the anguish in its lyrics. In “Vietnam” Cliff testifies against the war with this damning, and commonplace, incident. In preserving this story in song Cliff reminds his listeners, then and now, what it meant to be living in a nation at war: surrounded by senselessness.
Senselessness is at the heart of Edwin Starr’s 1970 hit “War”. “War” is the definition of iconic, and its bitting lyrics and social analysis of war is the epitomization of frustration with Vietnam. In it Starr questioningly cries “War…what is it go for?” a question he quickly answers: nothing. For Starr and his listeners (which happened to be a large portion of the American public as his song shot to number one) there was no excuse for the violence being forced upon those involved in the war.
“War” is a song of questions, but its also a song of answers. “War”, much like the mood in the country, is resigned and defiant. “War, it ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker / War , friend only to the undertaker,” Starr sings toward the end of his song. Much like Cliff’s “Vietnam” with its powerful plea for “somebody [to] stop this war”, Starr’s “War” serves as a cry for people to stop fighting them, a reminder of what bad wars do to good people. For Starr and folks across the country peace deserved a chance to succeed where violence clearly failed. John Lennon felt the same way.
In 1972, an election year, President Richard Nixon ordered John Lennon deported. Lennon, famous as a member of the Beatles, had become a vocal peace/anti-Nixon advocate, his song “Give Peace A Chance” a large part of demonstrations across the nation. In “Give Peace a Chance” Lennon, like his contemporaries, ask the government to do just that, and implores citizens to get involved. Still, as influential as “Give Peace A Chance” was and continues to be, Lennon’s song “Imagine” is arguably a more enduring testament to the times.
“Imagine” is widely considered one of the greatest songs of all time, and is one of the most notable of John Lennon’s solo career. John asked people to imagine a world were strife is replaced with success, where derision replaced with cohesiveness. Immortalized in John’s lines is the desperate desire across the nation and the world for us to move past military conflict. Lennon wasn’t lying when he sung “you may say I’m a dreamer, / but I’m not the only one.” Sadly, while the Vietnam war eventually ended, calls for peace were never answered.
“When the President Talks to God, Does He Ever Think Maybe He’s Not?”
According to Pew Research Center, by the end of his Presidency George W. Bush had an approval rate of 34%. The eight years under Bush saw two immensely unpopular wars, an economic meltdown, and several notable failed domestic policy changes. For many George Bush’s presidency was a wash, a large disappointment and as can be expected the music of the time reflects that.
From Pink’s “Dear Mr. President” to the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is The Love” and everything in between, our airwaves and T.V. screens were saturated with testaments against the President. Neil Diamond even rushed to record his critically acclaimed 2006 album Living With War in nine days because he felt so moved. The lead single? “Let’s Impeach The President”.
George Bush wasn’t impeached, but in 2008 his party was voted out of office, and his successor, Barack Obama, was largely embraced by citizens both here an abroad. He ran on a platform of hope and people did just that. Instead of the anti-Bush Anthem “When the President Talks to God”, Obama had “Yes We Can”.
Conclusion: “Insert Song Lyric Here”
Clearly its impossible to examine every song tied to our memories on the societal level, even in the small time spans put forward in this article. I’ve tried my best to single out a few major songs from each of those eras but there are countless others that would have worked just as well. The message, however, remains the same regardless: music preserves for us things we might have otherwise forgotten.
In his reexamination of American History, Howard Zinn turned away from textbooks and toward primary sources. The result, his sprawling A People’s History of the United States sheds new light on events previously left unexamined. Zinn did what few before him did, and he was good at it.
Each time we listen to a song, its as if we are making our own Zinn-ian trip into our collective history. Every second in “A Change is Gonna Come” speaks to the experiences of those living with race in America, every word in “Goodnight Saigon” forces us to remember what happened to our nation’s young men in Vietnam.
This is what makes music such an effective cache of memory: in it an artist explores more than they would be able to in prose or even poetry. Imagine reading an essay on the death of Hattie Carroll, or even reading the lyrics of the song on the page: something immeasurable is lost without Dylan’s voice and music driving home his point about its importance. Every piece of music is tied to our collective memory, and our greatest memories are tied to the pieces of music that keep us from forgetting it.