Paper presented at FKL, Lugano, Switzerland 2023
The theme of the conference was the future of sound.
OUT LOUD
The sound of the future is the sound of the people exercising their right to a different future rather than one dictated by those in power. It is the mass of people without power, with unheard voices, joining their voices together in a clamour to be heard. It is the sound of change.
Cass R. Sunstein writes ‘Speakers require listeners’ (Sunstein 2003:98)
‘It is the sound of the crowd - its size, its ability to amplify and define its goals in the act of asserting humanity’s right to achieve them, which makes the difference between the possible and the illusory’ (Clement 2016:17). What distinguishes a crowd of people from simply a crowd to a crowd of protesters is intention, the intention to come together with the view of making themselves heard meaningfully.
‘to be heard and to be listened to’
In fifth century Athens where, in Ellen Wood’s words ‘citizens in modern democracy have been converted from ‘actors’ to ‘electors’ (Wood 1996:124, Clement 2016:21), so creating a space for opposition, dissent, discontent and conflict. The importance of democracy is paramount for an equal society and is still being fought for.
Show us what democracy looks like! THIS is what democracy looks like!
One! We are the People
Two! A little bit louder
Three! We want justice for all people...
In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, Clement identifies that the losing of common land where the poor could graze their animals, was a major factor in creating an impetus for change. This loss was caused by the theft of these common lands by more powerful and wealthy landowners and meant that people were no longer tied to one place creating a more mobile population. As Rosa Luxemburg noted ‘Those who do not move, do not notice their chains” (Clement 2016:140). This change of way of life was a cause of major discontent especially as it often meant finding alternative means of living in industrial cities. Poor working conditions was and still is a cause of major protests in the form of strikes in the workplace. In 19C Italy mondine workers protested about their conditions, immortalized in the song, Bella Ciao. This has been re-used and re-worded throughout the world as a protest song including in Iran as a demonstration against hijab wearing and as Do it Now as an environmental protest. Here are the original versions and the version that was used by anti-fascists in 1943 to 1945.
Alla mattina appena alzata
o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao
alla mattina appena alzata
in risaia mi tocca andar.
In the morning I got up
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao
In the morning I got up
To the paddy rice fields, I have to go.
Una mattina mi son svegliato
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
Una mattina mi son svegliato
E ho trovato l'invasor
One morning I awakened,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao!
One morning I awakened
And I found the invader.
These workplace protests often escalated into larger and longer protests such as the miners’ strikes in the UK in 1984. This particular strike with its constant and noisy protests carried on for nearly a year and caused great hardship. Now, in the UK, workplace strikes have to be voted on with a particular percentage of workers agreeing before they can take place. In Northern Italy, the wildcat strikes, the gatto selvaggio, were ‘of the moment’ a sudden downing of tools. These gestures of disapproval signalled a striving for change, a group of people with a common aim. They created an empowerment and a common feeling of shared values and space. The implications of economic, environmental and societal aspects of the agency of dissent, especially noisy vocal dissent, impacts on all strata of society.
Creating short and snappy slogans to chant means that they are accessible to all, easy to remember often rhyming and endlessly recreated for different causes. Some are long lasting such as this chant about prime minister Margaret Thatcher which has outlived her life span by many years.
‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out’
‘Thatcher, Thatcher school milk snatcher’
Currently, and rightly so, the environment takes centre stage with quickfire slogans such as:
No more coal! No more oil! Keep your carbon in the soil!
Whilst call and response chants encourage large masses of people to respond in an easy way.
What do we want? Climate justice!
When do we want it? Now!
1,2,3,4
Climate change is at our door.
5,6,7,8
How much longer will we wait?
The very act of protest summons authoritarian silencing thus rejecting not only the protesters right to dissent but their voices. I witnessed a pepper workers’ strike in Cochin, India in the late 1990’s. Hundreds of workers, all clad in white sat immobile and silent in a public square. The effect was potent and powerful.
Occupy, Arab Spring, Zizek writes that 2011 was ‘the year of dreaming dangerously, of the revival of radical emancipatory politics all around the world’. (Zizek 2012:127) He writes ‘What is to be done in the aftermath of the Occupy Wall Street movement, when the protests that began far away—in the Middle East, Greece, Spain, the UK—reached the centre and are now being reinforced and rolling out all around the world?’ (Zizek 2012:77)
Extinction Rebellion, Yellow Vests, Black Lives Matter - No longer are the mass of people who are currently without power willing to accept the authority of those in power especially with an attendant abuse of that power. As the chant goes:
No justice, No peace
Protests are always about power relationships and as Castells writes: ‘I start from the premise that power relationships are constitutive of society because those who have the power construct the institutions of society according to their values and interests. Power is exercised by means of coercion, the monopoly of violence, legitimate or not by the control of the state and/or by the constructions of meaning in people’s minds, through mechanisms of symbolic manipulation (Castells 2015:5).
However, it is not always prudent to protest. As Sunstein writes ‘In many parts of the world, nonconformity is death…it is reasonable to conform’ (Sunstein 2003:v). As we know, there are many places where justice is no longer a sensible reason to protest however valid. To stand up for your rights, against the prevailing authority, is seen as an act of nonconformity.
The sound of protest nowadays is amplified through the use of social media and snatched phone footage. It is spread quickly throughout the world and all strata of society. It is unhindered, unfettered and viral. Knowledge was originally spread by word of mouth meaning organised demonstrations were confined to small areas whereas now the voices of the unheard and the alienated can now move more swiftly into the future through social media. Castells writes ‘Digital networks of horizontal communication are the fastest and most autonomous, interactive, reprogrammable and self-expanding means of communication in history’ (Castells 2015:15). This creates a non-hierarchical and mass participatory method of dissemination.
Original methods of disseminating displeasure and disagreement were through song as seen in Bella Ciao. Jazz is associated with the civil rights movements which itself arises from the protest songs of black American blues but which has become disassociated from its original intentions. Deena Weinstein writes ‘Protest songs aren’t heard as protest songs’ (Peddie 2006:9). The lyrics of folk songs right up to the present day frequently reflect working class discontent. For example, Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land written in the 1940’s, comments on land ownership being removed from the people akin to the removal of common land remarked on earlier.
This Land is your Land.
Clement writes: ‘Considering the relationship between music and politics, Piñeiro Blanca (2004) argues that music…is also a reflection of a particular society at any given time, as music becomes a vehicle for the transmission of ideas that are socio-politically relevant and meaningful at specific moments’ (Clement 2016:59). She further writes ‘the extent to which the composition and performance of protest songs can really make a difference in the struggle against the political and economic system remains doubtful’ (Clement 2016:60). It was said, perhaps by Arlo Guthrie, that ‘You don’t accomplish very much singing protest songs to people who agree with you. Everyone just has a good time thinking they’re right’ (Peddie 1966:10).
The suggestion that the sound of protest is the sound of the future is to ask whether sound is effective as a means of achieving its aim, such as social, political or environmental justice? From small localised demonstrations against particular grievances to mass uprisings that encompass a large part of a nation, the voice is the potent instrument that carries the intention. In the age of the internet and mobile phone, the sound of these large and small protests are spread horizontally and without hierarchy. This also accounts for the widening of knowledge with injustices being revealed and spread throughout the world. It is this disclosing that may be the form of future dissent as oppose to the physical demonstration. However, these platforms are routinely shut down by dictators making them unreliable. Perhaps the form that the sound of the future depends on is as yet unknown technological platforms. Clement suggests that the sound of the crowd is the sound of democracy. Lack of an equal and universal freedom and justice for all combined with the impact of environmental disaster is the basis for nearly all protest. I personally can see no prospect of this occurring therefore, I argue, that the sound of the future is the continued sound of protest.
References
Badiou, A. 2012 The Rebirth of History
Castells M. 2015 Networks of Outrage and Hope Polity
Clement M., 2016 A People’s History of Riots, Protest and the Law Palgrave Macmillan London
Peddie, I. (ed.) 2006 The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest Ashgate
Price, S., Sabido, R. S. (ed.) 2016 Sites of Protest Rowland and Littlefield, London New York
Sunstein, C. R. 2003 Why societies need dissent Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London
Van Der Zee B. 2008 The Protesters Handbook Guardian Books
Zizek, S. 2012 The Year of Dreaming Dangerously Verso London
Guthrie, W. This Land is Your Land The Asch recordings volume 1 1997
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