Political Music

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Патрислав Андреевич
Re: Political Music

Postby Патрислав Андреевич » 2014-10-21, 21:58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqeFWhcA71k
Self-criticism (for Michnik)

It's a song about attacks on Kukiz (the author) and other likely-minded people by Gazeta Wyborcza (whose editor-in-chief is Michnik) because of his political views, not compatible with the ones they import from the West and propagate.

And my attempt at translation:

I am a mohair, a fanatic
A nazi, a swine, a homophobe
A traitor, an agent, a crank
Enemy to Russia, and the European Union
A filthy catholic who doesn't understand
That embryo's not a human
Because it can't walk
A fool who's still got one wife
I am a mohair, a fanatic

I am a bigot, and a fascist
A public enemy, a non-conformist
I am a disgusting chump
An ignorant, a lout, a filthy bastard
A blinded nationalist
A crazy claimant
A nit-picking fool
In our ideal system

Yes - it's me
I confess
Kill me

I am an idiot who didn't understand
When he made murals with friends
Who didn't sell SB his fiancée
And then I even married her
An insubordinate lout
Who contests the only right plans
Who doesn't see that Poland is great
Like during the reign of Comrade Gierek

Yes - it's me
I confess
Kill me
Last edited by Патрислав Андреевич on 2015-02-19, 10:03, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Political Music

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-10-28, 1:00

These are a bunch of political parties' songs from Kerala. This one is from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), also known as CPI(M) for short. Kerala is one of the three states where this party is strongest (the other two are West Bengal and Tripura, way over in northeastern India):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyR7FVSgNgk
This is a Congress Party song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTF8QWuJ4d8
A song from the Muslim League called "Haritha Pathaaka" ('The Green Flag'):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKk_og0ajGg
And a song seeking votes for the 2011 Janata Dal candidate from my parents' hometown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEr50dTa5Nk

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Re: Political Music

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2014-10-28, 14:38

Riblja Čorba - Forces of the opposition (1985 i.e. 5 years before we even got the multiparty sytem)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj4KACmfYsQ

Direktori - Animal Farm (1996) - comparing Milošević with Napoleon the pig from Orwell's Animal Farm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WoXFnmkH9w

Idoli - Boys (1981) - making fun of the Soviet socialist realism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfI3eGXkZH8

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Re: Political Music

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-10-30, 9:19

I think it's fair that these two songs are political. There are a number of songs by Dalits in India, in a variety of languages, complaining about the discrimination they face from Indian society. This one by Murugan is in Tamil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2kFzm-G7k
And this one ("Dalit anna, anana anna anna") from a protest in Hyderabad last year is in Telugu:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRDZm2mg5yU
Also, these two songs from Nepal are obviously political since they're very specifically Maoist. :P This one by the Nepali Maoist Cultural Group...I honestly don't care what its political message is or anything; I just love it because it's gorgeous lol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ty0If5F_68
This one, "Hami Maobadi Biriyeka Chhainau," is a revolutionary song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Y9tAtWqaQ
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2017-05-06, 4:38, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Political Music

Postby md0 » 2014-10-30, 10:19

Today I found out about this song which is sung by Theodorakis, a Greek leftish artist who was imprisoned by the Greek Junta during 1967-1974. At one point his sentence was commuted to house arrest and the guards supplied with with a piano as a honeypot trap.
His music was banned by the Greek Junta and anyone listening or performing his work, including himself, would receive up to 15 years in prison. So trick his guards, he began writing songs on the music of another composer, Hadjidakis (aka Hatzidakis) who also opposed the Junta but silently (he went on a self-exile in the US and his music wasn't political) and since he was a liberal he passed under the radars.
One of those songs was "I'm a European", on the tune of "Hymettus". Theodorakis lyrics criticise the non-reaction of European governments to the fall of Greece to the military dictatorship (and the open backing of the junta by the US and NATO).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlXhFMSp2CQ

Είμαι Ευρωπαίος, έχω δυό αυτιά,
τόνα για ν' ακούει, τ' άλλο δε γροικά,
αν στενάξει Τσέχος, Ρώσος, Πολωνός,
ο άνθρωπος πονάει, πέφτει ο ουρανός

I'm a European, I've got two ears
one's for listening, the other hears not at all
of a Czechman sights, a Russian or a Pole
oh the human plight, the sky will fall


Εκεί ψηλά, εκεί ψηλά,
εκεί ψηλά στον Υμηττό,
υπάρχει κά- υπάρχει κά-
υπάρχει κάποιο μυστικό

Up there, up there
up there on Hymettus*
there's a ce-, there's a ce-
there's a certain secret


Αν πονέσει Μαύρος, Έλληνας, Ινδός,
τι με νοιάζει εμένα, ας νοιαστεί ο Θεός,
αν πονέσει Μαύρος, Έλληνας, Ινδός,
τι με νοιάζει εμένα, ας νοιαστεί ο Θεός

If a Black is hurt, a Greek or an Indian
why should I care, leave it to God
If a Black is hurt, a Greek or an Indian
why should I care, leave it to God


Εκεί ψηλά, εκεί ψηλά,
εκεί ψηλά στον Υμηττό,
υπάρχει κά- υπάρχει κά-
υπάρχει κάποιο μυστικό

Up there, up there
up there on Hymettus*
there's a ce-, there's a ce-
there's a certain secret


Είμαι Ευρωπαίος, έχω δυό αυτιά,
τόνα μόνο ακούει, απ' τα Ανατολικά
την πόρτα μου χτυπάει και πάλι ο φασισμός,
όμως σε τέτοιους ήχους, είμαι εντελώς κουφός

I'm a European, I've got two ears
only one of them works, the eastern one
fascism knocks on my door again
but to those sounds I'm completely deaf


Εκεί ψηλά, εκεί ψηλά,
εκεί ψηλά στον Υμηττό,
υπάρχει κά- υπάρχει κά-
υπάρχει κάποιο μυστικό

Up there, up there
up there on Hymettus*
there's a ce-, there's a ce-
there's a certain secret


Έχω ένα αυτί μεγάλο, τ' άλλο πολύ μικρό,
κι έτσι ήσυχος τρυγάω χαρά πολιτισμό,
έχω ένα αυτί μεγάλο, τ' άλλο πολύ μικρό,
κι έτσι ήσυχος τρυγάω χαρά πολιτισμό,

I've got an ear which is huge, the other is so small
so I blissfully harvest the fruits of civilisation
I've got an ear which is huge, the other is so small
so I blissfully harvest the fruits of civilisation


Εκεί ψηλά, εκεί ψηλά,
εκεί ψηλά στον Υμηττό,
υπάρχει κά- υπάρχει κά-
υπάρχει κάποιο μυστικό.

Up there, up there
up there on Hymettus*
there's a ce-, there's a ce-
there's a certain secret


* Mount Hymettus, coincidentally (since the original Hatzidakis song was written a decade before the Junta happened), is the mountain which hosts the bulk of radio and TV transmitters in Athens, and it was one of the first pieces of telecommunications infrastructure to be silently be taken over the military before the coup was declared.
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Re: Political Music

Postby Sol Invictus » 2014-10-30, 18:19

Accidentally came across this song protesting against building subway in Riga (and related immigration of Soviet workers) from 1980s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9PcSDtE6uA
Metro nav draugs!
Lai nolīstu zemē,
virs zemes daudz svešus cilvēkus sasauks
Neviens no viņiem nekur neaizbrauks.

Metro tos līdzi pazemē sauks.
Ar viņiem pa visus pilsētu brauks.
Katrs kaut kur paliks, neviens neaizbrauks.

Subway is not a friend!
To crawl under ground,
above the ground many strange people will be called together.
None of them will go anywhere.

Subway will call them to come along underground.
it will take them all around the town.
Each will stay somewhere, nobody will go anywhere.

Патрислав Андреевич

Re: Political Music

Postby Патрислав Андреевич » 2014-10-31, 1:20

So I found this song, and attempted to translate it (well, the chorus at least). :)

Slovak (sk) Nenadávajte na politikov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGksTmAM2ac

Nenadávajte na politikov,
sami nič nezmôžu,
keby nemali naše hlasy,
no tak kradnuť nemôžu.

Nenadávejte na politikov,
nadávajte na seba,
iní nám ich nezvolili,
no tak nám treba!

Don't complain on politicians,
they can't do anything alone,
if they didn't have our votes,
they wouldn't be able to steal.

Don't complain on politicians,
complain on yourselves,
others didn't choose them for us,
that's what we have to do!

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Re: Political Music

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-11-03, 8:07

Les Guignols de l'info is a French TV latex puppet that engages in political satire, often using parodies of well-known songs (in French and English - not sure whether they've done parodies of songs in other languages yet). This one is a parody of "Happy" by Pharrell Williams and makes fun of French president François Hollande's personal life (I found it thanks to FluentU :lol:):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHkepTBAwFY

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Re: Political Music

Postby Saim » 2014-11-03, 10:59

The Catalan show Polònia does the same thing, minus the puppets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShBk-ZdH7nk

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Re: Political Music

Postby loqu » 2014-11-04, 9:42

vijayjohn wrote:Les Guignols de l'info is a French TV latex puppet that engages in political satire, often using parodies of well-known songs (in French and English - not sure whether they've done parodies of songs in other languages yet). This one is a parody of "Happy" by Pharrell Williams and makes fun of French president François Hollande's personal life (I found it thanks to FluentU :lol:):

That French TV show was adapted on Spanish TV for some years in the past, except they didn't do any songs. But their political parody was quite popular in the 90's.
Нека људи уживају у стварима.
Let people enjoy things.

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Re: Political Music

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-11-07, 9:11

I'm not sure it's possible for a song to be much more explicitly political than "Socialism Is Good!" (It's a famous song from the PRC. In Mandarin, it's Shèhuìzhŭyì hăo. In Simplified Chinese, that would be 社会主义好, but in fact, this video has the subtitles in Traditional Chinese instead, so it's written as 社會主義好 there). There are many versions of this song, including a rock version that seems to have become quite popular (it has not much less than twice the number of views this version has gotten):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26k0QK1OH14

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Re: Political Music

Postby Varislintu » 2014-11-07, 15:21

I ran into this old clip, of a performance where the Lebanese Khalil Gibran's verses about children from his book The Prophet have been translated and adapted into a song in Finnish. It has the feel of a protest song about it, and I can see how this was very relevant in the 60s, when teenagers were breaking free of the previous generation into their own group with wildly different thoughts and values.

What really fascinated me, however, were the last lines, where children are likened to arrows that the Higher Power shoots, using parents as their bows. The adapted song lyrics encourage parents to joyfully embrace their role in bending.

This fascinated me because there is currently a fundamental Christian movement in the USA called quiverfull, whose idea is also that children are arrows that parents make to fill God's quiver. But the messages could not be any more different beyond that! Quiverfullers don't believe in adolescence or teenage rebellion, they are highly patriarchal and emphasise obedience as the maxim of child rearing. Children are to be made into unquestioning arrows for Jesus. No room for any dissident thoughts. Whereas Gibran obviously takes a completely different spin on the same analogy. And I think he came to the better conclusion, almost a 100 years ago, while quiverfullers still apply the rod to their children to make them into copies of themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4HSfuBscmo

Lyrics:

Sinun lapsesi eivät ole sinun lapsiasi.
He ovat itseensä kaipaavan elämän tyttäriä ja poikia.
He tulevat sinun kauttasi, mutta eivät sinusta,
ja vaikka he ovat sinun luonasi, he eivät kuulu sinulle.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.


Voit antaa heille rakkautesi, mutta et ajatuksiasi,
sillä heillä on heidän omat ajatuksensa.
Voit pitää luonasi heidän ruumiinsa, mutta et heidän sielujaan,
sillä heidän sielunsa asuvat huomisessa,
jonne sinulla ei ole pääsyä, ei edes uniesi kautta.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.


Voit pyrkiä olemaan heidän kaltaisensa,
mutta älä yritä tehdä heistä itsesi kaltaista,
sillä elämä ei kulje taaksepäin eikä takerru eiliseen.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.


Sinä olet jousi, josta sinun lapsesi lähtevät kuin elävät nuolet.
Kun taivut jousimiehen käden voimasta,
taivu riemulla!

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
(Adapted ending lyrics for the song:) When you bend from the force of the hand of the archer,
bend joyfully!

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Re: Political Music

Postby Saim » 2014-12-16, 8:19

Western Punjabi song that critizes the Pakistani military, subtitles in English

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xscvtf65l1E

Патрислав Андреевич

Re: Political Music

Postby Патрислав Андреевич » 2015-01-23, 12:51

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhX93YStfUU
This is such a sad song about NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999… And how Russia asks her little sister Yugoslavia for forgiveness, since she didn’t come with help.

For the night under the leaden hail,
For the fact that I’m not next to you,
Forgive me, my sister, Yugoslavia!
For the death under the spring rain,
For the fact that I didn’t become a salvation,
Forgive me, my sister, Yugoslavia!


Sad song indeed… :cry: And the thought of those events still makes my blood boil. :x

This reminded me of another song on the same topic, this time in Slovak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwkJraoFryI

It hurts a man, when his own are falling,
When on their graves, others build their homes.
It hurts a man, when his own are falling,
When on their graves, others build their homes…

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Re: Political Music

Postby voron » 2015-01-23, 17:25

Патрислав Андреевич wrote:This is such a sad song about NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999… And how Russia asks her little sister Yugoslavia for forgiveness, since she didn’t come with help.

During my Serbophile period I came across this song too. It's inevitable.

Патрислав Андреевич

Re: Political Music

Postby Патрислав Андреевич » 2015-01-23, 23:16

Makes me wonder why I haven’t heard it earlier if it’s ‘inevitable’… :| I love both so much that yesterday I’ve been listening to nothing but them, and they put me in a depressive mood.

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Re: Political Music

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-02-03, 23:24

This is a song performed by various African artists both in French and in indigenous languages in an attempt to raise awareness about Ebola (click on CC for subtitles):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruYQY6z3mV8
This is a Mauritanian song (perhaps the most famous one there is from that country now) called "It Started from Nouakchott" sung by Hamzo Bryn. He is in this video, along with a Mauritanian lady named Leila Moulaye. This video sparked controversy in Mauritania, supposedly because Moulaye's head is uncovered in the video, and both Bryn and Moulaye were arrested. See here for more information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwkmBHJeA-k
A lot of people seem to assume (I suppose based on the video) that it's a love song, but the lyrics suggest that they're really not. They're mostly code switching between French and English but with a few lines in (Hassaniya?) Arabic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIlG-Dcc6X8
In response to the controversy, Bryn created another video (this time including some swearwords in English and also more Arabic :lol:). The title means "what's the big deal?":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq14G8NseoU&feature=youtu.be

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Re: Political Music

Postby md0 » 2015-02-18, 12:08

Found about this Catalan Leninist band through Youtube suggestions. They lyrics are pretty interesting, but god does it feel awkward to hear Leninists, of all people, sing about freedom :roll:

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Re: Political Music

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-02-21, 20:00

I've been thinking of posting these two particular songs for a while now. To be perfectly honest, I don't really remember why, but oh well. :lol: Both of them are dramatic Bollywood songs portraying what children going around begging had/have to go through. One is "Amma Roti De Baba Roti De" from Sansar (1951), so filmed (and probably set) just a few years after independence, when India was struggling to recover from colonialism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cijAc1zW3w8
There is an even more dramatic song with a similar title, performed by the same singer and her youngest sister (and probably inspired by the earlier song), from Samaj Ko Badal Dalo (1970), a Hindi remake of a Telugu remake of a Malayalam movie. :lol: Ironically, in the original Malayalam movie, the only indication we have that the children are begging is when someone informs their mother about this and she is outraged to see them at a bus stop (where it's implied that they're going around begging). The point of the movie was to portray the social evils of the time (the original version was written and directed by Kerala's biggest advocate of communism, Thoppil Bhasi, and the title of the Hindi version means 'change the society'). It's also probably worth noting that the economy during this period of Indian history was very poor, so it's not terribly surprising that ordinary children would be driven to abject poverty under the circumstances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvmtyM-mix4

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Re: Political Music

Postby md0 » 2015-02-25, 11:31

A favourite Greek strike song, in a modern version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTZP512gPs

The chimney is cold
and outside the gate
the assembled factory workers are debating
The day has grown bright,
with frostbitten lips
they take up the banners and set out

Five trucks they sent out,
at the waning of the moon,
and they came back full of strike breakers.
[Still] filled they went away again:
"Nobody will get through
we had better all go away as emigrants!"

A month has passed,
the machines are rusting
and the children suffer cold and hunger;
in the streets of Athens
workers are handing out fliers...

...and asking for support.
in the streets of Athens
with frostbitten lips
they take up the banners and set out


Translation from stixoi.info
"If you like your clause structure, you can keep your clause structure"
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