Professional opiners have begun to ask, "Where are the anthems for the Occupy Movement?" It's a darn good question, and not just because I've written one.
We remember the powerful unifying force of songs like "We Shall Overcome," and "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," the songs that drove the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements. These songs came from the Gospel tradition through the folk tradition to the street.
The times, they are a-changin', and hip hop is the prevailing form of expression in the movement now, as a cursory YouTube search will prove. Hip hop suits the Occupy Movement perfectly. It's defiant, aggressive, undeniable and capable of expressing many ideas in a short space of time. And it's full of call-and-response. (Mic check! Mic check!)
But the question for an anthem is not just "What does it say?" or even "How does it go?" The question is "What does it DO?"
The longing for Heaven expressed in those old Gospel songs was powerfully re-appropriated for use in the struggles here on earth -- Freedom, Justice, Peace. Those songs feed a movement because they move people. And they are inherently democratic. You sing along with them, partly because you can't say no to Pete Seeger, but mostly because in singing along, you're crying out for Freedom and Justice. You're straining against the high notes and reaching for Peace.
It could be that in this post "We Are the World" world, we've become wary of anthems. We're afraid that singing along will somehow result in more spam in our inboxes. Maybe we'd like to teach the world to sing, but we're afraid it'll turn into a Coke commercial.
And maybe those who pine and opine for an anthem are just looking for a quick and easy summation of the Message. It's hard to get people marching to...
"All we are sayin'... is give us a sustainable economic superstructure dominated not by corporate robber-barons but rather by worker-slash-owner consortiums..."
It is the strength of this movement that there isn't one message. There are many messages, all hung on the spine of Economic Justice. There it is. Economic Justice. We can't have a Progressive president without a Progressive Movement, and now that we've got one, there should be many anthems: Gospel anthems, hip hop anthems, Rockabilly-Reggae-Folk-and-Roll anthems. Anything but easy listening. Because we ARE the world and we SHALL overcome.
There's a good one by my friend Jon Fromer called "Gonna Take Us All." There's Anne Feeney's "Have You Been to Jail For Justice?" emma's revolution does one called "Occupy the USA"
And here's one I wrote with my wife Melanie Harby. Sing with me! (I won't spam you.)
Follow Roy Zimmerman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/meta4records
Loading comments… 
