My students hear a lot of jazz these days. I love the ones who protest because I know that I have them where I want them. Yes, it is not a democracy when it comes to the music, though at times I am willing to loosen up a bit. In fact it is looking at those who protest that inspires me to say, "Do you want to listen to some jazz? I can do that for you." Than as they mock my music I head to the stereo.
One student used to say, "Why can't you listen to rock music?"
I would say, "I am no longer an angry young man."
Saturday night I picked up Bruce Cockburn's World of Wonders cassette. It sounded awful like many of our cassettes, but those first moments of the first song took me back to 1986. I was an angry young man.
Am I still angered by what is called democracy. I think I am. But instead of working for political change I can be seen carrying bags of canned goods down the block to my church. I am glad there are folk out there working hard on issues I care about, but after a day of teaching, I don't need rallies or meetings. I need music, conversation, glass, exercise, prayer... I need to feed my spirit, so that when my music is mocked by an angry young man or woman, I don't respond like I sometimes did when I was an angry young man.
The lyrics...
Call it Democracy
padded with power here they come
international loan sharks backed by the guns
of market hungry military profiteers
whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
with the blood of the poor
who rob life of its quality
who render rage a necessity
by turning countries into labour camps
modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom
sinister cynical instrument
who makes the gun into a sacrament --
the only response to the deification
of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
idolatry of ideology
north south east west
kill the best and buy the rest
it's just spend a buck to make a buck
you don't really give a flying f...
about the people in misery
IMF dirty MF
takes away everything it can get
always making certain that there's one thing left
keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
see the paid-off local bottom feeders
passing themselves off as leaders
kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
open for business like a cheap bordello
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
see the loaded eyes of the children too
trying to make the best of it the way kids do
one day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
to find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
they call the revolution
IMF dirty MF
takes away everything it can get
always making certain that there's one thing left
keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
