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Songs of Blind Boy Whitehead
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The Blind Boy is angry about what is happening to his country, and he shows it in his songs. He sings them to anyone who will listen and hopes they stir the people. That is the most a singer can hope for. The danger for an artist like the Blind Boy is that his songs become mere screeds set to music and thereby lose their power to entertain, inform and motivate. He says he knows he sometimes approaches that point, but hopes each new song is at least as much art as message. You will decide whether he has succeeded.
We have plenty of talkers with messages, but we don't have nearly enough singers with messages. Try these songs and these messages.
"He Swore Upon the Bible" was written for the 2006 off-year election. Fortunately, this topical song is no longer relevant to these times, but it is still a good song -- the way things were.
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"Call Me a Liberal." The right wing of this country has somehow demonized the word "liberal" so much that even liberals have backed away from it in favor of the mealy-mouthed "progressive." The Blind Boy knows that it was the Liberals who saved capitalism for the capitalists under FDR and they're doing it again under Obama. They have been on the right side of history on most issues most of the time. Just as Liberals should be proud to wear their flag pins, so too should they be proud to call themselves what they are -- Liberals.
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"Chicken Hawk War." Sez the Blind Boy: "We're in an unnecessary war that's killing and maiming thousands. The scalawags who started it were sitting in their offices the whole time they were in office, out of harm's way and collecting the spoils -- either power, money, or both. And not a one of 'em ever looked an enemy in the eye while wearing a uniform. It's beyond disgusting to the true patriot." This song is as about as declarative as a song can be without turning into a manifesto. (But it does have a good beat, and you can clog to it.)
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