Tag: Justice

It is time for some more music, I think… I have been in a Radiohead phase of late, but today I am reaching once again into the back catalogue of British contemporary folk.

I am going to suggest something that many of you will find difficult on the ear—a dark brown English folk voice that makes no attempt at melodic prettiness and uses the sparest of musical accompaniment. Even more, this song is in no way religious—I think the writer and performer may even be an atheist.

Here in Britain, we are living through a time when our borders have been raised in the name of Brexit. This song is perhaps the best response to the spirituality of this reality that I have heard. It is soaringly prophetic. It has a devastating final clarion call to our humanity. It calls us out for what we have become. This (I think at least) is what art is for, and what we long to see emerging from our Proost collective.

Please give him a listen… (I did warn you, though!)

So Much To Defend, by Chris Wood

Sharon loves her cook-in sauce
Her daughter lives upstairs
Wednesday night is choir practice
Sharon does the chairs
On Monday they’ll mince up their Sunday roast
They neither borrow nor lend
The bloke out back flies a union jack
There’s so much to defend

Maureen locks her garage door
She keeps their old car safe
She’s got a little place for everything
Everything’s in its place
Wednesday night is yoga night how the ladies twist and bend
She’s just learned to Skype her grandchildren
There’s so much to defend

Abigail orders tuna steak “Ever so slightly charred”
She’s in the gym most evenings
She hits that treadmill hard
In the summer she’ll go surfing
With her boyfriend near Lands End
They’ve got a beautiful vintage camper van
There’s so much to defend

Bella’s zero hours contract means she won’t turn on her fire
But she pays full rent since her boyfriend went
There’s a lot there to admire
She says she’s learned a thing or two from her scary new best friend
Her little gecko sheds and eats its own skin
There’s so much to defend

Victoria saves her kitchen scraps for the chickens in her yard
She says the online Woody Guthrie shop won’t recognise her card
But she keeps in trim with her fundraising
She’ll be out there this weekend
A muddy young mum on a charity run
There’s so much to defend

When Svetlana talks about her work
She’s nothing but up front
She’s always carrying something sharp and always something blunt
She says she never gives herself away
But she lets them have a lend
Pepper spray takes the taste away
There’s so much to defend

Terry got laid off today
Now he’ll have to improvise
He says his season ticket’s not for sale
He’s Ebbsfleet till he dies
But his girls’ll get to stay in their bunk beds
They were hoping to extend
He’ll have to dust his mobile disco off
There’s so much to defend

Meanwhile Tomas
He’s got four rods out with an hour of daylight left
His little girl laughs to see such fun
But his wife looks scared to death because you see he’s trying to catch their evening meal from the swiftly flowing Thames
As the sun sets on Canary Wharf
There’s so much to defend

Some songs define an era. Up here in Scotland, where trad Scottish folk is mainstream, the super group Lau are legendary. A decade or so ago when Chris Drever wrote and released this song, it was a different world- perhaps our politics was kinder, or perhaps no-one had lifted the veil. Nevertheless, I am proud of how, for the most part, Scotland has been welcoming of refugees.

This song breaks me every time I hear it. That line, ‘They say we’re not like them…’

Here at Proost, our hope is to find ways to bring artistry and activism together. This is a perilous pursuit, fraught with possible conflict, because justice is not neutral, even if it seeks to be impartial. It is easy to fall into simplistic virtue-signalling or propaganda. Songs like this one show us the way. Tell stories of people whose voices are obscured. Speak of love and tenderness. Let compassion be our guide, even in the face of powers that tell us that compassion is naïve and foolish.