Who needs hard-hitting reporting on sanitation or nuisance issues related to Occupy D.C. when you can write up a puffy Style section front-pager on the protest music inspired by the leftist squatters?
On the one-month anniversary of the initial Occupy Wall Street protest in Manhattan, Washington Post staff writer David Montgomery devoted a 1,092-word October 17 Style feature to examining how protest music is helping identify "deeper streams that seem to link disparate cultures of rebellion in the United States and other parts of the world."
Oddly enough, much of the article seems to be free press for independent singer-songwriters like Emma's Revolution and David Rovics who "secretly [hope] to compose an anthem worthy of Dylan" and, I suppose, make a buck while doing so:
The Arab Spring; the pro-union demonstrations this year in Madison, Wis.; the plight of illegal immigrants; the execution of Troy Davis, and disenchantment with President Obama are among the themes that have inspired multiple songs by various artists in recent months.
“The Arab Spring really accelerated everything,” Sandy O says. “I think the Arab Spring is why Madison happened the way it did and why the occupations are happening the way they’re happening.”
Mount Rainier-based Emma’s Revolution saluted the Arab Spring in a new song called “Rise” and addressed Madison in “Stand Together.”
The duo wrote “Occupy the U.S.A.” as “a rally song to reflect back to the people that we as activist musicians are with them,” Sandy O says. “It’s really about them, it’s for them, and it’s something we want them to use.”
David Rovics had a different purpose in mind with his fresh tune “Occupy Wall Street.”
Rovics, based in Portland, Ore., also performed on Freedom Plaza, but there he presented his Arab Spring song (“Tunisia 2011”) and his anti-Obama song (“Four More Years”) because his Wall Street jeremiad wasn’t ready yet.
He finished it last week, and that night in a hotel room in Orlando, he sang it into the video camera of his iPhone, then uploaded it to YouTube. Now he’s on tour, playing it at every occupation he can get to.
He framed the lyrics as an answer to puzzled critics who keep asking, “Why occupy Wall Street?”
