Music Changes Minds

Friday, April 25, 2008

Music Changes Minds (Allegro/AFM Local 802)

LABOR HISTORY MONTH

Music Changes Minds

By Anne Feeney

As another May Day comes and goes, we cultural workers in the labor movement know that it will pass without comment in most U.S. unions.

But around the world, millions of workers will gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs in the 1886 battle for the eight-hour day. They will link arms and sing “The Internationale.” They will sing this 120-year old song in Korean, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Urdu, Hindi, Swahili and Chinese.

Here in the U.S., most people — even union members — couldn’t begin to hum the tune, and we know little of the Haymarket Massacre and less about May Day.

I’ll suggest to you that one of the reasons that we don’t know our history is because we don’t know our songs.

Since the dawn of humanity, we have been writing and singing songs as a way to remember our history and traditions. So many lessons that we have learned — both bitter and glorious — are remembered in labor songs.

Music that inspires us to collective action, music that inspires us to make individual sacrifices for the common good, or music that reminds us of the bloody and exploitative history of American industry will never sell at WalMart. And so this music has all but disappeared from our cultural landscape.

I spent 12 years as a trial lawyer believing that “professionals” would be able to make the system fairer to working people. I came to understand that was not, and would never be, true.

Studying our history convinced me that any powerful and important changes have come from the bottom up. Professionals, politicians and philanthropists are helpless to effect social change — without mass movements behind them.

We hear labor leaders decry U.S. labor law and declining union density. While these are problems to be sure, our failure to advance labor’s agenda has little to do with labor law. It has little to do with union density.

France has a fantastic labor movement, even though its union density is lower than ours. But French workers have something that we do not have — class consciousness. This is something that has been drilled out of us by corporate America.

No matter who we are, we say we are “middle class.” People on food stamps think they are middle class. People with six-figure paychecks and millions in assets consider themselves middle class. Can we really all be middle class? Who benefits from that perception?

It wasn’t until I immersed myself in American labor music (and began writing some of my own labor tunes) that I began to see where our class consciousness resides — in our culture!

For instance, a visit to www.LaborHeritage.org will give you a glimpse into a huge variety of cultural expression of working class value: books, music, films, art, puppets, poetry and more.

As I continue to learn and produce working-class oriented material, I become energized, optimistic and savvy.

I can hear some of you now: “I’m not working class! I’m a professional!” But unless you are primarily an employer, you are a worker — and a member of the working class. See if the values articulated in the cultural works of the labor movement speak to your true heart. I may just find you whistling “The Internationale” next May Day!

Anne Feeney (www.AnneFeeney.com) is a freelance troublemaker from Pittsburgh. Her award-winning songs have been featured in several films and are sung by activists everywhere — including Peter, Paul and Mary. Feeney was the only woman ever elected president of AFM Local 60-471 (Pittsburgh) and is also an active member of the traveling musicians’ local, AFM Local 1000. E-mail her at Anne@AnneFeeney.com.

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This story originally appeared in the May 2008 issue of Allegro, the newspaper of the New York City musicians' union (Local 802, American Federation of Musicians). You may reprint it as long as you credit the original source and author. The editor of Allegro, Mikael Elsila, can be reached at (212) 245-4802, ext. 179, or melsila@local802afm.org. (Note: when “Local 802” appears in the story, it refers to AFM Local 802, the musicians’ union local that covers New York City. See www.Local802AFM.org. for background.)

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