Chanson française – Rouge pour l'éternité – Marco Valdo M.I. – 2010

In memoriam UGO DESSY

Ah, Lucien mon ami l'âne, tu me vois bien peiné.

Et pourquoi donc, Marco Valdo M.I. mon ami, qu'est-ce qui t'attriste ainsi ?

Je viens d'apprendre que notre ami Ugo Dessy était parti vers d'autres îles, dont il ne reviendra sans doute jamais. C'était il y a un an déjà. C'est sa compagne qui m'a prévenu et dans son courriel, elle me disait : « Caro Marco Valdo,
è da diverso tempo che avrei dovuto scriverti per farti sapere che Ugo Dessy ci ha lasciati. E' passato quasi un anno perchè è accaduto il 23 aprile 2009. Ma come diceva sempre lui " Amo tanto la vita che continuerò a vivere anche quando non ci sarò più" - e infatti così è. » Ce qui se traduit à peu près comme ceci : « Cher Marco Valdo, il y a déjà quelque temps que j'aurais dû t'écrire pour te faire savoir que Ugo Dessy nous a laissé.... (continuer)

Stin Amfiáli
Στίχοι: Νίκος Γκάτσος
Μουσική: Σταύρος Ξαρχάκος
Πρώτη εκτέλεση: Τάκης Μπίνης
Από τη ταινία Ρεμπέτικο του Κώστα Φέρρη- 1983

Testo di Nikos Gatsos
Musica di Stavros Xarchakos
Prima esecuzione di Takis Binis
Dal film "Rebetico" di Kostas Ferris, 1983

2003
Verità supposte

Dall'album Verità Supposte del 2003

[2004]
Album: Un Numero

[2002]
Album “Talking to the wall”, with Sharon Aviv.

[1996]
Album “All my winding journeys”

[1981]
Album “Unapproved Road”

[1981]
Album “Unapproved Road”

[1986]
Album “True and Bold”

“Written at the end of the 1984/85 Miners' Strike in the UK for the Lothian Victimised Miners, most of whom were friends of mine, who lost their jobs as a result of their part in the strike. Davie Hamilton (now an MP) was the Chair of the Lothian Miner's Central Strike Committee - he spent 3 months in Saughton Prison after being arrested while trying to get medical assistance for an injured picket. He also lost his job.
Malcolm Pitt was the Area president of the Kent National Union of Mineworkers and was also arrested and imprisoned on a trivial charge.
At the time of the strike Arthur Scargill was the National President of the NUM, Peter Heathfield was General Secretary, and Mick McGahey was National Vice-President and Scottish Area President.
Ian MacGregor was an American hitman brought in by the Thatcher Government as head of the National Coal Board to... (continuer)

[1974]
Album “Outside The City”

“For Hein Kröher. I got the idea for this song after a long conversation with him about the second world war.” (da Colin Wilkie’s Songbook)

[1946]
Album: Folk Songs of the Hills [1947]

"The saddest songs are written when a person is happy. I was driving home after a date with a beautiful girl in Redondo Beach, California. I had a recording session to do the next morning and needed some material. I parked my car under a street light and wrote the verses to "Dark As A Dungeon." I got the idea from growing up around the coal mines in Kentucky. My father and brothers were coal miners…

I have known the fruits of strikes. The bitter and the sweet. Hunger and music... Who deserves more credit than the wife of a coal miner? Mother was one. She never complained about the hardships that were hers in abundance. Lighting the coal-oil lamp long before daylight, and cooking breakfast for her children and husband.
Taylor, my oldest brother, would come home and get 'washed up.' How well I remember the galvanized tub set in the middle of... (continuer)

[1972]
Album “Morning”
Testo trovato sul Colin Wilkie’s Songbook

[1965]
Album "We Travel The Road"

“I was reading about the dreadful mining disaster in Lengede, north Germany and said to Shirley [Colin Wilkie’s wife]: "You wouldn't get me down in a mine." Although I've changed the setting to a coalmine, it conveys my feelings to any kind of underground work”.
(from Colin Wilkie’s Songbook)

A Lengede, in Bassa Sassonia, nel 1963 una miniera fu allagata dall’acqua proveniente da lacuni laghi artificiali che la sovrastavano (!!!). 130 minatori rimasero intrappolati. 29 di loro morirono. Quando, dopo alcune settimane, le gallerie furono rimesse in sicurezza e si poterono raggiungere i corpi, i soccorritori scoprirono che quegli uomini, nel tentativo di aprirsi una via di salvezza, avevano scavato per 14 giorni prima di soccombere… Un corpo non fu mai neppure trovato.

[1976]
Album “Live in Person” (Germany tour)

“After working for British Railways for nearly thirty years, my father was made redundant during a big economy drive to make the railways profitable [the Beeching Cuts, when more than 2,000 local railway stations were closed down]. To show their appreciation for all his years of service they allowed him to keep his railway uniform, which consisted of a jacket, cap, trousers, waistcoat and overcoat. They also gave him a choice of redundancy payment of seven hundred pounds in his hand or a pension of about nine shillings a week until death. He chose the lump sum, which was just as well because he was out of work for two years, which to a proud man like him was almost unbearable. He even refused unemployment pay, said he'd rather starve, which he nearly did.”
(Eric Bogle, february 1975)

[1995]
Album “No Gods”
Il titolo fa riferimento alla poesia di Hamish Handerson “End of a Campaign” – dalla raccolta “Elegies for the Dead of Cyrenaika” – in cui già ci siamo imbattuti a proposito di Farewell To Sicily.

“L’orgoglio e la gloria sono soltanto un’altra sanguinosa menzogna che loro [the fat politicians] usano per tenerci tutti sull’attenti”… “Perché è chiaro che loro preferiscono le pecore agli uomini che pensano, ma uomini che pensano come pecore sono ancora meglio”

[1995]
Album “No Gods”

Il titolo fa riferimento all’appellativo “Mick” (ma anche “Paddy”) con cui un inglese è solito chiamare un irlandese.

“This is the most controversial of Brian's songs, but he makes no apology for that, and the response of audiences around the world to its powerful and uncompromising lyrics show a huge and growing swell of support for the stance he's taken. Brian wrote the song after seeing, on a trip between Spain and his home in the North of England, the way that Irish musicians were treated at London's Heathrow Airport. He was part of a mixed party of Scots, English, Irish, Breton and Galician musician bands on their way between the usual hectic run of summer folk festivals.
As a Scot with a British passport, Brian had no problems with either the customs or the immigration officers, nor had the English or the Bretons, or the Galicians, but the minute one of the... (continuer)

La versione dell'Iguana della canzone di Richard Berry portata al successo dai Kingsmen. Il testo è riscritto in chiave di satira politica e pacifista. Iggy l'aveva già incisa con gli Stooges (ma con un testo diverso) nell'album Metallik K.O. del 1974. Questa versione proviene invece dall'album "American Caesar" del 1993.

1988

"More Than a Name on a Wall" is a song written by Jimmy Fortune and John Rimel, and recorded by American country music group The Statler Brothers. It was released in April 1989 as the third single from their Greatest Hits album. The song, about a mother visiting the Vietnam Wall to see her son's name, peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart.

Basta violenza sugli animali! Grandi Los Fastidios!

Si commenta da sola!

[1965]
Registrata dal vivo al Newport Folk Festival.
Inclusa nell’album postumo “Memories” del 1968.

Questo brano racconta di quando Richard Fariña, artista statunitense politicamente impegnato e di origini cubane da parte di padre, dopo aver fatto un viaggio a Cuba ed essersi esibito in concerti nell’isola, venne bollato come “comunista” e chiamato a rispondere di fronte alla commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta per le attività anti-americane, non quella buffonata voluta da quell’alcolista del Senatore McCarthy negli anni 50, ma quella “seria” che funzionò dal 1938 fino al 1975 e della quale fece parte – per dirne uno – Richard Nixon

“Political activism earned folk music artist/beat novelist Richard Fariña a subpoena to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The government wanted to make him a criminal after a playfully defiant trip to Cuba and his outspoken performances... (continuer)

[1947]
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music: sung to the tune of “Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother”
Album: Struggle [1990]


On March 25th, around 3:30 p.m., a great explosion rocked Centralia Coal Company Mine Number 5 (Wikipedia, Centralia mine disaster).
In the aftermath, rescuers brought out eight wounded miners, but over a hundred workers remained underground, their condition unknown. In freezing weather, rescue teams worked around the clock to free those still enclosed while their families gathered at the mouth of the mine. In the end, these efforts and the families’ prayers went unrewarded; all of the missing 111 miners were found dead. But the body count alone did not attract national media attention; for it soon came to light that both state and federal mine inspectors had warned of the mine’s hazardous condition less than week before the disaster. In fact, the state inspector... (continuer)

[1932]
Lyrics & Music by Aunt Molly Jackson and his brother Jim Garland.
Album: The Songs and Stories of Aunt Molly Jackson, Folkways Records, [1961]

Come Dreadful Memories, un’altra canzone che Aunt Molly Jackson compose durante uno dei tanti scioperi ‎che i minatori di Harlan County, Kentucky, condussero nel corso degli anni 30, culminati il 5 ‎maggio 1931 nella cosiddetta “Battle of Evarts” quando tre minatori rimasero uccisi negli scontri tra ‎scioperanti, crumiri e vigilantes della compagnia mineraria. Il governatore fu costretto a mandare la ‎guardia nazionale a ristabilire l’ordine e da quel momento Harlan fu nota come “Bloody Harlan ‎County”. Era nota con questo nomignolo ancora negli anni 70, quando le lotte sindacali si ‎rinfocolarono e si fecero di nuovo molto violente… ‎

‎During her New York stay [1931], Aunt Molly Jackson visited Columbia's studios to make her only commercial... (continuer)

Direttamente dalla Lou Amaro Production Inc. per la categoria "Violenze sui primi ministri", una piccola parodia senza pretese. Più che una parodia, una riscrittura. La canzone è stata prodotta quando l'autore è stato ispirato dagli eventi del 13 dicembre 2009, quando il Cavaliere fu colpito da una chiesa volante (anche in Vaticano è arrivata la tecnologia). Ha narrato l'evento sulla musica della bellissima "Le mauvais sujet repenti" di Georges Brassens.
Le parole sono di Lou Amaro e di suo padre, la musica è di Brassens.

[2009]
Testo e musica di Fortunato Sindoni
Album: Ballate contro la mafia

[1971]
Testo trovato su Mudcat Café



Si veda anche al proposito la canzone Fort Dix Stockade di Bob Lusk, anche lui detenuto a Fort Dix ma prima della rivolta.

Il diciannovenne Bill Brakefield disertò nel 1968 ma, invece di provare a scappare in Canada, decise di rendere pubblica la sua decisione. Per qualche giorno riuscì ad evitare l’arresto rifugiandosi nel City College di New York, ma il 7 novembre la polizia fece irruzione, prese Bill e i commilitoni che avevano condiviso la sua lotta e li consegnò alle autorità militari.

All’epoca le corti marziali lavoravano senza sosta: nel 1969 furono celebrati quasi 80.000 processi per diserzione, con il 94% di condanne! E nelle prigioni militari i soldati pacifisti o, comunque, non disposti ad andare a farsi ammazzare o ad uccidere in Vietnam non se la passavano bene…
Quella che segue è una testimonianza dello stesso soldato Brakefield:
“Howie... (continuer)