Ian Buruma on Protest Songs from Washington to Beijing
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 11.15.05 | 12:04 AM ET
The author of the fine travel memoir “God’s Dust: A Modern Asian Journey” has written a thoughtful story in the Guardian about the state of protest music. Buruma begins by asking why Bob Dylan tunes are still the go-to music for American protests, but the article soon takes a global turn, touching, for example, on the music that fueled the 1989 student uprising in Tiananmen Square.
Buruma writes:
Rock and pop played a central role in the protests on Tiananmen Square. One of the leaders of the Beijing demonstrations was a Taiwanese pop singer, Hou Dejian, whose hit song, Descendants of the Dragon, was the unofficial anthem of the Chinese protest movement. Another figure to appear on the square was Cui Jian, who has been compared variously to Bruce Springsteen, Dylan and Lennon. None of them quite fit the raucous, rather melodramatic style of this Chinese rocker, who plays guitar as well as trumpet. His song, Nothing to My Name, belted out in hope as well as frustration, was played over and over, live, on loudspeakers, and private cassette players.
In another passage, he questions the dual roles of rocker/elder statesman Bono:
The very idea of Dylan going to the White House, or world summit meetings, to discuss the fate of the world, was ridiculous. Even accepting an honorary doctorate at Princeton was really too much for him. Yet this is precisely what the most political rock stars of today are doing: accepting medals, having meetings with presidents and prime ministers, receiving knighthoods. What is a rock’n'roller like Bono doing when he gives out official statements from the G8 summit praising George Bush for his generosity to Africa? And what about those “signed copies” of Bob Geldof’s photographs made during his African journeys? This is politics too, of a kind, but it is not exactly fizzing with protest against the established order.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
