Generational Dilemmas

So I promised a few more words about the Blues and Roots Festival before the week was through. I might not get these published until Monday, but I am writing them on Easter Saturday. Erina and I have been watching/listening to Live 8 all day at the shack, which is an interesting musical backdrop to discuss the importance and power of music as an instrument of change and engagement.

The highlights of last weekend for me were definitely Blue King Brown, and Ben Harper.

Blue King Brown are an excellent new Australian band who play an interesting mix of afro-beat, reggae and “worldy” sounding percussion driven tunes. Their songs are infused with political messages but the irony was not lost on me that I watched them play in the “*well known soft drink* live and local” tent.

That aside, the crowd got right into the “stand up and be counted” messages.

But – I am not sure if the songs are ever construed by the punters as the writers intend them. I wonder if the social commentators of today hit their mark?

Now to Ben Harper, who played one of the most inspiring sets I have ever seen. That guy is a very skilled musician and from my privileged viewing position about 10m from the stage, some of his songs took on a new meaning for me. The beauty of his music is that he writes wonderful songs about love, loss and heartbreak but also makes political statements about war, violence, corruption and so has the capacity to speak to anyone who will listen about whatever is on their mind. His political messages are subtle, but to me are about engaging with a system that won’t always engage with you, about the power that one person has to refuse to accept that the way things are is the way things must be.

As someone caught between two generations of politically apathetic peers*, these are potentially powerful messages.

“I can change the world with my own two hands, with my own, with my own, two hands”. I can engage, I can question, I can leave my mark but “please don’t talk about murder while I’m eatin’.

I worry that the punters, the people most likely to be listening to the messages, hear them not as words of motivation and messages of empowerment, but as excuses to disengage and to detach…. Using them as justifications to absolve themselves of responsibility for decisions made on their behalf by the governments they may have helped to elect, or to dismiss as lost causes the ongoing struggles of people around the world, and of those in their own backyards………..

“Policy and politics, it’s a drag – they put one foot in the grave, and the other on the flag”. And that is a lyric that links back to my previous post about inspiration and the ongoing quandaries of a surface dwelling existence – that lyric, it burns behind my eyeballs in those rare and self-indulgent existential moments …..

So, yeah uh…. Thanks to those people who wrote emails to me about the inspiration blog – even though there is only one comment on there, a few people took the time to tell me their thoughts, which was nice. And Erin your compliment did not go unnoticed (thanks – very kind) although obviously I am obliged to disagree with you. Hahaha.

*AM happy to take debate on this point, but I have decided that at 24 I am neither Gen X nor Gen Y, but a bit of both, Gen X+Y/2. Sound right?