Tomboy Anthem

I was just reading these horrible quotes by Kevin Lyman, the Warped tour founder/producer, and he was responding to questions by this great reporter, Megan Seling, about why there is so little representation of women musicians at the Warped Tour. And he said, "I don’t necessarily go search out girl bands — I always try to make sure they’re there. But they have to be good.” I mean, first of all, women are not "girls". That's just infantilizing and insulting. But second of all, he really hits on one of the most irritating aspects of sexism in the music industry, which is the way in which women are held up to impossible standards and hyper-scrutinized. There's a suspicion of, "What are you doing here? Do you really belong?" That kind of elitism is something I see in punk sometimes more generally, and it can mirror that kind of sexism or give it an added edge. "Are you punk enough to be here?" "Tomboy Anthem" is about the ways other people try and put you in a box or project their expectations onto you of who you should be. I'm really fed up with the kind of posturing and popularity contests that can get in the way of genuine communication and expression. This song is about just rejecting expectations and rules that don't serve us and not apologizing for it. — Statement from Madeline Burrows, drummer and vocalist for Tomboy

Lyrics

you talk and talk 
about what i do 
you think you know me 
but i'll show you 

you read my mind
well i read your diary 
if you're so tough 
than throw all your weight at me 
you think you're cool 
i'm just an accessory 
ha ha ha ha 
now you're gonna see 

can't watch you 
don't want to 
don't like you anymore
i can't watch you 

you get me now?
oh now you're the fucking king
if you're so sweet 
then get on your knees and sing
oh you're tone deaf?
surprise of the century
la la la la 
yeah you'd better believe!

i liked you but that was before

Sweetie, Tomboy's debut full-length, is out on Ride the Snake Records.

Tomboy are a riot grrrl band based in Boston and composed of Hanna Negami and Ali Donohue on guitar, Meghan Hines on bass, and Madeline Burrows on drums and vocals. 

Letter to My Father

Editors' note: Richard Wallace, also known as EPIC of the Chicago hip-hop group BBU, released his first solo album last month. Entitled #OPRAH, the title is actually an acronym: "Ordinary People Recording American History." It is, as the Chicago Reader's Leor Galil puts it, "a continuation of Chuck D's comment, but it's also an allusion to rap's current position, wherein recording equipment has become increasingly cheaper and more people have access to tools that allow them to document and share their experiences on some of the most popular websites out there." This track, "Letter to My Father," ties the political with the personal. Wallace's father died in prison, and the racist toll of the prison industrial complex and the injustice system are hardly news to anyone paying attention.

Lyrics

Take me away 
Take me away 
To brighter days 
Take me away 
Take me away 

To where my father is living 
Far from the prion system that pimped him Daley’s hit men 
hit men until they bent men 
Something gotta change 
Call me different distance distorted 
Son and daughter’s aborted 
And water boarded 
To save fortunes 
The porridge is running thing again 
And the wolfs is at the door 
The boy cried wolfs
till the the village called him a whore 
They took his voice and gave him sores took his hands and gave him sword 
Stole his soul and gave him lord 
I feel like war is eminent 
When you murder the innocent
There no repentance 
The life Trayvon 
Hearts dropped like a bombs 
while the world yelled stay calm 
The church said pray for him 
What happened to prophets speak the passion of the people 
Speak!!
Cause we need you
Not the money that leads you 
This is an open call to any militant 
That gives a shit
I’ll load a clip and die for this 
I seen my mother cry for this 
Look into her eye and whisper
Change gone come, because it has to
You dream might out last you 
But they are in line with what your past drew. 
And you drew Picasso’s momma 
I’m from where the red fern grows 
Stood on hot coals for the souls of Black folk 
I wrote this for cottage grove
GD’s BD’s and solid 4’s Vice Lords Black Stones and many more
They will unite till when this war 
You by pass them as some thugs but i see them as our core 
Intellectuals be the arm but the goons will be our sword 
War on bastards that want to out last us 
Word from the spook who sat by the door and learned master 
Wasn’t faster more intelligent 
Or or better fit then he was 
We don’t need them but they need us 
So drugs and dreams is what the feed us 
Keep us sick and waiting for Jesus 
To resurrect and kick his feet up
Well Jesus what are you waiting for? 
Waiting on you so long we knocking on Satan’s door. 
Like he ain’t picking up or he ain’t picking us.

Richard Wallace a.k.a. EPIC is a community activist, writer and lyricist in Chicago. He is a member of acclaimed hip-hop group BBU and is a co-founder of the Future of Benin Project.

Suicide Nets

“Suicide Nets,” from New Tongues' newly released Suite EP, is based on the use of such nets by the Foxconn factory in China to prevent workers from killing themselves by jumping out of their dorms. The suicides became common in 2010 at the Shenzhen manufacturing hub; workers began to see suicide as their only form of protest against inhumane and abusive working conditions.

Loud music often times has mundane or personal lyrics void of historical or political context. What we’ve tried to do is convey ideas about a subject that indirectly force the listener draw conclusions that are outside of their comfort zone. Abrasive soundscapes and the ebb and flow of tempo, volumes, and feel are important to what we write musically. The actual lyrical content of the songs may not be of the direct variety that politicos who listen to music seek out.

Lyrics

The ledge is not your friend today
Those nets are meant for safety
The line shall not be crossed today

Look out below!!!

Not today, not today, not today
When does it end? Where to begin?
Where does it end? When to begin?

Manufacturing Truth

Editors’ note: This track is from Tyranny Is Tyranny’s November, 2013 album Let It Come From Whom It May. The band is currently on tour and are working on their new album.

* * *

Life is not, as Hobbes asserted, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” because humans are naturally selfish. That brutishness is a product of what Marx called “commodity fetishism.” The system of enforced scarcity alienates human beings from our true cooperative nature. As the crises inherent in capitalism roll from one into the next, the working class has no choice but to focus on the brutal task of survival, barely noticing that those who exploit them are wrapped in the American flag and waving their own distorted versions of the Constitution.

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Lyrics

We were made this way
Our souls vacant and torn
Self-worth measured by progress
Progress measured by bone
Work. Breathe. Dream. Die.
Your saviors lie
You never read it
You manufacture
You tell the truth
You manufacture
Relations of production
We learn to ignore
Unplanned, unassumed
Crisis comes to the fore

Tyranny Is Tyranny is a Madison, Wisconsin post-noiserock group focusing on dynamics, repetition, and the dismantling of capitalism. 

People's Art and Political Struggles

Editors’ note: This workshop was presented at the Socialism 2014 conference in Chicago on June 26th. It was part of a track of radical art talks done every year at the Socialism conference. It now appears at the website WeAreMany.org. Broken up into two parts, the talks take on the broad question of creative expression’s relationship to activism, first from the outside in, then from the inside out.

The first speaker, Alexander Billet of Red Wedge, attempts to provide a framework for understanding art both under capitalism and how it is impacted by radical social change. The second speaker, Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi, then picks up by performing two of his own poems and shares his experiences as an “artist-activist.”

Alexander Billet is a music and arts critic and writer based in Chicago, and is on the editorial board of Red Wedge.

Remi Kanazi is a poet, writer, and activist based in New York City. He is the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine, and is the editor of Poets For Palestine.