Bringing the (Musical) Message Home

by Kaeley Pruitt-Hamm

This summer, civil rights activist Dr. Bernard LaFayette told me stories of how he and his friends not only survived but thrived in jail. When they were incarcerated for standing up for their rights as equal citizens, they wouldn’t mope around waiting for bail or even chant angrily. Instead, they sang. They sang and laughed and bonded with the watchman talking about his family. There is just something about music that is magical fuel for a movement, and I wanted to hear and feel more of it in our call to Bring Our Billions Home from war and greed. I wanted to move beyond just Dylan and Lennon covers as recycled bread and butter of protest songs, so in August I began recruiting for a new throng of theme-song generators for this generation’s movement.

After months of jamming with strangers at Westlake’s Occupy encampment, prodding hints of political dissent in open mic acts, and desperately negotiating with venues in Bellingham and Seattle, the events finally came together. Two concerts, which I decided to call “Voices of the 99%: Speak, Sing, and Play Your Peace” brought together artists and activists in Bellingham on November 18th and in Seattle on December 9th. Acts ranging from folk to hip hop to rap to spoken word were featured in packed lineups.

One interracial group from Hip Hop Occupies, called Black Magic Noize, used freestyle rap and improvised a call to “Bring Our Billions Home” in their lyrics. A boy named Yusif talked about how his family was violently driven out of their home in Kuwait through song. Most importantly, a diverse community has begun forming that has a powerful weapon for articulating our needs: creativity, which is crucial for causing a shift in the paradigms and actions of society.

It felt as if I had been looking at a fountain that seemed dry, but as soon as I saw all the pipelines together at once, it was overflowing with creative calls for justice. And that is what this campaign and movement is about: organizing and making connections – between people and concepts. We need to connect the fact that people are going to die from lack of health care from more budget cuts in the state of Washington, yet we are spending billions of dollars on weapons that kill abroad. It is not difficult to get people to talk about how budget cuts have affected them, because we are all feeling the drain.

But a crucial role as members of Fellowship of Reconciliation is to point to where those resources are being drained: our bloated military budget. We need to bring the message of the campaign home to people’s hearts and minds, and sometimes it takes a rhyme, a beat, and a soulful and eloquent cry for the truth to really be heard.