When I die, as we all must, I think that I shall miss the music more than almost anything.
Whether we hum in the shower, sing along to the radio in the car, or cut disks that go Platinum, we are all musicians. I have never met anyone with a pulse that doesn't enjoy music, in one form or another.
That much is clear from the wealth of "Music Diaries" that regularly grace the pages of this site. Classical music, music to dance to, music for protest even the one-hit-wonders are amply represented and enjoyed by many. So many, in fact, that the videos posted in the Diaries and Comment threads make loading the said pages a bit of a trial at times. Usually, the wait is worth it.
So I plan to do something a little different.
Each week, on Wednesday, I plan to post a Diary that takes one song and explores its roots. Some will be familiar, some many will never have heard before but I promise that they will all have a meaning and depth that makes the time spent reading and listening well worth the investment.
I will welcome suggestions for future songs. I have a few in mind and I will probably go with those for the first few weeks. From then on I hope that it's as much a voyage of discovery for me, as it is for you.
I was brought up with music. Every day, most of the day there was a radio playing, or Mum was singing in the kitchen. None of us played musical instruments although I tried. First the violin and later the trumpet. Those efforts resulted in music much in the way that I write Diaries, with no real notes!
As you will find out shortly, the singing was not much better!
Nonetheless, music matters. It matters rather less that you can create your own; all you need do is enjoy, or take inspiration from the work of others.
The struggle of the working classes to achieve social justice has always been "tuneful". Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, every folk song and protest refrain from time immemorial has lead the charge. We have sat around campfires, marched in the streets and manned picket lines. And they have all had a soundtrack.
In a later Diary I plan to share my earliest memory. I was, according to Mum, two and a half years old. Fifty years later I can remember the song, and many of the folk singing it.
Today we are going to remember the Aldermaston March, and it's theme tune.
This event was first held at Easter, 1958. It was a four day march from Trafalgar Square in London, to the Atomic Weapons Research establishment at Aldermaston. I can honestly say that I didn't take part because at that time I wasn't even a twinkle in my Dad's eye, though before Easter the following year I certainly was. I don't remember ever going on one of those marches, but I am told I did.
On that first march, several thousand people took part, and they marched to music. The song that was written by John Brunner became the theme tune of the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
A Song by John Brunner©John Brunner 1958
Don't you hear the H-bomb's thunder
Echo like the crack of doom?
While they rend the skies asunder
Fall-out makes the earth a tomb
Do you want your homes to tumble
Rise in smoke towards the sky?
Will you let your cities crumble
Will you see your children die?
Chorus:
Men and women, stand together
Do not heed the men of war
Make your minds up now or never
Ban the bomb for evermore
Tell the leaders of the nations
Make the whole wide world take heed
Poison from the radiations
Strikes at every race and creed
Must you put mankind in danger
Murder folk in distant lands?
Will you bring death to a stranger
Have his blood upon your hands?
Shall we lay the world in ruin?
Only you can make the choice
Stop and think of what you're doing
Join the march and raise your voice
Time is short; we must be speedy
We can see the hungry filled
House the homeless, help the needy
Shall we blast, or shall we build ?
This song resonates very powerfully for me and, I would imagine, for very many others who grew up in the Labour Movement through the sixties and seventies. I remember singing it often along with others, and they became firm favourites. Somewhere, in a box stored who knows where is a songbook that we used. It has the words to this and many other "Songs of Work and Protest". It also has beautiful folk songs from around the world and I wish that I could find it.
We now live in a world where everything is digitized, shared, uploaded and downloaded but that was not the case then. Some of these songs cannot be found by a quick "Google Search", and some can't be found even with a detailed one.
Forgive me, but in the interest of you hearing this song the way I remember it, then you are just going to have to put up with me singing it!
H-Bomb's Thunder by Twigg_sb
The words, and their meaning is clear. They are as pertinent now as they were in 1958. Quite honestly, we thought that by now we would indeed have "put and end to war", to quote a line from a song that will come later in the series.
It was fifty years ago and yet, in the news right now are the same tired old politicians hawking exactly the same jingoistic and dangerous policies that we all feared back then. Now the enemy is, apparently, Iran. They are afraid that Iran will bomb Washington DC, or somewhere. Yesterday they were afraid that 30 000 nuclear warheads would travel the four minutes from the Soviet Union.
They were afraid that Cuba would become "the enemy on the doorstep" .... So they isolated Cuba, wrecked it's economy and drove the people there into poverty. Yet still they have Universal Healthcare and we do not.
They are always afraid of something, someone yet they fail to recognise the deep irony here. Much of the rest of the world is afraid of the irresponsible and violent United States of America, and they argue for a right to defend themselves. There is only one country that has ever used a nuclear weapon in anger (twice), and it wasn't Iran.
The rights and wrongs of the end of the Second World War are a matter for historians. What is more pertinent to the world of today is that the need to remove such weapons has never been more important. We do need to prevent the proliferation, and we do need to decommission the ones we have. Only then are we in a position to show the world that we have learned. The USA ... The only country ever to use a weapon of mass destruction against a civilian population. You need to go first because that is the only way that the rest of the world will believe your serious intent.
Meanwhile, the music lives on, and now this song too will be easily found by the good spiders of Google.
Hope you enjoyed it.