Okay, so I play trumpet in a small brass band named The Huddled Masses Orchestra. We play some esoteric stuff and have a lot of fun while we do it. We are music nerds. But every now and again we do “occasional music” for some celebration or function that is a one-time only. When we do those, we look for event-specific tunes. We did Christmas carol events, that sort of thing.
Housing Rally
Two weeks ago we played at the Maine State House for a rally in support of housing legislation. Housing is a problem here in Maine, positioned right at the intersection of intersectionality. We coordinated some of our songs with the rally organizers and everyone seemed to think we added a je ne sais quoi.
We decided we want to do more rallies. After all, we are perfect for outdoors events. With seven brass players plus three percussionists we don’t need a sound system, and we don’t require a stage since we are supporting performers, never the main act.
The group wants to support two main categories of issues. First is women’s reproductive rights and the second would be anything that is rallying against neo-Nazis, and against fascists in general.
Choosing songs
We realized we would be more helpful at these things if we played a certain type of tune, shorter and which people could sing along with, or accompany by chanting. That’s how I was reminded of the Syracuse Cultural Workers collection. They present many chants (good representation of ones in Spanish) and at the end, a list of typical tunes that come out of the collective bargaining tradition (“Solidarity Forever”). The tunes tend to be extremely simple ones that people learned in school (“If you’re happy and you know it”).
The Contest?
The contest is to write some lyrics in support of the two issues above, set to the tune of one of the songs suggested by the Syracuse Cultural Workers.
Here is the list of song melodies crying out for updated lyrics:
Ain’t Going to Let Nobody Turn you Around
Amen (as in the movie, Lilies of the Field)
Day-O
Down By The Riverside
If You’re Happy and you Know It
This Little Light of Mine
Solidarity Forever ( a.k.a. Battle Hymn)
We Shall Not Be Moved
When the Saints Go Marching In
This is not the sum total of all songs we plan to play, (for example we have the music and lyrics to All You Fascists Bound to Lose) but it will be very helpful to organize the lyrics for these specific tunes in the run-up to events.
Hey, if you can think of lyrics that are pro-Biden, we’ll also use those!