Penny Stone
What songs were women singing 100 years ago when they were campaigning for full access to our democratic system?
At the beginning of the 20th century, the folk songs that have always been sung were being sung all over the country. Women were still singing while labouring – milking, spinning, waulking (beating) the cloth and such like. They were singing lullabies to help soothe the babies and themselves, and singing ballads telling of love and loss.
Songs of war were everywhere…
As I write, it is Remembrance weekend; a difficult one for many of us. For anyone who has lost family and friends to war, whether soldiers or civilians, it is important to have space to remember those people as well as the circumstances of their loss. Unfortunately, the pomp and circumstance surrounding our annual remembrance ceremonies based around the ‘victory’ of the First World War can be troubling for peace activists such as myself.
Most years I am involved with alternative…
’Biktub Ismak Ya Biladi, ‘al shams ilma bit(a)gheeb
La mali wala wlaadi, ‘Ala Hubik mafe Habib.
I will write your name oh my country, above the sun that never sets.
Not my children nor my wealth, above your love there is no love.
I first heard this song at a demonstration in Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, Palestine, in 2012. I was in the village to participate in a demonstration with my choir and, as is their tradition of…
When my choir San Ghanny (‘We Shall Sing’ in Arabic) and I were in Palestine two months ago, we took part in a demonstration to call for the return of Palestinian bodies from the Israeli government.
The campaign is led by family members, often mothers, of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces, or who have been involved in militarised resistance to the occupation resulting in their own deaths. This includes desperate actions such as suicide bombing.
For family…
I have just returned from a trip to Palestine with my solidarity choir, San Ghanny (‘We Shall Sing’ in Arabic) where we visited a farming community in the South Hebron hills called At Tuwani where we learned about their everyday lives and accompanied them in planting olive trees.
We planted olive trees on land owned by the community and immediately next to a fence marking off more land that used to be owned by the villagers, but has been stolen by the illegal Israeli settlement next…
In common with most people seeking positive change in the world, I have been struggling these past few months to keep hopeful about humanity. It feels very overwhelming and disempowering to hear the news every day. But there are always small things that can help us to keep on keeping on.
As the New Year turned, I turned to Pete Seeger to help me re-find some of my optimism and hope. And he did not let me down. So I would…
When we sing, we vibrate – that’s how we make sound, it’s a bit like having two little guitar strings in our throats that are amplified by the whole of our bodies. So when we sing together, we vibrate together. There’s no avoiding it, if you’re in the room with a group of singers, you will feel the vibrations in your body in some way. And if you sing as well, you will feel your own vibrations mixed in with other people’s vibrations. There’s no way to vibrate collectively alone. It’s one of…
We rise, for our brothers, for our sisters.
We rise, for water, for life.
We rise, for one nation.
Protect our water,
Protect our land,
Protect our people.
[Mass chanting at Standing Rock Spirit Camp, led by a young Sioux woman]
The Dakota pipeline is being planned and constructed to pipe oil from the Dakotas to Illinois, in the USA. The Standing Rock Sioux and other First Nations of the…
Many of you will know this song, 'Singing For Our Lives', by Holly Near. It has been sung in many contexts since she wrote it, but it began life as a cry for and from members of the global LGBT community in response to the killing of councillor Harvey Milk and mayor George Moscone in San Francisco in 1978.
There are songs that we inherit as radical activists, songs that are part of our history. I cut my teeth singing this song outside Faslane submarine base, and on all sorts of…
If you don’t live in Scotland, you might not know the phrase, ‘the carrying stream’. It has come to mean being part of the passing on of tradition, particularly through music and culture, and comes from the words of Hamish Henderson. Hamish was, among many other things, a great Scottish songwriter, collector and passer on of traditional songs. His final words, taken from the elegy he wrote for himself, is where this phrase ‘the carrying stream’ comes from;
‘Maker, ye maun sing…
It was a South African musician, whose name I can’t remember, years ago, said that ‘a group of people cannot all speak at once, but they can sing together’. And I’ve always kept a strong hold of this. It is important to remember.
When we have activist meetings, I always try to encourage folks to sing at the beginning and end of them so we can start from this place of everyone’s voice being heard, encouraging those who don’t want to sing to drum along on their knees or on the table…
I would like to tell you about some help Geoffrey Carnall gave to me some years ago when I was researching songs and stories to celebrate 50 years since the founding of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND).
I was volunteering at the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre at the time, where Geoffrey was on the management committee, and he was always interested in the treasure of songs and stories I was gathering. He always asked me to sing them and joined in softly but…
‘Take a stone in your hand and close your fist around it until it starts to beat, live, speak and move.’ Áillohaš (also known as Nils-Aslak Valkeapääs), Sami poet
As I’m sure most people are aware, the Paris climate talks are coming up and it is more crucial than ever before that we make bigger collective commitments to limit our impact on this earth that sustains us. But what has music got to do with that? Well, in my world, quite a lot. Music has the power to reach people…
Hello. My name is Penny Stone and this is the first of a new radical music column for Peace News.
So you’ll be hearing more from me in coming months. Sometimes I’ll round up bits and bobs that have been happening around the world, sometimes look at a particular radical music theme, and sometimes I’ll feature just one radical music event that has happened in the two months between issues.
About me: I am a radical musician based in Edinburgh. I write and sing topical…
