Songs inspiring action :: Giving Tuesdays #5
Exercise your rights when you have them. Are you the one?
Welcome back to Giving Tuesdays, a feature of On Humanity to support one another and those around us. As outlined here, every other week your requests or offers to this mutual exchange form will be posted here. Submit a new request anytime!
Today we’ll follow a different tune as it is Election Day here in the U.S. For a few moments I’d like to exercise my “moral authority” over this blog and encourage you, dear reader, to take action. If you have a choice to make and possess such a right: please vote for your values. Vote for your principles. Vote for what you believe in.
Empty words? Devoid of meaning? Feeling uninspired?
Imagine yourself in a society where you do not get any say in decisions related to your individual autonomy and rights as a human being. Imagine that such society is now at your doorstep. Wouldn’t you want to change the trajectory?
Irrelevant? False? Can never happen here?
For inspiration, I’d like you to listen to this beautiful song recently created and performed by students at the University of Art in Tehran, Iran on October 29, 2022, in the midst of the ongoing protests:
The above was bravely sung to the tune of the famous Chilean protest anthem, “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” (music by Sergio Ortega), itself having taken off after the 1973 coup d'état led to Pinochet’s dictatorship. Here is its 2019 rendition in Santiago during “The biggest march of Chile” as part of Estallido Social, which led to a national plebiscite in 2020:
This September 2022, in Moscow, Russia, the bard duo Ivasi, with experience in protest song since their initial popularity in the late 1980’s, organized a monumental and historic “unsanctioned concert” (mastering the use of Aesopian language) with this breathtaking feature song written last year, “We Are Not Zeros”:
Their full concert, called “Eternal Thinker,” was aimed at emotionally re-empowering anyone who lost their place and meaning in life as a result of this year’s absurd events.
I will conclude with a rough translation of “We Are Not Zeros” as sung by Ivasi in Moscow that day. Nothing can change there in the near-term, for obvious reasons. Yet, if you have a right to help affect change here, remember all those around the globe who are fighting for it at this moment in the small ways they can.
Today, on Election Day, be sure to exercise this right. Are you a one…?
“We Are Not Zeros” (composed by Georgy Vasilyev in 2021, my translation) They shut our mouths, they didn't let us in, They pushed us and tried to flatten into zeros. They narrowed the bounds, and they pressed and they pressed, But they could not destroy us. They could not flatten us into zeros. They could not flatten us into zeros. They could not flatten us into zeros. Chorus: We are not zeros, we are not zeros, You will not drive us with kicks into pens, We are not zeros, we are not zeros, We are ones and we are millions. Who is not afraid to fight off the herd, Who is not afraid to go through the pain, Who is not afraid to think with their own head, They are a one and surely not a zero. Who is not afraid - they are a one. Who is not afraid - they are a one. Who is not afraid - they are a one. Chorus: We are not zeros, we are not zeros, You will not drive us with kicks into pens, We are not zeros, we are not zeros, We are ones and we are millions. Who volunteers overnight in the hospitals - They are a one. Who pushes the limits every day - They are a one. Who does not want to pray to the bastard - They are a one. Who is not in a hurry to be zeroed - They are a one. Chorus: We are not zeros, we are not zeros, You will not drive us with kicks into pens, We are not zeros, we are not zeros, We are ones and we are millions.
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