Awareness Through Music (Media Meditation #3)

Michael Franti and Spearhead are very socially and politically conscious musicians, as well as advocates for peace in the middle east. After September 11th Franti wrote the song "Bomb the World". This song featured lyrics such as "You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb it into peace". These lyrics have shown up on protest signs and t-shirts all over the world, at demonstrations, large and small, for peace. He has become known as an artist that sings what he believes in. Michael Franti & Spearhead released the Yell Fire! album, inspired by Franti's trip to Israel, Baghdad, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The song Yell Fire!, with the same name as the album title is a good example of one of his songs with a strong meaning behind it.


He has even wrote a song showing his support for President Obama.




You know that music awareness affects listeners when in March of 2003 MTV banned music videos with war-related titles, lyrics or images. According to an article "MTV drops war-themed pop videos" written by The Guardian "MTV, like many other broadcasters, feels content should reflect audience sensitivities at this time of war," an MTV spokeswoman said. "There will be heightened public sensitivity to representations of war, soldiers, bombing, destruction of buildings and public unrest at home," stated the memo from Mark Sunderland, the broadcast standards manager of MTV Networks Europe. Yea right, MTV was probably told that they should refrain from showing these videos by the man upstairs. Not because they were being sensitive to their viewers but they didn't want these videos to evoke change or upset the public to a level where they choose to act on it...maybe even decide to protest against the war.


Another musician with a strong voice in preaching awareness is Ani DiFranco, singer, guitarist, songwriter, feminist, and gay rights activist among other things. "On July 21, 2006, DiFranco received the 'Woman of Courage Award' at the National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, New York. Past winners have included singer and actress Barbra Streisand and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. DiFranco is one of the first musicians to receive the award, given each year to a woman who has set herself apart by her contributions to the feminist movement." (Wikipedia). Her songs talk about social issues such as: racism, sexism, sexual abuse, homophobia, reproductive rights, poverty, and war.

Here are two songs that show her ability to share awareness through music.





Another Group to note would be Liyana, a musical group from Zimbabwe who spreads special needs awareness through music.



It is key to note that all of the musicians I talked about above have gained an enormous increase in the amount of listeners they have from social media sites such as youtube. The technological shift from analog to digital has definitely helped them spread their message of awareness, which goes along with the cultural shift of how we choose to find music. They are persuading us to take action or be aware through value messaging, and for these artist depending on which side you take are mostly positive. But as we have seen music can promote bad value messages such as the Lil John song "Can't Stop Pimping" which was talked about in Censored 2010 in reference to Human Trafficking and Domestic Prostitution Reconsidered (pg. 346). His lyrics state "They don't keep nothin dough, They bring it straight to daddy, You catch them stealin dawg, You beat that ass badly". This obviously is music being used to send negative value messaging. I guess just like everything in life, you have to take the good with the bad. It just sucks to see the bad being viewed more by the public then the good.