Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 26

January 29, 2025: Musical Activism: Post-9/11 Songs

[Fortyyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recordedtheir single “We are theWorld” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’llAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]

On how artcan radically change in meaning alongside history.

The song,and one of the cultural works in any media, that became most overtly associatedwith September 11th and its aftermaths was released almost exactly ayear before the attacks. America Town,the second studio album from Five forFighting (the stage name of singer-songwriter Vladimir John Ondrasik), wasreleased on September 26th, 2000 and included the song “Superman (It’s Not Easy).” Thatsong, an interesting psychological examination of Superman’s inner perspectiveand emotions, was the album’s second single and had already become a minor hitby September 2001; but in the aftermath of the attacks it became an anthem forthe first responders, an expression of their collective service and sacrificeon and after that horrific day. Five for Fighting’s live piano performance ofit at the October 20thConcert for New York City was one of the most moving moments in aperiod of American and world history full ofthem, and cemented this song’s enduring status as a definitive artisticexpression of the best of post-9/11 America.

Obviouslyall of Bruce Springsteen’s 2002 album TheRising comprised another, and much more intentional, such artisticexpression. But interestingly enough, perhaps the single song from that albumwhich became most overtly connected to 9/11 and its aftermaths—including a similarlive performance at another benefit concert, September 12th,2001’s televised special “America: A Tribute to Heroes”—waslikewise written a year before that event. Springsteen first wrote the song “My City of Ruins” inNovember 2000 for a Christmas benefit concert for Asbury Park, New Jersey, theseaside community that had been such a vital element of Springsteen’s childhoodand earlymusical career alike. By 2000 Asbury Park was in pretty rough shape (hence theneed for a benefit concert), and so was the titular city of ruins to whichSpringsteen’s speaker repeatedly implores that it “come on, rise up!” Byperforming the song at the Tribute to Heroes benefit Springsteen already beganto shift its association to post-September 11th New York City,however, and then his inclusion of it on TheRising—indeed, it is the album’s concluding track—cemented that new andenduring association.

Thespecific circumstances and ways in which these two songs became so closelyassociated with September 11th are thus quite different, but thefundamental facts are nonetheless similar: songs written in the fall of 2000becoming repurposed a year later after the attacks and in the process coming tofeel like collective artistic anthems of that moment and its emotions. Andthat’s what I would especially emphasize about this interesting and tellingpair of 9/11 songs: a particular and potent form of what literary critics wouldcall reader-responsetheory. That criticalperspective argues that the meaning of texts is made not by the authors (norby intrinsic elements within those texts), but by audiences through theirengagement with and responses to the texts. In my understanding reader-responsegenerally focuses on individual reader/audience member, but there’s no reasonwhy we can’t think about collective such responses, and indeed when it comes tohistorical events that affect an entire community or nation, it makes sensethat there would likewise be collective experiences of cultural and artisticworks. Moreover, Springsteen sought to produce such a collective experiencewith his post-9/11 album The Rising,and it’s clear that he succeeded very fully indeed.

Nextmusical activism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Activisms you’d highlight?

January 28, 2025: Musical Activism: Live Aid and Farm Aid

[Fortyyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recordedtheir single “We are theWorld” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’llAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]

On how anoverblown controversy at one activist concert led to a second that endures tothis day.

As I mentionedin yesterday’s post, “We Are the World” was directly inspired by the Britishsupergroup Band Aid’s late 1984 single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”Band Aid was the brainchild of producers BobGeldof and James “Midge” Ure, and in the summer of 1985 the pair decided tobuild on that starting point with a “global jukebox” known as Live Aid,comprising a number of concerts held around the world (but headlined by a pairof star-studded shows in London and Philadelphia) on July 13th. Watchedby nearly 2 billion people around the world, the concerts raised hundreds ofmillions for African famine relief (ostensibly, although the destination ofthose funds remained controversial for many years to come). But at least one famousperformer at the Philadelphia show expressed a different perspective: before helaunched into a performance of his song “When the Ship Comes In”(alongside Keith Richardsand Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones), Bob Dylanargued, “I hope that some of the money that’s raised for the people inAfrica, maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe one or two million,and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms that the farmershere owe to the banks.”

Even in thatpre-internet era, Dylan’s quote went viral, and was quickly and consistentlymisquoted (as hyperlinked above, there’s a full video of the Live Aidmoment, so the exact quote is perfectly clear) as “Wouldn’t it be great if wedid something for our own farmers right here in America?” The us vs. themframing of that misquoted version is hugely frustrating, not only because itplays into so many problematic broader narratives, but also because it goes directlyagainst the global solidarity exemplified by Live Aid. But if we set that falseframing aside, Dylan’s quote can be seen as offering a far more complementarythan contrasting perspective, and indeed as having set in motion conversationsthat led to a complementary activist concert: Farm Aid.Inspired by Dylan’s idea, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Youngorganized that September1985 benefit concert, held at Champaign, Illinois’s Memorial Stadium, toraise funds for family farmers in the U.S. Along with those three artists, FarmAid also featured performances from Dylan (natch), Billy Joel, B.B. King,Loretta Lynn, and Tom Petty among many others. Attended by a crowd of 80,000the concert raised nearly $10 million for its worthy cause.

That causedidn’t evaporate when the final notes sounded, though, and neither did Farm Aid,which has held concerts almost every Fall since 1985. The most recent, 38thFarm Aid concert, held on September21st, 2024 in Saratoga Springs, New York, still featured performancesby Nelson, Mellencamp, and Young, this time joined by Dave Matthews & TimReynolds from the Dave Matthews Band, Mavis Staples, Nathaniel Rateliff &the Night Sweats, and many others. It’s easy to see benefit concerts and othermusical activisms as a kind of parachuted-in moment without the staying powerthat is required to make a lasting difference; I don’t think that’s entirely fairin any case (raising millions of dollars as well as collective awareness are meaningfuleffects no matter what), but Farm Aid certainly reminds us that many of theseefforts endure long after the initial concert, and can become an ongoing elementof vital collective activism.

Nextmusical activism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Activisms you’d highlight?

January 27, 2025: Musical Activism: “We Are the World”

[Fortyyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recordedtheir single “We are theWorld” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’llAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]

Three individualswho together embody the serious and silly sides of musical activism.

1)     HarryBelafonte: By the mid-1980s, HarryBelafonte had been an iconic presence on both the cultural and politicallandscape for decades; indeed, as I discovered in researching thiscolumn on Vietnam Veterans Against the War, it’s hard to find a socialmovement and cause from the second half of the 20th century that didn’tfeature Belafonte’s activism in a significant way. So it shouldn’t be asurprise (even though I didn’t realize it until researching this post) that theoriginal idea for USA for Africa came from Belafonte—inspired by the Britishsupergroup Band Aid and their single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (1984),in early 1985Belafonte reached out to a number of prominent American musical artists tocreate a fundraising single for African famine relief. With its superstarlineup it’s easy to see “We Are the World” as more musical than activist, butBelafonte’s role certainly reminds us that it was fundamentally the latter.

2)     Michael Jackson:One of the first musicians that Belafonte enlisted to create the single wasalso the biggest superstar in the world at that moment. Michael Jackson wasn’tBelafonte’s first call, partly due to industry connections—Belafonte’s manager KenKragen reached out to a pair of his clients, Lionel Ritchie and KennyRogers; and Ritchie then contacted Stevie Wonder, whom he knew well. But when thelegendaryQuincy Jones was brought in to produce the song, he suggested Jackson, andas you might expect once the King of Pop was involved it more or less becamehis show. He offered to co-write the song with Ritchie, and the songwriting andinitial recordings ended up happening inJackson’s bedroom at the family home in Encino. Obviously the song’sactivist goals remained throughout these stages, but I would say the involvementand then the prominence of Jackson did reflect a definite shift toward themusical side of the equation.

3)     DanAckroyd: When it came time to record the song that musical side ended upincluding a veritable who’s who of mid-1980s musical royalty, from Ray Charlesto Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper to Bruce Springsteen, Waylon Jennings to five ofMichael Jackson’s siblings. But eagle-eyed observers of the resulting musicvideo noticed a very different kind of mid-80s star in the background, the comedianand actor (and, yes, musicalperformer) Dan Ackroyd (fresh off the blockbusting success of 1984’s Ghostbusters).As the first hyperlinked story above notes, Ackroyd’s participation in “We Arethe World” was entirely random, the result of the actor and his father walkinginto a management office for utterly different reasons but at precisely the righttime. Again Ackroyd did have a musical career which I’m not trying to downplay,but I would nonetheless argue that his presence in the recording sessionreflects how an earnest activist effort can gradually morph into something abit more celebrity-driven and, as a result, something somewhat sillier.

Nextmusical activism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Activisms you’d highlight?

January 24, 2025: Misread Quotes: Churchill on Politics and Age

[I hadoriginally planned a series on historical inaugurations this week, but I don’timagine too many of us want to be thinking about the inauguration any more thanwe have to. So instead, I’m gonna go with a suggestion from my wife, using theoccasion of MLK Day to highlight a handful of historical quotes, from him andothers, that our conservative commentators and politicians tend to get verywrong!]

This oneis pretty straightforward. Conservatives love to attribute to Winston Churchillthe quote, “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’renot a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” But as ProfessorPaul Addison argued inthis piece, that’s not only not a Churchill quote, but it also goes againstboth his own political journey and the lifelong liberalism of his belovedwife Clementine. I’m a big believer in the importance of both a heart and abrain, but we can’t let our heart dictate the way our brain works, and relyingon false quotes to support our pre-existing perspectives seems like doingprecisely that.     

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? 

January 23, 2025: Misread Quotes: The Bible

[I hadoriginally planned a series on historical inaugurations this week, but I don’timagine too many of us want to be thinking about the inauguration any more thanwe have to. So instead, I’m gonna go with a suggestion from my wife, using theoccasion of MLK Day to highlight a handful of historical quotes, from him andothers, that our conservative commentators and politicians tend to get verywrong!]

I’m no religiousscholar, but I have read every word in the Bible (for a college class), and hereare three quotes therein I think conservatives get wrong:

1)     Leviticus: I don’t thinkI can say it any better than Jed Bartlett did in that hyperlinked scene. But he’squoting a ton of different Old Testament Books, and I would argue that simplyreading all of Leviticusmakes it far more difficult to single out the single verse (18:22) about menlying with men as some sort of particularly significant prohibition. After all,Leviticus dedicates something like twenty straight verses to which animals thepeople of Israel canand can’t eat, and I would be willing to bet that just about everyone whoreferences Leviticus to excuse homophobia regularly eats many of the prohibitedmeats. A little consistency please, bigots.

2)     “An eye for an eye”: Hammurabi’s Code,to my understanding the origin point for the “eye for an eye” argument for thedeath penalty and similarly retributive punishments, is already far lengthierand more complicated than that simplified phrase. But for conservative Christianswho seek to support the death penalty, it’s the Book ofExodus to which they turn. It’s true that Exodus 21:24-25 does delineatesuch punishments with that “eye for an eye” phrase, but that’s in response to avery specific situation: “If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so thather fruit depart from her, and mischief follow” (meaning I believe death orother grievous injury to the woman). Even if we want to use the Bible toinfluence our justice system (and I do not want that), this section ain’t anoverarching frame for that effort.

3)     Jesus: Mostly Iwant to ask you all to read that blog post, written by what seems to be anardent believer, making the case for Jesus as at least anti-capitalist and ultimately(and this is where I would land as well) quite overtly socialist. I know thoseframes didn’t exist a couple thousand years ago, but the ideas behind them havealways been part of human societies, as has for example the debate between amore individualist and a more collectivist way of thinking. If Jesus wasanything, he seems to have been thoroughly collectivist, and I believe ifconservative Christians were truly to follow his model, they and we would be ina very different place today.

Last misreadquote tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? 

January 22, 2025: Misread Quotes: The Constitution

[I hadoriginally planned a series on historical inaugurations this week, but I don’timagine too many of us want to be thinking about the inauguration any more thanwe have to. So instead, I’m gonna go with a suggestion from my wife, using theoccasion of MLK Day to highlight a handful of historical quotes, from him andothers, that our conservative commentators and politicians tend to get verywrong!]

On three complexConstitutional quotes that conservatives consistently over-simplify.

1)     The2nd Amendment: I said a good bit of what I’d want to say aboutthe minefield that is the 2nd Amendment in that hyperlinked SaturdayEvening Post Considering History column. I’m not going to pretend that forthose of us who are for stringent gun control the amendment is a slam-dunk inour favor, as it’s much more complicated than that—and that’s the thing, it’sreally quite complicated, historically as well as legally. 2ndAmendment absolutists refuse to recognize those layers, and that’s a deeply problematicover-simplification.

2)     The10th Amendment: The balanceof federalism and “states’ rights” (a phrase not specifically found in theConstitution) in the founding era was at least as complicated as the questionof guns, and the very brief 10th Amendment doesn’t do much toresolve those complexities. But I think there is a crucial part of that brief amendmentthat has been consistently overlooked by those who argue for “states’ rights”: thatthe powers not delegated to the federal government “are reserved to the Statesrespectively, or to the people.” That is, there’s a third powerful party inthis framing in addition to the U.S. and the states; and when it comes tocurrent controversial issues like whether individual states have the power to passrestrictive abortion laws, I’d argue that conservatives are overlooking thepeople’s power in that equation.

3)     “Wethe People”: I began that hyperlinked book with an extended discussion ofwhy I believe that opening phrase of the Constitution’s Preamble represents a trulystriking and significant choice, locating the new nation’s identity not in lawor religion or any other overarching frame we might expect, but in the humancommunity itself. That entire book project was an attempt to argue that wehaven’t meant just one thing by that phrase, though, and more exactly that theconservative emphasis on a homogeneous white America as our origin point is atbest just one perspective and at worst (and what I would really argue) a mythicpatriotic perspective with very little basis in history or reality. At thevery least, we can’t let that perspective dictate what we mean by “we the people,”no more than any other part of our Constitution.

Next misreadquote tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? 

January 21, 2025: Misread Quotes: Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural

[I hadoriginally planned a series on historical inaugurations this week, but I don’timagine too many of us want to be thinking about the inauguration any more thanwe have to. So instead, I’m gonna go with a suggestion from my wife, using theoccasion of MLK Day to highlight a handful of historical quotes, from him andothers, that our conservative commentators and politicians tend to get verywrong!]

On what Lincolndid indeed say in his 1865 second inaugural address, and two other things heimportantly said as well.

AbrahamLincoln’s SecondInaugural, delivered on March 4th, 1865, is not quite as briefas the GettysburgAddress but is still quite short (especially for an inaugural address), totalingless than 700 words. That makes every one of those words even more significant forsure, and so I don’t entirely disagree with the emphasis that has long beenplaced on Lincoln’s brief and pointed final paragraph: “With malice towardnone, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to seethe right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’swounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow andhis orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peaceamong ourselves and with all nations.” There are more clauses in that one-sentenceparagraph than have generally been the focus, but “malice toward none” and “charityfor all” are indeed two striking perspectives at the end of the Civil War, andare thus indeed a model for reconciliation as this passage has long been read.

But at justover 70 words, that brief paragraph comprises about one-tenth of the inaugural,and for most of the rest of it (hyperlinked above so you can read the wholething for yourself), Lincoln says some quite different things about the warthat, not surprisingly, have not figured into conservative collective memory ofthis speech and moment. For one thing, he is quite clear about thecauses of the Civil War: “These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerfulinterest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen,perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgentswould rend the Union even by war.” The paragraph which begins with thosesentences is by the longest in the address, indeed comprises nearly two-thirdsof the entire speech, and so it’s more than fair to say that the main thrust ofLincoln’s remarks was not on imagining a reunited future, but on being veryclear about what had brought the nation to this present point. Anyone who arguesthat he would have let the nation forget those histories had he lived into Reconstructionneeds to grapple with that fundamental fact.

Moreover,Lincoln ends that longest paragraph on an even more somber and striking note,one that would not be out of place in another greatAmerican speech, Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the 4thof July?” Having expressed the “fond and fervent” hope that “this mighty scourgeof war may speedily pass away,” Lincoln adds, “Yet, if God wills that it continueuntil all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequitedtoil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall bepaid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, sostill it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteousaltogether.’” In OfThee I Sing I made the case for Lincoln as a consistent voice ofcritical patriotism, and I don’t think he ever expressed that perspective moreclearly nor more powerfully than in this impassioned sentence. Let’s make sureto remember it as well every time we quote the malice and charity moment.

Next misreadquote tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? 

January 20, 2025: Misread Quotes: MLK’s Dream

[I hadoriginally planned a series on historical inaugurations this week, but I don’timagine too many of us want to be thinking about the inauguration any more thanwe have to. So instead, I’m gonna go with a suggestion from my wife, using theoccasion of MLK Day to highlight a handful of historical quotes, from him andothers, that our conservative commentators and politicians tend to get verywrong!]

On twoways to reframe the one King quote we collectively (but inaccurately) remember.

For manyyears now, I’ve shared the samepost for MLK Day, highlighting the many layers of King beyond the March on Washingtonspeech (and even the many layers of that speech beyond the famous “content of theircharacter” line). That’s all important context for today’s post, so I’d ask youto check it out and then come on back for more.

Welcomeback! All those are reasons to go beyond this one quote and this one speech incommemorating King, but it’s equally true and important to reframe ourcollective memories of that individual quote in multiple ways. For one thing,the “content of their character” paragraph is the third of five straight “Ihave a dream” paragraphs (here’s thefull transcript of the speech), each articulating a different (if interconnected)dream about race, community, and America. Three of the other four focus inparticular on Southern states, highlighting quite fully the layers ofprejudice, racism, segregation, and racial terrorism that these communitiesstill feature so prominently and centrally in 1963 (one hundred years after theEmancipation Proclamation, a frustrating anniversary with which King begins hisspeech). King might be arguing in the “content of their character” paragraph thatit would be ideal if we could stop seeing and thinking about skin color and race(which is how conservatives love to use that line), but these adjoiningparagraphs make clear that the targets of that argument are Southern white supremacistsspecifically and (I would argue) all white Americans generally. Physician, healthyself.

Relatedly,but even more overarchingly, King frames all five of those “I have a dream”paragraphs with a sixth, introductory paragraph worth quoting in full: “So eventhough we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. Itis a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one daythis nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We holdthese truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” In this SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columnfor MLK Day four years ago, I made the case for King as exemplifying my conceptof critical patriotism, and I don’t think he ever did so more succinctly and potentlythan in this quote. That means we have to recognize that every one of thesubsequent dreams is a goal for the future, and also and most importantly somethingwe have to work for together, to push the nation toward that idealized but neveryet realized more perfect union. Conservatives want to read King as chastising hisprogressive peers for a misplaced focus on race, but the truth was preciselythe opposite—he was critiquing conservatives for the ways their racism has keptus from progressing. Feels like an important lesson to consider for MLK Day2024.

Next misreadquote tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? 

January 18-19, 2025: Spring Semester Previews: My Scholarly Work and You

[AnotherSpring semester is upon us, and with it my annual Spring semester previews.This time I’ve focused on one skill I’m excited to be teaching as part of eachof these courses. Leading up this post with a request for help with my nextscholarly project!]

I’ve gotsome steady public scholarly work that I very much plan to continue in 2025,from this blog to my biweekly SaturdayEvening Post Considering Historycolumn to my #ScholarSundayThreads newsletter. But my first experience creating a public scholarly narrative historypodcast was extremely enjoyable, and so I’m definitely looking to createanother!

We can callthat a second season of The Celestials’ Last Game if we’d like, and Imight because of branding and whatnot (he said very knowledgeably), but Ifirmly believe I’ve done what I can with that particular history so this secondseason would have to focus on a new subject in any case. I’ve got one idea, whichis the really fascinatingstory of the early 20th century barnstorming baseball team theHouse of David (to keep the baseball thread going, natch). But I don’t yetknow enough about that story to know if there’s a 9-Inning podcast there, so…

…thisspace for rent! Or rather, as in this blog’s long and proud history of crowd-sourcedposts, this space for y’all’s suggestions. Any ideas for other histories or stories—whetherrelated to baseball, sports stories, or some other under-remembered part ofAmerican history—will be very welcome! Share ‘em below, or shoot me an email (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu), andthanks in advance!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Youknow what to do!

January 17, 2025: Spring Semester Previews: The Short Story Online

[AnotherSpring semester is upon us, and with it my annual Spring semester previews. Thistime I’ll focus on one skill I’m excited to be teaching as part of each ofthese courses. Please share what you’ve got going on this semester and year aswell!]

I saidmost of what I’d want to say about generative AI, in the classroom andeverywhere else, in this year in review post on the subject a few weeks back. Butsince my online-only courses have been the place where I’ve encountered the useof ChatGPT most consistently, I’ll add this: I’m not looking, as I never havelooked and never will look, to be a cop in the classroom. What I am looking todo, now more than ever, is to have all the conversations, including the toughestones. So despite not meeting this class face-to-face, I’m still going to try tohave a conversation with them at the start of the semester on why using AI forclasswork isn’t just a potentially dangerous thing to do for their own futures,but also will lead to both mediocre work and, y’know, the further destructionof our planet. The skill of resisting these understandably tempting technologicaltools is no easy task in January 2025, but I skill I look forward to helping thestudents who are up for the challenge to practice.

Scholarlyupdate this weekend,

Ben

PS. What’son your radar?