#TBT: Billy Bragg shines a light on Brexit, Black Lives Matter and more
What a difference two years makes.
In September 2016, I had the pleasure of interviewing Billy Bragg, a songwriter who’s criminally underrated in the U.S. Along with discussing his then-new album and upcoming Philly show, Billy indulged me with his perspective on then-current events: Brexit, nationalism and the 2016 Presidential election.
Politics aside, what struck me most was the clear, concise and ultimately positive way he approached and explained everything. It’s refreshing when compared to the trolls, click-bait and calculated outrage we’ve all become accustomed to.
I’m not linking the article I wrote, because I botched it by getting in the man’s way. So, in the lead-up to the midterms and in the middle of everything else going on, here’s that part of our conversation, almost verbatim*, from two years ago:
I saw you at the Keswick in 2013, and one thing that really stuck out was that the monologues between the songs, almost as important as the songs themselves. What is your process like on deciding what to talk about and how does that evolves during the tour?
Well, if you see me at the beginning of the tour, I don’t have much to say. But after a week of reading the newspapers, watching T.V and listening to what people talk about, I generally have something. It’s about the journey. A lot of what I am doing has its basis in the kind of folk music I sing.
Not in traditional folk but in more storytelling folk, such as Woodie Guthrie and Lead Belly. Their ability to tell a story, I mean the way Lead Belly plays a song is half of it’s a story, and half of it’s a song.
So that process, I think when you play music you try and offer a different perspective on this world. So to just play the song, I am not saying anything about it. I am leaving too much to chance.
If you come to the town and there’s a context in that town that you written, especially if you’re a foreigner, if you can find something that’s going on in the town and the area and has a similar context to the song you wrote about something in Britain, if you can make that connection it is conducive to getting people to understand what you are talking about.
I was listening to [the Billy Bragg album] Fight Songs before I called, and the first line of “Big Lie” seemed especially relevant [“If you want all of your problems solved the / Answer is to have these people deported”]. Drilling down to that at the moment, would you be able to talk about things you see in this election in America with things you see in England? I am wondering if there is something to be said about what you said in 2013 about the British National Party getting seats and how people went door to door to try and fight that?
Well, I think that can be summed up in one word with a comparison, and that word is Brexit.
You know, since, whether or not it’s a good idea to be part of the European Union is a long debate and the pros and cons are considerable on both sides. But since that vote went down, there has been a considerable rise of racist attacks in the U.K.
A Polish man was kicked to death for simply speaking his own language. I read a report yesterday of a reporter who went there to report on the story, and while he was walking around things happened there that haven’t happened since the 1970s. people were shouting at him, “Oi, Paki!” I haven’t heard anyone shout that since I was in at school. And somehow the Brexit result has emboldened those people. It has somehow given them the courage for these people to express their worst impulses.
A woman was subject to a racist attack in the supermarket, got kicked in the stomach and lost her baby. I could not believe this is happening. It’s absolutely shocking. But its that similar impulse behind the rhetoric of Donald Trump. He may not be a racist, but he acts like one. He may in his hearts of hearts care, but he is using discrimination to get an audience to win votes. That is really concerning.
The root of many of our problems in the 20th century was when people started to blame one minority within society for all of society’s problems, rather than accept that problems challenge us all, we all have to face these problems, no matter our creed, color or politics.
You know, I prefer the politics that are inclusive in trying to bring everybody forward, rather than politics that single out one particular group of whatever sort as the source of everyone’s problems.
…
It was March around the time all this wall rhetoric that was coming down. We discussed that, and we talked about Brexit as well, and there was a similar sort of what you might call a nativism that involves turning in from what our two countries stand for.
You know, and, when Trump talks about making America great again, I don’t understand what he was talking about. America is a pretty great country.
When Woody Guthrie was a child, he saw African-Americans getting lynched. When I was a child, there was segregation in parts of the United States. Segregated schools, segregated drinking fountains, segregated hotels. America has come a long way, and it’s a great place. It’s a great place to come visit, great place to live.
Does it have problems? Of course, it has problems. But the idea that there is somewhere you can go back to, again … You know, my country is manifesting that itself in return to blue passports, not the red passports that you can use. Now they are talking about grammar schools that we had in the 50s.
This is the same impulse to go back to the perceived Golden Age. This is the Golden Age! We are in it! And we’re lucky we are.
My dad was conscripted in the Second World War. His dad was involved in the First World War. How lucky we are that our children don’t have to fight in wars. I don’t buy this, “Back to the Golden Age” shit.
You’re mining a lot from old songs, and you’re recasting them now. Like, “I Ain’t Got No Home” and the songs you wrote in the 80s and 90s. “Ideology” and “Sexuality,” in particular, are so relevant now. What makes those songs timeless? Is it the songwriting, is it the fact history repeats himself? Is it a combination?
I think it’s the fact that every generation has to deal with these problems. You know, in my generation, to talk specifically against racism it was Rock Against Racism. Now it’s Black Lives Matter. Before me, it was the Civil Rights Movement.
Every generation has to find out how to deal with these problems. Unfortunately, we can never get rid of these problems because they are the dark side of human nature. The cynical side. We live in the world where the thing that divides us is if you’re a glass half empty to a glass half full kind of person. If you’re a glass half empty person you think everything is bad, wrong, and it’s all down on you, it’s easier to give into to those impulses.
If you’re a glass half full person, you have to grab onto the positives to counter the arguments of people such as Donald Trump. So, it’s not that I was perceptive to write these songs that are timeless, it’s that we have to constantly fight the social and cultural mores of the times that we live in. There is always room for improvement. There are always issues that come up.
In your country, it’s Black Lives Matter. In my country, it’s the rise of racial incidents following Brexit. We can’t turn our back on these. But in singing these songs, it’s good to know others took these challenges and won. We do win, and we do get those improvements.
The songs remind us of the way the arc of history comes in our direction. Sometimes it does pull back such as in the 1930s and 1940s. It can get pulled by evil forces but it generally moves forward to compassion and equality and using our culture is as good as any, you know? A song is like a gesture.
[For instance, Colin] Kaepernick. I mean, he made a single gesture. It’s a small gesture. He just knelt down, and he made an entire debate about the role of black lives, patriotism, the militarization of national identity, and it was a small gesture. He brought an entirely different argument. Music can do that as well.
So you know, we’re talking about our time when a huge decision has to be made by your country this autumn. These kinds of ideas and these kinds of methods. Putting across ideas are still relevant in the age of media, even more so because the idea can be spread quicker.
*Except for brackets and ellipses, everything from Billy is verbatim. My questions were lightly edited to remove “uh’s,” “um’s” and some general fawning.
Jack Firneno is a dad, writer and drummer … but not always in that order. Find more at www.dadwriterdrummer.com.
