It's always interesting when consumers turn, suddenly and en masse, to the past, as they're apparently doing right now with an album by a singer who made a name for herself as an optimistic voice during World War II. Reading the piece this morning inspired me to revisit an album I haven't listened to for years, Spain In the Heart, an astonishing collection of multi-national songs from the Spanish Civil War. If you're a folk music fan, and really even if you're not, the musical legacy of that conflict is really spending some time with.
My sense is that most Americans my age think of Vietnam when we think of protest songs. But the songs from the Spanish Civil War have a particular urgency to them. Songs like "Jarama Valley" were banned in Spain by Franco and were smuggled back into the country to keep the memory of the international Republican brigades alive. Folk songs like "Ay Carmela" (covered above by a Spanish punk band El Ultimo Ke Zierre, and the inspiration for the movie of the same title) became calls to arms. Early Nazi detainees even wrote songs that became symbols of the resistance, like "Peat Bog Soldiers." The entire artistic legacy of the Spanish Civil War, in movies, poetry, novels, etc., is deeply developed and fascinating (highly recommended: La Caza, and Land and Freedom). But I think the songs stand out. It's hard to imagine any protest song in the United States, any single artistic act, requiring the same bravery or carrying the same significance as simply singing a folk song did in Spain, or carrying as widely across borders. And it's proof that war songs don't have to be sweet and comforting to raise up the hopes of people in combat. The whole range of human emotion--fear, anger, defeat, love, hope--is here.