Encouraged by Bruce Springsteen’s new protest song “Streets of Minneapolis” and enraged by the United States government-sponsored brutality, murders, kidnappings and concentration camps, music artists are resisting Donald Trump’s MAGA fascist authoritarian advance. From Minneapolis to the Gulf Coast, people’s artists are defying censorship and speaking out.
In New Orleans, while murderous paramilitary thugs from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) roamed the city and as 350 armed National Guard patrolled its French Quarter, the 38th Annual Folk Alliance International (FAI) Conference took place from January 21–25.
The focus on activism was very fitting to the official theme of the conference: “Rise Up!”. From the show-rooms of the Sheraton Hotel to the city’s raucous Mardi Gras parades, defiant and diverse feminist, socialist and LGBTQ+ activist performing artists and their allies rose up.
Prominent among the strong voices heard there were iconic singer and Righteous Babe Records founder Ani DiFranco, punk-folk dynamo Carsie Blanton, bounce-music queen Big Freedia, hip- hop poet/singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball, Canadian bard James Keelaghan, Louisiana zydeco masters Jourdan Thibodeaux and CJ Chenier, Los Angeles Afro-Mexican rhythm band Las Cafeteras, Latina guitarist Eljuri, composer David Amram, veteran folk singers Tom Paxton and Cathy Fink and many musical artists from Australia, Ireland, Canada, Mali and other lands.
“From porch songs to protest anthems, we recognise the folk artist’s role in preserving roots and pushing boundaries — amplifying stories that demand to be heard,” said the organisers.
“In this moment of social, cultural, and ecological urgency, we are called to rise up — as artists, activists, and allies — to keep the flame of folk music burning bright.”
Workshops, keynote talks, and performances ran each day, focusing on empowering and encouraging people in the just struggle against the Trump-MAGA regime’s growing oppression.
In the streets, the marching, dancing and singing revelry was even more wildly joyous. Mardi Gras preparations had begun, and on January 24, the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus marched through the Marigny and Bywater neighbourhoods, trumpeting their official theme of Rebellions Are Built on Hope. Among the marchers was multi-genre visual and performance artist, José Torres-Tama.
I met with Torres-Tama in his painting- and photo-filled Bywater studio, two days later.
A self-described mestizo of Quechua indigenous descent, born in Ecuador, Torres-Tama grew up in New York City and New Jersey and settled in New Orleans more than 30 years ago. He is a proud survivor of Hurricane Katrina and a resistance fighter against the racist and anti-immigrant hostility of much of the “mainstream” US and especially Trump’s regime.
As a parent of two young men, he is also concerned for the future of young people, especially people of colour.
“I hold steadfast to a belief that artists can serve as the conscience of our times and create work that speaks a people’s truth in contrast to official lies,” he said.
“All we have is our memory against a celebrated and imposed amnesia, and as an artist, it’s my job to remember.”
Aptly, his latest touring stage show is called United States of Amnesia, which includes the wryly defiant slogan, “No Guacamole for Immigrant Haters!”. His previous solo show, Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers was “a sci-fi Latinonoir performance that exposes the hypocrisies of a system that dehumanises immigrants while readily exploiting their labour,” he told me.
His recently published book Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & Photography of Post-Katrina Protests chronicles his 10-year photo documentary project of Latin American immigrant activists, and their public protests to expose the many human rights violations experienced by undocumented reconstruction workers while rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina.
His latest spoken word piece on the crescentcitysounds.org platform is called American Mantra/Alien Green.
“I’ve always been very socially inclined with all my art and work. I don’t have the privilege to make art about nothing,” Torres-Tama said.
“My brown immigrant body has been under attack since I have been in this country and now we have brutal anti-immigrant hysteria in this country.
“People love to seduce themselves with the mythology based on Hollywood propaganda. I never believed the lies. No human being is illegal on stolen lands.
“This country is built on white supremacy. Hollywood propaganda is very pervasive, and it creates a mythology that is beyond Orwellian. Look at this cadre of criminals telling us not to believe our eyes as people are being murdered in daylight in Minneapolis and other cities.”
Torres-Tama concluded in a more hopeful vein: “I do believe in the power of the people. Governments hate when people take to the streets. As Jim Morrison of The Doors sang: ‘They’ve got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers’.”