Books & music

On June 2 Justin Sane and Chris #2 from Anti-Flag dropped in to Martin Place to show their support and performed a few songs for Occupy Sydney.

Legendary masters of hip-hop Public Enemy made their seventh visit to Australia to play to 800 fans at St Kilda’s Esplanade Hotel on May 17, after consecutive shows in Brisbane and Sydney. Original members Chuck D and Flavor Flav belted out their most popular hits including “Don’t Believe the Hype”, “Welcome to the Terrordome” and “Fight the Power” from their 25 year-long recording career .

Anti-nuclear activist band The Super Raelene Brothers first made it into the pages of Green Left Weekly in 1995. But the duo, who have just dropped their latest atomic-bomb-atomising EP, Nuclear Kop, were making music way before then.

Adam Yauch (best known as MCA from the US hip hop group the Beastie Boys) wasn't larger than life. Beneath the dynamic stage presence, over-the-top rhymes and highly stylised videos was someone who was quite humble and even soft-spoken in interviews. One almost gets the feeling that Yauch and his MCA alter-ego were two separate people. The hole that both leave in modern music, however, is immense.

Genre-bending musician Filastine says he has taken so much flak for being political in his music that these days he tries to be a little more innovative in getting his message across.

Musician and activist Phil Monsour is releasing his latest 12-song CD, Ghosts of Deir Yassin after the mobilisations for Palestinian Land Day on March 30.

Bruce Springsteen is back. And according to fan and detractor alike, he's angry as hell. Given the times in which we find ourselves, this should be unsurprising. What is surprising, however, is the musical method he's chosen to express this anger: a sound and structure that is at once vintage Springsteen and new territory for the Boss.

Protest singers aren't always producing angry slogans to give their audience a sense of solidarity: there are some who can make you consider an issue in a new light by using well-constructed lyrics, a tuneful melody, humour, and a gently persuasive voice. Such a catalyst is Jez Lowe, a British singer/songwriter, who is touring Australia. Lowe writes specifically about life in his native north-east England, but there is such truth and universality in his writing that it appeals to audiences across the world. He is to folk song what British screenwriter Jimmy McGovern is to television.

The Yiddish language, developed out of German by Ashkenazi Jews, was the major language of European Jews before the Holocaust. With the development of modern Hebrew in Israel it started to fade.

The oil-rich South American nation of Venezuela is in the midst of a complicated and contradictory process of social transformation. The revolutionary movement, headed by President Hugo Chavez, is redistributing wealth, bringing key industries under state ownership and promoting experiments in direct, participatory democracy. The aim of the Bolivarian revolution is to build a “socialism for the 21st century”.

The Solidarity Choir in Sydney is celebrating its 25th anniversary on March 31. The event will take place from 7.30pm upstairs at the Gaelic Club, 10 Devonshire St, Surry Hills, near Central Station.

This is an abridged version of an article that first appeared on February 24 in the Occupied Chicago Tribune, the newspaper backing Occupy Chicago. Despite brutal forced evictions of Occupy camps across the United States late last year, the movement for the interests of the 99% against the 1% is still going strong.