Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Protest music

While there aren't any popular protest songs about the Iraq war, there has been a good use of music to raise awareness in Bulgaria. This cause is the nurses in Libya that have been convicted twice of infecting children with HIV, despite the testimony of international experts that those children were infected before the nurses ever arrived in Libya. A massive rally was held for these imprisoned nurses, featuring a new song that has gotten massive airplay throughout Bulgaria. There are Bulgarian and English versions of "You are not alone." Download here, English lyrics here. The snippet I heard on PRI's The World sounded very much like "We Are the World" from the 80's, including the sloppy choral effect caused by vocalists from different genres coming together. In this case it is pop musicians and pop folk musicians, who apparently don't normally collaborate at all.

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