Archive Film Night: Songs of Solidarity, an audio research project culminating in a DJ set, commissioned by SET Film Festival to close their Archive Film Night, which centred on collective voice and choral in solidarity, protest and resistance music, 2024. tracklist and descriptions below.
Al Hudoud - Marcel Khalife
1980
– meaning “The Border,” this is a poetic song about the settler-colonial erasure of Palestinian identity, materially and spiritually. Sung by Marcel Khalife, a Lebanese musician who has recorded numerous songs and albums in support of the Palestinian people.
Mother Rage - Kathy Fire
1978
– an anti-authoritarian song of rage and revenge addressed to the agents of patriarchal violence, intertwined with calls for lesbian pride and women’s solidarity, by self-proclaimed lesbian anarchist activist Kathy Fire.
The Foggy Dew - The Dubliners
1976
– a famous Irish rebel song recounting the 1916 Easter Uprising of armed Irish Republicans against British colonial rule, and a eulogy to the rebellion’s dead.
Prisioneros Somos - Suni Paz
1973
– a song of anger, framing peoples across South and Central America as prisoners of US imperialism, corrupt governments and police, and violent carceral systems of repression.
Ithemba Edinalo Inkululeko - South African Choral Singers (Unidentified)
1965
– a hopeful and defiant choral protest song entitled “The Trust I Have Is In Freedom,”; its lyrics call activists to arms against Hendrik Verwoerd and assert the vision of a free, post-apartheid South Africa. Recorded by refugees of apartheid in (what is now) Tanzania.
Lama Bada Yatathanna - Gaza Youth Choir
2016
– a well-known Arabic love poem, sung and performed by students of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music under occupation in Gaza, using smuggled recording equipment.
Abre Tu Ventana - Victor Jara
1971
– released shortly after Chile’s election of socialist president Salvador Allende, this is a sweet and gentle song inviting ‘Maria’ to open her window to a new life, joyful and free from poverty and oppression.
M-Anvi Chante Peyi-M - Atis Independan
1975
– based on a poem by an unidentified Haitian poet and sung in Haitian Creole, the purpose of this song is to ‘awaken’ Haiti from her sleep of repression under the brutal dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier.
Palestine - Nass El Ghiwane
2000
– a song of solidarity by well-known Moroccan chaabi music group Nass El Ghiwane, evoking a country in exile and calling for a free Palestine.
Landlord, What In the Heaven Is The Matter With You? - John L. Handcox
1930s
– this incisive poem denounces the exploitation of tenant farmers and farm labourers by landowners in the American South during the Great Depression. It is one of the many songs and poems written by John L. Handcox to inspire his fellow members of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.
Un Son Para Mi Pueblo - Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy and Grupo Mancotal
1983
– a joyful Nicaraguan post-revolution song; this is an ode to the farmers and workers of Nicaragua as well as the Sandinista youth who have inspired the ‘people’s sound’ referenced in the song’s title.
Oh! DeGaulle - Freedom Fighters of Algeria
1962
– this satirical song, sung in local dialect, ridicules Charles De Gaulle’s inflated ego and incoherent politics, recorded by the F.L.N. Algerian choir upon Algerian independence from French colonial rule.
Life of the Miners - Three Girls Accompanied by a Choir of Miners from Canaria, Ayacucho
1988
– this song calls for local mining communities in the Ayacucho region of Peru to rally together against a ‘government that murders us by starvation,’ performed by the children of miners in Canaria.
Woke Up This Morning - The Freedom Singers
1963
– the lyrics to this song were written by Freedom Rider Rev. Robert Wesby during his time in jail, and became one of many popular civil rights songs born out of gospel and spiritual choral music.
Kadinlarimiz - Melike Demirag & Sanar Yurdatapan
1982
– based on Nazim Hikmet’s “Epic of the War of Liberation,” this song is dedicated to the women who worked for Turkish independence at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and was released by two musicians exiled by the Turkish military junta.
Pestle Thuds Resound In Bam Bo Village - North Vietnamese Musicians (Unidentified)
1971
– written from the perspective of residents of the mountain village of Bam Bo, this song remembers life before US military aggression in Vietnam, and commits itself to supporting the liberation fighters.
Intifada - Riad, Hanan, Alia and Nariman Awwad
1987/2022
– using self-made equipment in their living room, this track was recorded by four Palestinian siblings as part of a protest album in the early stages of the First Intifada. The tape was recovered by the Majazz project in 2020.