Me

And mom and dad was never getting back together
So he was on some 'Baby we gon' make it last forever'

(...)

Temporary gratification, self-validation
That’s what its made of
It’s all true and it’s the only reason he’s even talking to you

You can try to fix my broken wings
You can know all the words to the songs I sing
But you don’t need to know what’s wrong with me
Unless you think you’re gonna come home with me

The only guarantee in life is a life worth dying for cause death don't wait for no one sitting on your front door

Le déserteur

People Like Me

s it fair to say that I am stressing out
I'm stationed in Iraq and they won't let me out
My homeys said I was stupid for even joining
My counsoller said that my decision was disappointing
How she had good for good state colleges
and with my good grades it wouldn't have been a problem
but they don't understand the power of significance
more than brilliance and certainly more than dividends
and if you ask me now would i repeat it
Would i fight in a war i don't believe in
Well the answer is if not me where the cancer is
they been doing this before Jesus of Nazereth
and after all this time it is still deadly hazardous
and bush isn't really being all that inaccurate
When he says we're winning the war cos its staggering
but thats cos we're killing everybody that we see

(...)

Everybody gotta eat but everybody doesn't
which is why i want to tell you about my favourite cousin
he and I grew up where the sun shines
and we both partook with the gun crimes
and we both liked american rap rhymes
even though we didn't understand one line
if you remember my line of notes in my last album
I talked about a close call with a grenade
I think we both must have been about 7th grade
but dont panic we both survived without damage
but we developed a bond like we survived the titanic
but when the country became frantic
my mother tried to get us out, planned it
to the last detail except the plan got derailed
cos there wasn't enough money for the plane tickets
how bitter when my mother had to chose who to take with her
so my cousin got left in the war and thats just hard to recall
but now i take refuge and prayer,
kinda like finding god in the phonebook
it came to me sounding kinda like something from a song hook, saying

Charlie Brown Jr - Descubra O Que Há De Errado

Há quanto tempo
Estou sonhando acordado
Quanto tempo perdido
Eu perco tempo demais
Nao me pergunte o que é que eu quero da vida
O que é que eu quero da vida
Eu tenho sede demais

Slo-speed

La Valse a Sarkozy

Fort Europa

These walls don't lie

tenho que dizer que este é um dos meus videoclips preferidos!

"Eu trabalho p'rá caralho mas nasci pr'á vadiar.
(...)
Eu sou do jeito que eu sou. (...) Porque eu vivo para ser feliz. Eu não vivo para ser normal."

Chorão

Alle volte mi ritrovo con la testa fra le mani
e penso, penso e rifletto: in Italia c’è un conflitto
una guerra che fa più di mille morti all’anno
tra lavoro e mala sanità, e dimmi tu
se questa qua non è pulizia etnica
cos’è come si chiama?
Quando uno che c’ha i soldi può avere tutto
e uno che ne ha di meno non ha diritto
nemmeno a un letto in un ospedale quando sta male
e se vuol farsi curare deve pagare
solo che coi soldi che gli danno quelli del lavoro interinale
c’è l’affitto da pagare, il bambino da mantenere
e cosa cazzo vuoi pagare un dottore
quando non sai nemmeno se tra due mesi
c’ avrai ancora un fottuto lavoro
perché il lavoro interinale non è altro che
una prestazione occasionale di lavoro manuale
non qualificato, esattamente il caso in cui
il rischio d’incidente sul lavoro è quintuplicato
e tutto questo non è capitato
ma è stato pensato, progettato e realizzato
dal padronato in combutta con l’apparato decisionale dello stato
per il quale la vita di un proletario non vale non dico niente
ma sicuramente non vale il costo di un’assunzione regolare
con tanto di corso di formazione professionale;
è evidente il disegno criminale o no?
o sono io che sono pazzo?

99 posse, Povera Vita Mia

Memórias

Juno

You're a part time lover and a full time friend
The monkey on you're back is the latest trend
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

Moldy Peaches, Anyone Else But You

Dub Poetry. Linton Kwesi Johnson

Intervista a cura di "Echoes"

"Concerko", Roots Catalogue, 1985, Belluno

(...) il fatto che sia musica di protesta è una delle caratteristiche che definiscono il reggae, Ma si tende a dire cose attraverso un codice. Bob Marley in Rat Race disse: "Quando il gatto se ne va, il topo agisce, violenza politica governa la città." Voleva dire che quando un leader era fuori dal paese, un altro avrebbe organizzato violenza, ma se l'avesse detto in modo diretto...

in Arte di Opposizione, Stili di vita, situazioni e documenti degli anni ottanta, Tommaso Tozzi

Recordar Perugia

Award-Winning Singer Mercedes Sosa Dies at 74

By Adam Bernstein

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 4, 2009; 7:54 AM

Mercedes Sosa, an Argentine singer who emerged as a electrifying voice of conscience throughout Latin America for songs that championed social justice in the face of government repression, died today at a medical clinic in Buenos Aires. She was 74 and had liver, kidney and heart ailments.

With a rich contralto voice, Ms. Sosa was foremost a compelling singer whose career spanned five decades. She performed with entertainers as varied as rock star Sting, the Cuban singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés and folk singer Joan Baez, who said she was so moved by Ms. Sosa's "tremendous charisma" and emotive firepower that she once dropped to her knees and kissed Ms. Sosa's feet.

Ms. Sosa's towering artistry, which led to several Latin Grammy Awards, belied her physical dimensions. Short, round, dark-skinned and often dressed in peasant clothing, Ms. Sosa was affectionately nicknamed "La Negra" (the Black One) as an homage to her indigenous ancestry.

It was a term of endearment that followed her throughout the Spanish-speaking world, said ethnomusicologist Jonathan Ritter, who has written about Ms. Sosa. "It's hard to overestimate her popularity and importance as a standard-bearer of folk music and political engagement through folk music," he said.

Ms. Sosa once declared that "artists are not political leaders. The only power they have is to draw people into the theater." While not defining herself as a political activist, Ms. Sosa asserted herself in the "nueva canción" musical movement of the 1960s and 1970s that blended traditional folk rhythms with politically charged lyrics about the poor and disenfranchised.

This "new song" movement, formed by singers, poets and songwriters with Marxist leanings, cast light on the struggle against government brutality and the plight of the downtrodden throughout the hemisphere. Ritter said, much of the nueva canción songs favored by Ms. Sosa "drew upon the rich heritage of Latin American poetry and literature to score their political messages." This, he said, gave it a far-more enduring fascination than protest songs in the United States during that period, whose "blunt, direct lyrics were part of their political efficacy, but also limited their long term poetic appeal."

Here are the lyrics of "We're Still Singing," which she sang accompanied by the large Andean drum called the bombo: "I was killed a thousand times. I disappeared a thousand times, and here I am, risen from the dead. . . . Here I am, out of the ruins the dictatorship left behind. We're still singing." Ms. Sosa came under official harassment and intimidation by the right-wing, nationalist junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The government was responsible for the deaths and disappearances of an estimated 30,000 real and perceived leftists, and Ms. Sosa transformed her sold-out concerts into rallies against the abuses of power.

Her songs were banned from Argentine radio and television, and she courted arrest by singing anthems of agrarian reform such as "When They Have the Land" at one performance in the university city of La Plata. Many in attendance were arrested by security forces, and Ms. Sosa was publicly humiliated by an officer who walked onstage and conducted a body search.

Ms. Sosa scheduled more concerts in the face of threats against her. They were subsequently canceled when anonymous bomb threats were called in. The military governor of Buenos Aires prohibited her from further performances. Unable to earn a living or speak out as an opponent of the regime, she moved in exile to Europe in 1979 and lived for three years in France and Spain.

She recalled this as a dark period for her artistically, and at times her voice failed. "It was a mental problem, a problem of morale," she told the New York Times. "It wasn't my throat, or anything physical. When you are in exile, you take your suitcase, but there are things that don't fit. There are things in your mind, like colors and smells and childhood attitudes, and there is also the pain and the death you saw. You shouldn't deny those things, because to do so can make you ill."

Ms. Sosa returned to Argentina shortly before the dictatorship crumbled, and she found that her popularity had risen to a dramatic new peak. At home, her concerts attracted tens of thousands of ticket buyers, and her albums sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Abroad, she was a star attraction as well, and a political celebrity. She received a 10-minute standing ovation for a 1987 concert at Carnegie Hall and received ecstatic reviews when appearing in other major American cities, including Boston and Washington. She broadened her repertoire to include rock, pop and cabaret songs, always sung in her native language.

Esquire magazine noted, "Your Spanish may or may not be good, but Mercedes Sosa requires no translation. Hers is the song of all those who have overcome their fear of singing out."

Haydée Mercedes Sosa was born July 9, 1935, in San Miguel de Tucumán in rural northwestern Argentina. She was of mixed Indian and French ancestry, and her parents were day laborers.

She said the geography and culture of the area was also crucial to her development. It was desolate, with far greater influence from the indigenous culture of nearby Bolivia than distant, cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. She called it "an advantage for someone who wanted to be a folk singer," and at 15, she won a local radio station's amateur-hour contest.

In the late 1950s, she and her first husband, guitarist Manuel Oscar Matus, with whom she had a son, moved to Mendoza, a city at the foot of the Andes. There, they helped form the new-music movement that fused folk rhythms with the language and politics of the moment, and wrote an artistic manifesto as well. Her international touring career followed her appearance at an important folklore festival in Cosquín in 1965.

Not a songwriter, she was a keen interpreter of others' works. The Chilean writer Violeta Parra was responsible for Ms. Sosa's signature song, "Gracias a la Vida" (Thanks to Life), a number more nostalgic that political. Ms. Sosa collaborated on two acclaimed albums in the early 1970s with composer Ariel Ramírez on lyricist Félix Luna on the albums "Cantata Sudamericana" ( South American Cantata) and "Mujeres Argentinas" (Argentine Women).

She received a Latin Grammy Award for Best Folk Album in 2000 for Ramírez's "Misa Criolla," and again for "Acústico" in 2003 and "Corazón Libre" in 2006. She continued to win over younger audiences by incorporating the music of rock singer-songwriters such as Argentina's Charly García and Sting, whose song "They Dance Alone" paid tribute to the disappeared in Argentina.