The Philippine Online Chronicles

Like much of politically-motivated art, we’ve all seemed to have relegated the Protest Poem as merely an aesthetic representation of our less-than-aesthetic politics, at its highest regard art complementing the cause and at its lowest the cause’s catchy thirty-second sloganeering jingle. Much authorial thought is put into the Protest Poem’s capacity of packing a message, but not much into its effectivity as such. What is the measure of the success of the Protest Poem?

Local contemporary popular discussion dictates that its effectivity lies in its literariness, in a literariness that owes largely to Russian Formalist tradition, in its capacity to mean more than what it’s already trying to mean while keeping its face well and truly composed, more here being discourse that is aesthetic – I find it lyrically beautiful and emotionally moving – basically any effect other than what its main intent is, namely: political commentary, or rather, political provocation, which is basically the other and basically the more popular measure of the Protest Poem’s success: its capacity to provoke a reaction that is more than – other than – aesthetic, a reaction that is pious in the socio-political sense, that one belongs to a greater whole, owed to greater causes, and that one must contribute to both – greater whole, greater causes – for the greater common good – I find it morally convincing, and it is making me want to do more good in the world.

All such talk comes off as simplistic, promoting nothing much but the further bifurcation of the double duties of art. As an enjoyer and as a producer of not just art but of art as political commentary, I’ve always believed that art as political commentary always means to do what art and political commentary are both aiming for by and of themselves, that is, at the very least to initiate discussion, at best to change minds, all in all to illuminate and elucidate the populace about certain conditions at work in the world affecting us and the way we live, only in a more obvious and more focussed context, ie, this is about history, about society, about the struggles of the oppressed against the oppressors.

Along these standards, one finds most protest poetry as politically simplistic, always either superfluous or lacking, ultimately ineffective both as art or political commentary. With these, one also finds that all these are necessary in the appreciation of the Protest Poem, ensuring not only its effectivity, but also its tradition, reminding us that it’s not just art as it’s not just political commentary: it is both, so its success ought to be measured not bifurcatedly as art alone or as political commentary alone, but as one and the same.

One only needs to know the definition of the word “Tubthumping” to unlock the notoriously annoying late 90s Chumbawamba song of a quintillion videoke-singings and sitcom-dubbings and ringtone-sharing. A tubthumper is defined as a noisy and vigorous public speaker, a rhetorician or speechwriter, or in more contemporary terms, a ranter. Tubthumping is the actual act of promoting or arguing for something via a noisy and vigorous manner, or in more contemporary terms, ranting. One doesn’t even need to know about Chumbawamba’s nearly thirty-year career as anarcho-punk activists – the single's cover art is a play on the thoroughly socialist image of the arm and hammer – although maybe knowing that the album Tubthumper is an extended Leftist rejection of Tony Blair’s revisionist social democrat New Labour policies might help shed light on the importance of “Tubthumping” in the album itself as well as a piece of protest poetry.

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Tubthumping (ChumbawambaVEVO)

So: going in, the album, transliterated into modernese as Ranter, the first song as “Ranting,” we see –

We’ll be singing

When we’re winning

We’ll be singing

– as a particularly runty rant chant, in equal measures mischievous and optimistic, anticipatory of winning as they’re already singing –

I get knocked down

But I get up again

You’re never going to

keep me down

– what can be considered as a pavement hooligan rendition of “We Shall Overcome,” complete with imagery of violent physical authoritarian state oppression common to any genuine public demonstration of social unrest and also the corollary resistance of the demonstrators to be oppressed. This is followed by –

Pissing the night away

He drinks a whisky drink

He drinks a vodka drink

He drinks a lager drink

He drinks a cider drink

He sings the songs

that remind him

Of the good times

He sings the songs

that remind him

Of the better times

– a hint on the identity of the public demonstrators struggling to be heard over the din of state oppression: being a British song, pissing here is not in the American, ie, Global, sense of irritation or annoyance or even the more logical literal urination but the British euphemism for imbibing copious amounts of alcoholic beverages, and doing this all night long, the list of alcoholic beverages imbibed being the enlisted in the next four lines ordered in decreasing amount of alcohol by volume, either a chronological drinking process – barhopping and switching drinks from hard to soft – or a dramatic arc of increasing sobriety, from befuddlement to awakening, from hopelessness to hopefulness, from complicity to activism; the drinking imagery doubling as metaphor for the increasing awareness of the need for socio-political change strongly suggests that the various personas in the song – the we, the he – are working class people: much of British Working Class culture centres on the pub and its singular raison d’etre as both personal and communal coping mechanism for and also as avenue of contempt for the oppressive machinations of the state to maintain and propagate itself, ie, wars, work, wages. This is followed-up by yet another personal and communal mechanism for coping and contempt of the working class, namely singing, and not just singing per se but singing specifically nostalgic songs while drinking, songs that act as evocations of the good times, maybe even the better times, all in aid of making oneself feel better, all in aid of reminding oneself the reasons why one is doing what one is doing, later cemented by –

Oh Danny Boy

Danny Boy...

Don’t cry for me

Next door neighbour...

– a reference to a popular Irish pub ballad of lament for a young man leaving home either to go to war or, more pointedly for this song’s analysis’s purpose, to go to America as part of the international immigrant diaspora, all in the name of working overseas for ideally better pay, for an ideally better life, all working class issues the world over.

In brief: the song’s dramatic situation is simply a labourer gets off of work and decides to celebrate the working week’s end with a thorough bingeing; it is about the irrepressible urge to not back down but to fight; it is about working hard and playing hard; it is about happiness not only as a cure for oppression, but also as a means of protest.

All this political commentary is cleverly wrapped up aesthetically – the simplistic fight-fight-fight attitude, the cozy pub imagery – as a very effectively catchy pop song in the tradition of the football chant, football in the British sense, yet another hallmark of British Working Class culture, and here lies its success in the unbifurcated measure of things: “Tubthumper” took an aggressively Leftist working class counterculture demeanor and laid it out as an effortlessly catchy three-powerchord-pop-song and put in in the ears and mouths and radios and TV sets of billions upon billions of people thrice the world over since 1997 – it is no exaggeration to call the song as nothing less than a world-wide success, but it was a success that quite paradoxically lead to the song’s ultimate fate: the videogame company EA Games bought the license and permission to use the song for their simulation of the 1998 World Cup for an undisclosed amount of dollars – it’s easy to picture this being upwards of one million, not even counting on subsequent royalties, not to mention the countless popular cultural and economic mileage the song has received either as a source of parody or as catch tune as a cultural indicator of a certain time and place in various TV shows and movies since it first came out in cassette or on MTV – as the song blazed its way through the popular consciousness, the farther it went from the artists and the socio-political conditions and the very culture that spawned it, and the farther it went the weaker its potency as protest became. In the end, it turned itself into a piece of music with all the activist charge of a Makati Metrosexualite’s annoying ringtone in the MRT.

It’s a wonder of a knot: to add on an earlier point, I’ve always seen the success of the Protest Poem as wholly riding on its potential for popularity – popularity in the aesthetic (if it’s a good piece of verse), social (if it talks to/about people not given the chance to be heard), and even moral (if it’s talking about something true and right) senses, but also and maybe more importantly popularity in it being potentially radio-friendly and marketable, ie, Protest Poem as Pop Song, as these two things are tried and tested ways to reach a potentially larger audience than via the usual avenues of the Protest Poem, only it seems that once it does become radio-friendly and marketable, its protest stops being pertinent. A local example would be Gloc9‘s “Upuan:” even an uncritical reading of its lyrics –

Kayo po na nakaupo

Subukan n’yo naming tumayo

At baka matanaw

At baka matanaw ninyo

Ang tunay na kalagayan ko

Tao po, nandyan po ba kayo sa loob ng

Malaking bahay at malawak na bakuran

Mataas na pader pinapaligiran

At naka pilang mga mamahaling sasakyan

Mga bantay na laging bulong nang bulong

Wala namang kasal pero marami ang nakabarong

Lumakas man ang ulan ay walang butas ang bubong

Mga plato't kutsara na hindi kilala ang tutong

At ang kanin ay simputi ng gatas na nasa kahon

At kahit na hindi pasko sa lamesa ay may hamon

Ang sarap sigurong manirahan sa bahay na ganyan

Sabi pa nila ay dito mo rin matatagpuan

Ang tao na nagmamay-ari ng isang upuan

Na pag may pagkakatao'y pinag-aagawan

Kaya naman hindi niya pinakakawalan

Kung makikita ko lamang siya ay aking sisigawan

– would reveal that it’s not just talking about the local haciendero in some rural Visayan town, and the lyrics are at times particularly biting in the blind item sort of way. It’s not written in the artistically-flighty language, and yet one wonders on how effective it is in working its activist ass, or in other words, is “Upuan” pushing people to protest against State Oppression, or in other words, do people who dance to it know that they’re dancing to a protest song? Is it important that they know they’re dancing to a protest song? Is it important for the dancer or for the protest singer?

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Upuan (JPacena)

This sentiment scratches the main reason why I think along my standards, analyzing Protest Poem unbifurcatedly as art as political commentary, most Protest Poems fail: most Protest Poems are exclusively produced and consumed hermetically in the Art world; most Protest Poems are not radio-friendly nor marketable nor danceable, ie, popular music, or rather, we don’t see Protest Poems as being nothing but Serious Writing, nothing but Serious Literature, and sadly, nobody takes Serious Writing – Serious Literature – seriously, or at least, nobody important in the final analysis of Art projected towards eliciting socio-economic upheaval, ie, the peasantry, the great unwashed, the teeming masses, you. And all these things, it seems, are inseparable from the Protest Poem. To dance to a Protest Poem seems to insult its politics. To make a pop song out of it – and consequently, to earn money from it and to become famous because of it – seems to compromise it, seems to make it less activist.

And this, it seems for now, it seems how it’s been for years, is the measure of success of the Protest Poem: it needs to keep its message for it to remain relevant; to keep its message, it must stay within its semiotic territory; to stay within its semiotic territory, it cannot aspire to be more than what it is; and what it is is what is – art as political commentary. Any sort of aesthetic distance from the subject dilutes the message. Any sort of semblance of political transcendence dilutes the message. It cannot mean more than what it initially means. Without the politics, it’s just a song. Without the song, it’s just the politics. It is bad news for all of us protest poets the world over, bad news for all our protest songs, but I know we’ll overcome, I know we’ll never let this keep us down.