Protest And The Art Of The Singer-Songwriter

Almost a quarter of a million people protested in France at the weekend (not huge by French standards) about the introduction of a mandatory health pass (pass sanitaire) to enter public spaces including cafes, restaurants, and bars, shopping centres, theatres and live venues etc.

Research suggests the majority of the population approves of the new measures, and the rules have prompted a surge in bookings for vaccination appointments, which was the reason for the health pass introduction, due to the low take-up rate by the French.

Those without a valid pass can be fined more than 135 euros — and businesses that fail to check that customers have passes risk being closed down.

But, as witnessed on the streets of France’s major cities over the past weeks, opposition has been vociferous — across the political spectrum including the hard left as well as far-right activists promoting anti-Semitic hate.

In 2018 the gilets jaunes movement followed the imposition of a fuel tax rise, but quickly morphed into a general and sometimes violent challenge to established elites and centres of political power, the Guardian reported. The anti-passers, while in defence of individual liberty, draw from the same deep well of suspicion and mistrust in the motives of the powerful.

This all should be fertile ground for singer-songwriters, but where are the great protest songs cataloguing recent social injustices?

As DJ and artist Don Letts, says in the Guardian, it is difficult for artists to create protest songs because of the ‘woke’ culture and a fear of being accused of ‘cultural appropriation’.

“For artists, the protest song is an increasingly difficult proposition. In a world so woke you can’t make a joke, trying to navigate the minefield of fake news, conspiracy theories and information overload is made even trickier by the fear of being accused of cultural appropriation,” he writes.

Singer-songwriter Sadie Jemmett, who also happens to be my wife, played a small concert outside the Herisson Social Club, near where we live, on Monday evening and her first set included three politically-charged protest songs. One was about the MeToo movement, the second in support of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement and the third about the refugee crisis resulting from the war in Syria.

The ‘gig’ had a picnic, family-type atmosphere, but her songs were well received by the French audience, they understood and valued the importance of singing about social injustice. The flyer for the gig designed by the venue, described her as ‘British folk’, which is what she is, in the same vein as great American folk singers such as Dylan, Baez and Mitchell et al.

It was quite a brave set of songs to play in that type of setting, but Sadie won the crowd over, particularly as she introduced each song in French and explained its history. She also compared Herisson to the town of Woodstock, which is not far off the mark, as there is a strong alternative and artistic vibe about the place.

I realised on this night that Sadie is a folk troubadour in the original bardic sense of the word going from town to town entertaining the crowds while raising social awareness.

For good measure, she added an anti-capitalist song in the second set in Herisson and finished with Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi, which, with the current state of the climate, is more relevant today than ever before.

At the end of the evening she was swamped by people wanting to know more about her music and she has had an offer to perform in Marseille, where apparently political tension is simmering in the French melting-pot of a port.

In the UK, Sadie would never have received that kind of acceptance or recognition for her protest songs. Nowadays it’s all about how many followers one has on Spotify or social media — and songwriters only have three-seconds to capture a listener’s attention.

Raising awareness through a song is a dying tradition, apart from in Hip-Hop, and we have become far too complicit in thinking a song can change the world … unless you live and work as a songwriter in France of course.