True Love and the Revolution in Song

Falla 113 Jonathan Falla True Love and the Revolution in Song 1986 was my year for seeing revolutions, and all three of them were in fine voice. In El Salvador the war had reached a stalemate but, in government-held territory, they sang hymns that might be thought thoroughly subversive. In Nicaragua the initial fight was won and the more bombastic lyrics stilled also; now they crooned more pensively over the intractable problems that obstructed their millenium. In Burma they had been at each other's throats for decades, but in a low key, and the songs were an insistence; yes, there is a Revolution; it may drag on rather but it'll not go away and you'll not forget it, will you? Not if we keep singing. I had an invitation from a priest, a European who believed that his nationality gave him at least partial protection from the death squads of Salvador. There was to be a weekend of music in the hills, a "workshop," and it could be remarkable. If it worked out well we'd see the poor risking , for a change, a little communal joy. That would be a change, certainly . We'd visited Salvador's slums, refuges and refugee resettlement schemes and there was not much joy to be found there. I got the idea — music as a liberating force, at the heart of popular solidarity. We drove way out of town up steep dirt tracks, the bus near toppling, lopsided under its roof load of youth and guitars. Very bad roads; very hot, very dry, very much bumped about, we came along high ridges running away from the capital amongst the interminable coffee groves that actually do not belong to the cultivators, all dark green and dusty. At the top end of the ridge, a small town with a rather grand new cement church; a foreign mission. Rather more than a hundred participants turned up; kids in large part from different towns but none the less welcome for the spark they brought. More than half brought guitars also. The programme was simple enough. For three or four hours a day over the long weekend we sat on the cement seats behind the altar while a priest with an accordian taught us hymns. We began on the Friday evening: 114 the minnesota review "Gloria a ti por siempre, por siempre, por SIEM-PRE!" two hard guitar chords hitting the syllables of "Siempre" over and over again. It was fun, at least for an hour or so. Between these exercises for massed band we did other things. We were divided into eight groups; Lambs, Little Angels, ... I forget the others. We had allotted tasks. I was cast amongst the Angelitos, and we Angelitos had to enforce discipline. I am not even a Christian — though I was a school prefect once. The Lambs I think got to clean the latrines; others cooked, or swept. The priests had devised games and activities for us. We enacted, en masse, the stages of the mass, and were told its meaning. We fell upon a heap of newspapers and cut them up in order to illustrate Sin, which was most interesting, for the young Salvadorean is perfectly well aware that one should not believe everything that one reads in the papers. We stuck our cut-out vice onto large sheets of sugarpaper for each other's contemplation and, amongst the rapes, the murders and the frauds of Mammon, there were lies, distortions, all the misrepresentations of a smug and reactionary press. "You see here? It says that people are falling into debt through drink and idleness but that's a lie, that's not why our families get debts and the newspapers know it and for them to say so, that's a Sin!" Right enough. We picked up our guitars again, banging out that double Strum: "Gloria a ti por siempre, por siempre, por SIEM-PRE!" What was going on, exactly? Could this be regarded, really, as the foundations of group consciousness amongst the oppressed? I was taken in hand not by one of the priests but by a sympathizer. "You have to understand so much first." Well...