PShift 20 Sept 2013 - 'Roadmap to Apartheid'
With the crisis in Syria on a knife's edge, PShift is going to revisit the middle east and the resons it came t this. We talk about Palestine and the apartheid state of israel.
One year ago of PShift (12 Sept 2012) I played the song 'Pegale le duro al fiero' (Strike the beast hard). For me it captures the attitude and hope that lies in any long & difficult struggle - like the one in Palestine, like the struggle in Chile against the dictatorship of Pinochet and like our own struggle here in Qld against the mini dictator Joh Bjelke Petersen. Here are the words to the opening stanza of the song (this version was played in the 1980s by the band 'Frontera'. Sue Monk sings solo on the opening lyrics that say:
Strike the beast hard
because if you don't it will leave you hunger;
strike it because they'll kill you
and they’ll cover you with earth,
sing your thousand songs
and set out walking with your wounds,
and together we’ll go to the forest
to sing, then, to life.
FRONTERA (Sue Monk, Sergio Aldunate, Lachlan Hurse, and others) sing this Ruben Giliando expose of the need to fight US imperialism. This recording is from a cassette tape called 'Living In The Colonies — What's Left?' recorded in the mid 1980s at a time of struggle against the Bjelke-Petersen government. The gig was put on at the Migrant Resource Centre in West End. See http://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2012/09/14/strike-the-beast-hard/
STRIKE THE BEAST HARD
Words and music: Ruben Galindo
Original arrangement: Grupo Moncada
When the sun scorched the earth
a child was being born in the mountain,
in a cradle or hard stone
that poisoned him.
He opened his eyes to the world
and saw nothing but misery,
he touched the cruellest inferno
where the fire attacked him;
he grew up among the brambles
where the smoke was like grape-shot.
He rises up above the Andes
with his warrior's poncho
seeking a path,
a path that he desired,
that he wanted as a child;
he never complained about being
American by blood,
sowing his determination
and with his hands pulling out
the spur of evil.
Strike t he beast hard
because if you don't it will leave you hunger;
strike it because they'll kill you
and they’ll cover you with earth,
sing your thousand songs
and set out walking with your wounds,
and together we’ll go to the forest
to sing, then, to life.
They 've given you very little bread
for the sweat which you burned,
you spent your whole life
extracting riches for the beast;
it's not time for fear
because the sun's gone bad,
the sky's covered over with terror
and the fire's sputtering out.
Now you've found the road
that the light gave to your life,
raise the child who follows you
and teach him to sing,
teach him that man
has a lot of struggling to do,
put your cope over him
and set him on the road to struggle,
jump from the Andes and shout
over the earth.
