Capitalism changes, mutates, transforms, colonizes Mars, designs androids, and catapults us into science fiction, but the poor remain (even though someone had abolished poverty by law...), exploited, and oppressed. ---- Songs have always accompanied struggles, on strikes, on picket lines, in the countryside. Songs help us remember the names of those who stood tall, those who never bowed their heads, those who died for their rights and those of all. May 1st remains the celebration of the exploited, a day to dance and sing in anticipation of 364 days of struggle.
1 DUAP - HERO OF NOTHING
2 PAT ATHO - THE MURDER OF ABD EL SALAM
3 RIDERZ WITH ATTITUDE - WORKING CLASS RAP
1 DUAP - HERO OF NOTHING
Duap's proletarian rock reinvigorated the sound of Italian Oi! in the late '90s. They played for just a few years, producing important songs for the "suburban" kids and the rebels: "On those walls black writings / 'Punks and skins still together'" goes "Storie di quartiere." Their streetpunk didn't flaunt political or ideological content, but that didn't mean their lyrics were uninhibited. Like much of Oi!, their lyrics recount the daily lives of working-class neighborhoods-certainly the factory and the workplace, but also the anxieties, frustrations, pastimes, and urges of those who live in the suburbs. "No one will notice anymore / if you're dead or alive, / every day you fight / to stay standing." Thus begins "Eroe di nulla," a song from their latest and most mature album "Solo per noi," easily recognizable by its compact, lively sound, just the right amount of raw. The cover features Flavio Costantini's work "Parigi 7 aprile 1912, I banditi tragici," which immortalizes the arrest of Raymond Callemin and Pierre Jourdain-known as Raymond la Science and Imbart-anarchists from the Banda Bonnot. Duap's name originally stood for "Distribuzione Unitaria Anarco-Proletaria," but since it referred more to a project than a band, and being a bit heavy... the song "Duri a perdere" became the perfect way to keep the old acronym and sum up their attitude. If punk had plenty of anger to vent, Oi! It's a punk song steeped in hate: "Eight hours of swearing / you think in vain about your future / you're locked in this life / they don't even let you breathe." The heroes described in the song are actually just ordinary people, those who go to work every day, to (sur)vive: "Hero of nothing! / hero of eight hours / hero of nothing! / working hands / hero of nothing! / hair always short / hero of nothing! / ready for victory!" A simple refrain perhaps, but one that encompasses the materiality of their exploitation (the calluses on their hands), their subcultural affiliation (shaved head: "...now you have a style: / skinhead!") and a hint of hope given by the struggle. "Hero of nothing" also seems to recall, with a war metaphor, those "fallen at work", victims of a system of exploitation that reaps - even in Italy alone - a daily bloodbath, a true silent war. "I don't want any medals / but I want my dignity back!" It certainly won't be a consoling text; there's no happy ending. "Only for Us" is disillusioned but never resigned: "I don't want your greeting / I don't want your money / I don't want any medals / I don't want to obey anymore."
2 PAT ATHO - THE MURDER OF ABD EL SALAM
Abd Elsalam Ahmed Eldanf (*) was crushed by a truck that crashed into the union picket line guarding the gates of the logistics company during a dispute on the night of September 14, 2016. He worked as a laborer at the GLS warehouse in Piacenza, was 53 years old, a father of five, and originally from Egypt, where he taught. That night, the USB union picket blocked the gates of the logistics hub during negotiations over the respect of temporary workers' contracts. Abd El Salam participated despite having a permanent contract. He dies, another of his colleagues is injured by a strikebreaker who, driving a heavy vehicle, literally crushes workers and their rights. "The Murder of Abd El Salam" is one of a handful of songs that recall the worker and his story, written by Pat Atho on his second solo album. "He's stone dead / they lied / he died of pain / the doctor said so. How he died / they ran him under / blind destiny / a strikebreaker's van." Path hails from the punk scene of the "filthy province" of Lazio, among whose most incisive bands he's been a part are Automatica Aggregazione and Gli Ultimi. In his solo project, he dusts off Italian and overseas folk traditions, using his harmonica and an old-school six-string guitar to sing with the same streetwise authenticity of punk. What matters is having stories to tell, and Abd El Salam's is one of them: "Who killed him? You killed him / Who killed him? The boss killed Abd El." The piece is accompanied by a few lines from the author that retrace the dynamics of the strike picket in Piacenza and the worker's death: "It's a homicide, whether intentional or negligent is only important in the courts: the message was clear, for those with ears to hear. Violence is once again returning throughout the country at strike sites, a reminder of a squadrism that seemed to be long gone. Abd El Salam is neither a symbol nor a martyr. Abd El Salam is an Egyptian professor, in Italy a logistics worker, killed in the race for profit." "The company has the right / the company has the power / to take the life / of a man if it believes it." The song flows quickly despite the heavy narrative, a handful of verses reiterating that no one should die at work, for work, or on work, "...I wish I could tell you / that the fight will be hard. / But just tell me / how Christ died / I want to know / why he died."
(*) His name is spelled differently; since I don't know which is correct, it's always been reported as written in the source.
3 RIDERZ WITH ATTITUDE - WORKING CLASS RAP
In a Western world where the dominant power had made trap its perfect cultural expression (a branch of rap that took the gangsta urge to achieve money, power, and women by any means and method to the extreme), the working class's trapped response could only come from the "new slaves." Riderz With Attitude was born in Turin, a gang of riders who rap about and animate their struggles. The idea and political use of trap music in an anti-capitalist vein originated among those who were the first to work within the framework of the algorithm, which established unprecedented forms of control and exploitation. It was around 2018 that the mobilizations of new delivery workers began in Italy, employed by digital capitalist giants who based their profits on an invisible neo-gangmaster system, on extreme flexibility, speculating in defiance of any right, law, or convention. "Working Class Rap" is certainly one of their most iconic songs: "Pump this shit, everything trembles, working class rap / push it harder through the streets, I want a thousand gangs / 66-pound bottles, fuck your Moet / money doesn't smell / but your community center only needs a private room." A fresh and fast-paced lyrics that distances itself from posse rap, slogans, and "classic" storytelling to become more fluid and disjointed: "Every day is a gamble like I'm playing dice / I wear my Quechua raincoat even if it's thirty degrees / we ride all day like we were nomads / guess who fucks with the riders? / exactly: nobody." The precariousness and working conditions of the riders also emerge in lines like "From Porta Palazzo (keep it real) / I travel nine kilometers to deliver a happy meal (oh shit)" or "Secondary roads like rats in the sewers / here we are like the leaves on the trees in autumn," which depict working conditions very different from those of industrial capitalism. The name RWA obviously recalls that of the seminal American group NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitudes), which laid the foundations of a certain type of rap. It is interesting that the Turin group replaced the racial theme with the "R": "you don't know the hard work but you talk about classes / everything is right in theory if you don't put it into practice". The song is introduced by a rather impressive manifesto: "Working Class Rap isn't just a song, it's a style. A way to overturn the usual content of trap, return to the streets and try to overturn a reality that's too narrow. Ostentation gives way to insubordination, gang rage to class hatred: Gucci becomes Kalenji, necklaces become chains, the private room a square covered with a carpet of 66-size bowls. It will never be mainstream and doesn't want to be; the goal is to tell and accompany lazy shifts, messy strikes, and intolerant attitudes, pumping from a cargo tank and hoping for 1,000 'gvngs'." RWA are also a fairly rare example in Italy of a crew in which each member raps in their own language (thanks to subtitles or translations on YouTube, you can understand a lot); some of them are Fara, 3P, Makita, Karma, and Shiro. "And I won't stop in the cold / even if it's minus seven / we're really out there / not like your rappers" says "Class Hatred", "under the rain if it rains, to hell under the sun" had, alas, already sung the working class... As if it were a modern "CNN of the exploited", in the story of their work we encounter a vocabulary typical of the labor movement: "Do you want some sauce? We'll even bring you BBQ sauce / with the scab meat we make ragù!" (from "Nomadi").
En.Ri-ot
https://umanitanova.org/note-bandite-maledetto-lavoro-2-con-la-carne-di-crumiro-ci-faremo-del-ragu/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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