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, @ChrisFHJordan  2:43 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2017

What can a song do?

Bruce Springsteen proclaimed himself and the E Street Brand to be part of the “new American resistance” to the presidency of Donald Trump at the band’s Sunday, Jan. 22 show in Perth, Australia. The pronouncement came  after the Women’s Marches of Saturday, Jan. 21 that took place in multiple U.S. cities, including Asbury Park.

But if Springsteen and the E Streeters are part of the movement, what can a song do? The question came up during an audience question and answer segment in  “A Conversation with Bruce Springsteen,” Tuesday, Jan 10 at Monmouth University in West Long Branch.

Robert Santelli was the moderator.

“I don’t know, has anybody ever had their mind changed by a song?” said Springsteen, initially hesitant. He seemed to think out his answerer as he spoke. “I met one kid who said it did, but only one. So, I tend to believe music is important to activism in the sense that it stirs passion. It stirs interest. It stirs curiosity, it moves you to question your own beliefs. It strikes straight to your emotions and it stirs you up inside. After you’ve heard it, I think it marinates inside of you, and ends up coming out in your own energy.

“I mean, there’s a more basic way that if you listen to ‘If I Had A Hammer’ or ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’ (both by Pete Seeger), these are things that are directly aimed at very socially conscious people and politically conscious people and are important in the same way hymns are important in church. It makes us strong -- stronger in our beliefs. And in a certain moment, the right song can start a fire.”

Springsteen seemed to gain momentum as he spoke.

“I wrote ‘41 Shots’ and it successfully pissed people off for a while. I ran into people who didn’t like me very much, I realized. And some people who really liked what I did a lot,” Springsteen said.

“American Skin (41 Shots)’ was written about the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, by four New York City plain-clothes police officers.

“So, (music) can stir the pot. It can bring ideas to the fore, and it can create dialogue and create conversation and create argument out of which hopefully comes some sort of small resolution of events,” Springsteen said. “It also documents things, it’s historical in nature. If you go back to the great folk music of the ‘60s, Woody Guthrie’s music, not only is it beautiful but it’s a document of events and the way people fought and felt and experienced things at that time. It’s very important to the way that we think and experience things. If you listen to great music from the ‘30s, Woody’s music, and you can apply it today to many, many injustices -- injustice is injustice.

“Those things resonate down through the years and they keep people alive. They keep the singers’ voices alive, they keep people like Joe Hill alive, they keep Martin Luther King alive, Malcolm X alive. Songs do have the capacity to translate and to communicate, and to sustain and serve. So I have a deep belief in pop music as a political force, that’s the best way I can answer that question.”

The audience broke out into applause.

Bruce Springsteen towers over the audience as he performs

Bruce Springsteen towers over the audience as he performs with the E Street Band at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, Tuesday, Aug. 23. (Photo: THOMAS P. COSTELLO)


So is Springsteen writing protest songs about Donald Trump? Well, no, according to his interview earlier this month on the “WTF” podcast with Marc Moran.

“No, I haven’t written about it, it takes a while to digest all those things,” Springsteen said. “I don’t know if I will. I don’t go, ‘OK, I need a Trump album, that’s what got to come next.’

“I got a lot of songs that are about it right now, they’re kind of there already,” Springsteen said. “I work from the inside out. In other words, I’m inspired by something internally  and I make a record based on what I can write about at a given moment. Sometimes it ends up being topical, sometimes it doesn’t -- we’ve got a good arsenal of material right now that we can go out and sort of put in service.”

After Springsteen made his “new American resistance” pronouncement on Jan 22, the night’s setlist included “Darkness on the Edge of Town” “My Hometown,” “No Surrender” and “American Skin (41 Shots).”

Twelve hours earlier, band member Patti Scialfa, also Springsteen’s wife, had joined with protesters in the Asbury Park Women’s March.

Chris Jordan: cjordan@app.com

http://www.app.com/story/enter...song-power/97216540/

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The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

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