Episode 49: Art and Upheaval

Notable Mentions

For this episode of Change the Story Change the World we are going to revisit some of those Art and Upheaval stories along with the song of the same name to make a point. Yea, some people think you can’t beat the devil with a song, but they don’t know!

Art & Upheaval (song) From the CD Songlines by Cleveland Plainsong:

Art & Upheaval: Artists at Work on the World’s Frontlines, New Village Press

Change the Story Change the World

South African Bill of Rights: The Bill of Rights is arguably the part of the Constitution that has had the greatest impact on life in this country. As the first words of this chapter say: "This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom."

It has also been the source of the majority of the groundbreaking rulings the Constitutional Court has handed down. To read more about selected rights and the way the Constitutional Court has interpreted them, see children's rights, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, workers' rights and access to information.

Art for Humanity: engages with multidisciplinary arts practice and a wide variety of creative practice within the context of the pressing need for the centering of social justice in our contemporary moment. Based primarily in Durban, the organization aims to support, host, document, create space for, catalyze, and help stimulate this intersection between the arts and questions of history, social transformation and social justice. 

Bishop Desmond Tutu: was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.

Khmer Rouge: The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), otherwise known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia on April 17, 1975. The CPK created...

Notable Mentions

For this episode of Change the Story Change the World we are going to revisit some of those Art and Upheaval stories along with the song of the same name to make a point. Yea, some people think you can’t beat the devil with a song, but they don’t know!

Art & Upheaval (song) From the CD Songlines by Cleveland Plainsong:

Art & Upheaval: Artists at Work on the World’s Frontlines, New Village Press

Change the Story Change the World

South African Bill of Rights: The Bill of Rights is arguably the part of the Constitution that has had the greatest impact on life in this country. As the first words of this chapter say: "This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom."

It has also been the source of the majority of the groundbreaking rulings the Constitutional Court has handed down. To read more about selected rights and the way the Constitutional Court has interpreted them, see children's rights, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, workers' rights and access to information.

Art for Humanity: engages with multidisciplinary arts practice and a wide variety of creative practice within the context of the pressing need for the centering of social justice in our contemporary moment. Based primarily in Durban, the organization aims to support, host, document, create space for, catalyze, and help stimulate this intersection between the arts and questions of history, social transformation and social justice. 

Bishop Desmond Tutu: was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.

Khmer Rouge: The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), otherwise known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia on April 17, 1975. The CPK created the state of Democratic Kampuchea in 1976 and ruled the country until January 1979. The party’s existence was kept secret until 1977, and no one outside the CPK knew who its leaders were (the leaders called themselves “Angkar Padevat”).

While the Khmer Rouge was in power, they set up policies that disregarded human life and produced repression and massacres on a massive scale. They turned the country into a huge detention center, which later became a graveyard for nearly two million people, including their own members and even some senior leaders.

Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture:  Reyum was a non-profit, non-governmental organisation dedicated to Cambodian arts and culture. Reyum was founded by Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (1964 - 2005) in December 1998 in order to provide a forum for research, preservation, and promotion of traditional and contemporary Cambodian arts and culture.  

Watts Writers Workshop: was a creative writing group initiated by screenwriter Budd Schulberg in the wake of the devastating August 1965 Watts Riots in South Central Los Angeles (now South Los Angeles). Schulberg later said: "In a small way, I wanted to help.... The only thing I knew was writing, so I decided to start a writers' workshop."[1] The group, which functioned from 1965 to 1973, was composed primarily of young African Americans in Watts and the surrounding neighborhoods. Early on, the Workshop included a theatrical component and one of the founders was the actor Yaphet Kotto. The group expanded its facilities and activities over the next several years with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Government files later revealed that the Workshop had been the target of covert operations by the FBI. Writers involved in the Workshop include Quincy Troupe, Samuel Harris Jr better known as Leumas Sirrah, Johnie Scott, Eric Priestley, Ojenke, Herbert Simmons, and Wanda Coleman, as well as the poetry group Watts Prophets.

Amde Hamilton: Father Amde is widely recognized for being one of the original poets in the world famous Watts Writers Workshop during the 1960’s, where he and two other poets formed the legendary rap group, the Watts Prophets. Amid racism, poverty, and police brutality that ultimately sparked the Watts Riots, the Watts Writers Workshop tapped into the young, Black voices of Los Angeles that needed to be heard. 

Watts Prophets: The Watts Prophets are a group of musicians and poets from Watts, California, United States. Like their contemporaries The Last Poets, the group combined elements of jazz music and spoken-word performance, making the trio one that is often seen as a forerunner of contemporary hip-hop music. Formed in 1967, the group comprised Richard Dedeaux, Father Amde Hamilton (born Anthony Hamilton), and  (See Also Art and Upheaval: Chapters 11, 12. 13) 

DAH Teatar: (Research Center for Culture and Social Change) dah theatre is a professional theatre troupe and research center. Working at the crossroads between theatre, dance, and the visual arts, through dedicated team work, for 30 years dah creates daring artistic forms that inspire personal and social transformation. 

Slobodan Milosevic: (born August 29, 1941, Požarevac, Yugoslavia [now in Serbia]—found dead March 11, 2006, The Hague, Netherlands), politician and administrator, who, as Serbia’s party leader and president (1989–97), pursued Serbian nationalist policies that contributed to the breakup of the socialist Yugoslav federation. He subsequently embroiled Serbia in a series of conflicts with the successor Balkan states. From 1997 to 2000 he served as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Bertold Brecht:  known professionally as Bertolt Brecht,[a] was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill and began a lifelong collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the Verfremdungseffekt.

The Troubles: also called Northern Ireland conflict, violent sectarian conflict from about 1968 to 1998 in Northern Ireland between the overwhelmingly Protestant unionists (loyalists), who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans), who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the republic of Ireland. Marked by street fighting, sensational bombings, sniper attacks, roadblocks, and internment without trial, the confrontation had the characteristics of a civil war, notwithstanding its textbook categorization as a “low-intensity conflict.” Some 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 more were wounded before a peaceful solution, which involved the governments of both the United Kingdom and Ireland, was effectively reached in 1998, leading to a power-sharing arrangement in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont.

The Wedding Community Play: The Wedding Community Play Project is not a title which trips easily off the tongue, and those of us suspicious of any artform which privileges "process" over "product" might be forgiven for approaching with trepidation a play which wears its origins so openly. Co-written by Martin Lynch and Marie Jones, along with seven different community theatre groups from different areas of Belfast, The Wedding threatens, on the face of it, to be a horse designed by a committee, especially given the political delicacy of some of the issues it addresses in dramatising the effects of a mixed marriage.

Song Exploder: is a podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. Each episode is produced and edited by host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway in Los Angeles. Using the isolated, individual tracks from a recording, Hrishikesh asks artists to delve into the specific decisions that went into creating their work. Hrishikesh edits the interviews, removing his side of the conversation and condensing the story to be tightly focused on how the artists brought their songs to life. Guests include Fleetwood Mac, Billie Eilish, U2, Metallica, Solange, Lorde, Yo-Yo Ma, The Roots, Bon Iver, and more.