Canaries in the mine of America

Like the canaries in the mine, whenever the democracy of the United States threatens to explode, musicians appear to warn of the presence of danger.

Ever since the Almanac Singers, led by Woody Guthrie with that guitar that read "this machine kills fascists", toured the nation from coast to coast during the Great Depression to encourage people who were tumbling - victims of " that insidious and destructive disease that was unemployment, "as John Steinbeck wrote," American music has sounded like a counterweight to government outrages.

Examples abound.

The songs have always indicated the noxious atmosphere with which American democracy collided with its original values.

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sang during the March on Washington in 1963 shortly before Martin Luther King Jr. pronounced that famous

.

Jimi Hendrix distorted the anthem

at Woodstock against the Vietnam War.

Public Enemy and Run DMC downloaded wild rhymes and rhythms to vindicate black pride in the squalid neighborhood ghettos of the eighties.

And, more recently, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, John Fogerty, REM or Pearl Jam spearheaded the Vote for Change movement in 2004, calling for a vote against George W. Bush after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With Donald Trump become president and with the possibility that his re-election reaffirms his policies and his populist ardor, music is once again like a canary fulfilling its function.

Alert, but it also becomes a combat weapon.

In this way, a trail of records released this year seem driven by activism, indignation and even anger, adding to the outstanding contributions that Death Cab for Cutie, Father John Misty, DJ have made since Trump's arrival in the White House. Shadow or rappers Kendrick Lamar and YG.

As Bob Mold sings in

: "I never thought I'd see this shit again ... / Wake up every day to see a nation on fire."

At the helm of the devastating Hüsker Dü, the epitome of

North American

, Mold was already a scourge in the eighties against Ronald Reagan and now he has just released his 14th solo album,

, a rabid treatise of electric guitars sounding like steamrollers because “ silence was always death ”.

With urgency, Mold battles with his

songs

against "the abomination that is Trump."

It is the most angry album against the current president, but it is not the only one.

In 'Murder Most Foul', Bob Dylan travels back to the day of Kennedy's death and warns of the dangers of the present

From conservative styles such as country, Willie Nelson, a hippy in the cowboy genre and declared akin to the Democratic Party, calls in

to action through the vote, "the greatest weapon we have to throw him out", as he maintains regarding Trump.

Drive-By Truckers also wax like their life depended on it.

After releasing the outstanding

in 2016

, where they charged against an unrecognizable country that fostered racism and hatred, they published

in January

, another cry of fury at the American situation, and a few days before the elections they surprised with

, a work that affects the loss of credibility of Trump.

With their

revitalizing

, they wonder in the song that gives the album its title: "Will we get up from where we are standing / or will we settle with tearful eyes / looking at the gun pointed at us?"

The very elegant Mastersons are also positioned in

, leaving aside love songs to reflect on their country "adrift", and The Chicks, formerly known as Dixie Chicks, but which last summer got rid of the first part of the name for its southern allusions and racist overtones.

In their day, The Chicks already attacked George W. Bush, for which they were harshly criticized, and now include in

the song 'March March', which refers to the massive protests of Black Lives Matter.

“I am an army of one.

/ I march, I march with my own drum ”, they sing.

The

also takes place.

As in the old days, Public Enemy fire rhymes like bullets against Trumpism in

, an album that contains the hard-hitting 'State of the Union (STFU)', born of black fury in the face of so much humiliation. white.

“State of the union, / shut your mouth.

/ Sorry, son of a bitch.

/ Get away from me, ”sings Chuck D, father of the

most political

and who reviews his classic

with the rest of the group

to call for action.

The same does another famous person like Nas.

Their new album,

, is less aggressive in sound, keeping its characteristic traces of

more ambient and

, but it does not stop oozing wounded African-American pride in compositions like 'Ultra Black' or 'Till the War Is Won' .

The rise of Black Lives Matter also sneaks into the latest from Alicia Keys through

, a ballad in which the pop icon admits to speaking in the first person in relation to the protests. The same as Yola, the last great talent from Nashville with his extraordinary mix of country and soul, who has launched

, an imposing halftime where she vindicates her status as a black woman in order for the new generations to fight for their civil rights . Sufjan Stevens dedicates

the lost faith in American identity

, an electronic abstraction with strong political connotations that asks about the role of citizens in the face of the institutional debacle. Something very similar to the reflections that, by way of spiritual dissatisfaction, nonconformist firmness and lyrical cubism, Bob Dylan has made in

, where the American conscience revives on the way to purgatory. In the 17 minutes of

, the longest song of his career, there is a walk back in time on the day of John F. Kennedy's death to show the dangers of the present. "In America you can breathe danger," the writer Richard Ford argued a few days ago. Some of their best musicians sing, once again, to avoid the explosion.