What is revolution? In the words of Malcolm X, "Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way." In the hands of artists, revolution represents all of that and much more. So much more, in fact that any attempt to define it based on its usage would be contradictory at best. Better then, to let those artists speak for themselves.

That seems to be the motivation behind a new art project that manifests itself most tangibly as a two-CD set titled Music for a Revolution. It was compiled by UK artist Alan Dunn over the course of four years. It's an ambitious project that found the artist creating endless playlists around the term "revolution," eventually hitting upon this 69-track collection presented in an artfully rendered package in an edition of 1,000 given away to all who ask.

The most famous songs to include the term "revolution" are not here, but each is cited as inspiration. The first, of course, is the Beatles' "Revolution." Dunn writes on the project's web site
that the sound collage created by John Lennon and Yoko Ono that became the separate track "Revolution 9" was an antecedent for his project. "What emerged from that session, an 8.22 collage we now know as 'Revolution 9,' laid the foundations for this collection exploring artists’ uses of the term."

Derek Horton's liner notes also cite the "tacit influence" of Gil Scott Heron, whose "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" looms large over the project, and Horton's notes, which begin, "The revolution will not be digitised." He's wrong, of course. The revolution has been digitized, as anyone moved to action by a YouTube video or an MP3 clip of a rousing speech can attest (or, of course, heard this disc, which comes at the waning moments when music can be both digitized and revolve, as hard media gives way to soft). Horton's own notes feel contradictory. The Malcolm X quote above comes from the notes, as does this: "Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms singing ‘We Shall Overcome’? You don’t do any singing, you’re too busy swinging." "The revolution will not have a soundtrack," Horton writes. "There will be music but (quoting Jim Carroll) "just because there is music piped into the most false of revolutions."

Isn't this very document a soundtrack? Yes and no, and that equivocating means that perhaps Horton's sentiments aren't contradictory at all. While there is plenty of music in this collection based on the idea of revolution, it is the spoken-word material that hits hardest here. Perhaps that's because those snippets are drawn from in-the-moment events, where the fire and passion and rage of revolution is visceral. The music, in contrast, is thought out, less organic, the term "revolution" used as shorthand to evoke an emotion or idea or thought.

"Works of historical importance were collaged and sequenced with newly invited compositions, blind calls for submissions, spoken word, student pieces, anonymous works, YouTube snippets and existing tracks," Dunn writes. The upshot is that most will have heard of few of these artists before spinning the disc. Robert Pollard from Guided by Voices is the biggest name here (for U.S. audiences, anyway), with the track "Headache Revolution" from his band Boston Spaceships. Tracks from Chumbawumba and Paul Revere and the Raiders also make an appearance.

The rest, then, is new to most, but good. Dunn has done an exceptional job compiling and sequencing these tracks. It helps that many are short snippets; it's hard to be bored by something that changes direction every 30 seconds or so. At the end of its more than two-hour runtime, the idea of fomenting revolution is not the first thing that comes to mind; fatigue inspired by the overuse of the term is a more likely reaction. But as for Dunn's stated goal of exploring artists' use of the term, he succeeds. The listener can't help but grasp how fluid and elastic the word is, and have the way they think about it enhanced for the effort.

Labels: art, music