Readers recommend: songs about peace - results

So-called smart bombs, death from friendly fire, war on terror, the Great War – these phrases make no sense. I don’t understand violence, its terms and conditions, or the small print. Is peace rare because it isn’t profitable, and is that why those in power turn their backs on trying to achieve it? Peace – what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. But there is always protest. As Gil Scott-Heron says in Work for Peace: “They’ve turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries, they are turning the planet, into a cemetery. Got to work for peace.” And Shirley Walton makes a call to Send Peace and Harmony Home.

But do the powerful keep peace at home by putting the proletariat in their place with pomp, ceremony and patriotism in order to avoid civil disruption? In wars, while arms salesmen profit, those that suffer most are civilians and soldiers who end up physically or mentally injured or disfigured. If they survive, they return to debt, rationing and a lower standard of living. Do some military personnel prefer war, aggression and danger to freedom and peace? Is that why we’re not all trying to give peace a chance? Let’s do just that with The Keeper by Bonobo with Andreya Triana and then New Kicks by Le Tigre.

When the keeper threw a ball out from the trenches into no man’s land during the first world war, and each side made a complicit decision not to fight, it demonstrated that the two sides were neither hostile nor violent. Yet those in power still built barriers to divide people. Later they were not trenches, but walls – walls that split families and friends. Like the decision to play football above the trenches, the Berlin Wall was peacefully breached 25 years ago, but this time it was those behind the iron curtain that helped let the light in. The wall was opened up as much as bashed down.

At another wall setting – this time in war-ravaged Palestine – Jim Page calls for peace in I’d Rather Be Dancing . Otherwise, as Chava Alberstein says in Chad Gadya: “When will this madness end?”

It’s always fascinating to juxtapose both sides of any story, both sides of any wall – because what you are fed from what may be the peaceful side might well still have blood on it. In Living Dafur by Mattafix, “you don’t have to be extraordinary, just forgiving, to create calm”. Then there’s Busi Mhlongo’s Yehlisan’umoya Ma-Afrika (African National - Calm). Peace is what many humans can achieve; quietly, contentedly. Yet they can have their lives shattered by those with the loudest voice, those with the biggest egos, those with the bitterest agendas or narrowest views, from those behind world politics and illegal wars down to those who make comments on internet forums. But it’s always better to live in peace – a very simple desire. Let’s make time for it, and for Tempo de Amor by Baden Powell and Marcia Sousa.

After this year’s centenary of the start of the first world war, I found more about that no man’s land and everyman spirit in the Farm’s All Together Now: “A spirit stronger than war was working that night/ December 1914 cold, clear and bright/ Countries’ borders were right out of sight/ They joined together and decided not to fight.” Cries for peace, freedom and equality can come to all kinds of people in other places at other times. The Beastie Boys say it in their post-9/11 track An Open Letter to NYC: “Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten/ From the Battery to the top of Manhattan/ Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin/ Black, white, New York you make it happen.”

I had originally wanted this playlist to be primarily about peace, but many of this week’s suggestions, including Eric Bogle’s No Man’s Land, were equally anti-war songs. Therefore unlike our democratic leaders, I had to go with readers’ wishes, choosing anti-war songs that were also about peace. Now to finish? Here’s Vicki Anderson and I Want to Be in the Land of Milk and Honey.

The playlist

1. Gil Scott Heron – Work for Peace
2. Shirley Walton – Send Peace and Harmony Home
3. Bonobo with Andreya Triana – The Keeper
4. The Farm – All Together Now
5. Jim Pace – I’d Rather be Dancing
6. Chava Alberstein – Chad Gadya
7. Mattafix – Living Darfur
8. Busi Mhlongo – Yehlisan’umoya ma-Afrika (African Nation – Calm)
9. Baden Powell and Marcia Sousa – Tempo de Amor
10. Le Tigre – New Kicks
11. The Beastie Boys – An Open Letter to NYC
12. Eric Bogle – No Man’s Land
13. Vicki Anderson – I Want to Be in the Land of Milk and Honey