Episode 176
176: Are Art & Upheaval Incompatible or Inevitable? You Decide
Are Art and Upheaval totally
incompatible or unavoidably connected?
We’re rebroadcasting this episode from 2022, in part, because the ground beneath it hasn’t settled—it’s shifted, cracked, and in some places, caught fire again. The headlines keep reminding us: conflict, repression, dislocation, the slow erosion—and sometimes the sudden collapse—of trust in our institutions and in each other.
And right there, in the middle of it, the same quiet, stubborn truth this episode points to: if you scratch the surface of upheaval, you will find artists. Not on the sidelines—on the frontlines. Bearing witness. Making meaning. Holding the line while other systems falose thier grip.
Three things to listen for as you step in:
First, the insistence that art is not ornamental in times of crisis—it’s operational. It does real work in real conditions.
Second, the pattern: loss, rupture, and then—again and again—creative acts that stitch something back together. Not perfectly. But enough to move forward.
And third, the wager at the heart of it all: that imagination isn’t an escape from reality—it’s a tool for reshaping it.
Some people still think you can’t beat the devil with a song.
Listen closely.
Then decide for yourself.
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.
*******
Change the Story / Change the World is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.
Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.
Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you’re an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.
Transcript
Hey, there are art and Upheaval intrinsically incompatible or unavoidably connected. From the center for the Study of Art and Community.
e we begin, a quick note from: roadcasting this episode from:Conflict, repression, dislocation, the slow erosion and sometimes sudden collapse of trust in our institutions and in each other is a persistent state. And right there in the middle of it is the same quiet, stubborn truth this episode points to.
If you scratch the surface of upheaval, you will find artists not on the sidelines, on the front lines, bearing witness, making meaning, and holding the story in place where other systems lose their grip. So, three things for you to step into as you listen. First, the insistence that art is not ornamental in times of crisis. It's operational.
It does hardcore work under the most difficult conditions.
Second, the pattern loss, rupture, and then again and again, creative acts that stitch something back together not perfectly, but enough to move forward. And third, the wager at the heart of it all that imagination is not an escape from reality, it's a tool for reshaping it.
Some people think you can't beat the devil with a song, so listen closely and then decide for yourself. Where indeed? Well, these are the opening chords of a song about art over evil.
nd destruction. I wrote it in:Each verse of this song, also called Art and Upheaval, rose up from one of six stories about artists working in the trenches, in communities in upheaval, facing conflict and disorder. Some people think you can't beat the devil with a song. Actually, I would bet that most folks, including you, would probably agree. And I get that.
I really do. That's the story we all grew up with. Art is not powerful. It's soft, even weak.
One of the questions I was asked over and over when I was touring the book was whether I really believed that human creativity and imagination could help vanquish the forces of evil. My answer then evolved and now is absolutely.
Not as a matter of faith or conviction, but because I've seen it firsthand in America's prisons and jails, in war torn Yugoslavia, in Northern Ireland, post Khmer Rouge Cambodia, in South Africa, in Watts, California. The list goes on and on.
Needless to say, today's headlines remind us that those terrible fearful frontlines are an ever present feature of human existence. Sometimes we notice, sometimes we don't. I get that too.
That said, for this episode of Change the Story, Change the World, we're going to revisit some of those art and upheaval stories along with a song of the same name to make a point. Yeah, some people think you cannot beat the devil with a song, but they don't know this is Change the Story, Change the World.
My name is name is Bill Cleveland. Now, before I crank up the Victrola again, I'd like to begin with some digital distance calisthenics if you're willing.
The muscles I'd like us to exercise are pretty easy to find but often overlooked. Some people call them the imaginative muscles. So here we go.
Just relax, close your eyes if you'd like, and open your minds as you consider the following scenes.
Imagine working in a theater company for no money, 12 hours a day, six days a week, crafting performances that few will ever see and will likely land you in jail.
Imagine hundreds of newly minted art school graduates whose number one goal is to use their talent and creativity to advance democracy and economic justice across the world. Imagine a solo exhibit of paintings as one of the only visual records of a reign of terror in which over 2 million people died.
Imagine an internationally recognized writers program forced into bankruptcy and burned to the ground by a government that feared its power to change hearts and minds. Imagine street performance and graffiti art that somehow helped to bring down a brutal despot and end a decade of war.
Imagine having to cancel your after school dance class due to local bombing. Imagine a Supreme Court building that is an art gallery with judges as docents.
Imagine having to sit down with rival militia leaders to negotiate the individual lines of your community play.
Imagine poetry readings conducted at the Barrel of Imagine waking up every day knowing that your work as an artist is critical to the survival of your people. Imagine knowing that your art making could get you killed and doing it anyways.
And imagine hearing this from one of your country's most respected spiritual and political leaders. These images powerfully complement the words of the Bill of Rights.
Given our history, they serve as an apt reminder that words, however inspiring and lyrical, have been used as much to subvert as to create. It is therefore necessary to portray our commitment to human rights in pictures which are less open to corruption.
tu spoken at the opening of a:Each print represents one of the 27 articles of the then very new South African Bill of Rights.
They also represent an important moment in the 400 year South African freedom struggle, a struggle in which thousands of artists, dancers, actors, writers and musicians joined the front lines as full participants.
the privilege of taking from: Front Lines, was published in:A year later, I released a CD with some songs that were inspired by the stories in the book. For this episode of change, the story changed the world. I'm going to dig into the song art and Upheaval and the stories they represent.
Before we get into it, I want to begin with a shout out to my musical partner in crime, Alan Friedman. I know it's a cliche, but it's true. No Alan, no recording.
Without his brilliant production chops, his fabulous bass lines, and his friendship, that music would still be in my head, keeping me up at night. In fact, it was Alan's idea to assemble and record our rhythm section first and then build a different ensemble on top for every song on the cd.
On the Arden Upheaval track, in addition to the drums, bass and rhythm guitar, there were seven other players, including a horn section. I have to say, making this song was an extraordinary journey of music and history. In these two verses, we travel to Cambodia and South Africa.
Now, we all know that poetry and song lyrics often make use of metaphor, but it's important for me to say that the line in the Crimson Flood of the Killing Field in that first verse is not a metaphor.
It's a photo perfect description of the reign of terror and death that the Khmer Rouge visited on the people of Cambodia that killed nearly 2 million people in less than four years. This was the annihilation of 21% of the population, which included 95% of the country's artists and traditional culture bearers.
The story in the book also recounts how some of Cambodia's surviving artists worked to bring their country's 3,000-year-old traditional culture literally back from the dead. Now that feral child in the second verse comes from from the South African story I shared.
It alludes to the wild new spirit of democracy trying to find its way through the pride open gates of the newly reborn South Africa. Here's another verse from the song that tells a distinctly American story about rap poets, revolution and a place called Watts.
Cleveland PlainSong:The poets Dang dinda streets of fire, you know it's beat ain't gonna burn Budd.
Bill Cleveland: In:One of the few bright spots to emerge in the aftermath of what some call the Watts Rebellion was the creation of the Watts Writers Workshop.
Starting small as the smoke was just settling on 103rd street, the workshop became a magnet for writers of all kinds of in a community that, believe it or not, had not one library for more than 600,000 souls. For others, it was a needed way station for a life of writing. The work that rose up revealed a motherload of distinctive and talented voices.
One of those voices was a young man named Amde Hamilton.
Amde Hamilton:Sometimes I don't even have a permanent address. I'm a thinking man forced to play a survival game.
I'm an educated man with a doctor's degree from SWU Sidewalk University Pimping meaning and feeding shit I ain't dreaming.
Bill Cleveland:Now what you just heard is the part of the song known as the bridge. A bridge is like a scene shift in a movie that provides a contrast to the rest of the song.
listener back to Watts in the:It was a tricky fit rhythmically and pitch wise, but I think it worked. Amdi's doctor's degree from the Sidewalk University makes his point perfectly.
Here's what he has to say in the book about how he learned about the power of words. I learned the power of words in the insane asylum. I had a doctor who was insane.
He had control in me, told me I had a problem and I said, I didn't have a problem. He said, explain to me then why you don't have a problem. I thought I had a pretty nice gift for Gab, so I started laying it out.
When I got through, he sat back and he took every word that I said and tore them into little pieces and threw them back in my face. He destroyed me with my own words. It made me see the power of words. I walked out of that room.
I said to myself, someday I'm gonna learn how to use that power. After he was released, Omdi eventually learned to harness that power at the Watts Writers Workshop.
While there, he joined fellow writers Richard Didot and Otis O. Solomon to form the legendary Watts Prophets.
The book chronicles the prophets 40 year history as pioneering urban poets who laid the foundation for rapid hip hop, the rise of spoken word, and mentored multiple generations of Los Angeles writers. Unfortunately, loss and betrayal were a regular presence in the Prophet's story, but so was their resilience and their numerous rebounds.
Actually, losing something that is precious and creating a path to the next chapter is a constant for all the stories in the book.
This pattern of apparent endings and rebirth is also at the heart of the song's chorus, which begins with a kind of shrugging recognition of the audaciousness of the tune's song. Beats devil premise, but then doubles down on it with a challenge.
Go ahead, take my voice away I'll just start dancing and if you take my legs I'll be singing and finally you could take my life but what I've created my art will live forever.
Cleveland PlainSong:Some people think we can't beat the devil with a song, but they don't know. They don't know. Take a mile for a summer dancer Breaking my legs and I will sing Think of my life and the angel of my ashes Will dance in the.
Bill Cleveland:Wind.
Cleveland PlainSong:Will always dance in the wind.
Bill Cleveland:Another recurring element in the Prophet story is fire, both metaphoric and literal. This is true as well for Serbia's Da Theater.
The burning stage curtains in that verse takes you to Belgrade, Serbia, and an extraordinary group of women performers who call themselves Da, which means breath in Serbo Croatian.
ed the former Yugoslavia from:The hot concrete on the square of the Republic is thick with workers intent on their journey home.
Diana and Jadrinka shuffle back and forth in the art gallery on the edge of the square, watching the rushing river of people through the windows, arms crossed, staring out into the square. They try not to look like novice theater directors waiting for their first curtain. But this is impossible.
There is no curtain and they are literally sweating with worry and fear. What did they think they were doing?
Years of training for the stage, only to debut here on the street in the middle of rush hour, bearing witness to an epidemic of not knowing, speaking words that have been disappeared, forgotten. They had all agreed this performance was unavoidable. The war that does not exist is destroying their country.
The Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian men who are not being pulled from their beds in the middle of the night, never to return, can no longer be ignored. The cries of children who are not being cleansed from the cradle of their homelands must be heard.
The mothers with no tears cannot remain invisible in this interminable year of these things not happening. The noxious cloud of denial has obscured the Serbian sun. Someone must speak. It is time.
The actors shed the coats the that cover their black costumes and golden wings. One by one they begin the action, first in the gallery and then stepping purposefully into the square.
Solo journeys merge and break apart, then merge again. The surging crowd changes course to avoid the black forms moving against and across the flow.
A few slow, glancing haltingly at the incongruous wings springing back and forth on the crude harnesses attached to the actor's back. Slowly, one of the actors, Maja Mitik, begins singing the lyrics culled from Bertol Brecht's anti war songs. In the dark times.
Will there be singing in the dark times? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times. The sun's last golden glow mingles with the glint of street lights.
Jadranka holds her breath as the angels maintain their circuitous journey across the square to the empty fountain at the center. The singing continues. When evildoing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out Stop. When crimes begin to pile up, they become invisible.
When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries too, thaw like rain in the summer. The actors move more intensely, trading lines that ring out across the square.
Though Brecht's lyrics are 60 years removed, they're shocking to hear. When the leaders speak of peace, the common folk know that war is coming. When the leaders curse war, the mobilization order is already written. Out.
There's no mistaking what's being said here. This romance of blood and soil is an obscenity. With each passing line, the ugliness of the war is materializing in the square.
And now, as more people stop and cluster, the congregation of angels is accorded the space they need to complete their mission. Diana scans the crowd. There are people in suits, mothers, children, students with their book bags, and yes, men in uniforms.
Slowly it dawns on her that there are soldiers everywhere, watching the action, glancing nervously at each other, cradling their weapons. She feels like an acrophobic on the edge of a cliff, anticipating the gust of wind that will take tip the balance one way or another.
She is both exhilarated and terrified by the danger that this performance will come to a premature conclusion. But as the actors continue, nobody moves. They're all listening. Yeah, I guess it's true.
Some people think you can't beat the devil with a song or a painting or a play. You know, when I started researching my book and looking for a publisher, a few folks were encouraging, but others thought I was just crazy.
They said, sure, you might stumble on a stray artist here or there trying to survive in the trenches, but give me a break. No artist worth their salt is going to be willing or able to do serious work in these conditions.
I thought they were wrong, but I had no idea how wrong until I started to do my research.
In a few short weeks of Internet searches and conversations with colleagues around the world, I found over 500 stories of what I was calling art and upheaval. Since that time, I found thousands more with thousands of variations and context and intention.
And along the way, I've come to know that if you scratch the surface of a human disaster, you'll find artists doing astonishingly courageous work in the midst of chaos and destruction. You might ask, why? What moves them?
Well, to live, to eat, to kindle the human spirit, to bring peace or resolve conflict, to manifest beauty in the face of horror or reveal the ugly truth in the face of denial. To rally, to bring order or educate and inspire, to entertain, to heal.
And most of all, to tell the story directly, obtusely, in code, as a joke, as a song in a pub, as a poem or a painting on the wall, as a play unfolding in a cramped living room, as a dance in the street. All of these stories are about communities that have been deeply wounded, searching for a next step in the direction of equilibrium and healing.
I think we would all agree that we live in a time and place where our fellow citizens, our families, our communities, our institutions are searching for a way to bring some kind of balance to an out of kilter world. A balance between the safe and the challenging, the material and the transcendent.
Tradition and modernity, opportunity and responsibility, chaos and order. A balanced future that honors and respects all of the community stories.
A balanced community that trusts itself to embrace the full range of these stories, the good and the bad, the settling and the unsettling.
I think these stories about artists making a difference in some of the world's most out of kilter places can teach us something about using the creative process to bring some balance to our own communities. In the end, that's what most of us are out here hoping for.
Communities that engage their creators to help weave a strong fabric out of the many stories that define our histories, our struggles, our values, our beliefs and our dreams.
We're going to conclude this episode of Change the Story, Change the World by playing Art and Upheaval the Song in its entirety, with a nod to Rishikesh Hiraway and his fabulous podcast Song Exploder, and to our composer Judy Munson for the wonderful soundscape she created for this episode.
ke you to Northern Ireland in:And Australia, where former soldiers and the indigenous Pijinjara people use theater to help heal the social, environmental and health impacts of the fish and cloud atom bomb tests of the 50s and 60s.
Before we bid you adieu, if you're interested in learning more about all these artists working on the front lines, check out the links to art and the tune and the books in our show notes. So thanks to all of you for listening. Please stay well, do good and spread the good word.
Cleveland PlainSong:Streets of fire in our west speed going to burn by speak his mind. The curtain burns and the stage.
Cleveland PlainSong:We.
Cleveland PlainSong:Are going to speak in tongues until we hear the light. Some people think we can't beat the devil with a sound but they don't know, they don't know.
Take a mile for summer dancer Breaking my legs and I will sing Think of my life and the anthem of my ashes we'll dance in the wind we'll always dance in the wind. In the crimson the wood of the kill empty heels we are going to beat our drums until the play dogs heals.
The feral child in the globe appear she is the shaman at the gates and the crack bill he. Some people think we can't beat the devil with a song but they don't know they don't know.
Make a my voice I'm a dancer breaking my legs and I will sing Taking my life and the air ashes will dance in the wind we'll always dance in the wind.
Some think my thing is rest, press and request Sometimes I don't even have a permanent address I'm a thinking man forced to play a survival game I'm an educated man with a doctor's degree from SWU Sidewalk University Pimping, meaning and Phoenix Shit I ain't dreaming.
Cleveland PlainSong:On the broken road.
Cleveland PlainSong:The signs appear oh and when the silent bridge you know the fake gods fear. Through the vision clouds the soldier fears he is a living happy life to the song lines.
Some people think we can't beat the devil with a song but they don't know who. Some people think we can't be the devil with a song but they don't know.
Some people think we can't be the devil with Some people think we can't be the devil with us Some people think we can't be the devil with a song but we don't know.
