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 Seize The Day
(UK)
Song : United States
Album : Peace Not War
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Folk music and popular protest have long had a common history. Whenever people gather on a picket line, in street demonstrations or in temporary encampments to express their feelings on any kind of issue, music always seems to happen. 'People start to adapt songs and make songs,' observes Theo Simon, one of the main singers and songwriters for the protest group Seize The Day.
His own experience of this phenomenon started when he began singing as a duo with Shannon Smy in 1996. They were both involved in the campaign against the Newbury by-pass, and after testing the waters as a duo on the summer festival circuit, the group expanded to its present line-up of seven. They have released two albums to date and contributed the song United States to the recent Peace-Not-War compilation, which includes material by Chumbawamba, Public Enemy, Ani DiFranco and Miss Dynamite.
Theo grew up immersed in English and Celtic folk music and also picked up on the likes of Dylan and The Incredible String band through his elder brothers. These influences inform the all-acoustic music Seize The Day make. He's frustrated that the mainstream media tends to consider what they do to be outdated or unfashionable, but inspired by the response of voters to the Radio 3 website: 'There's a belief in the music industry that protest music isn't popular and never will be again, but the reality is that there's a wider audience for it. The number of votes that we've received shows that', he declares.
Direct action protest and their hands-on involvement in it has always been the core inspiration for their songs, and their lyrical subject matter has steadily broadened over the years to include a wide range of environmental and social issues. The group's name sums up their general philosophy and belief in people power: 'It's very much about being empowered to do something in your own life and not waiting. If you are involved in a campaign of any kind, if you actually get out and do something you immediately feel ten times more powerful, just for having done it.'
That idealism is tempered by realism though. Songs like Price of Petrol and Only Doing My Job acknowledge the complexities and contradictions of issues facing the modern world, the need for compromise and seeing things from another point of view: 'We need to recognise that we're all in this together. None of the problems in the world are really about 'us' and 'them'. We need to find our common humanity and have compassion for each other.'
Jon Lusk 2003
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