Southern Men, Racism, and Resistance

When truth stares back at us

Photo by Ashlyn Ciara on Unsplash

Thanks to Jessica Lee McMillan and my friends at the Riff Album discussion yesterday, I learned of a new, old Brazilian artist — Chico Buarque, whose 1971 album, Construção, was our topic for the day. As Jessica detailed, Buarque wrote songs of resistance against the tide of censorship and control exercised by his government.

In her questions for us, Jessica asked if there were other albums of resistance we could cite. Jeffrey Harvey said almost any album by P-Funk resists the flow, Charles in San Francisco mentioned Hendrix’s rendition of the American National Anthem, and Nicole Brown named Marvin Gaye’s epic What’s Going On. While I thought of The Clash’s London Calling, what came most readily to mind were certain songs I remember from the early 70’s. CSN but mainly Y’s “Ohio,” and my first thought — a song never far from my mind — Neil Young’s “Southern Man” from his 1970 LP, After the Gold Rush, the first Neil Young album I bought at the ripe old age of fifteen, in 1971.

I thought of this song for a variety of reasons.

When I first listened to the album, I was lulled by side A’s first three songs — “Tell Me Why,” “After the Gold Rush,” and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” — into that sense of dreamy, poetic wonder that Neil evokes so easily. And so, just…