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We Took It For Granted

We took it for granted, we took it as read
That everyone here gets a roof and a bed
We took it as given, we took it as right
That no one wants children to beg on the street

We took it as normal, as just how it was
That the sick would get healing, the poor would get alms
We took it as what makes us proud to be here
That we offer safe haven to victims of Fear

We took it as basic, as not worth a thought
That we welcome the world and give Justice to all
We took it as dealt with, a battle long won
That a human has rights, whatever they’ve done

We took it as standard, as not worth the mention
Education for all, and a reasonable pension
We took it as simply the way that things are
That the Public have libraries, transport and parks

We took it as settled, a deal long since reached
That even the shirkers get something to eat
We took it as moral, we took it as fair
That we offer safe haven to victims of fear

We took it as always, as progress, as life
A world where our grandchildren’s children could thrive
Now all we can do is to wave from the quay
As everything taken sails far out of reach.

Posted by Rohan Kriwaczek on Apr 2nd 2013 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)

Rohan Kriwaczek

ProfileRohan Kriwaczek is a writer, musician and conceptual researcher based in Brighton, UK. To find out more visit rohan-k.co.uk.

To believe in the absurd is foolishness. But the study of the absurd; now that is a science!

Four Men Set Out for the Mountains

Four men set out for the mountains
Four men arrived at the mountains
Four set up camp in the mountains
To see what they could see

Three men tried for the very top
Two men cried when they saw the drop
One kept going when he should have stopped
To see what he could see

That one man climbed way beyond his reach
Up into the clouds where the eagles screech
Forgot about the ground, his sights was on the peak
To see what he could see

Then he saw what he saw and he understood
But on his way down it all turned to mud
And he tried to hold on longer than he should
To see what he could see

And they thought him mad when he told them why
For he had no words for the towering sky
For the blanking white of the blizzard’s eye
Or the birth of light at the edge of time

And he had no words for the face of God
But he’d seen what he’d seen and he understood
And he kept it in his heart for as long as he could
To see what he could see.

Posted by Rohan Kriwaczek on Mar 22nd 2013 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)

My mother has asked me to choose, but how do you choose a nodding Jew?

Posted by Rohan Kriwaczek on Mar 22nd 2013 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

A Reminder to Christian America

Whatever happened to Thou Shalt Not Kill?
Wasn’t that important once? Not optional.
And didn’t Jesus cast the money-lenders out?
Well you’ve put them in charge, what’s that all about?
Do you remember the Seven Deadly Sins?
You offer them as prizes; may the worst man win.
And thou shalt not steal? Well, that’s just a laugh
Wasn’t someone living there when you showed up?
And as for your wars of revenge and greed
Didn’t Jesus tell us all to turn the other cheek?
See, you call yourselves Christians – don’t look like that to me
So sure, bully the rest of us, but do it honestly.
And don’t go trying to preach the higher ground
To some folks you’re the terrorists – and the world is round.

Posted by Rohan Kriwaczek on Mar 15th 2013 | Filed in Poetry,Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Howard Goodall’s Story of Music Serves Imperialism

He lays out his stall in the opening lines – “music … today is a massive global phenomenon, and so it’s hard for us to imagine a time when, in centuries gone by, people could go weeks without hearing any music at all. Even in the 19th century you might hear your favourite symphony four or five times in your whole lifetime…”

Weeks? Really? Without hearing music at all? I’m sorry, Mr Goodall, but that is utter nonsense. But also very telling nonsense. It reveals that to Mr Goodall, as with most classical musicians, only the music of the courts, the Art music played by professional musicians, written down by the musically educated, is worthy of mention or consideration. What about the bagpipers depicted regularly by Breugel? The church carvings of the 12th and 13th centuries portraying pipers, lutenists and fiddlers? Among the ordinary people depicted in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which describes a group of people meeting in a tavern on their pilgrimage to the shrine of Becket at Canterbury, the knight, squire, prioress, friar, miller, cook’s apprentice, pardoner, sumner, carpenter’s wife, Nicholas the poor scholar and Absalom the parish clerk are all performing musicians. By stating that people of the time spent weeks without hearing music at all is he suggesting that the folk music, the dances, the work songs and drinking songs, story songs that accompanied everyday life for the ordinary peasants, is not worthy of consideration as music? That he goes on to mention “your favourite symphony” makes it clear, as it was only the upper middle classes and aristocracy that went to symphonic concerts in the 19th century.

Of course this could just be an innocent error, albeit repeated at the opening of each programme, but alas I cannot give him that credit, as I have been through the Classical mill and seen this snobbery at first hand many times. What this programme is, is the story of Western Classical composition presented as if that is the only story of music, as if Western Classical music is the only music, and the evolution of Western music is the evolution of music itself.

Whilst that may be forgivable, the opening title sequence pulls a common trick. By including images of Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, a forty-thousand year old flute, cave paintings and ancient Greek ceramics he is implying that Western Classical music is the heir to the entire world’s musical history, and that journey will continue on into the future. He is also claiming Jazz, folk and world music as part of this journey, which it isn’t.

Certainly Western Classical music gave the world the concept of functional harmony, but in doing so it stole from music the wonderful colourings of expressive and natural tuning used to this day so richly in India and the Middle East. Certainly it created an accurate system for writing music down, thus enabling many instruments to play different notes together, but in doing so it regimented rhythm into neat little packets divisible by four, thus stripping it of all the subtleties of swung and complex rhythms found in Jazz and folk music around the world, which simply cannot be written down without great rhythmic compromises.

Goodall’s portrayal of the story of music is typical of the kind of 1970s Oxford graduate he is, steeped in conservatism, elitism, imperialism and the worst kind of blinkered classical snobbery, which is what makes his constant attempts to be popularist by playing Keane piano parts or using cheap synth sounds to play Bach so cynical and embarrassing.

Imperialist and patronising (“there’ll be no need for misleading jargon or fancy labels. Terms like Baroque, impressionism or nationalism are best put to one side.”) this was a missed opportunity by the BBC, and one that is at least forty years out of date.

Posted by Rohan Kriwaczek on Feb 8th 2013 | Filed in music | Comments (3)

The Last Believer

Please don’t take my God from me
I’ll still need something to believe -
For all your Science and History
It doesn’t show me how to be

It cannot quench the fires of rage
Or warm the heart through dismal days
It has no smile, it cannot cry
It lights the stage but not the play

On Greed and Lust and Pride and Shame
Its silence offers no restraint
On Beauty, Love and Life’s Great Game
Its comfort empty as the grave

So please don’t take my God from me
I’ll still need something to believe -
For all your Science and History
It doesn’t show me how to be.

Posted by Rohan Kriwaczek on Jul 23rd 2012 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)

Dear David…

So you’ve upped the prices on our drink
And we’ve had to cut our smokes
Now you’re calling us all scroungers
Cause your system’s gone and broke

Well I’m hardly sitting on me arse
I work fifty hours a week
But your minimum wage is a bloody farce
It’ll never make ends meet

Now I’m not crying revolution
And I’m really not after a fight
But you stuck up toffs, you’ve grabbed the lot
And we all know that ain’t right

And it’s not about how much there is
But how it’s been spread about
And the way things are something’s gotta give
And we’re all given out

So let me ask you something
How was all your money earned?
Cause no one ever got that rich
Through hard back-breaking work

How exactly did you make it
Whilst sitting there at your desk?
By paying us in pocket sums
And creaming off the rest

So don’t strip us of our dignity
And expect us to behave
Don’t preach about society
Whilst gobbling all the cake

Cause us, we are society
And there’s more of us than you
And you may nurse a bigger purse
But we’ve got less to lose.

Posted by Rohan Kriwaczek on Jul 13th 2012 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)