There are. There's Bono and U2. Sinaid O'Connor also. They were/ are from my generation's music. And there have been plenty of bands since. Maybe you are just not listening to it because it's not a style of music that's easy on your ears? I must admit, I'm kind of out of the loop, but I do hear bands from time to time either write songs that are pro-peace/ anti war, express the sentiments of what people are feeling, or who stand up for a cause.

What about the Dixie Chicks song, "Not Ready to Make Nice" - which was a response to the people who criticized them for speaking out against George W. Bush?

And hard rock songs of the 60's and 70's would be classified as 'war music" Rolling Stones, Iron Butterfly, Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane and so on. Iraq and Afghanistan are harder, as music became much more individual. The iPod playlist took over. You may recall the Doonsbury character "Toggle", who made a tidy sum programming iPods for fellow soldiers.

Mind you, Wagner is now iconic war music after "Apocalypse Now".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/soundtrack

I would also add "Top Gun" soundtrack as iconic war music.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092099/soundtrack

Here's one from the 90's you might appreciate Graeme.

There IS this, Graeme:

I'm going to have to charge up my earphones before I can do all these responses justice.

I recognize there have been lots of anti war songs on the charts. Even Wagner, in the Apocalypse context, is anti-war.

But there not the hit tunes of wars until after world war 2. You rarely find them in any form before that.

The world is waiting for the sunrise doesn't like war, and it looks to the day when it will be over; but it does not reject war. Just before the battle, mother - is similar. So is a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

And there is much that is openly militant. and rousingly so. To this day, critical of war though I am, I cannot listen to Vera Lynn singing There'll always be an England without being moved by the war spirit of the time.

Have their been equivalents of these in the past fifty years? Many? Pop songs that embrace war? that accept it? that even in sadness and sense of loss accept war?

In world war two, a 9/11 event would have produced enough pop music of the sad or militant (or both) sort to fill the charts. The only thing I ever heard to express anything was an Oscar Peterson composition that had borrowed heavily from My Wild, Irish Rose.

Of course, it may have something to do with the decline of group singing as a social activity in a world in which music has become so much  performance, spectacle and noise oriiented. I mean, it's hard to repeatedly scream I"m gunna make ya sweat bubba - and wearing a skin tight skeleton costume with your face painted white andn jumping hysterically whille you're gathered with friends around a piano.

I gather many a blushing maiden must have been attracted by the sophisticated charm of that tender ditty.

I've never heard a Pearl Harbour hit, Graeme. Nor an Auschwitz pop number. Nor a celebration of Nagasaki getting vaporised; the "new" Dresden… though there was "I vow to thee my country" as a piece of Anglican recruitment propaganda. Vera Lynn was a morale booster who sang all sorts of songs. Tyhere was money for such things back then. Sorry, 'There'll Always Be An England", like "Land of Hope and Glory" turns me quite off, Graeme. I guess it's in the ear (enculturation and values?) of the beholder.

Not in the context it is used, which is as a stimulant for for aggression.

Graeme,

For someone who loves music this is a thread.

I don't share your take on things, perhaps because I am aware of pro and anti war music all through my lifetime.

Just today I was listening to Josh Ritter's I Got a Girl in the War (GREAT LYRICS)

You have not heard all the music out of the US post-9/11? Maybe because it is mostly C&W?

Trace Adkins- Arlington
Toby Keith- Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angy American)
Tim McGraw- If You're Reading This
Alan Jackson- Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?
Billy Ray Cyrus' Some Gave All
Ray Stevens mocked Osama Bin Laden
 

Jackson's and Keith's records topped the Billboard country singles chart, Jackson's for a number of weeks.

Check out Springsteen's The Rising album.
The Boss also had Souls of the Departed about the Gulf War on his Lucky Town album and there was Further Up on the Road

How about Steve Earle's Jerusalem album  (alot is about 9/11)  Ashes to Ashes and the controversial John Walker's Blues, written from the vantage point of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. But it worries about homeland security gone too far.

How about Willie Nelson singing Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

How about Big & Rich's 8th of November about Vietnam? How about "Fighting Side of Me by Merle Haggard?

How about God Bless the USA? Lee Greenwood first sang it at the 1984 GOP Convention but it became a Gulf War Anthem. It was an a Gulf War song  juxtaposed with Iris DeMents Wastleand of the Free.
 

How about James Taylor's Slap Leather?
Get all worked up so we can go to war
We find something worth killing for
Tie a yellow ribbon around your eyes
Big Mac Falafel and a side of fries
Yeah, Big Mac Falafel
Stormin' Norman
I just love a parade

Daryll Purpose did Don't Tear Down
I did a lot of travelling in 1991
That's the year American morality hit bottom
They're dancing in the streets with blood on their breath
Praying to the war god and celebrating death

Not all Vietnam era music was anti-war either
The Spokesman did Dawn of Correction as a parody of Eve of Destruction.
The Ballad of the Green Beret
Johnny Wright did Hello Vietnam (They used it in Full Metal Jacket)
C Company's Battle Hymn to  Lt. Calley
I do not know who did Open Letter to My Teenage Son (about disowning his son if he was a draft dodger)
 

A tidbit....Josh Ritter says Girl in the War portrays the disciples Peter and Paul debating the dangers of maintaining an inflexible worldview while a young man fears for the fate of his lover who is serving in Iraq. Ritter spoke at the Center for American Progress Annual Dinner in 2006 and said “It's about a bunch of people talking about problems and not getting past just the talking. So I hope you do."

As the song's worried lover declares to the political leaders, “If they can't find a way to help her, they can go to hell.”

For you Graeme:

There's  also Universal Soldier by Buffy Saint Marie or One Tin Soldier by the Original Caste.

Damn, I just wrote a long post, and lost it. And it's very late.

I can't listen to the music you sent until I recharge my earphones. (It's annoying. Amplification is no substitute for real hearing. I miss a lot, particularly in symphonic music and choral.)

You're all quite right about the CandW war songs. I plead guilty to not listening to CandW though, unlike rockers, most of them at least know what singing means. And I always have time to listen to Johnny Cash.

I have an old friend who was a successful C and W singer before he switched to teaching. He's a very talented guy. Bob Hill. Did any of  you ever know of him? It's a long time ago.

Some of you are still confusing anti-war with war songs. I was referring strictly to songs which either glorified war or, at least, accepted it however sad they might think it.

In the case of Vera Lynn and There'll always be an England, it's the joy and life in it, and in her young servicemen audiences that holds me. It may well mask a terrible reality but, oh, it's magnificent.

There's also a terrible reality masked by the Nazi youth in Cabaret whose sings "Tomorrow belongs to me" But the joy and life of it is still electrifying.

The Pearl Harbour song:

Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.

Praise the Lord, we ain't agoin' fishin'.

Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition

and we'll all stay free.

It's about three clergymen who served the guns at  Pearl Harbour.

There's a wonderful book called Songs from the Front and Rear. It's a collection of popular war songs, but with the dirty words

I am always suspicious of songs that "glorify" war Graeme. I tend to imagine some man behind a curtain that is trying to sway our opinions in order to control an outcome by requesting these songs be produced in order to control the masses by appealing to our emotions in an abusive way.

Do they glorify it or are they songs of lament? I always thought it was the latter.

Could be. Propoganda plays a signifigant role in wars IMO.

graeme,

I was addressing your statement that it did not exist and we were externalized and shared both supportive and opposed to war music.

There are oodles of songs supportive of war or troops, government or ideals...

Military conflict always makes music a cottage industry.

One I keenly remember one being supportive of the troops and to boost the morale of the troops (from my days protesting the politics and mission of the 1st Gulf War)
Voices that Care (was a We Are the World type thing with celebrities, etc)

I also keenly recall the co-opting of songs like Bette Midler's Wind Beneath My Wings and Hank Williams Jr.s Don't Give us a Reason.

Some of the songs that made my skin crawl were parodies like Scudbuster (Ghostbusters)

.

Pro-Vietnam stuff exists like- and if you listen to ANY of these and tell me they are not pro-war.

Autrey Inman's Ballad of Two Brothers

David Dudley's What We're Fighting For

L

Posting this gag worthy one, listen to the very end

Oh my God, SG, that was sooooo sad on so many levels!

And don't forget the Ballad of the Green Berets.

Wow!

I was reminded of a recording by Gord Sinclair, a particularly obnoxious jounalist/broadcaster in Canada in the 1950s and 60s. It was in praise of the US in Vietnam. (Not to be confused with his son, also Gord Sinclair, who was a superb broadcaster in Montreal - I worked with the son, and  had great respect for him.)

Music has long been used as propaganda, of course. As has alcohol. It was long a practice in England's armies and navies to issue strong booze before battle. The archers at Agincourt were blotto on local wine during that battle. There was an officer who won a  high award - possibly a VC - at Waterloo. He had no memory of the battle at all. Sailors were, in both British and US navies, tanked up on 100 proof rum before battle. But the unfortunate American sailors fell victim to the temperance movement in the late nineteenth century.

The ones I like most are the ones that signify  hope rather than the war itself. Something like The whole world is waiting for the sunrise..... re-popularized by Les Paul in the 1950s (I think) as a madly paced and vaguely jazzy guitar piece.

Now I think of it, the appearance of the anti-war song, and its dominance, my be due to the market.  In WW! and WW2, young people didn't have spending money. But by the 1950s, they were the major market for music. And they were anti-war.

I've always had a limiited respected for their motives. Much of their opposition to war came because they didn't want to be drafted, not because of any principle. They are now relatively quiet about war because it's all volunteers and mercenaries getting killed on our side.

It can do that too. It's one of those things you have to test with your conscience. I didn't realize the Pink Floyd song was about Vera Lynn (I don't follow British war songs...but rock n' roll has been a poetic force for raising conversation, regardless of whether one likes the style and sound of it), until Graeme mentioned her name and then I was reminded of it immediately. But I think in their case, as a popular progressive rock band of the 70's, and especially that album "The Wall" they were lementing over the loss of hope and the existing apathy...amdn tying the past to the present...then, as now. That whole album, while not "rosey" is thought provoking, and is still popular.

You mean Gordon Sinclair, a Toronto broadcaster on CFRB. Gord is his son, yes. But they differentiated each other with gifferent given names. The piece you refer to is this:

First broadcast on June 5, 1973, I remember hearing it then (without the background music)

Sinclair was a bit of a bombast, but he had cred. He was a reporter form the Toronto Star and moved to CFRB in the 1940's. He was part owner of that radio station. More on his bio here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Sinclair

Sinclair didn't live far from me when I was growing up in Toronto. He was known for his Rolls-Royce.

i would question  his credibility. The US does NOT have an oustanding aid record. Sinclair made that a hit my feeding Americans the king of blarney and praise they believe is true. And whatever it was doing in Vietnam, it was not helping the poor and downtrodden.

I'm puzzled by the reference that father and son used different names. I was on air with the son daily for  a dozen years - add specials, and that's some 4000 occasions. I never heard him called anything but Gord, and that's how he signed off the news.

He also made much more money than his father did - and was much more modest and more generous about it.

And he was a far superior journalist. He was my boss, my editor. He largely shared his father's far right political views. But, early on, when I went to him to get clearance for what I thought a very touchy editorial I was doing, he said, "Never ask me. You say what you believe. And I'll support you're right to say it." To his dying day, he was as good as his word. I never knew him to do a selfish or dishonest thing.

The father was a selfish, ignorant, bullying, self-centred, quarrelsome drunk.

I should add that we argued heatedly on air. In an early show, he jumped up, pounded the table, roared at me, and I roared back at him. the other panelist, nervously pushed her chair back.

At the height of it, God winked at me. He was genuinely angry at me and my opinions. But he winked because this was radio - and it was damned good radio.

Gord and I genuinely disagreed on any issue you can think of. And he would really get mad at me. But I was his guest at many a congenial lunch. And we never exchanged a quarrelsome word off air.

Graeme,

I think it's just being human, having conflicting feelings............

At last, I see we have something in common.

The first record I bought when I was a teenager was not anything by Elvis Presley - but Vera Lynn's "Hits of the Blitz".

I can picture Vera now on that record cover. Sitting on a pile of rubble that was once London, dressed in a skirt and twinset............

"Red, white and blue, what does it mean to you?"............

No need to question his credibility. Gordon Sinclair was what we would call a "personality". He wrote his emotive screed after hearing that the American Red Cross was broke. It was emotive rather than factual. Sinclair also went after churches, God and a whole bunch of people in his commentaries on CFRB every weekday morning.

They used different given names to differentiate each other. Gordon Sinclair was the Toronto and national person (father). He was also on Front Page Challenge for decades. He always asked the embarassing questions of the guests.

Gord Sinclair was the Montreal Sinclair and is likely as you describe him. I never heard him in the Toronto radio market and never saw him on national TV. Both CFRB abd CJAD were owned by Standard Broadcasing, of which Sinclair Sr. was a shareholder. No idea if Gord was a shareholder. Standard was majority owned by Argus Corp. then Conrad Black, then Alan Slaight and now Astral Media. It may eventually be owned by Bell Media.

Ah - I see. Gord began on CJAD when he was very young - which may be explained by the srs. holding. By the time he was twenty, Gord was hugely successfull, far the lead morning man in Montreal   (and the early morning man is the one that makes or breaks a station.

He then opened his own station, rather a modest affair which I remember being interviewed at, and noting the ancient equipment. He sold that station for a million (it soon went broke), then returned as news editor (and dominant figure) at CJAD for the next thirty years or so to  his death in his early 70s.

And quite true - Gord Sr. was, as  you say, a personality - with a really ugly side. I once met Pierre Berton - same story. I met him as I was leaving a CBC studio. He was obviously lost, so I helped him find his way to the right place. In return, he was nothing but rude and arrogant. It must be a disease.

To PP - Hits of the Blitz? You must be a mere child.

Somehow, I am reminded of the day many hears ago when I was teaching a class on World War One. I mentioned the musical "Billy Bishop Goes to War", and suggested that students should get the LP and listen to it.

I was immediately concious of dead silence and fixed stares. At last, a girl's voice came from the back of the room,

"What's an LP?"

lol...God winked at you, huh?

When he's your boss, he's God.

NOW THAT'S FUNNY!

But I was serious.

you people get me so confused.......