P2P-Zone - The protest songs, they are a-changin'

Nanci Griffith has one. So does REM. The Beastie Boys, Spearhead, System of a Down. John McCutcheon, Luka Bloom, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Lenny Kravitz. They and many others have been singing protest songs since the war began, and many songs are available as free downloads from the artists' sites.

Some are even getting radio play; WBCN put the Beasties' ''In a World Gone Mad'' on the air as soon as it was available. In general, though, you're not likely to hear much protest on commercial radio.

What you will hear -- it's No. 23 on the national Billboard chart -- is Darryl Worley's anthem ''Have You Forgotten?,'' which is about as pro-war as you can get. (''I hear people saying we don't need this war/I say there's some things worth fighting for.'') It's also No. 1 on Billboard's country chart.

Locally, bands report that protest songs are getting a strong response from audiences. Will Dailey of Mappari, which releases a CD on April 26 at the Middle East Downstairs, has written a couple of songs in response to the war. ''Though our audience doesn't know these songs, they have gone over as well as, if not better than, most of our older ones,'' Dailey says. In particular, he notes, audiences have responded to Mappari's song ''Nayirah,'' which refers to the teenage girl who testified before the US Congress about Iraqi atrocities, sparking support for the Gulf War. It turned out that she was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States and had made up her stories. The song refers only elliptically to her but repeats the line ''We've been fooled before.''

When audiences hear the song in concert, ''I'm not certain at that time that they know exactly what it's about,'' Dailey says. ''If an individual loves a song and then takes the time to figure out what it's about, I think it's a better tactic than `I wrote this song for protest. Now listen.' ''

Indeed, some of the strongest songs to emerge so far are quiet, simply sung statements rather than raging screeds. Some are from internationally known artists; others have been heard by only a few local audiences. But news of them is spreading, by e-mail and by word of mouth, and their numbers seem to be growing.

Some ''new'' songs aren't really new. Like ''Nayirah,'' they may have been inspired by events of the last war against Iraq -- or they may even have been written then.

Maine songwriter Chip Harding remembers driving home the night the Gulf War began. ''When I drove in the driveway,'' he says, ''I could see the flickering blue of the TV through the window'' as his three sons, then small boys, watched the news on TV. ''When they started asking me about Iraq and the people we were bombing, with all of my education as an adult, the only frame of reference I could come up with was `Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.' Which basically told me that I don't know anything about these people, and neither does anyone else here.''

Harding wrote ''Ali Baba'' then and recorded it on an album. Lately, he's been hearing from fans who've told him they've been listening again to his simple, haunting plea for peace. Harding now teaches music at Berwick Academy in South Berwick, Maine, rather than performing, but he's decided to remaster the recording and post ''Ali Baba'' on the Web.

''It's disturbing how accurate it is,'' he says, ''to what's falling on Baghdad this very minute.''

Nationally, more artists seem to be announcing daily that they're working on something. Kravitz's ''We Want Peace,'' available on the Rock the Vote website (www.rockthevote.org), also features Iraqi pop singer Kadim Al Sahir, Palestinian musician Simon Shaheen, and Jamey Haddad of Lebanon on percussion. Alanis Morissette is reportedly in the studio; so is Joseph ''Reverend Run'' Simmons of Run-DMC. Madonna continues to promote her forthcoming video for ''American Life,'' though she's now saying it's as much ''pro-troops'' as ''antiwar.'' Undoubtedly, there's still more to come.

Louise Kennedy

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/09...hangin_+.shtml