Sounds of dissent - This Month's Theme - Letter to the Editor

New Internationalist, August, 2003 by Adam Ma'anit

Elvis Costello once said: 'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture: it's really a stupid thing to want to do.' With that in mind, we are hoping to mitigate some of our folly by including a flee CD. Certainly not the most original idea we've ever come up with, but nonetheless a first for the NI in all these 30 years we've been raging against the machine.

But taking Elvis's point, it probably helps to have something to listen to when reading this magazine. So before you read on, pop the included disc into a CD player and turn it up so the neighbours can hear it too. They won't mind, honest!

Be warned though. Since its an anti-war Compilation, it may not play well on equipment manufactured by companies with arms-trade links. If you own one of those (Philips, Hitachi, etc) try to play it anyway; maybe one of the songs will penetrate to corporate fog and inspire them to disinvest. Who said music couldn't change the world?

Bono did actually. The lead singer for Irish rock band U2 said recently that he had given up on the power of music to change the world and decided to go about trying to change it the old-fashioned way: by lobbying those in power. It's entirely possible that he's right. Then again ... Nah'.

Adam Ma'anit for the New Internationalist Co-operative adam@newint.org

Special thanks to Mudge and Kelly from Peace Not War for producing the CD for us and for their contribution to the global peace movement.