Hang around music journalism long enough, and you will encounter two inquiries. The first poses some variation on the question “Is guitar music dead?”; to which the answer is, invariably, no, it’s merely taking the afternoon off.
The second is generally “Where have all the protest singers gone?” in whimsical echo of a Pete Seeger song, and laments a perceived absence of engagement in contemporary politics among the young. This apathy is attributed to whatever trend the author finds particularly confounding at that moment—TikTok dances, Brazilian butt lifts, pickleball, insisting they distract us both from political debate and from spotting the next Creedence Clearwater Revival.
However, the relationship between politics and music took on new texture recently with the news that Dave Rowntree (pictured), best known as the drummer from Blur, will stand at the next election as the Labour candidate for Mid Sussex—currently considered a safe Conservative seat. Meanwhile, in December, Tom Gray of the Mercury prize-winning band Gomez became Labour’s candidate for Brighton Pavilion.
Both appear canny choices. In Eamonn Forde’s recent book 1999: The Year the Record Industry Lost Control, numerous interviewees cite Rowntree as one of the few pioneers amid the music world’s floundering in the early digital age. He is a qualified solicitor, a music rights campaigner and a longstanding Labour member, serving as a county councillor in Norfolk from 2017 to 2021.
Since 2020, Gray has spearheaded the #BrokenRecord campaign for fairer streaming fees, leading to a parliamentary inquiry, and, more recently, became chair of the Ivors Academy, the association for songwriters and composers. While his remit as an MP would require engagement with a range of issues, he has said he looks forward to “a government that is excited about putting music back into schools.”
Rowntree and Gray aren’t the first musicians to enter politics, but their desire to participate in its fabric is an interesting development; a concession, perhaps, that in order to effect real change you have to pace the corridors of power. Or a realisation that if they don’t do it, who will? They are, too, of a generation that remembers how it felt last time: the long midwinter of Tory rule, the joy of a Labour victory. This was the time when their music careers were first blooming, the sense of new life rising, the days when the Union Jack belonged to Geri Halliwell, not Nigel Farage.
It is an odd thing that, six decades since he first emerged, our notion of what a “protest singer” looks and sounds like still rests on a blueprint of a young Bob Dylan: white and male and standing in the folk-rock lineage. (Incidentally, declaring any opinionated young thing with an acoustic guitar “the New Dylan” is another music journalism habit.) When the thinkpiece authors lament the lack of protest music, it is arguably because they keep looking in the same places, expecting to hear the same intonation, instrumentation, complaints.
It’s odd that our notion of what a ‘protest singer’ looks and sounds like still rests on a young Bob Dylan
The real protest is happening elsewhere. In recent times, we might think of Massive Attack, Young Fathers and Fontaines DC joining forces to help Médecins Sans Frontières’ work in Gaza. Or the artists boycotting this year’s SXSW in protest at sponsorship from the US Army and Collins Aerospace. The fact that Taylor Swift has been publicly critical of Donald Trump could genuinely help sway the next US election.
The south London rapper Dave was only 19 when he released “Question Time”. It was 2017, Theresa May newly in office, David Cameron just out the door. The track addressed them directly on matters including the lack of justice for victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, Brexit, global poverty and the cost of living.
I listened to it this week, and thought how little has changed. How the same questions might just as easily be raised with our current premier. Poverty. The west’s relationship with Palestine. The return of Cameron. Our failure to pay healthcare staff a decent wage: “I just find it fucked,” he rapped, “that the government is struggling to care for a person that cares for a person.”
In its final section, Dave turned to Jeremy Corbyn, then Labour leader, and offered him a warning that hovers over Rowntree and Gray—and the hopeful Keir Starmer: “Everybody’s great until you get them into office and then guys start forgetting things,” he noted. “Prove to us you’re different.”
