This Week with David Rovics

drovics

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This podcast features audio essays, interviews, concerts, and new topical songs.

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371 episodes

"Up the Rebels" session 1

Today I did a live broadcast which will be the first of a series of online concerts I plan to do about resistance. Whether we're talking about armed uprisings, mass civil disobedience, or actions carried out by much smaller groups of people, current events and history are full of stories of resistance. "When you fight, you win" may not quite be actually true, even if it's a good slogan. But even if making the effort doesn't always get the desired results, resistance in its many forms often leads to positive changes that wouldn't have happened otherwise. The themes I explore in this episode include: __ __

1h 8m
Mar 24
Hollywood Bread and the Unanswered Questions

Was Israel involved with the 9/11 attacks?  It's classified.

12m
Mar 22
New song: "This Is Genocide"

A song for all the holocaust-deniers.

2m
Mar 21
Little Crow's Uprising and the Minnesota Famine of 1862

Revisiting history, events in Minnesota in 1862 and events in Israel and Gaza since October 7th have some remarkable similarities.

10m
Mar 17
South By Southwest By Middle East

It turns out there are a lot of artists who don't want to play for exposure while children in Gaza are dying of it.

8m
Mar 15
"Ballad of the TikTok Ban" Take 2!

I wrote this song about a year ago while on tour in Australia, and then promptly forgot about it.  But now that banning TikTok is back in the news with a vengeance, I revised "Ballad of the TikTok Ban" a bit, and made a slightly better recording of it this morning in my living room studio.

3m
Mar 13
New song: "What I Learned from the Hasbara Trolls"

The thousands of troll accounts spewing genocidal propaganda on my Facebook posts are abhorrent and completely full of crap, but they have a fascinating narrative, albeit completely farcical.  All the more fascinating is the fact that, although obviously farcical to anyone with an actual clue, the western press and politicians generally accept the narrative as self-evidently accurate.

4m
Mar 11
bearing witness

a concert for gaza.

1h 3m
Mar 10
The Living Wage for Musicians Act: Why We Should Support It and Why Big Tech Won't

On March 6th, representatives Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman introduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act. They're working with the United Musicians and Allied Workers union, and the Make Streaming Pay campaign.

13m
Mar 08
Wadi Gaza is Arabic for Babi Yar and Aaron Bushnell is American for Szmuel Zygelboym

The holocaust that is underway in Gaza is being enabled by the US government and denied by the mainstream US press.

10m
Mar 07
Song for Aaron Bushnell

On the other side of the world, Aaron Bushnell's body burned in the same way the bodies of innocent people are burning every day in Gaza. As he burned he shouted repeatedly, "free Palestine."

3m
Mar 04
New song: "Flour"

After using starvation as a Total War, strategic weapon of collective punishment, the Israeli occupation forces are using food tactically as a weapon of war as well.

2m
Mar 03
What Are the Pro-Israel Trolls Trying to Accomplish?

2,000+ hateful comments and one week later, what I have I learned from the Hasbara Trolls?

26m
Mar 03
Interview with Regis Tremblay

Award-winning filmmaker Regis Tremblay interviewed me at length earlier today from his home in Crimea. It was a wide-ranging and interesting discussion, if I don't say so myself!  Here's the audio version of it.

1h 7m
Jan 28
"Lines Are Drawn" REMIX

"One side says it's a surgical strike But that's not what it looks like To anyone else who's seeing this It looks just like the apocalypse It looks like a whole population Being targeted for total devastation Times like these, you pick a side You can't be neutral in a genocide..." I wrote this song yesterday, as I was anticipating the genocide ruling from the Hague. Today, as the World Court has made clear that it is the responsibility of the world to prevent this genocide from being fully executed, I received this beautiful remixed rendition of the song from Chet.

2m
Jan 27
Notes From A Holocaust with mandola

Concert from my living room, mostly consisting of songs from the Notes From A Holocaust album, with mandola.

1h 5m
Jan 26
New song: "Lines Are Drawn"

One of the most well-known aspects of the Second World War was that the virulently anti-communist leaders of countries like the United Kingdom made an alliance with the Soviet Union, because of the mutual interest they all thought they had in defeating Hitler. Here we are again -- but where's the united front against fascism?

2m
Jan 26
The Mold, the Dust, and the Bathtub

And other things that trigger powerful memories.

16m
Jan 25
Discussion with Chet Gardiner, musician/engineer

Here's the podcast rendition of the discussion I had earlier today with Chet Gardiner, the musician/engineer I collaborated with to create my new album, Notes From A Holocaust.

1h 5m
Jan 24
Notes From A Holocaust GUIDED TOUR

The archived rendition of today's livestreamed broadcast of the new album, with commentary, in MP3 form. 

1h 53m
Jan 19
New song: "Airdrop" #AirDropAidForGaza

#AirDropAidForGaza https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/airdropaidforgaza?__eep__=6&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZWfr1eHVZv55egARwcpinltZpDmZH_Et_TJLGrQjEoEZO19iTkn1ktVgM8psL2BvAjE-x7D-6UCPDzEmrifPdP5L7XBpogdL5F35XRjCSvi0X1xDImJbVj64mhjiC5dMwGq5q-fW1a-p020SUN8JDfSHO7CCnnyHET6jT_s3zCUMw&__tn__=*NK-R has been trending on X and then the Jordanian Field Hospital in Gaza was bombed.

3m
Jan 18
Interview with Jon Schwartz and Elise Swain, with music

Joy LaClaire's interview with Jon Schwartz and Elise Swain https://forthright.media/2024/01/12/jon-schwartz-and-elise-swain-plus-david-rovics-songs/ of the Intercept was brilliant. All of them share so many valuable insights. I originally learned about the interview because of the inclusion in it of several of my songs, also very well-done. 

1h 1m
Jan 12
Talking shop with Russell and Steve

Russell and Steve are both brilliant musicians from here in Portland, Oregon, and they've started up a weekly podcast series interviewing other artists. Here's the MP3 of their interview with me (it's also on YouTube -- look up Russell Gores).

1h 7m
Jan 11
Notes From A Holocaust in Standard Tuning

I livestreamed a bit of a workshop, where I played the 20 pieces from the upcoming album, in the order in which I wrote them, with a bit of commentary.  I played all the songs in standard tuning on the guitar — the most popular instrument, in the most popular tuning — in order to show folks who may like to sing them how to do so easily.  Especially with the aid of the songbook for the album, which you can download at davidrovics.com/palestine https://www.davidrovics.com/palestine, where you can also watch the video version of this tutorial.

1h 30m
Jan 11
”Land and Freedom” REMIX

Every struggle for national liberation that I've ever heard of, when the distractions are put aside, boil down to two intimately connected things: land and freedom. This is the last studio mix to go on the upcoming album. davidrovics.com/palestine

2m
Jan 10
”Stop the Genocide” REMIX

A brilliant mix from the studio magician in Hawai'i here for this song I wrote in late October. The rest of the tracks on what will soon be an album can be found in a playlist at davidrovics.com/palestine.

2m
Jan 09
”They’re Killing Off the Journalists of Gaza” REMIX

Audio from the upcoming album, merged with the original video. This is happening right now, every day. davidrovics.com/palestine http://davidrovics.com/palestine?fbclid=IwAR0QgGv0Fb-Zc2me0eO1L4gIdIr2kxkV9zw2L8KHCcRwhvwpRSgnFgGaFpE

2m
Jan 07
Life and Death in the Shadow of Genocide

As the bombs continue to rain down on Gaza and the world races ever closer to World War 3, in the rest of the world, life goes on, as does death.

20m
Jan 04