This is a soapbox podcast where Luigi Cappel introduces one of hismost recent songs, a protest song about the official relationship between New Zealand and the USA. Protest songs go as far back as Leadbelly and as recent as Bob Geldorf's Live Aid concerts. It is an area where songwriters use music as a tool to get a message accross and to try to build a better world.In the mid 1980's the Kiwi's made a decision to ban nuclear powered and armed ships from our ports. The United States couldn't live with this position and decided to penalise us for our decision and suspended us from our regional peace treaty. 20 years later there is a little thawing, but we remain suspended from ANZUS and while Australia now has a free trade agreement with the US, New Zealand is forced to seek trade alliances with countries like China.Ironically several Kiwi's were awarded US Medals of honour for service in Afghanistan recently.Luigi Cappel wrote a song last month to protest this position with the words:Mr Bush i'm asking why we can't be friendsIt's our environment we were trying to defendOur men fought along with yours on a dozen foreign shoresYour logic I just fail to comprehend.This song was written a month ago and spent the first 2 weeks at Number One on the Music Forte Country Music Top 20. The song is presented in this podcast as well as a personal soapbox in relation to this situation.Mr Bush Why Can't We Be Friends and other songs can be heard at www.musicforte.com/member/bluesbroYou can email Luigi at luigicappel@gmail.com

[ Sun, 19 Nov 2006 05:44:00 GMT ]

Listen

Download

Listen on your iPhone