{"content":[{"text":"Critiquing the Crisis through Music \n – Three Songs about Life in Cyprus \n Before and After the ‘Haircut’ of March 2013","bbox":{"left":0.119722,"top":0.121927,"width":0.576975,"height":0.085937}},{"text":"MIKE HAJIMICHAEL","bbox":{"left":0.119722,"top":0.246535,"width":0.18780600000000003,"height":0.022119}},{"text":"Abstract \n This essay reflects on three songs from Cyprus written, released and performed on/or \n about/around the bailout crisis of March 2013. While the songs come from three different \n musical genres and artists they articulate a number of themes which are pertinent to \n understanding the economic crisis as a possible succession of a number of political crises and \n unresolved wounds that go back to the 1970s. One of the essay’s main objectives is to contribute \n to an emerging field in contemporary Cypriot scholarship, namely that of popular music \n studies through a contextual analysis of songs and the art of listening (Back, 2008). The essay \n also aims to develop an understanding of songs as commentary, as a form of media narrative \n on everyday lived experiences as reflected by musicians living through economic and political \n crises in Cyprus.","bbox":{"left":0.119722,"top":0.287388,"width":0.760715,"height":0.215727}},{"text":"Keywords: popular music, protest, songs, ethnomusicology, Cyprus, crisis, ethnography","bbox":{"left":0.119722,"top":0.520505,"width":0.680014,"height":0.018433000000000033}},{"text":"Introduction \n Music has always been a barometer of society’s problems, often reflecting on social, \n economic and political conditions. Musicians act as commentators on the present, \n reflecting on society’s anxieties, injustices and problems. We listen to songs by modern day \n ‘troubadours’ who express ideas through the looking glass of music on the world around \n them, as they see it. \n Every generation and moment in history has its own epoch-defining music. Bob \n Dylan’s ‘Blowin in the Wind’, John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, The Sex Pistols ‘God Save The \n Queen’ and Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’. Songs are contextually bound time and \n again, defining shared experiences or exploring narratives that are often unspoken. For \n instance, Linton Kwesi Johnson’s ‘Sonny’s Lettah’ on the unjust British Police Force’s ‘Sus’ \n laws or Gil Scot-Heron’s moving ambient declaration ‘Poem for Jose Campos Torres’ \n reflecting on the ‘dogs’ and ‘police’ in every street around the world. In this paper my aim \n is to reflect on the issue of how artists critique a crisis by exploring specific songs and the \n context leading to the economic and political watershed in Cyprus, more commonly","bbox":{"left":0.119722,"top":0.561378,"width":0.760614,"height":0.30073499999999986}},{"text":"233","bbox":{"left":0.483364,"top":0.917521,"width":0.03327199999999997,"height":0.02027599999999996}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}