What are some Holocaust or Genocide related songs?

Question

Do you know any songs that have to do with the Holocaust or a Genocide?

Answer 1

http://www.metrolyrics.com/instant-karma-the-campaign-to-save-darfur-album-various-artists.html This is an album released to help the people of Darfur (400,000 have been killed in the last 3 years).
http://www.genocidetext.net/gaci_songs.htm This is a list of other songs about genocide and some of their lyrics.
P.S. Ring Around the Rosy is about the Bubonic Plague, not a genocide.

Hope this helps,
Channa

Answer 2

Songs About Genocide

Answer 3

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What are some Holocaust or Genocide related songs?
Do you know any songs that have to do with the Holocaust or a Genocide?

Answer 4

1

Answer 5

"Strange Fruit"
It is a song about the lynchings of African Americans.

Answer 6

System of a Down- P.L.U.C.K.

Answer 7

ring around the rosy

Answer 8

When I think about the Holocaust, the first song that comes to my mind is ""Die Moorsoldaten" ("Peat Bog Soldiers"), a song written by political prisoners in the German concentration camps before the war. Maybe Börgermoor concentration camp in 1933 or Dachau. It became the defiant hymn of all the political prisoners.

See : "Peat Bog Soldiers" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat_Bog_Soldiers_%28song%29

"The massacre of Jews at Babi Yar inspired a poem written by a Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko which was set to music by Dmitri Shostakovich in his Symphony No. 13."

"In 1984, Canadian rock band Rush recorded the song "Red Sector A" on the album Grace Under Pressure. The song is particularly notable for its allusions to The Holocaust, inspired by Geddy Lee's memories of his mother's stories about the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, where she was held prisoner."

"In Pink Floyd's album The Wall, one of the record's tracks is titled "Waiting for the Worms". This song is set in the middle of the time the main character, Pink, has become a neo-nazi, and the head of a fascist group. The song seems to be set in a march down a main street in Brixton, England, with Pink singing/saying the lyrics through a megaphone. One of the lyrics from the song is, "Waiting! For the final solution to strengthen the strain!" "

"A song from Arcade Fire's 2007 album Neon Bible titled "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" is rumoured to be about the Holocaust as well, with such lyrics as "Left my name with the border guards/a name that I don't need" , "We'll make it if we run!/Run from the memory" and "been eating in the ghetto on a $100 plate". The music in the song itself seems very Eastern European inspired with string instruments and a military chorus in the background."

"The Holocaust in art and literature : Music" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_art_and_literature#Music

"The Flowers of Guatemala", R.E.M. (from Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986)

"Redemption Song", Bob Marley (from Uprising, 1980; also available on Legend and One Love)

"My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying", Buffy Sainte-Marie (from Little Wheel Spin and Spin, 1966; also available on The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie)

"Civil War", Guns N' Roses (from Use Your Illusion II, 1991; also on Greatest Hits)

"P.L.U.C.K.", System of a Down (from System of a Down, 1998)

"Famine", Sinéad O'Connor (from Universal Mother, 1994)

"Beds Are Burning", Midnight Oil (from Diesel and Dust, 1987; also on 20,000 Watt RSL)

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", Bob Dylan (from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, 1962; also a lovely version on The Concert for Bangladesh, 1971)

"Bullet the Blue Sky", U2 (from The Joshua Tree, 1987; live version on Rattle and Hum)

"Cortez the Killer", Neil Young (from Zuma, 1975; definitive version on Live Rust, 1979)

"Sleep Now in the Fire", Rage Against the Machine (from The Battle of Los Angeles, 1999; also on Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium)

"Call It Democracy", Bruce Cockburn (from World of Wonders, 1985; also on Waiting for a Miracle)

"Ilsa Koch", Woody Guthrie, 1948

"With God on Our Side", Bob Dylan, 1964, The Times They Are A-Changin'

"Dachau Blues", Captain Beefheart, 1969

"Ride 'Em Jewboy", Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, 1973

"Red Sector A", Rush, 1984, Grace Under Pressure.

"This Train Revised", The Indigo Girls, 1994

Details and lyrics : "Twelve Great Songs About Genocide" : http://www.genocidetext.net/gaci_songs.htm

"Of all the songs of all the ghettos, the one which spread like wildfire, was the "Song of the Partisans" by Hirsh Glik, "Zog nit keynmol az du geyst dem letstn vet" ("Never Say that You Are Trodding the Final Path"). It used a tune by the Soviet brothers Pokras, and it became the official resistance hymn of all the Eastern European partisan brigades. It was translated into Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Romanian, Dutch, and English. It was well known in all the concentration camps."

"Music of the Ghettos and the Camps" : http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/arts/musVicti.htm

"Karel Berman, Terezín. Terezín is a suite for piano written by Berman, a Holocaust survivor. He arrived in the concentration camp in 1943 and participated in many musical performances there."

"Charles Davidson, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, 1968. This song cycle is based on the poems of the children of Terezín, a camp for artists and musicians who were too prominent to kill outright. It is written for a children's choir, with piano accompaniment. The TV documentary, "The Journey of the Butterfly," about Terezín and the art created there includes a performance of "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" by the American Boychoir."

"Michael Horvitz, Even When God Is Silent. The text for this chilling music was found written on a wall in Germany by someone hiding from the Gestapo. Dramatic and chilling."

"Wilfred Joseph, Requiem, 1963. A dirge for the Jews who died during World War II, it uses the Kaddish Prayer for the Dead as the main theme."

"George Katz, Aide Memoire, 1983. A collage of music, phrases, slogans, and mass cries all taken from original sound documents of the Nazi period. They are put together to form Seven Nightmares, from which the dreamer can find no rest. Asleep, beset by terrible dreams, yet terrified to wake up and find the dream is a reality."

"Oskar Morawetz, From the Diary of Anne Frank: Oratorio for Voice and Orchestra. This oratorio is dedicated to Anne Frank and uses excerpts from her diary as the text. It is a tribute to the courage and nobility of the human spirit."

"Tera de Marez Oyens, Charon's Gift. This piece was written for the composer's husband. Oyens and her husband, Menachem Arnoni, made a trip to places associated with the deaths of family members during the Holocaust. Arnoni became depressed, unable to forgive himself for his own survival and attempted to take his own life, ending up in a coma for four days. "Like Orpheus, I descended into Hades there to plead with Charon. As he released . . . my dear one to me, Charon's gift was written in gratitude." "

"Krzysztof Penderecki, Dies Irae, 1967. A memorial to the victims at Auschwitz, Dies Irae allows the singers and players to improvise according to their talents and abilities. The chorus recites words, rather than singing them, and the instruments are the framework for the rhythm and pitch. It was first performed on the grounds of Auschwitz in 1967."

"Steve Reich, Different Trains, 1988. Reich, an American composer born in 1936, spent his childhood shuttling by train between his divorced parents' homes during World War II. After he became a composer, he began to wonder how his life might have been different if he had been a European Jew, rather than an American. He felt that trains might still have played an important part of his life, taking him to a ghetto and an extermination camp. He wrote a unique and interesting composition for string quartet and synthesizers."

"Simon Sargon, Shema. This work is named for the Hebrew word for affirmation of faith in God's unity. Levi's poem includes a quotation from the biblical prayer associated with Shema. Most of the poems were written within a few months of the liberation of Auschwitz. Throughout the cycle, Sargon's musical style is extremely vocal, fully exploiting the coloristic and technical range of the soprano in the lyricism of its lines."

"Arnold Schoenberg, A Survivor From Warsaw, 1947. This is a true story about a survivor from the Warsaw ghetto. It is atonal, using a twelve-tone technique, which the Nazis had banned as degenerate. It was written for a narrator to half sing and half speak the story. The musical drama is six minutes in length, describing a moment at the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising when the crowds began to sing Shema Israel as a symbol of their unity in the face of death."

"William Schuman, Ninth Symphony or Le Fosse Ardeatine. Schuman wrote this composition to commemorate the slaughter of 355 Jews, Christians and Italians in the Ardeatine caves. "I saw the cave and thought about all the people buried there and their lives. I'm a foe of forgetting." "

"Francis Schwartz, Caligula, 1975. Based on the names of concentration camps and massacre sites, Caligula has an eerie atmosphere created by electronic music and human voices chanting, howling, and groaning as they recite the familiar names of places that were once geographical locations."

"Demitri Shostakovich, Babi Yar, 1962. Babi Yar is located in the Ukraine, not far from Kiev. It was there that the Nazis slaughtered 70,000 Jews. The text for this symphony is a poem by the Russian poet Yevgeny Yetushenko. The use of tolling bells and men's voices singing in the bass range creates a dark and foreboding musical composition. It is one of the first musical statements against antisemitism in Russian music."

"Ben Steinberg, Echoes of Children. This cantata won the prestigious international Gabriel Award for outstanding creativity in broadcasting programming. Steinberg is the Director of Music for Toronto's Temple Sinai."

"Music in Response to the Holocaust" : http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/arts/musRespo.htm