With Determination - The Labour Movement and Music

Reflections on music and the labour movement


This is my fourth year of teaching. I adore my job. I thrive on the energy that my profession gives me. However, since September, I have felt my profession being degraded by a government that simply does not value public education.  I have turned to music as a comfort and as an encouragement.  Today showed me, once again, that music is prevalent in all aspects of my life - including my involvement with the labour movement.


Today, for the first time in my life, I attended a political rally.  When one thinks of teachers attending a rally, the idea is rather comical at first.  Teachers are well-groomed, apple-eating, well-behaved, stern figures of authority who occasionally crack a smile.  Does one expect teachers to be vocal and attend mass rallies with thousands of their colleagues?  Well, today that is exactly what occurred at the Vancouver Art Gallery.  My little Nikon did a not bad job of capturing some of the images of this amazing event.  

Teachers from all districts in the Lower Mainland and a variety of unions here to support us

We heard a variety of speakers who spoke passionately about the importance of teachers' work and the importance of public education. In between each speaker, however, a group led us in some rousing songs about the values of the union.  They called themselves Solidarity Notes.  One of the lyrics resounded with me: "THE UNION UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED."  I immediately thought of Frederic Rzewski's (pronounced Jevski for you non-Poles...you're forgiven this time), The People United Will Never Be Defeated.

I first encountered this piece in my third year of university in an optional piano literature class at the University of Alberta.  I was in my very early twenties, an optimist, and had aspirations to be a lawyer.  I had no designs at all of being a union member.  I was intrigued by the origins of this solo piano piece. Rzewski based the theme upon the Chilean song, "¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!" 

The song was initially composed as an anthem for the popular unity government, reflecting the spirit behind the mass mobilization of working class people who in 1970 had elected Salvador Allende for the socialist transformation of Chile.  

The music Rzewski created is nothing short of a masterwork.  It takes roughly 50 minutes to perform. It has a theme and 36 variations.  The pianist, in addition to needing a virtuoso technique, is required to whistle, slam the piano lid, and catch the after-vibrations of a loud attack as harmonics: all of these are "extended" techniques in 20th-century piano writing. Much of the work uses the language of 19th-century romanticism, but mixes this language with pandiatonic tonality, modal writing, and even serial techniques.

Something struck me as I sang along with my brothers and sisters from all sorts of unions.  What power music holds over us! Music can mobilise us against governments that wish to impose their wishes on us.  The people can express their will through music. Singing a familiar chorus or tune together can give us a sense that we are truly unified for a cause.  The lyrics of music can serve to express our will to governments that simply will not listen.  

A few of my teacher colleagues will read this and I would like to encourage them and any others in unions who struggle to remember the instructions that Rzewski gives us on how to play the theme: WITH DETERMINATION.

Now, if you have 50 minutes...sit back and take a journey through the Chilean labour movement through the lens of this phenomenal music.

(The entire piece here is played by Ursula Oppens who premiered it on February 7, 1976 and to whom it was dedicated.)