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David Rovics Pays Tribute to Fellow Musician and Friend Brad Will
Musician David Rovics, pays tribute to his friend, Brad Will, the U.S. journalist and activist shot dead in Oaxaca on Friday. Rovics says, "For those of us alive today who had the honor of being one of Brad's large circle of friends, his memory will be with us painfully, deeply, lovingly, until we all join him beneath the ground -- hopefully only after each of us has managed to have the kind of impact on each other, on the movement, and the world that Brad surely had in his short 36 years."
AMY GOODMAN: Gustavo Esteva, we are going to turn now to a tribute to Brad Will from his friend and fellow musician, David Rovics.
DAVID ROVICS: Brad embodied the spirit of Indymedia. He was not just covering stories that the mainstream press ignores, such as the exciting violent revolutionary moment, which has gripped Oaxaca for several months now. Brad was not risking his life to get a good shot at a confrontation at a barricade because he might get a photo on the cover of a newspaper, get some perhaps well-deserved fame and money. He was posting his communiques on Indymedia for free.
Sure, Brad was filming in order to cover history, but he was there also to make history. Brad knew that a camera is a weapon, or hopefully a shield of some sort, and sometimes can serve to deescalate a situation, to protect people from being violated, beaten, killed. And Brad knew that if the independent media didn’t document history, nobody else would.
Brad deeply appreciated the power of music and culture. If he did not have a camera in his hands, he often had a guitar. During some of his many travels around Latin America, he wrote emails to me about the musicians he met, with whom he shared my songs and recordings. He particularly liked my song “Saint Patrick Battalion” and reportedly shared his rendition of it with lots of people. He would not live to know just how much his life and death would resemble the San Patricios who died fighting for Mexico during the first and the U.S. invasion of that country in the 1840s.
Through all Brad did and saw on large swaths of three different continents, he somehow continually brought with him a boundless enthusiasm and obvious love of life, love of good parties and good riot. He was my favorite kind of person, my favorite kind of revolutionary: the sort who is just as comfortable talking about revolutionary theory, current events, music, relationships or smoking a bowl on a Manhattan rooftop at sunset, the kind of person who was alive in mind, body, and spirit in equal proportions.
READ MORE AND LISTEN ONLINE:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/30/1535249
DAVID ROVICS: Brad embodied the spirit of Indymedia. He was not just covering stories that the mainstream press ignores, such as the exciting violent revolutionary moment, which has gripped Oaxaca for several months now. Brad was not risking his life to get a good shot at a confrontation at a barricade because he might get a photo on the cover of a newspaper, get some perhaps well-deserved fame and money. He was posting his communiques on Indymedia for free.
Sure, Brad was filming in order to cover history, but he was there also to make history. Brad knew that a camera is a weapon, or hopefully a shield of some sort, and sometimes can serve to deescalate a situation, to protect people from being violated, beaten, killed. And Brad knew that if the independent media didn’t document history, nobody else would.
Brad deeply appreciated the power of music and culture. If he did not have a camera in his hands, he often had a guitar. During some of his many travels around Latin America, he wrote emails to me about the musicians he met, with whom he shared my songs and recordings. He particularly liked my song “Saint Patrick Battalion” and reportedly shared his rendition of it with lots of people. He would not live to know just how much his life and death would resemble the San Patricios who died fighting for Mexico during the first and the U.S. invasion of that country in the 1840s.
Through all Brad did and saw on large swaths of three different continents, he somehow continually brought with him a boundless enthusiasm and obvious love of life, love of good parties and good riot. He was my favorite kind of person, my favorite kind of revolutionary: the sort who is just as comfortable talking about revolutionary theory, current events, music, relationships or smoking a bowl on a Manhattan rooftop at sunset, the kind of person who was alive in mind, body, and spirit in equal proportions.
READ MORE AND LISTEN ONLINE:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/30/1535249
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