Bury my heart at Wounded Knee

From an interview with Yoriyos that I did the other day. Check his excellent album "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" out these days.

"It’s more like the 40’s to the 70’s really, for me. I’m fascinated with that wide-eyed peace and liberation seeking generation. I know it wasn’t sought after by everyone, you still had the suits and boots calling all the shots, drawing up the laws and setting the dividing lines between classes and colours, but it seemed like for a moment, that the people of that generation understood they held the power and not their governments. Their governments were there to serve them and not the other way round. We were at the brink of a major breakthrough I think, a revolution even, of love and peaceful co-existence, with our musicians, writers and poets leading the way. But then the governments caught on and invested in big co-operations and the media industry. That’s when the bubble burst. Now they use it to distract us, manipulating and brainwashing our thoughts. They have the youth on a hook from an early age. If you act, look or think differently you’re made to feel like an outsider, or even a threat. We’re all so dependant on the TV and the Internet for our information that we forget who controls what goes on it in the first place.

We’re so desensitised with what’s going on because we see it so often in the media that it doesn’t seem shocking anymore. We’re not affected directly and we’re too comfortable with the shrink-wrapped lives we lead that all we need to do is flip the channel or turn the page and we think it’ll go away, but it never does. I’m guilty of this too, but I’m trying my hardest to make a lasting change. People used to live more happily without the technology and overload of useless information we have today. I mean why is it that we in the UK are planning a 20billion pound upgrade of our nuclear weapons but still cannot commit even a fraction of that to so called “third world nations”? We have medicines and enough water and food for everyone, but we’ve become capitalistic dictators ourselves, profiting at the expense of others.

We’re all guilty, we feed this system. And we don’t expect karma to deal us a bad hand? I mean what do our taxes get spent on? It’s our responsibility to know. I’m sick of this cycle and governments keeping us on a need to know bases. We need to know why things aren’t getting better. Even getting a mortgage these days just to buy a house is the standard thing to do. We’re all in debt or just scraping by, it’s a fact of life we happily accept. Why? The older generation who laboured so hard, bringing the country to where it is now are on pensions that can barely sustain them. Their kids put them up in homes and forget about them because they’ve been taught to care only for themselves.

No wonder the world’s in such a mess. All our Prophets, poets and philosophical thinkers aren’t listened to anymore, factual books aren’t being read, it’s all fiction and reality TV now. I miss people like Curtis Mayfield and John Lennon, George Harrison and Jim Morrison. There was great depth in their characters and behind their lyrics. They weren’t after the fame like a lot of the musicians today. I miss the dreams we had. That’s what interests me about that generation more than the music that was going on, the people, and their message of Love and the Unity of Humanity. Who’s spreading that message now? "