David Rovics

David Rovics is an American indie singer/songwriter.

A complex and very interesting character, his music concerns topical subjects such as the 2003 Iraq war, anti-globalization and social justice issues. Rovics has been an outspoken critic of former President George W. Bush, the Republican Party, John Kerry, and the Democratic Party.

David Rovics is critical of the United States of America and claims that the U.S. governments foreign policy represents U.S. corporate interests and that the U.S. government does not like democracy either at home or abroad.

Although most of Rovics work is commercially distributed, Rovics has made all of his recorded music freely available as downloadable mp3 files. He encourages the free distribution of his work by all non-profit means to promote his work and spread political messages, and speaks out against websites or programs like iTunes that charge money for downloading his songs. Rovics has also advocated the performing of his songs at protests and demonstrations and has made his sheet music and lyrics available for download.

BIOGRAPHY

David Rovics was born in New York City. His family moved to Wilton, Connecticut when he was young. Rovics was politically inspired during his adolescence by his experiences with the conservative-oriented, Christian milieu of his home town. His parents, both classical musicians and educators, were liberal in their outlook. Perhaps for this reason, While in his teens Rovics acquired interests in nuclear disarmament, vegetarianism and other counterculture issues. Rovics is ethnically Jewish and an atheist.

In 1985, Rovics enrolled at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana but dropped out and moved to Berkeley, California. He worked in varied occupations, including as a cook, barista, secretary and typist, while pursuing his musical interests as a street and subway performer and in small clubs and bars. He immersed himself in leftist counterculture and made contact with other songwriters and performers on the underground circuit.

By the early 1990s he was a full-time busker in the Boston subways.

On May 1, 1993, Rovics was involved in a traumatic incident in which a close friend was shot dead after intervening in a gang shoot-out. This was a turning point in his life, forcing him to concentrate on his songwriting career, initially as a means of dealing with the grief over his friends death. He had already amassed a fair collection of lyrics and songs by that time, but his own admission, his compositions prior to this time were inferior and preachy, and none were used in his later albums.

From around the mid 1990s, Rovics has spent most of his time on concert tours around the world. In 1996 he self-released his first album, Make It So, which consisted mostly of covers of other artists songs. He released his second cover album in 1998. He produced a series of five original song albums between 1998 and 2003 as self-release titles. The album Who Would Jesus Bomb? was entirely distributed in mp3 format over the Internet and had no commercial release, although it was included in a later best of album.

Rovics is a Wobbly- a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. In that Wobbly tradition of sharp social commentary, David is a master. The Industrial Worker.

In 2003 Rovics signed up to Ever Reviled Records and produced a studio album, Return. Later that year, he released Behind The Barricades: The Best Of David Rovics in association with AK Press, including titles from his earlier self-releases which met with minimal commercial success. He has since released the Songs for Mahmud album as a self-release in association with Ever Reviled Records. Despite being the sole performer in most of his work, he usually describes himself only as a songwriter.

Although Rovics work has never met with great commercial success, it has been critically acclaimed in the press and continues to be popular with a small yet widespread base of fans with similar political interests, as well as supporters of internet file sharing.

These days Rovics tours regularly on four continents, playing for audiences large and small at cafes, pubs, universities, churches, union halls and protest rallies. He has had his music featured on Democracy Now!, BBC, Al-Jazzeera and other networks. His essays are published regularly on CounterPunch and Truthout and the 200+ songs he makes available on the web have been downloaded more than a million times.

Rovics currently lives in Portland, Oregon with his family and has a daughter, Leila, who was born in 2006.

POLITICAL ACTIVISM

In an interview article with the Baltimore Independent Media Center entitled Inspiring the Troops Through Music, David Rovics said: when I first started writing any songs that were any good I had already become very much involved with activism and wanting to talk about what was happening in the world. But when I first started writing songs, I wasnt writing political songs

I say, that Im not really hardly at all involved with the folk music scene and I dont play for the folk music audiences so much and shows dont get booked by the folk music presenters. Everything Im doing pretty much in the activist scene. I find that when folk music aficionados come to my shows that they usually like it. I think I could be doing fine in the folk scene if there was enough interest there for more people to be booking shows. The interest in the kind of music Im doing is almost entirely in the activist scene, which is fine

If you look at it take a real cursory glance of the world around you we see that pretty much every institution out there uses music in one way or another. Every corporation uses music to sell their products. The military uses music to inspire their troops. I use music for my troops. Its the same basic function that music is playing. You know, even from a capitalist perspective you could say its used to sell products and to foster in the military for example, that people are working together that theyre part of the same thing, that theyre sticking up for each other. Thats what were using music at marches and rallies. Its to inspire the troops. And in other settings its to educate people about things that are happening and to talk about it in a way that hopefully might be more memorable than a speech

Yes, to communicate to people on an emotional level. And perhaps even a spiritual level and reach them in a way that people dont often get reached by other means. And its just one of many means of communication, but I think its a an important one and when we have events, whether theyre protests or educational events or whatever, the events that have music and food at them are so much different from the ones that dont. Everyone, whether or not theyre conscious of why they come out of those events inspired and feeling like theyve learned something and theyre going to do something with that knowledge thats the difference between even a really good speaker, theyre still are not really pessimistic but good educational optimistic speaker theres still something missing compared to when you hear that speaker and you sing a few songs before or after preferably after I think because then you leave on a feeling on more togetherness and optimism even when the songs are not particularly optimistic. Theres something about music that makes people feel optimistic

OPINIONS ON FILE SHARING

David Rovics supports file sharing of his own work. Feel free to download these songs. Use them for whatever purpose. Send them to friends, burn them, copy them, play them on the radio, on the internet, wherever. Music is the Commons. Ignore the corporate music industry shills who tell you otherwise. Downloading music is not theft, youre not hurting anyone, I promise. (And in any case, yes, this is legal, and Im making all of these songs available myself.)