Slave Songs and Symphonies is an ambitious, beautifully crafted\u00a0collection of poems, images and epigraphs. It’s about human history,\u00a0progressive art and music, campaigns for political freedom, social\u00a0justice and peace. Above all it’s about the class and cultural struggle of\u00a0workers ‘by hand and by brain\u2019 to regain control and ownership of the\u00a0fruits of their labour.<\/p>\n
David Betteridge\u2019s poems are leftist, lyrical, and learned, infused\u00a0with sadness and compassion for the sufferings of our class, the\u00a0working class. They are also inspired by visionary hope, and a strong\u00a0belief that our class-divided society and culture can be transformed by\u00a0radical politics and good art \u2013 and by radical art and good politics.<\/p>\n
Bob Starrett\u2019s drawings are much more than illustrations. They\u00a0dance with the poems, commenting on them as well as illustrating\u00a0them. They are like Goya\u2019s drawings in their dark, ink-black\u00a0truthfulness and their intimate knowledge of suffering and Blake\u2019s\u00a0‘mental fight’. Like the poems, they express and resolve the struggles\u00a0they depict.<\/p>\n
Slave Songs and Symphonies tells the story of how slave songs\u00a0become symphonies \u2013 and helps makes it happen. It is not just about\u00a0class and cultural struggle \u2013 it is class and cultural struggle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"etheme_brands":[],"product_cat":[3275],"product_tag":[],"class_list":["post-20398","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-books","first","instock","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/20398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"brand","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/etheme_brands?post=20398"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=20398"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=20398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}