My Protest Song

      It was three years ago, shortly after the mass murder at the Pulse night club in Orlando, Florida – just another shooting in the seemingly endless string of shootings before and since – that these words came  - from wherever words come from - into my head:
     Voices cry out from Orlando, here them cry, oh, hear them cry.
    Or maybe those words materialized on my brain screen because from among the tunes in the playlist that’s usually running in my head an old American hymn that I like called “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” had  recently been playing.
     In any case, those words superimposed themselves over the first line of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” after which it was easy enough for me to come up with more words of my own to go with the rest of that tune:
        Voices cry out from Orlando,
        Hear them cry, oh, hear them cry.
        They are crying out to us, Lord:
        “Oh, how many more must die?”
        It occurred to me that this would be a good song to sing at demonstrations calling for gun law reform and the banning of AR 15-style semi-automatic assault weapons, the guns used in all mass shootings in recent years. One could substitute “Orlando” with other sites of mass gun violence -  Columbine, Aurora, Newtown, Virginia, etc. – and the verses could go on and on.
          But I never did anything with my song. I just thought about it every time there was another mass shooting, another dozen or so people bleeding to death from gunshot wounds inflicted from bullets speed-fired from a semi-automatic assault rifle.
         Then a little over two weeks ago there were two mass shootings within hours: one in El Paso Texas and one in Dayton Ohio. Thirty-one more people dead, bled-out from assault rifle gunshot wounds. “Do something!” Americans began crying out to our legislators in desperation and fear for our own lives and the lives of our loved ones.
        I, too, was feeling the same fear and helpless frustration as most  of my countrymen and women. I wanted to do something. I wanted to start an initiative to put a vote to ban semi-automatic assault weapons in Ohio on our state ballot.
         But I learned that such an initiative would likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, would require a network of canvassers in every county in the state, would have just about zero chance of breaking through the pro-gun lobby Ohio legislature, and, even if the issue did by some miracle make it onto the ballot, might well be voted down. And if by some  double miracle a ban on assault weapons in Ohio did make it onto the ballot and was voted into law, a would-be shooter could just drive across the state line into Indiana or Kentucky or West Virginia or go online to stockpile his  deadly arsenal.
        So I quickly abandoned the idea of trying to start a ballot initiative. But I still wanted to do something.  I thought of my song. And I decided that my song would be my protest. And maybe, if my song got out there, it could be others’ protest as well.
      I wrote out half a dozen verses to a tune resembling  “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”:

      Voices cry out from El Paso, hear them cry, oh, hear them cry 
      They are crying out to us, Lord, "Oh, how many more must die?"

       Voices cry out from Ohio, hear them cry, oh, hear them cry 
       They are crying out to us, Lord, "Oh, how many more must die?"

       Voices cry out from California, hear them cry, oh, hear them cry      
        They are crying out to us, Lord, "Oh, how many more must die?"

        Voices cry out from Virginia, hear them cry, oh, hear them cry
        They are crying out to us, Lord, "Oh, how many more must die?"   
       
         Hear the children cry in Newtown, hear them cry, oh, hear them cry   
         Hear the fathers and the mothers, oh how many more must cry?  
   
          There is only one solution, hear our cry, oh, hear our cry  
          Ban the AR 15 rifle or ten thousand more will die

         Or ten thousand more will die.
    
          I decided I wanted to record this song, spread it around, make it available to others who might want to sing it at protest rallies, give voice to those who wanted to say something to their legislators.
         Now, I would like to have had this song recorded professionally and sung by someone with a good voice to some guitar accompaniment. But that would take planning and time, probably more time than would pass before the next shooting.
           So I decided to sing and record the song myself.
            First I videoed myself singing it on my phone. Then a colleague who is a sound engineer made an audio recording of me singing it on which – I later realized – I messed up the words.
             Finally I recorded myself singing it on my laptop and a tech-savvy relative kindly posted it on Youtube for me. I humbly realize that I possess neither a lovely voice nor good recording equipment.  
             But I did want  to get the song out there so that others might sing it, hopefully much better than I do.
              Anyway, if you’d like to hear my recording of “Voices Cry Out,” here’s the Youtube link:

                         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9kETiqu1oU
 
              A song is not much of anything, really. Maybe it’s nothing at all. But I can’t think of anything else to do.