Border Songs and the Politics of Migration Heather Craigie - NACLA
go to original June 16, 2014

I care, do you care?

Stand for justice, if you dare

Are we a nation, divided as we fall?

Border Songs CD (artwork Amos Lee)

The opening lines of Border Songs, sung by the performance ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, invite listeners into a conversation about human rights, global awareness, and moral responsibility that continues through many of the album’s tracks and ripples out into contemporary debates surrounding immigration reform. While Sweet Honey’s “Are We a Nation?” was composed in specific response to Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant law SB1070, the song’s fundamental plea for unity - “We need a nation / joined heart and hand / come together / heed the call” - establishes the thematic backbone of an album, showcasing the human consequences of U.S. immigration policy and border enforcement. The album raises one rallying cry: a call for recognition and outrage around the dead bodies, in excess of 6,000, that have been found on the U.S.-Mexico border since the mid 1990’s. Border Songs listeners will likely arrive at a similar moral consensus after absorbing the album’s 31 tracks, though it remains to be seen whether these deaths will ever pierce the national psyche. As Salvadoran poet Mario Bencastro reflects in his poem, “Arizona,” (read in Spanish on the album):

How many Joses have perished?

How many Marias?

How many Juanitos?

The ominous death count

neither frightens the statisticians

nor shocks humankind

nor provokes a single tear

from the world’s cold eyes

Border Songs, produced in Flagstaff, Arizona, is at first glance a seemingly eclectic array of music and spoken word created to benefit the work of No More Deaths / No Más Muertes, a humanitarian organization seeking to end death and suffering on the U.S.-Mexico border. The narrative threads throughout the album, however, weave a complex picture of human displacement caused by a free market economic model. As opposed to benefit albums created in response to high-profile natural disasters, Border Songs attempts to raise awareness about an economic disaster with grave ramifications for migrants seeking economic opportunity and family unification in the United States.

Read the rest at NACLA

Here is the complete list of contributing artists:

Calacas Blues
Calexico
Charles Bowden
Christa Sadler
Chuck Cheesman
Classik & Pachuco
Cyril Barrett
Denise Chávez
Dúo Guardabarranco
Eliza Gilkyson
Eric Skye
Giant Giant Sand
Glenn Weyant
Joel Rafael
Lakesigns
Lilo Gonzalez
Los Románticos
Margaret Randall
Mario Bencastro
m. henry
Michael Franti & Spearhead
Óscar Sarmiento
Pete Seeger
Raúl Zurita
Robert Neustadt
Scott Ainslie
Sergio Mendoza y la Orkesta
Sweet Honey in the Rock
Ted Warmbrand
Tom Russell

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