Can you just imagine how excited Laura Nyro would have been at the thought of Barack Obama being president of the United States? I don’t want to count my president before the votes are cast (or counted!), but I can’t help but be cautiously excited.
Of course Laura, like all of us, was frustrated by the realities of U.S. politics (“Save the Country,” anyone?). Yet no one was a more righteous American than her–America being a promise, a dream, a shining hope. How many times she used the word America in her songs (“Christmas in My Soul,” “American Dove,” “American Dreamer” … have I forgotten any?).
And then there’s the terrific song she recorded during the dark days of the Reagan Administration, “The Right to Vote.” It’s snarky. It’s pretty hopeless. Yet it’s funny, and we laugh along with her disdain of The System.
Thank you sirs for the right to vote
Bet you didn’t know I had a voice in my throat
Now let’s see should I vote for “A” or “B”
“A” talks a lot
But not to me
“B” wants war
Kill or flunk
Forget the vote – I’ll just go out and get drunk
They say a woman’s place
Is to wait and serve
Under the veil
Submissive and dear
But I think my place
Is in a ship from space
To carry me
The hell out of here
Patriarchal great religions
Full of angels
Forgiving and fair
While they push the buttons and blow up the place
Might as well
Make room for a worthier race
They say a woman’s place
Is to wait and serve
Under the veil
Submissive and dear
But I think my place
Is in a ship from space
To carry me
The hell out of here
All the colors in a race riot
In the land of the free
All the women are on a diet
I’m hungry
Are you hungry
I’m hungry
So hungry
For peace and quiet
Thank you sirs for the right to vote
The microwave
And the old mink coat
Now let’s see should I vote for “A” or “B”
“A” talks a lot
But not to me
“B” wants war
Kill or flunk
Forget the vote – I’ll just go out and get drunk
They say a woman’s place
A woman’s place
I won’t forget the vote November 4, but I absolutely plan to go out and get drunk that night. I just hope it’s because I’m celebrating, not because I need to anesthesize myself for the next four years.
Michele, what you say about “The Right to Vote” is really true. The song is almost funny, and it does take a quite dim view of our political system – one which I have tended over the years to very much sympathise with myself because I have never been (and are not) one to believe voting can change much. So much so my relatives criticise me for taking voting too casually (In Australia, you should be aware, voting is compulsory but of couse one can vote informally if they are really dissatisfied with the system).
When I first heard “The Right To Vote”, I often thought it based on Elizabeth Gould Davis’ “The First Sex”, a book notorious today among serious academics for inventing a matriarchal paradise which serious academics admit is unlikely and most likely impossible. Though that interpretation sounds now rather less likely, the song still stands as I see it as the best on “Mother’s Spiritual” and one of Laura’s very best songs after her 1975 comeback.
Nyro glad Obama is President?! This comment staggers me. Nyro was a genius. After 5 minutes of listening to his pandering lies, she’d go write another song like Money, which is all Obummer cares about. Laura was too shrewd to be taken in by hype. Obama comes from the same cesspool as the Geffens who first supported her. And she left them, too.
This is the third post, of your website I read through.
However , I really love this particular one, “Im hungry.
Are you hungry? Soul Picnic” the very best. Cya -Tammie