Shannon Smy ~ singer & songwriter

Activist and lead-singer with Seize the Day, radical English acoustic band
with global roots

"We write songs to celebrate, inspire & support
the liberation of life."
(Scroll down to listen to songs)

Seize The day's polital and environmental commitment has sometimes led to controversy.

World Music Awards ~ Naked Protest

In 2003 they won the BBC Radio 3 Audience poll for the World Music Awards, but were denied the award (perhaps because of their stance on the war in Iraq) - and responded by protesting naked on the stage.

Their music was featured however on the international CD "Peace Not War" alongside Ani Difranco and Billy Bragg.

Their international appeal was reflected in the BBC World Service listeners selection of Shannon as "pick of the week" in 2000, following her appearance on 'Everywoman'.

They spent three months on a musical campaign tour promoting sustainable agriculture in India, visiting rural villages in Andhra Pradesh, helping to support farmers, and performing to policy makers.

The band also spent one Christmas supporting the Peace Movement in the West Bank, and helping to facilitate Palestinian access to basic services such as water.

Seize The Day’s American tours have included a range of concerts supporting the Small and Family Farmers Alliance, as well as fund raising for various environmental campaigning organisations.

They also performed as the headline band at the "Rally for Rural America" in Washington, D.C., the Biodevastation Conference in Boston, the May Day March in San Francisco and dozens of venues up and down the east and west coasts of the USA and Canada. And they played to 5000 people at The Key Arena in Seattle on the eve of the WTO meeting.

Radio and Television

Seize The Day have featured on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Singing in the Wilderness," hosted by Tom Robinson.

Shannon was subsequently interviewed for BBC World Service's "Everywoman," reaching 45 million listeners worldwide.

Her appearance was also selected for the "Pick of the World" programme."

www.seizetheday.org

CAMPAIGN SONGS:

'Prisoner of Palestine'

"On Christmas 2001 we went Bethlehem to support the work of the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian based initiative committed to non-violent civil-resistance. The ISM group we were with included Europeans, English, and Americans, with many courageous people of Jewish heritage.

We visited homes faced with demolition, and joined non-violent mass protests. Most memorably, we resisted tear-gas attacks to act as human sheilds and protect the free movement of school-students along the road into Ramallah, after citizens demolished an illegal IDF checkpoint.

While there we met many ordinary families and discovered first hand the terrible, grindingly oppressive reality of everyday life under Israeli occupation – and the situation has only worsened since. It is a daily human tragedy which we are all complicit in."

(See below for lyrics to 'Prisoner of Palestine')

'With My Hammer I Break the Chains'

"I heard the news on the radio of the arrest of a group of women who had given themselves up after destroying all the relevant parts of a Hawk Jet bound for Indonesia to commit genocide on the people of East Timor.

On hearing the verdict of 'Not Guilty', I burst into tears and decided to attempt the writing of the song of their story… It took me months to collate all the information about their case, all the newspaper reports, letters they wrote to each other in prison and the transcript of the trial… 40 pages in all which is why the song is so damned long!

I eventually found the time and the inspiration to write it on a mountainside in India. The hardest thing was waiting to find out if the women who were part of that action, 13 of them in all, liked the song, had I got it right? There was no way I was going to sing it if not. You can guess what they thought by the fact that you have actually heard it!
...and it led to us performing on the Main Stage at Glastonbury Festival."

'What are we doing here?'

Newbury Bipass Protest Song

In 1996 there was massive protest lasting months to stop a major road being built in the UK. Thousands of enviromentalists came together to peacefully demonstrate and occupy the land so as to stop the progress of the machinery.

Shannon joined the protest with her musical talents and powerful presence.

"The most incredible thing that happened to me at Newbury was my relationship with the security guards. Fleets of them would arrive each day in buses to protect the diggers and chainsaw crews from our best efforts to disrupt the work. There were 800 security guards in all and over the months of being there I must have met nearly all of them.

I’d start my day watching to see where they were going and trying to prevent them arriving and then, if that failed, walking around the cordon talking to anyone who would talk to me.

It was a hell of a boring job being a security guard so I got to talk to a lot of them, mostly they got why we were there, many needed the money, and many felt hopeless about the state of the world. Perhaps significantly the Police were the most hopeless.

There were only a few who wouldn’t chat and the day came when I and a couple of friends, Willow and Simon Spacegoat, started to walk the lines singing ‘What are we doing here’ …over and over again…

‘Don’t you know any other words?’ one of the Police said after a while…

‘You write them’ I said… and Dave, the red hatted security guard piped up… ‘I will, I’ll have a go.'

It was filmed and shown on Undercurrents and BBC2 a few days later, a testimony to human beings, the struggles that we all face and the hidden lyrical talents of some security guards.

Prisoner of Palestine ~ Lyrics

"That tattoo on your granny’s forearm doesn’t tell it
Old maps of locomotive tracks cannot convey
And though I picture chimneystacks, I’ll never smell it
Or taste the anguish of the ones who got away…
Your love had died, but you survived,
To dream a place that’s safe for you and all your kind.
Then you awoke to find that Zion was a nightmare
And you’re a prisoner - a prisoner of time - in Palestine

Between the golden beaches and the River Jordan,
A desert garden that they call the Holy Land
But if you spoke to Jesus, Moses or Mohammed,
This isn’t quite the paradise that they had planned;
How did the Promised Land of flowing milk and honey
Where three religions knelt before one living god
Become a place where flowing blood and foreign money
Oil the tank tracks where the gentle prophets trod?

Before they launched a jihad on the unbelievers,
Before they put the seed of Ishmael to the knife
Before the massacre of Sabra and Shatilla,
Before crusaders killed your kids then raped your wife
The God of Love was high above,
But here on earth the gods of hate were doing fine,
And if you cannot yet forgive them or forget them
You’re still a prisoner - a prisoner of time - in Palestine.

That family farm that fed us forty generations
Apparently was someone else’s before that
And now somebody from a European nation
Says someone else’s great grandchildren want it back!
So I must live beyond an artificial border
With neighbours who’d prefer that I did not exist;
They stole my olive orchard, then they stole the water,
And when I struggle with them, I’m the terrorist!

I had a baby, but a settler-bullet killed it,
I had a job, but now they’ve cordoned off the town,
I had a dream but every time I tried to build it
Somebody else comes with a tank and knocks it down…
A young man’s pride, a suicide,
A Jewish bride and bridegroom bleeding where they dined,
And if you say “they’re not much better than the Nazis”
You’re still a prisoner - a prisoner of time - in Palestine.

And if you thought that it was all about the Bible
Get with the history of a thousand years or two
It’s very nice to know you’re in the chosen peopl
‘Til you discover why it is they’ve chosen you,
To be the scapegoat when the rich demand a cutback
The one to blame when people cannot get enough
And when it’s not P.C. to use you for a punch bag
They’ll very kindly let you be their boxing glove…

And so the Jews go on to kick the Palestinians
Because the rest of us have beaten up the Jews,
And for those oil-sheikh dictators it’s convenient
That they’ve an enemy in Israel to use.
So long as Abraham’s descendants are divided,
So long as grief between them builds a ghetto wall,
So long the camouflage and cover are provided
For what’s the greatest daylight robbery of all...

The praying presidents who heat the seat of power
The fossil traders who pollute the corridors,
The road of corpses laid from Tel Aviv to Basra
Keep up the pressure on that petrol pump of ours..
A fresh excuse for each abuse
Of terror and of counter-terror in our time,
How shall we change the climate globally for freedom?
While there are prisoners (of poverty and crime) in Palestine.

Those Palestinians – They are my people!
But people cornered in a hell they didn’t choose.
How could I not support their fight for liberation
So they can live in dignity without abuse?
And those Israelis – They are my people!
But people with a history they could not control.
Why would I not support their right to be a nation
And hold a homeland open for the Jewish soul?

The son of David in his armour-plated Zion,
Goliaths daughter reaching for another stone,
They’re gonna need a bit of help to tame the lion,
It isn’t fair to leave them struggling there alone…
The God of Love may be above
But here on earth is where we make the love divine,
And when we see how each is captive to the other
We’ll free the prisoners – and family of mine - in Palestine."

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