Glastonbury and Greenpeace bring back the protest song

Friday, June 24th, 2011

The times they are a-changin’ over at Glastonbury — the UK’s best and biggest music festival — this weekend.

Greenpeace has enlisted the help of the Cowshed Recording Studio in London to build a low-carbon straw bale recording studio (also called Cowshed).

The studio has been built in a bid to encourage festival goers to record their very own 1960s-style protest songs. Environmental issues are the main focus, and Greenpeace is planning to use the best tune to celebrate the launch of a new Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior boat later in the year.

Some great pictures of the eco-friendly recording studio being built show what a lovely structure it is, with a raw-log frame complete with all the knotty, knobbly bits. And with the straw in place, the whole thing looks rather cosy.

Just about all of us, one way or another, are fed up with the status quo, and one of our most effective communication tools – music – has been failing to reflect this adequately. We’re calling on all left-field artists, musicians, writers; everyone who opposes exploitation, destruction, corruption, manipulation and fraud – stuff that has become staple fodder of the increasingly half-baked media reporting we routinely ignore. Raising Voices aims to use the uniquely positive environment that is Glastonbury to build momentum around the protest song.

- Joe Leach, Cowshed Studios London

For more information, you can check out the Cowshed’s Facebook page and the Cowshed’s Tumblr Blog (where you can also see some of the recent recordings from Glastonbury goers).

Meanwhile, those of us who aren’t lucky enough to be enjoying the muddy wonders of the Park Stage (Radiohead are apparently doing a “surprise” set this evening) the stone circle and Shangri La can instead enjoy this video of the Super Furry Animals at Glastonbury 2007 performing — rather aptly — Slow Life.