I have an assignment in class after the students view Pussy Riot and Fela Kuti to consider what songs they could write about here and now in Canada that would get them arrested or jailed. Pussy Riot were arrested and given seven year jail sentences for an impromptu performance in a church of a song called “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Chase Putin Away”. There’s a hit title, right? A lot of the students will say things like they will write a song about racism or lgbt+ as if to sing about those issues will get them arrested. It confuses me because here, in North America and even western Europe, as far as I can tell, there have been a zillion songs about both those issues sung or performed and nobody arrested because of writing it. Yes, once upon a time but the assignment is about now. What right now would get you into trouble? Would go against the grain of social acceptability? Some students romanticize it but I don’t think Fela Kuti wanted to be stripped and beaten and have his mother thrown out of a window and the Kenyan soldiers rape women at his hide out when he wrote and sung Zombie. A few of the students get it and they know and I know that we have to be like Elmer Fudd, vewy vewy cairful about how we discuss what we observe.