Labi Siffre's Impact On American Culture

Nothing Frightens people more than change. Infact people's resistance to change often creates negative consequences, such as the Civil war as a result of the South’s resistance to the abolition of slavery. With every new generation comes change, whether it be clothing, hairstyles, or even music. The 70s brought about a lot of change within the world which then inturn affected the music that was produced during the time. The older people looked at the young folks and the music they were producing as strange and offensive. With drug influenced songs and weird and offensive lyrics many 70s bands like Black Sabbath, spit in the proverbial face of the old classics of the 60s and earlier. Artists such as Labi Siffre were having none of their long hair and crazy music as expressed in his less than subtle song song “ I Don’t Know What Happened to the Kids”. The juxtaposition of Labi’s song and Black Sabbath’s song “Iron Man” as Black Sabbath is apart of the group of “kids” Labi is worried about. The first divide between the two can be discovered when examining just the structure of the two songs against each other. The song is very simple instrumentally, for the first two minutes and twenty-two seconds the song only consists of Labi’s voice and his acoustic guitar. For the next thirty seconds the guitar is accompanied by drums, fluttering strings and
It is a little strange that an openly gay black musician in the 70s was opposed to the change the new generation of young adults and musician were introducing to society. It’s not just a disgust for the new generation, but an all around disappointment as if he felt he had done so much to set an example for them, but all they have done is let him down. This can be seen in the last verse of the song when he sings “I would have thought that after fifty-five