"Put a Woman in Charge" - a Look at Music's Role Pushing for Progress

Meet two songwriters focused on the role of women, including Kamala Harris, in building a better world.

Updated post-broadcast - Through much of the pandemic, I ran “Sunday Sanity” shows on Sustain What convening musicians and poets ranging from The Nields to Chuck Leavell (the Rolling Stones keyboardist), from the accordion-playing climatologist Ray Pierrehumbert to Zambian activist singer Joseph Pupe.

I just ran this wonderful conversation exploring the intersection of music, movements and politics - with a particular focus on the monumentally important election ahead, and the voices and power of women.

You can watch here on YouTube or watch and share on LinkedIn, Facebook or X (@revkin).

I’m told that clicking the ♡ button increases the visibility of this post on Substack.

I was inspired to focus a show on this theme after recently hearing two songs for the first time - a punchy home-grown rallying cry, “Going to Stump, Bump, Dump Trump,” written by Carl Karush, a retired Maine seaweed farmer and Downeast Maine neighbor, and “Put a Woman in Charge,” a resounding anthem that, for obvious reasons, is getting attention right now but was first released in 2018 by multiple-Grammy-winning blues master Keb' Mo and written by Mo’, Beth Nielsen Chapman and John Lewis Parker.

You can listen to Carl Karush’s tune below. He asked me to record him, saying his goal with the song was to point out Trump’s failings without disparaging his followers. That is a tough path. Let me know if you think he succeeded!

Woman in charge

I just love the infectious strumming rhythms, themes and clarion call chorus of “Put a Woman in Charge,” so I reached out to co-writer Chapman and she graciously agreed to come on the show. Here’s her version from her 2022 album CrazyTown:

Chapman has had a much-lauded, decades-long career as a hit songwriter, touring performer and songwriting coach. Much of her music focuses on helping people navigate challenges. Drawing on wrenching life losses and cancer struggles, in 2016 Chapman joined with Olivia Newton-John and the Canadian artist Amy Sky to create “Liv On” – an album designed to comfort people experiencing loss and grief.

And then there’s science. In 2012, she released “The Mighty Sky,” a family-oriented collection of songs about physics and astronomy penned with fellow songwriter Annie Roboff and Rocky Alvey, then the director of Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory outside of Nashville. Chapman is bound for a British tour later this month.

You’ll learn plenty about “Put a Woman in Charge” in our conversation but here’s some background for starters:

Writing songs that matter

As we planned the show, I learned Chapman has been doing songwriting workshops with my old friend Dar Williams, a longtime progressive songwriter whose latest book is, yes, “How to Write a Song that Matters.” So I reached out and happily Williams can join as well.

Here’s Williams’s ode to the upside of incrementalism - on doing something “Today and Every Day” to build a better neighborhood, nation and planet:

Here’s a great line:

Some say the smallest things don't count

Then say the big things don't amount

To any answers either Man there is no break or breather

There's no time for this smart frustration

I say everyone, everyone's a power station

Why music?

Isn’t music kind of secondary to sustainability work? A beat to march to, a playlist to listen to while you do the actual work? I think it’s bigger than that.

I sense Taylor Swift thinks so too. I guess we’ll find out this fall.

You may already know by now that I’ve been a singer/songwriter in spare moments since the early 1990s. I’ve also written quite a bit about music making and its role in building a fully sustainable human journey. I still fondly recall my Times feature on Ani DiFranco’s efforts to use her business acumen to help long-struggling Buffalo.

A seaweed farmer’s Trump song

Let’s swing back to Carl Karush, who also wrote a marvelous ballad about the lives of seaweed farmers and others harvesting the bounty of the sea. Here’s “Going to Stump, Bump, Dump Trump”:

More songs with purpose

Here’s my Zambian friend Joseph Pupe leading his song “We Have the Power,” recorded remotely with a batch of my Hudson River Vally musical friends after we all got to know each other on my Sunday shows. He ended up visiting Beacon, New York, where we performed face to face.

I was thrilled when Nerissa and Katryna Nields (the leaders of the band The Nields) joined our merry Sunday gaggle ahead of the 2020 election and sang “We’re Going to Need a Boat.” I just love this tune:

Watch the little back-and-forth at the end when I muse “we’re going to need a vote” as well as an inclusive boat and they excitedly say they might rewrite the song. The songwriting process works best as that kind of give and take.

Also listen to their song Tyrants Always Fall.

What songs have you heard, sung or written that you think matter in this or other ways?