Music to Move You to Save Mountains

Madonna sang it, so it’s got to be spot-on: “Music makes the people come together.”

Madonna’s Music may be about people coming together to party, but I do think music can move and motivate the masses to take more beneficial actions (not that we don’t need some fun in our lives), such as, for example, working to end mountaintop removal coal mining.

If you still are hem-hawing about whether there’s any sane justification for blowing up mountains, razing forests, burying streams with the mega-rubble from blasted mountains, driving communities to extinction and destroying human health, maybe you need some musical inspiration to help you see the solar-powered light.

Check out Lissie’s Mountaintop Removal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEdZlWjjCJo&feature=kp

Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott’s music video for Keep Your Dirty Lights On uses some of my photos and sends folks to the OVEC website for more information. The song was nominated for the Best American Roots Song at the 2014 Grammy Awards.

Also using my photos is Shayar’s I Am The Earth, which addresses the issue of deep shale gas fracking as well as MTR.

Okay — true confession — I put together the video for the tune. This song, written especially for OVEC, is deserving of a professionally-made video.

And, who knew? Hank Williams III does not like mountaintop removal coal mining. While in Morgantown, WV, Hank3 told Baltimore City Paper:

The biggest thing right now is trying to keep mountaintop removal out of Tennessee. That’s the biggest goal. There’s a Chinese company that owns 40 miles [of mountaintop] but we are trying to keep it underground and keep doing it the way it’s been done for so many years instead of ruining the mountains. I’m in West Virginia right now, the mountains are beautiful and unfortunately there’s already been 2,200 miles taken out of West Virginia. Even coal-mining families would try to say keep it underground as much as you can. So that’s something that’s important to me, for generations to come even after I’m long gone. That’s something you can’t replace. Especially since it’s not even staying in the state. Most of it’s (the coal) being taken and used elsewhere so that in itself is a letdown.

More musicians oppose mountaintop removal coal mining and there are more songs about the need to end the insanity of extreme energy extraction out there. Hope you find at least one you really like, one that you hear in your head when you need a little musical motivation to act up for change.

How about acting up right now? Sign-up to support the A.C.H.E Act and contact the White House to demand an end to mountaintop removal coal mining.