In this episode of Wine, Women, and Revolution Heather interviews musician and activist Ben Grosscup. Ben bills himself as a labor troubadour following in the long tradition of merging song and protest, he also serves as the executive director of the People’s Music Network. They delve into some deep subject matter in this interview ranging from how neo-liberalism is actively committing violence on the world, to how capitalism can not react rationally to our modern global crises, to the “American Idolization” of our collective singing culture.
Transcript Auto-Generated
Ben Grosscup 0:00
So Love me Love me Love me. I’m a liberal.
Heather Warburton 0:17
This is Wine Women and Revolution with your host, Heather Warburton. Hi and welcome to Wine Women and Revolution. I’m your host Heather Warburton coming at you here on Create Your Future Productions. You can find us online at YourFutureCreator.com . Follow us on all the social medias and get us wherever you get your podcasts from. This is a guest I booked a little while ago and I’ve been really excited for if you follow me on social media, as you probably see me a couple of times share a video by this guy. And it’s the “Love me I’m a Liberal”. I think I first saw one that was the remake, he updated it for the Obama administration. And since then I’ve seen videos of him here and they’re updating it again and again. So first off, I just want to welcome to the show Ben Ben Grosscup.
Ben Grosscup 1:05
Heather, thank you so much for having me.
Heather Warburton 1:07
Yeah, it’s exciting. I was so happy that you said yes. I’m always still surprised when people say yes. Like I write these, you know, awesome people like you to be on my show. And when they say yes, like Yeah. So it’s very cool that you decided to come on the show. So I wanted to start right in. You’re kind of a labor troubadour I think I saw you refer to yourself as once. You take a lot of these classic labor and socialist songs and either update them or perform them. How did you get into the hat?
Ben Grosscup 1:37
Oh, my goodness. Well, you know, a lot of my journey through political music has actually been connected to this thing called “The People’s Music Network”. But that was starting in like the late 90s. And I’m actually starting in 2013, I became the executive director of the People’s music network. So as a teen, I was very involved in anti war activism. And by a teen, I just turned 39 yesterday. And so in 1999, I was very involved in the movement in Minneapolis, where I grew up fighting against the sanctions on Iraq, we understood that to be a real genocide imposed by the United States government against an entire population. And, you know, in the ferment of anti war, pro peace activism, you know, I got involved with some music, I had been in a ska band, a very apolitical ska band as even younger than, than that, like, I mean, 17. And so, and then, and then 16, and 17. And so and then, you know, shortly after I turned 18, I got involved with this group Voices in the Wilderness. And I actually went to Iraq on this delegation, with this pacifist organization that was trying to resist the sanctions regime being imposed on the people of Iraq. And then I came home and I was on fire, I was wanting to organize with people, do activism, go to demonstrations, put on demonstrations, and also wanted to do music. So I remember I mean, as a pretty, pretty young person, you know, I actually produced a CD, that was a benefit CD. I mean, this is like 1999. So people still did this. And it was it was a variety CD of songs from songwriters about the sanctions on Iraq. And even though I wasn’t, I didn’t go to any in person gatherings. At that point, I did find through email members of the People’
