Compassion Fatigue

Our society faces a real, and threatening problem, that has been growing faster and faster throughout the years. It’s called “Compassion Fatigue”, and it basically means that with the constant development of media and information, and the excruciating bombing of images and news which we receive every day, (mainly), through television, our eyes, brain and eventually our selves, got used to see the most horrible things, with the ability to carry on with our lives, without even thinking about others problems, or feeling almost any compassion during the 24 hours of our days.

It’s not really something that the main public wants to be, but most of us watch, and listen, the most horrible news and still, we are capable to change the channel without making any expression of compassion, understanding, or the urge to do something to change what is bad in this world. We see every day on the news, stories about kids in Africa and their miserable lives, murders, corruption, images of war and this stuff is shown so many times, that our brain got used to it. Just like a few decades ago, if a man saw the leg of a woman, he would jerk off for a fucking month. Nowadays, seeing a naked woman is something banal. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the real problem. Showing what is happening in the world, or showing some tits and penis is not wrong. What I believe it’s wrong, is to put censorship in the middle of those things.

Trying to make people more comfortable when they watch strong images, is going to do even worst. If you want to compassion fatigue to end, end censorship. Censorship, makes something strong, into something banal, that we don’t give importance. If you want to show the consequences of a war, show the dead bodies, show the blood, and the mutilated faces, show the raping, show the executions, show the cursing, show everything. Only that way, people will pay attention, only that way people will find new things, will change their ways of thinking.
Only this way people will want to change the world.  If they puke with disgust, even better, they will remember it. If they get “traumatized”, they will never forget it.
If you want to shake this world, shake the people too. Show them what you can only see if you have a strong stomach. Make people cry and have nightmares about those who suffer every single fucking day!

Show and say everything, maybe people will give everything too. 

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Music, what it was, what it is, and what it will be…

Music traveled with mankind throughout it’s history. When society changed or needed a change, music changed too. Music lacks of spirit nowadays, and needs a transformation. What the fuck happened to music? What caused this?

1. The Past
Music was a form of expressing deep feelings, express anger, happiness, political views and philosophical views, unfortunately we lost that. Music was able to change minds and moods in matters of second. Music told the truth. It triggered the good and bad in each one of us, love, universe, society, feelings… It was ugly and beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong though. We always had lame bands and singers, but even those had some talent. They had morals, they felt what they were singing. Creativity was lost, experiences were always being done with instruments and new ways of expression. Music had a “boom” and you could fit anywhere you wanted. You had Punk, Rock, Grunge, Blues, Jazz, Reggae, Hip Hop and so much more. The Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Kids, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Living Color, Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead, Cake, Anvil, Blur, The Flaming Lips, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joe Cocker, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, The Kinks, Mr. Bungle, The Pixies, Spin Doctors, The Pop Group, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, The Stone Roses, Sonic Youth, B.B.King, John Maher, Howlin’ Wolf, War, Cab Calloway, Nina Simone, Fred Anderson, Bob Marley, Sublime, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and so many more, unfortunately I can’t name them all.
All of them had great musicians, and brought creativity and real and deep feelings to their songs. Why have we lost this amazing fucking bands? What happened?

2. The Present
The real reason music has lost it’s meaning is simple. Money and society. I believe this two things rotten music. Before this world crisis, we had money, everybody was happy and blinded by the capitalist dream, at least the ones that could actually hear music, because some had nothing. The industry of music changed, minds changed, and instead of personal expression and meaning for the music, we wanted money. Money caught music. It was the first priority, to make money. Adding that with the lazy fat and “puppetish” society, music started to die.
Music has no creativity and has a plastic false content. It’s all about, how you are not alone in this world and how you will be happy, we all know that is false. They don’t mean anything of what they say on their songs, they don’t care.
While music channels had music and accepted new music, nowadays MTVs and shit like that only have stupid reality shows, and only accept music that have boobs, or a guy with a six pack that looks like a girl and reads lyrics from a paper. We actually got to this sad point, where music is weaker than ever. Fortunately, there are some  bands/singers that actually can make good music. The Black Keys, Jamiroquai, Gorillaz, At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, Blood Red Shoes, Cage The Elephant, Das Racist, Dead Weather, Death From Above 1979, Death Grips, Efterklang, Every Time I Die, Johnossi, Justice, Lightning Bolt, M.I.A, Mumford And Sons, OFWGKTA, The Rapture, Seasick Steve, Streetlight Manifesto, Tom Vek, Willy Moon, The Subways, Tame Impala, White Stripes, Yeasayer and many more, but, once again, I can’t name them all.

3. The Future
What will happen to music? I strongly believe that music will not die, and will actually rise up again. We are facing the greatest problems of humanity, people are dying, people are changing, people are mad, and are getting tired of this capitalism bullshit we live in. All of this will be reflected in music, the anger, the agony, and all of this shit we are surrounded by.
I think we will face another “music boom” and music will be born again. Good, and real music, will be heard again.
With society (r)evolution, we will have a music (r)evolution.

– Guilherme Pedrosa