CHICAGO, IL — “Cicada Season,” our debut EP, is meant to announce our presence as a band onto the scene after three years of steadily growing underground. And because we are dedicated to playing music that expresses the growing movement for justice and a new society that values humanity and life over corporate profits, we see the album’s release as a microcosm of that movement.
In these times, when our society is crumbling around us, and it seems all of humanity and maybe even life on earth could be lost, we have to trust that those of us who bring a new vision of the world to the people we struggle beside are part of a larger process of change unfolding. This is what the album is about: revolution as an expression of nature’s laws.
The songs speak to both the ills of society as well as the new world that we are struggling for. The second song, “Revolution Blues,” addresses many issues: attacks on public education, homelessness, our failed healthcare system, police terrorism, developing fascism, the threat of world war, etc.; and connects all of these to each other as part of a larger process of globalization and social revolution that we are living through.
Overall, the album is not meant to depress, but to inspire listeners to take on the historical task of organizing, learning, educating, and taking action to transform our cruel, corporatist system to a humane, moral, cooperative one.
The title has a lot of meanings. The cicadas represent us—the people struggling to improve our conditions and change our society—emerging right on time to make our voices heard! They also symbolize stages in nature, as a metaphor for stages in history. Finally, “Cicada Season” represents a time of super-abundance: during actual cicada season, many kinds of animals and plant life are effortlessly fed and nourished, symbolizing the promise of a world in which we can all share in the natural abundance of our earth. This is what we are fighting for, with action and song.
The Zapatistas, a movement led by indigenous Mexicans, who today carry on the legacy of a 500 year-old struggle against colonialism and genocide, use the snail as a metaphor for the slow but steady progress of the revolutionary movement, and as inspiration for the patience it takes to fight this life-long struggle. “Lento, pero avanzo,” says the snail. “Slow, but I move forward.”
Expressing a similar notion, the American union organizer and Socialist leader Eugene Debs declared in a famous speech that got him jailed in 1918, on the subject of socialism: “It is as vain to resist it as it would be to arrest the sunrise on the morrow.”
I believe this. And I hope our music offers you inspiration and encouragement in your daily struggle to build the new world that is coming.
Adam Gottlieb & OneLove’s debut EP “Cicada Season” is available at adamgottliebandonelove.com and on all major digital music distributors.
