U2 - "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
From War
Released in 1983
Recommended Age Group: Secondary and College
Before I was a K-12 educator, I had a decent career as a college educator. I taught mostly introductory English courses with an emphasis on argumentation and research, but I always found that to be a bit repetitive. Every semester hitting Toulmin, research databases, and thesis statements; I loved it and believe in it, but I needed something to get my classes going. So early in my career I started playing music to give each semester a flavor different from the last. Although "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was not the first song that I taught, it was the first that I spent a vast amount of time with as a teacher.
I was introduced to this song in a college English class as a piece of poetry. Before that, U2 was that band from the ill fitting iPod commercials and I only had heard the singles from 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. Something hit though when I heard "Sunday"; it had a purposive nature and its military cadence reminded me of "London Calling". So, a few months later when I was in Scotland, I bought a copy of War on vinyl and listened to it when I got back to Utah. However, nothing really stuck to my like "Sunday."
Maybe that is why it is such a great teaching tool: it unfolds for the listener with each word and it deeply connects cultural and historical subjects. At the base it is a song about the Irish partition in the 20th Century and the political, social, and religious separation between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. However, the Irish Republican Army, Sinn Fein, nor the British Empire are not name checked throughout the song. Instead Bono, with the military gait set by the band, puts out a personal message of the innocence lost in war torn areas like Ireland. In a 2016 interview, Bono stated a desire to contrast the 1916 Easter Uprising with Easter Sunday, a military coup mixed with a resurrection. However, once the large puzzle pieces of Irish 20th Century history are in place, the song can grow in meaning. The term Bloody Sunday is a reference point for massacres by powerful governments against dissenting groups and there are quite a few within the 20th Century. Bono, in the same interview, talks to about the adaptive nature of this song as a song about the "troubles" faced by any group in an area of turmoil. This same adaptive nature allows the song to be discussed and given new life depending on the person singing it and the world events surrounding them.
This version gives a bit of context to the meaning of the song without giving too much away ("This is not a rebel song"). The performance is excellent as well.
To teach it, a teacher nor the learner needs to have an expansive grasp of Irish history. Instead, the song can be broken down by lines and discussed as a protest song, but not a "rebel" song. Lines like
"Bodies strewn across the dead end street
But I won't heed the battle call"
and
"And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart"
are vague in the historical context, but rich in personal experience. Handing students the lyric sheet for analysis can yield deep insights into the meaning without ever discussing artist, history, or social contexts. However, the conversation is enriched when a teacher reveals the historical background and gives a larger understanding to the students. How I have used it in the past is to show how a single song can open up to a much larger topic for academic and cultural discussion and then we talk about topics for a long term project and give students time to think about the slice of the academic pie they are researching and whether it could be too large for their academic work.
At baseline "Sunday" deserves to be taught due to its historical and cultural contexts; just give students a few minutes to dissect it and see what new contexts might be available to this generation.
Perhaps my favorite version of the song. Instead of it being a military sounding march, it transforms into a mournful ballad. The introduction by Bono about Inniskillin and the bombings in that town gives historical understandings to the ideas powering the song. However, know that at 4:08 Bono passionately uses an expletive, but the introduction is worth the time for more context.
Uploaded by 平和Adilton on 2017-01-22.
