Songs for “Dark Times”
Video link
Songs for “Dark Times” (Jim Novak)
“Truly I live in dark times!” That’s how Bertolt Brecht described the oppressive atmosphere in Europe in the 1930s. Art and music should be forms of witness, he said, especially in times of crisis. Even things that are thought to be “beautiful” take on a political edge. He wrote:” A conversation about trees is almost a crime / Because it involves a silence about so many misdeeds.”
At “Songwriters Open Mic “ we’ve heard over the past several weeks a number of songs, including brand-new songs, about dark times — in Minneapolis, Venezuela, Greenland — with all the grim realities (and misdeeds) that those place names have recently come to connote.
Songwriters Open Mic is a virtual stage for addressing whatever is on the songwriter’s mind: the sunnier days, struggles for decency, and darker moments of our times.
This video from February 10, 2026, is a combination of a Brecht poem about the dark times together with my own song, written years ago, called “Center of the Universe.” I put them together that night because I was impressed with how many of the open mic songs (old and new), performed in recent weeks, were about versions of the dark times that Brecht spoke of. (In Brecht’s day, it was fascism on the rise: 100 years ago precisely —1926 — in Germany there were paramilitary groups creating the infrastructure for dictatorship…. and Brecht was about to start his first musical collaboration with Kurt Weill.)
Brecht said:
In the dark times,
Will there be singing?
There will be singing…
Of the dark times.
In January and February, we’ve had songs for these “dark times” from performers coming in (via Zoom) from California, New York, Nevada, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and Texas. For information about Songwriters Open Mic, and to listen or perform, write me at jimnovakmusic AT gmail DOT com.
Jim Novak
