This week’s offering by the Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell first appeared in 1969, at a time when American foreigh policy in Vietnam was increasingly being called into question. I think that in its quiet reasonableness, its readiness to give credit for a once noble dream, it is one of Joni’s best compositions, and indeed one of the most effective antiwar songs ever. Of course, any plea by poets or songwriters for peace and moderation inevitably calls into mind Shakespeare’s lines from sonnet 65: ‘How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,/Whose action is no stronger than a flower?’, though Shakespeare was thinking of tyrannical Time rather than human tyranny. How indeed, and yet flowers persist.

It is no doubt hardly necessary to point out that the fiddle here represents concord and the pleasant arts of peace, as opposed to the drum which stands for all that is martial and inflammatory.

The Fiddle and the Drum

And so once again
My dear Johnny, my dear friend
And so once again you are fightin’ us all
And when I ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry and I fall
Oh, my friend, how did you come
To trade the fiddle for the drum?

You say I have turned
Like the enemies you’ve earned
But I can remember all the good things you are
And so I ask you, please
Can I help you find the peace and the star?
Oh, my friend, what time is this
To trade the handshake for the fist?

And so once again
Oh, America, my friend
And so once again you are fighting us all
And when we ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry and we fall
Oh, my friend, how did you come
To trade the fiddle for the drum?

You say we have turned
Like the enemies you’ve earned
But we can remember all the good things you are
And so we ask you, please
Can we help you find the peace and the star?
Oh, my friend, we have all come
To fear the beating of your drum

Joni Mitchell