“There is no explanation. This is Nazification”, sing the British Marsh Family in their new song, Minnesota. It’s a change of pace for a family band whose bread and butter is humorous parodies and who first went viral in 2020 for singing about lockdown to the tune of One Day More from the musical Les Misérables.
Last week the Kent band joined Bruce Springsteen and Billy Bragg in releasing music in protest at the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by US border patrol agents. All three tracks came out on 28 January, four days after Pretti was shot and killed.
Springsteen said his song, Streets Of Minneapolis, was written “in response to the state terror being visited on the city” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) enforcing Donald Trump’s migration policies in Minnesota. It is now at the top of the US iTunes Top Songs chart.
Billy Bragg, the British singer and political activist who released his own song, City of Heroes, within hours of Springsteen’s, told The Observer he has been inspired by “the courage of the people of Minneapolis”.
“Those of us who can’t get to Minneapolis have to find other ways of standing in solidarity with those putting themselves in harm’s way to stop ICE occupying their community,” Bragg said. “Artists have a means of expressing their support through creative interventions.” and the internet has given us a means of doing so in real time US protest tracks were pioneered by singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie from the 1950s.
The Marshes’ song Minnesota is an adaptation of the 1967 protest track San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), written by John Phillips from the Mamas & the Papas and sung by Scott McKenzie.
Ben Marsh, 49, who writes the family’s lyrics and is a reader in American History at the University of Kent, stressed that this time the song is not a parody. “This one needed to be done in a different way and not be funny, just to try and get a message across of solidarity,” he said.
He said he chose to adapt San Francisco “because of its link to protest, its soaring refrains, its simplicity, its earnestness, and its celebration of love”.
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A video of the family singing Minnesota at home in Faversham has been viewed more than 1m times since it was posted and they have received “thousands of messages” of support, including from the neighbourhood where Pretti was killed.
One South Minneapolis resident who contacted the family told them the song had “moved him to tears”. He wrote to Marsh: “Just to know others outside our immediate bubble here, see what is happening and support us, brings so much hope to us on the literal front lines (also known as our neighbourhoods).”
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Marsh said he was moved to write the song after his four children, who sing and play a variety of instruments in the band, saw Pretti’s killing on TikTok. “We wanted to tell Minnesotans we have seen this before in history. We know what happens next. And it's really important they know they're not just stuck in their street or community,” he said.
The family have approached Universal for permission to authorise and officially release Minnesota on music streaming platforms, after being “overwhelmed” with requests for a recording to be made available beyond their YouTube channel.
Springsteen performed his track live for the first time on Friday at a concert in Minneapolis. The lyrics of the song call ICE “Trump's federal thugs” and his “private army”.
Trump has not commented publicly on the song but a spokesperson for the White House said the administration is “focused on encouraging state and local Democrats to work with federal law enforcement officers on removing dangerous criminal illegal aliens from their communities – not random songs with irrelevant opinions and inaccurate information”.
Photograph by Steve Ullathorne