Renowned Hawaiian musician and guitarist Makana was invited to play instrumental background music at the APEC Summit gala dinner Saturday night here in Honlulu. At the dinner, Makana opened his jacket to reveal a t-shirt which read, “Occupy with Aloha.”
Then, instead of performing the background instrumental he was scheduled to play, he started to sing a protest song he had released earlier that day. As world leaders, including Obama and Chinese Premier Hu Jintao, sat in the audience, Makana sang his new song inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, “We are the Many.” “I started out very subtlety and subliminally, and I was like, ‘ye come here, gather on stage. The time has come for us to voice our rage,’” Makana says. “Then I realized that, ‘Wow! I didn’t get in trouble!’ So I played it again.”
We’ll occupy the streets, we’ll occupy the courts and we’ll occupy the offices until you do the bidding of the many not the few. That seems to be the chorus of the song. Watch it on Democracy Now!
Awesome …