"Democracy" Rhythm and Tempo?

[CohenHead32]

Hi there, I'm new to the forum and a new fan of Leonard Cohen's

I have a few questions regarding the tempo and rhythm of this tune.


What's the songs meaning?
What is its form? Sound? Rhythm? Tempo?
What's the function of the song?

[John Etherington]

Hi Cohenead32,

Welcome to the forum. This may leave you none the wiser, but here are two quotes from Leonard on the song (both from Jom Devlin's compilation "Leonard Cohen in His Own Words"):

I wrote about eighty verses to it...I have described the cosmos. Anything that happens. I have a verse for it.. I touched on what I called the Russian Honeymoon and how it was going to break down. And I touched on the mess, the racial tension in the American cities that it had to explode. So there was a prophetic quality to the whole thing that was overtaken by events. The Soviet empire did fragment and there were uprisings in the cities. I felt an enormous amount of work was down the drain just because I was a prophet without an alarm clock (1993)

I asked myself, a terrutory that has produced everybody from Dracula to Ivan the Terrible to Stalin, is this really the fertile ground for parliamentary democracy? I don't think so. It was clear to me that the real laboratory of democracy is America (1993)

When the song was released, George Bush senior was president, soon to be replaced by Bill Clinton. During Leonard's present tour, Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush as president, and for many of us the song became an anthem of celebration.

All good things, John E

P.S. Be warned that if this thread turns into a political debate, it will no doubt be swiftly moved to the "garbage bag" of the Politics section!

[tomsakic]

The song also tend - whatever where the author's original intentions - to be ironic. That irony was continued and pushed forward in Cohen's next song about the USA, The Land of Plenty (2001). But whatever USA became, the author is right: the image of America as promised land, the myth of plebeian democracy, an oversea utopia, remained in the common imagination of generations of people, whatever the actual political circumstances are. (Cohen: "Because I think the irony of American is transcendent in the song." See: Zollo, 1992) The concept of America/democracy (as seen from our tired European shores) is celebrated in this song, which was written in the moment when eastern Europe has been "returning" do democracy (and it actually entered transitional capitalism "without human face").

Tired Europe is best described in one of discarded verses, recited on show in New York City, June 1993 (the recording was uploaded to dimeadozen.org ten days ago):

It ain’t coming to us European style:
Concentration camp behind a smile.
It ain’t coming from the east,
With its temporary feast,
As Count Dracula comes
Strolling down the aisle.
From the eye above the pyramid
And the dollar’s cruel display
From the law behind the law,
Behind the law we still obey
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Recommended reading: Paul Zollo, 1992, Songwriters on Songwriting. Leonard Cohen, at http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/zollo.html