Who Reaps the Profits? Who Pays the Price?
Arguably the most powerful song Leon has created, "Who Reaps the Profits?" remained in relative obscurity until five years after it was written, only available as sheet music or through various artists LPs, one of which it was originally composed for: Nuclear Power: No Thanks (where it was issued complete with printed lyrics). Come 1986, it was finally brought into Leon's standard discography with a re-recording, and has since become recognised as one of his key songs.
The song is one of several in Leon's catalogue, which contrast opposing worlds - in this case, the powerful, calculating and inhuman capitalist and the black African, enslaved to the system and living in extreme poverty. Leon delves deeply into the latter world, a place where we are not accustomed to going, outlining the appalling suffering which millions have to endure in order to feed the Western capitalist machine, with the accusation/admission, "Nobody cares, nobody sees".
Ostensibly about nuclear power, the song comes to the issue of uranium mining as a component of a much broader system of brutal exploitation, in which the threat of starvation drives people into the mines night and day, slaving away to extract diamonds and gold for the enrichment of the faceless Western capitalist, who is waited on hand and foot. It is known that in 1981, Leon was returning to his 1960s songbook for inspiration, re-working early numbers such as "Money, Money, Money" and "Ballad of the Gentleman and the Docker" for his live LP. And here too we can find an antecedent: "Never Mind the Slugs". This 1968 song contains imagery of turning wheels leaving scars on the landscape from where gold has been pillaged. It is worth noting here the quotation which accompanies "Never Mind the Slugs" in the songbook, Look Here, taken from literature produced by the African National Congress:
"We burrow into the belly of the earth to dig out gold, diamonds, coal, uranium. The white oppressors and foreign investors grab all this wealth. It is used for their enrichment and to buy arms to suppress and kill us."
The first recorded version of "Who Reaps the Profits?" is slower than the better known one, but otherwise built on the same template, with Frankie Armstrong and Roy Bailey contributing vocals. There is also an intervening recording of the song, made live at the Vancouver Folk Festival of 1983, and released on the LP, Bullets and Guitars; this reviewer has not heard that particular recording, but at 3:02, it is presumably substantially cut. (The full version on Bringing the News from Nowhere is more than six and a half minutes long.) It is billed as being by Leon and Roy Bailey, so may omit those sections usually sung by Frankie Armstrong.
Another rendition may be heard on And They All Sang Rosselsongs, where it is covered by Chris Foster and Bara Grimsdottir.
The song is one of several in Leon's catalogue, which contrast opposing worlds - in this case, the powerful, calculating and inhuman capitalist and the black African, enslaved to the system and living in extreme poverty. Leon delves deeply into the latter world, a place where we are not accustomed to going, outlining the appalling suffering which millions have to endure in order to feed the Western capitalist machine, with the accusation/admission, "Nobody cares, nobody sees".
Ostensibly about nuclear power, the song comes to the issue of uranium mining as a component of a much broader system of brutal exploitation, in which the threat of starvation drives people into the mines night and day, slaving away to extract diamonds and gold for the enrichment of the faceless Western capitalist, who is waited on hand and foot. It is known that in 1981, Leon was returning to his 1960s songbook for inspiration, re-working early numbers such as "Money, Money, Money" and "Ballad of the Gentleman and the Docker" for his live LP. And here too we can find an antecedent: "Never Mind the Slugs". This 1968 song contains imagery of turning wheels leaving scars on the landscape from where gold has been pillaged. It is worth noting here the quotation which accompanies "Never Mind the Slugs" in the songbook, Look Here, taken from literature produced by the African National Congress:
"We burrow into the belly of the earth to dig out gold, diamonds, coal, uranium. The white oppressors and foreign investors grab all this wealth. It is used for their enrichment and to buy arms to suppress and kill us."
The first recorded version of "Who Reaps the Profits?" is slower than the better known one, but otherwise built on the same template, with Frankie Armstrong and Roy Bailey contributing vocals. There is also an intervening recording of the song, made live at the Vancouver Folk Festival of 1983, and released on the LP, Bullets and Guitars; this reviewer has not heard that particular recording, but at 3:02, it is presumably substantially cut. (The full version on Bringing the News from Nowhere is more than six and a half minutes long.) It is billed as being by Leon and Roy Bailey, so may omit those sections usually sung by Frankie Armstrong.
Another rendition may be heard on And They All Sang Rosselsongs, where it is covered by Chris Foster and Bara Grimsdottir.
"'Who Reaps the Profits?' asks more fundamental questions: about the violence done to the earth, about the destruction of the indigenous people of the world in the scramble to exploit the earth's resources, about the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, about the kind of society which demands nuclear power, a society motivated by competition, profit and greed, a society whose values are hollow, devoid of all feeling and humanity, a society driven by some mad logic and a technology out of control towards its own extinction." - sleevenotes to Nuclear Power: No Thanks
“I wrote this song for that LP [‘Nuclear Power: No Thanks’]. It was intended to be a song about uranium mining on land – in Australia, Namibia, Canada – which properly belongs to indigenous people. But it grew to be more than that: a song about dreams colliding, about two different ways of looking at the earth and its resources.” - LR (sleevenotes to The World Turned Upside Down (CD box set), p38-39)
“I wrote this song for that LP [‘Nuclear Power: No Thanks’]. It was intended to be a song about uranium mining on land – in Australia, Namibia, Canada – which properly belongs to indigenous people. But it grew to be more than that: a song about dreams colliding, about two different ways of looking at the earth and its resources.” - LR (sleevenotes to The World Turned Upside Down (CD box set), p38-39)
Recordings
Version 1 (1981)
Version 2 (1983) Live recording with Roy Bailey, from the Vancouver Folk Festival
Version 3 (1986)
Cover Version (2005) By Chris Foster
- Nuclear Power: No Thanks Various artists LP
Version 2 (1983) Live recording with Roy Bailey, from the Vancouver Folk Festival
- Bullets and Guitars Released in Canada only
Version 3 (1986)
Cover Version (2005) By Chris Foster