[Sting]: They Dance Alone (1988) I'd been in Chile in the late Seventies with the Police. It was at the height of the Pinochet regime, and there was a bit of a furore about us going there. I asked Amnesty International what they thought and their advice was that I should go, because rock'n'roll means freedom in these countries. So we went out there and it was pretty painful. There were troops and tanks on every street. At the press conference they'd put a little British flag and Chilean flag on the table. I picked up the British flag and threw it in the bin. They said, "What did you do that for?" and I said, "In our country that flag is the symbol of the British fascist party." There was uproar. They called us animals. They weren't very nice to us, the right-wing press in Chile. The women in Chile whose husbands and sons had disappeared would dance outside government buildings with invisible partners. I thought it was such a powerful silent protest and an incredible metaphor for loss and suffering that I wrote this song. They banned the record in Chile. But I played the song over there with some of the women it was written about. It was probably one of the most intense performances of my life. I was put in that situation just because of a song. I'm just a singer.
sillybunnyon August 28, 2006 Link
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