Search 'songs about Paris massacre' or variations therein and absolutely nothing turns up other than politicians, bloggers and news reports on YouTube. Where oh where can our songwriters be— writing about brands and fans and sex, maybe?

I spent 45 minutes the other night searching for something to post about the brutal murders in the French capital on 11.13.15 and finally settled on the beautiful elegy by Antoine Leiris to the mother of his child that started off as an open letter and ended up as a BBC-created monologue.

Neil McCormick in the The Telegraph UK writes about the power of music and its rallying cry in times of need. He does it eloquently:

Under the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, it was a crime to possess a radio. When Sharia was imposed on parts of northern Mali in 2012 during the civil war, musical expression was outlawed, punishable by death. Militants destroyed recording studios, dismantled radio stations and amputated the limbs of people caught playing instruments. This is a vision Islamic terrorists would impose on the rest of us: a world without melody.

This is not our way. Music, dancing and singing are part of everyone's everyday existence. The Bataclan massacre, as U2 singer Bono put it, was a "direct hit on music."

It is the nature of terrorism to hit where it hurts. So if bands shy away from touring Europe, if audiences grow fearful of gathering to watch them, we will all suffer. This is when we need musicians to sing up and be counted.

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