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Jul 1, 2024 · Perhaps the term “protest song” should be paused at a time when everything is being scrutinized for the wrong reasons. Many are simply humanist songs or calls to action that can cross party...
Jul 1, 2024 · Perhaps the term “protest song” should be paused at a time when everything is being scrutinized for the wrong reasons. Many are simply humanist songs or calls to action that can cross...
Jun 19, 2020 · Bob Marley's Get Up, Stand Up and Bill Withers' Lean On Me soundtracked several protests, while streaming figures for songs that call out police violence soared: from Childish Gambino's This Is...
Jul 9, 2022 · A project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council has analysed protest songs from the 1600s to today, creating the first official database of English protest songs.
- The Power of Collective Singing
- “Strange Fruit’’: Elevating Protest Songs to The Level of Art
- “This Land Is Your Land’’: A Response to Wartime Jingoism
- “Protest Music Boiled Down to Its Quintessence”
- Say It Loud
- The Power of The Pop Song
- Another Moment in History
The best of these remain alive today as national anthems or traditional folk songs. The communal singing of songs was also used by slaves in the United States. While dancing was forbidden, the singing of songs was allowed – as long as they weren’t critical of their masters, of course. The slaves used songs such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’’ and “S...
Lynching of African-Americans had become so common in parts of the States since the turn of the century that, as Bob Dylan expounded in his powerful 1965 epic, “Desolation Row,’’ “They’re selling postcards of the hangings,” referencing the distribution of photographs of three hanged black men in his hometown in 1920. When the New York songwriter an...
Born in Oklahoma in 1912, Woody Guthrie was named after Democrat (and future President) Woodrow Wilson. Woody’s father, Charley, was himself supposedly involved in a lynching, that of Laura Nelson and her son LD the year before Woody’s birth, and he encouraged his son to follow his anti-socialist leanings. But like many “Okies”, during the Great De...
Singing songs that supported a sensitive way of life had gotten many Americans into hot water during the paranoid McCarthy era of the Cold War. Union songs were seen as Communist anthems, and their singers were seen by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his supporters as subversives, to be rounded up and dealt with. Guthrie’s friend Pete Seeger, a member ...
Throughout the 60s, both black and white artists would write and perform songs decrying racial prejudice and inequality. Nina Simone’s ferocious “Mississippi Goddam’’ was a violent response to the bombing of a children’s bible group at a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four teenagers were killed. Sam Cooke’s powerful “A Change Is Go...
While the very big and obvious Civil Rights and anti-war movements pioneered the use of protest songs, their use wasn’t entirely limited to those campaigns. By now, politicians were well aware of the power of the pop song. In 1960, during one of the tightest presidential elections in history, John F Kennedy was grateful to have the support of Frank...
Today, protest songs continue to flood out from singers and songwriters old and new. Neil Young’s recent “Child Of Destiny’’ urges us to “Stand up for what you believe/Resist the powers that be”. Lady Gaga turned to Guthrie when she performed at the 2017 Super Bowl, singing “This Land Is Your Land,’’ a year after Beyoncé had used the same platform ...
- 5 min
Jun 26, 2020 · These songs take on some of the ugliest stories in our history and reflect the commitment of Black musicians to telling the truth of how Black people have been wronged, and survived, and fought...
People also ask
Why do we have songs of protest?
What is the point of protest music?
Do acoustic guitars mean a protest singer?
What is the most blatant protest song in hip-hop?
Are protest singers finger-picking folkies?
Why is 'Strange Fruit' a protest song?
For a song to rouse, inspire and disrupt across decades, it must be applicable outside the context of its creation. Many a topical protest song, penned in the heat of events, remains specific...
