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Woody Guthrie, an American singer-songwriter and folk musician well known for his protest songs. Protest songs in the United States are a tradition that dates back to the early 18th century and have persisted and evolved as an aspect of American culture through the present day. Many American social movements have inspired protest songs spanning ...
Some anti-war songs lament aspects of wars, while others satirize war.Most promote peace in some form, while others sing out against specific armed conflicts. Still others depict the physical and psychological destruction that warfare causes to soldiers, innocent civilians, and humanity as a whole.
YearSongArtist1966202419802023"Asteria"Mar 5, 2015 · A collection of protest songs providing a window into the mood of the anti-Vietnam War movement. ... on its list of the top 500 songs of all-time. More on: United States. ... some radio stations ...
- Karen Bliss
- 4 min
- “We Shall Overcome,” 1959. As the decade turned over, the Pete Seeger version of a hymn dating back to the 18th century—which morphed at the turn of the 19th century into “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” and then “I Will Overcome”—made a profound impact after his change of “I” to “we” and the addition of some new verses.
- “Give Peace A Chance,” 1969. Arguably the most world-renowned protest song, John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” couldn’t be simpler in sentiment: All we are sayin’ is give peace a chance.
- “Respect,” 1967. Here is one for women’s equality. With a male vocalist, the Otis Redding original meant the opposite, demanding respect for one’s man: What you want / Honey you got it / You can do me wrong honey / While I’m gone / All I’m asking is for a little respect when I come home.
- “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud),” 1968. Another enduring message, this James Brown song, co-written with his bandmate and collaborator Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis, was adopted as an anthem for the Black Power movement.
- Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
- Woody Guthrie – This Land Is Your Land
- Bob Dylan – Masters of War
- Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
- Nina Simone – Mississippi Goddam
- Buffalo Springfield – For What It’S Worth
- Aretha Franklin – Respect
- James Brown – Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud
- Creedence Clearwater Revival – Fortunate Son
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Ohio
Written as a poem by Abel Meeropol – a white, Jewish teacher and member of the American Communist Party – and published in 1937 before he set the lines to music, “Strange Fruit” exposes the sheer brutality of racism in the United States at the time by way of a stark, powerful description of a postcard Meeropol had seen depicting a lynching. Juxtapo...
It’s remarkable to think that a song as entrenched in the American psyche as Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” started life as an answer song. Guthrie had grown increasingly irritated with what he considered to be the smug complacency of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”(inescapable in the late 30s, thanks to radio playing Kate Smith’s ver...
While plenty of Dylan’s early forays into politicized writing leave room for interpretation, “Masters Of War” sees the then 21-year-old at his most pointed. On the release of its parent album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, he told Village Voicecritic Nat Hentoff, “I’ve never really written anything like that before… I don’t sing songs which hope peop...
This early 1964 track was a departure for Sam Cooke, who hadn’t previously addressed the Civil Rights Movement in his music. But the times were a-changing and he’d been inspired both by Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. (Cooke wrote the song after his band was turned away from a whites-only motel in...
You can hear the moment on Nina Simone’s 1964 album recorded at Carnegie Hall: After winning the crowd with some show tunes she announces another show tune, “but the show hasn’t been written for it yet.” Then she launches into “Mississippi Goddam” and the laughing stops. Written in the wake of the murder of Emmett Till, Civil Rights activist Medgar...
Though the song’s outlived the circumstances, this Stephen Stills landmark was inspired by a specific event: During 1966 the Sunset Strip police got impatient with hippie kids hanging around, and imposed a 10pm curfew – initially targeting the Whiskey a Go Go, where Buffalo Springfield were the house band. The result was two months’ worth of nightl...
“Respect” certainly wasn’t a feminist manifesto when Otis Redding sang the original version, though Otis wasn’t anti-feminist either: In his version, his partner could do whatever she pleased with her time as long as she showed a little respect when he got home with the money. Aretha’s version is very much a demand to be treated right, and she slig...
Though he’d changed the face of black music a few times by 1968, that year’s “Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud” was the first song on which James Brown made an overt statement on civil rights – and it was a typically mold-breaking way of making his feelings known. The tone of the civil-rights movement had so far been one of a request for equal...
Few political songs have been subject to more misunderstanding than John Fogerty’s Vietnam-era treatise. Most everyone got what Fogerty meant in 1969: The song pointed a finger at the class-centric nature of the draft system, calling out the “senator’s sons” who managed to avoid service. (A President’s grandson, David Eisenhower, apparently inspire...
While the old saying claims that a picture is worth a thousand words, in the case of a photograph taken by student John Filo and later printed in Lifemagazine, a picture also inspired one of the best protest songs of its time. The photograph was taken in the immediate aftermath of the Ohio National Guard opening fire on students protesting the Viet...
- 3 min
Apr 12, 2017 · Art emerges: race struggles of the early 20th century. As America pulled out of the Civil War and its class and race divides evolved, protest music likewise shifted and adapted with the music of ...
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Bombarded by horrific images of war, citizens at home made their views known via protests and popular culture. Some of the most enduring anti-war sentiment was distilled through protest songs which were sung and broadcasted far and wide. Today, they are some of the most poignant reminders of the tumult and horrors of the conflict.
