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PopMatters Picks: Say It Loud! 65 Great Protest Songsby PopMatters Staff20 July 2007 Part 5: Public Enemy to Dixie Chicks (1989-2006)By PopMatters StaffThe brave, early activists of the US AIDS movement knew that Silence = Death. Throughout history it's "Put up", we're told, "Shut up", we're threatened. Praise to those who set their protest to song and act up!
19 July 2007 Part 4: Heaven 17 to N.W.A. (1981-1988)By PopMatters StaffSarcasm, irony, tongue-in-cheek, parody. Thumb your nose at 'em. Flip 'em the finger. Plug in the amp and blast 'em. That oughta kick 'em outta their apathy and get their asses shakin'! And more thoughts on motivational music.
18 July 2007 Part 3: Curtis Mayfield to The English Beat (1970-1980)By PopMatters Staff"Just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine, go down .." Julie Andrews sang in Mary Poppins. Indeed, a bitter dose of angry words in need of saying, and set to a beat, quite effectively gets heard.
17 July 2007 Part 2: Janis Ian to Jimi Hendrix (1966-1970)By PopMatters StaffMusic truly is the universal language. The best songs of protest are passed around, from movement-to-movement, era-to-era; its singers gaining multilingual fluency along the way.
16 July 2007 Part 1: Beethoven to Phil Ochs (1824-1965)By PopMatters StaffPsalm 100 instructs, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord!". What more joyful sound than the life-affirming song of protest, for that is the sound wrenched from the deepest grief and suffering, from exhausted and diseased lungs, and the voice raised in tuneful protest is among the most beautiful of human sounds. Sing out, indeed!
Edited by Zeth Lundy / Produced by Zeth Lundy and Sarah Zupko Most songs are written for one of two reasons: love or protest. At its fundamental level, self-expression in music is all about raising awareness, the subject of which fluctuates between beauty and outrage—two kinds of passion that rouse people to song in equal measure. The protest song is not simply an idealist’s sing-along custom-made for populous sit-ins and social demonstrations; human protest is waged at every level of our existence, in private and in public, and transcends the picket line to include battles for gender rights, racial equality, and freedom from the tyranny of self-righteous authority figures. The very best protest songs are those that touch upon universal themes that can be reapplied to a multitude of struggles from decade to decade, whether or not they were originally written in response to a specific event.
It makes sense that music—pop music, in particular, the readymade stuff of the masses—is used as a fundamental tool of dissent. Music speaks for us as individuals and groups, in eminently hummable phrases and cathartic dominion; its audience connects with its populist means of chorus and refrain; and its immediacy, its need to relay a message in mere minutes, is a most urgent sympathizer. Protest music’s tipping point in popular culture came in the 1960s, when songwriters like Bob Dylan redirected pop music’s focus to relevant real-time crises, such as the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. It has continued to be a vital method of expression for years since, lending voice to fights for basic human rights and campaigns of logic against hollow governmental agencies, most notably during the tumultuous tenure of the latest Bush Administration and its ongoing quagmire in Iraq.
—Zeth Lundy
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Negritude 2.0: Retelling the Story of Black Music: When Black Pop Blew Up the First Time
By Mark Reynolds [1.Oct.08] Deconstruction Zone: Reinventing the Southern California Novel: Marisa Silver’s The God of War
By Rodger Jacobs [30.Sep.08] Negritude 2.0: Retelling the Story of Black Music: Bert Williams, Godfather of the Black Stage & Studio
By Mark Reynolds [25.Sep.08] |
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