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 | From Chad Bowar, your About Music Editor The recent Occupy Wall Street protest movement has been in the news lately, with the protests spreading to cities across the U.S. Protests and music have always gone hand in hand, and our music guides examine protest songs and music from over the years. | |
All About Protest Music
The most remarkable thing about protest music is that it helps people realize they're not alone in feeling a spirit of dissent against certain injustices, whether on a personal or more overarching governmental level. Great protest songs by artists like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie are so infectious, you can't help but sing along. This is hugely effective in creating a sense of community, helping groups organize to affect change.
| Best Social and Political R&B/Soul Songs
Although R&B is mostly known as lovers' music, there's been a long history of performers using the music to make a point or further a social or political agenda, particularly during the civil rights era. During the 1960s and '70s, various artists not known for "message" songs injected a healthy dose of serious commentary into their songs, and although the tradition has faded with time, it has never completely died.
| Oldies Protest Songs
Vietnam was obviously the main subject threading through pop songs of the first rock and roll generation, as Korea hadn't been thought of as such and those WWII fighting songs were but a distant memory. But as the country picked sides, the children of the greatest generation began asking themselves if war was the answer, or was ever the answer to begin with.
| Why Does Protest Music Work?
Somehow, whether your mode of protest song is a sing-along or more of a lesson, focusing on that simplest of commonalities is something very few politicians, preachers, or teachers can exemplify quite as well as a songwriter. Why is that? I don't know that many people have cracked that code, but I don't think that's quite as important a question to answer, as much as "How can we continue?" Or, even more importantly, "How can we not continue?"
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