Protest songs in the United States

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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 a variety of musical genres including but not limited to rap, folk, rock, and pop music. Though early 18th century songs stemmed from the

American colonial period as well as in response to the Revolutionary war, protest songs have and continue to cover a wide variety of subjects. Protest songs typically serve to address some social, political, or economic concern through the means of musical composition.[1] In the 19th century, American protest songs focused heavily on topics including slavery, poverty, and the Civil War while the 20th century saw an increased popularity in songs pertaining to women's rights, economic injustice, and politics/ war.[2] In the 21st century, popular protest songs address police brutality, racism, and more.[3]

History

Nineteenth century

19th-century protest songs dealt, for the most part, with three key issues: war, and the

Oh Freedom", and "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", among others); and women's suffrage
, both for and against in both Britain and the U.S.

equal rights, moral improvement, community activism and patriotism.[7]

The Hutchinsons' career spanned the major social and political events of the mid-19th century, including the Civil War. The Hutchinson Family Singers established an impressive musical legacy and are considered to be the forerunners of the great protest singer-songwriters and folk groups of the 1950s and 60s, such as Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

Many

Edwin McMasters Stanton required that black regiments be commanded by white officers.)[9]

A fervent abolitionist, Transcendentalist critic, and poetry lover, who was a friend and enthusiastic champion of American poet Emily Dickinson, Higginson had been deeply impressed by the beauty of the devotional songs he heard the soldiers singing around the regiment's campfires. Higginson wrote down the texts, in dialect, as he heard them, but failed to provide tunes. The second influential book about African-American spirituals was the 1872 collection Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, by Thomas F. Steward, comprising songs sung by students of Fisk University on their fund-raising tours throughout the county, arranged and harmonized according to 19th-century classical music conventions.

One of the known African-American spirituals is the anthem "

John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1900 and first performed in Jacksonville, Florida as part of a celebration of Lincoln's birthday on February 12, 1900, by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal.[10] In 1919, the NAACP adopted the song as "The Negro National Anthem". This song contained strong appeals to the ideals of justice and equality, and singing it could be interpreted as an act of grass-roots self-assertion by people who were officially still barred from speaking out too overtly against Jim Crow and the resurgence of Ku Klux Klan
activity in the 1920s.

A topical parlor song that is arguably a precursor of

New York Mirror and published in that paper, set to music composed by British-born composer Henry Russell
. Verses include: "That old familiar tree, / Whose glory and renown / Are spread o'er land and sea / And wouldst thou hack it down? / Woodman, forbear thy stroke! / Cut not its earth, bound ties; / Oh! spare that ag-ed oak / Now towering to the skies!" This song has never caught on as a movement song, however

Twentieth century

In the 20th century, the

Vietnam War protests
) all inspired protest songs.

1900–1920; labor movement, class struggle, and the great war

Joe Hill, one of the pioneering protest singers of the early 20th century

The vast majority of American protest music from the first half of the 20th century was based on the struggle for fair wages and working hours for the working class, and on the attempt to unionize the American workforce towards those ends. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in Chicago in June 1905 at a convention of two hundred socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States who were opposed to the policies of the American Federation of Labor. From the start they used music as a powerful form of protest.[12]

One of the most famous of these early 20th century "

Wobblies" was Joe Hill, an IWW activist who traveled widely, organizing workers and writing and singing political songs. He coined the phrase "pie in the sky", which appeared in his most famous protest song "The Preacher and the Slave
" (1911). The song calls for "Workingmen of all countries, unite / Side by side we for freedom will fight / When the world and its wealth we have gained / To the grafters we'll sing this refrain." Other notable protest songs written by Hill include "The Tramp", "There Is Power in a Union", "Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—Union Scab".

Another known song of this period was "

Bread and Roses strike") and has been subsequently taken up by protest movements throughout the 20th century.[13]

The advent of World War I (1914–1918) resulted in a great number of songs against the war in general, and specifically in America against the U.S.'s decision to enter the European war. One of the successful protest songs to capture the widespread American skepticism about joining in the European war was "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier", (1915) by lyricist Alfred Bryan and composer Al Piantadosi.[14] Many of these war-time protest songs took the point of view of the family at home, worried about their father/husband fighting overseas. One such song of the period which dealt with the children who had been orphaned by the war was "War Babies", from 1916, with music composed by James F. Hanley and lyrics written by Ballard MacDonald, which spoke to the need for taking care of orphans of war in an unusually frank and open manner.[15] For a typical song written from a child's point-of-view, see

No Man's Land on the telephone (then a recent invention), unaware that he has been killed in combat.[16]

1920s–1930s; the great depression and racial discrimination

The 1920s and 30s also saw the continuing growth of the union and labor movements (the IWW claimed at its peak in 1923 some 100,000 members), as well as widespread poverty due to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, which inspired musicians and singers to decry the harsh realities which they saw all around them. It was against this background that folk singer Aunt Molly Jackson was singing songs with striking Harlan coal miners in Kentucky in 1931, and writing protest songs such as "Hungry Ragged Blues" and "Poor Miner's Farewell", which depicted the struggle for social justice in a Depression-ravaged America. In New York City, Marc Blitzstein's opera/musical The Cradle Will Rock, a pro-union musical directed by Orson Welles, was produced in 1937. However, it proved to be so controversial that it was shut down for fear of social unrest.[17] Undeterred, the IWW increasingly used music to protest working conditions in the United States and to recruit new members to their cause.

The 1920s and 30s also saw a marked rise in the number of songs which protested against racial discrimination, such as

Lewis Allan and performed and recorded by Billie Holiday, which contains the lyrics "Southern trees bear strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze". It was also during this period that many African American blues singers were beginning to have their voices heard on a larger scale across America through their music, most of which protested the discrimination which they faced on a daily basis. Perhaps the most famous example of these 1930s blues protest songs is Lead Belly's "The Bourgeois Blues
", in which he sings, "The home of the Brave / The land of the Free / I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie."

1940s–1950s; The labor movement vs McCarthyism; anti-nuclear songs

The 1940s and 1950s saw the rise of music that continued to protest labor, race, and class issues. Protest songs continued to increase their profile over this period, and a rising number of artists appeared who were to have an enduring influence on the protest music genre. However, the movement and its protest singers faced increasing opposition from

Harvard political scientist who was in charge of military propaganda for domestic consumption and wrote prolifically for popular magazines.[19]

In 1948 Hays and Seeger organized a quartet, which also included a young

blacklisted by the entertainment industry during the McCarthyism era. Right-wing and anti-Communist groups protested at their performances and harassed promoters. As a result, a planned Weavers television appearance was canceled, they lost radio airplay (and royalties), and Decca Records terminated their recording contract. Because of its New Deal and popular front associations, folk music itself was under a cloud as potentially subversive, regardless of content, and disappeared from the mass media.[20]

For the remainder of the 1950s, Seeger continued to appear at camps and schools and to write songs and pro-labor union and anti-war editorials, which appeared in his column in the folk music magazine Sing Out! under the pen name of "Johnny Appleseed". The Weavers were temporarily silenced but returned to sing before a rapturous crowd of fans in a reunion concert at Carnegie Hall in 1955. Issued in 1957, the album documenting this concert, The Weavers at Carnegie Hall, became a highly influential best-selling LP album.[21] A second Weavers LP, Folk Songs Around the World, issued in 1959, was limited to traditional songs and spirituals.

State Department denied Robeson a passport and issued a "stop notice" at all ports, effectively confining him to the United States. In a symbolic act of defiance against the travel ban, labor unions in the U.S. and Canada organized a concert at the International Peace Arch on the border between Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia on May 18, 1952.[22] Robeson stood on the back of a flat bed truck on the American side of the U.S.-Canada border and performed a concert for a crowd on the Canadian side, variously estimated at between 20,000 and 40,000 people. Robeson returned to perform a second concert at the Peace Arch in 1953,[23]
and over the next two years two further concerts were scheduled.

In the 1940s, one of the leading musical voices of protest from the African American community in America was

John H. Hammond, which included the song "Trouble", which summarised the plight of many African Americans in its opening line of "Well, I always been in trouble, 'cause I'm a black-skinned man." The album was the first race record ever forced upon the white radio stations and record stores in America's South and caused such a furor that it reached the desk of President Roosevelt. On December 20, 1940, White and the Golden Gate Quartet, sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt, performed in a historic Washington, D.C. concert at the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery. In January 1941, White performed at the President's Inauguration, and two months later he released another highly controversial record album, Southern Exposure, which included six anti-segregationist songs with liner notes written by the celebrated and equally controversial African American writer Richard Wright
, and whose sub-title was "An Album of Jim Crow Blues". Like the Chain Gang album, and with revelatory yet inflammatory songs such as "Uncle Sam Says", "Jim Crown Train", "Bad Housing Blues", "Defense Factory Blues", "Southern Exposure", and "Hard Time Blues", it also was forced upon the southern white radio stations and record stores, caused outrage in the South and also was brought to the attention of President Roosevelt. A month later, White sang as a member of the Almanac Singers on their much criticized anti peace-time draft album, Songs for John Doe. Despite this, however, and White's membership in the Almanac Singers, instead of making White persona non grata in segregated America, resulted in President Roosevelt asking White to become the first African American artist to give a White House Command Performance, in 1941, for the Roosevelts were great fans of folk music.

After the

anti-nuclear protest songs was Vern Partlow's "Old Man Atom" (1945) (also known by the alternate titles "Atomic Talking Blues" and "Talking Atom"). The song treats its subject in comic-serious fashion, with a combination of black humour puns (such as "We hold these truths to be self-evident / All men may be cremated equal" or "I don't mean the Adam that Mother Eve mated / I mean that thing that science liberated") on serious statements on the choices to be made in the nuclear age ("The people of the world must pick out a thesis / "Peace in the world, or the world in pieces!""). Folk singer Sam Hinton recorded "Old Man Atom" in 1950 for ABC Eagle, a small California independent label. Influential New York disc jockey Martin Block played Hinton's record on his "Make Believe Ballroom". Overwhelming listener response prompted Columbia Records to acquire the rights for national distribution. From all indications, it promised to be one of the year's biggest novelty records. RCA Victor rush-released a cover version by the Sons of the Pioneers. Country singer Ozzie Waters recorded the song for Decca's Coral subsidiary. Fred Hellerman – then contracted to Decca as a member of the Weavers – recorded it for Jubilee under the pseudonym "Bob Hill". Bing Crosby was reportedly ready to record "Old Man Atom" for Decca when a right-wing "committee" headed by Bronx, N.Y., Rabbi Benjamin Schultz and closely associated with the publications Red Channels and Counterattack, began attacking Columbia and RCA Victor for releasing a song that Schultz alleged reflected Communist ideology.[25]
According to a New York Times report on September 1, 1950:

Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, national director of the Joint Committee Against Communism, conceded last night that members of his committee, acting as individuals, had made known their feelings of opposition to the song to the recording companies. Those who protested against the song's issuance on records insisted that it parroted the Communist line on peace and reflected the propaganda for the Stockholm "peace petition." Mr. Partlow said yesterday, according to an Associated Press dispatch from Los Angeles, that his song was "not part of the Stockholm or any other so-called peace offensive." He added, "It was written five years ago long before any of these peace offensives."[26]

Buckling under, both Columbia and RCA Victor withdrew "Old Man Atom" from distribution. Henceforth, mainstream pop music would avoid songs that mentioned potentially controversial topics until the folk revival of the 1960s. Other anti-nuclear protest songs of the immediate post-war period had included "Atom and Evil" (1946) by the Golden Gate Quartet, ("If Atom and Evil should ever be wed, / Lord, then darn if all of us are going to be dead.")[27] and "Atomic Sermon" (1953) by Billy Hughes and his Rhythm Buckeroos.[28]

1960s: The civil rights movement, Vietnam war, and peace and revolution

See also: American folk music revival
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.
Bob Dylan with Joan Baez during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., 1963

The 1960s was a fertile era for the genre, especially with the rise of the

Oh Freedom".[29]

One of the key figures of the 1960s protest movement was

The Times They Are A-Changin'
" (1964). While Dylan is often thought of as a 'protest singer', most of his protest songs spring from a relatively short time-period in his career; Mike Marqusee writes:

The protest songs that made Dylan famous and with which he continues to be associated were written in a brief period of some 20 months – from January 1962 to November 1963. Influenced by American radical traditions (the Wobblies, the Popular Front of the thirties and forties, the Beat anarchists of the fifties) and above all by the political ferment touched off among young people by the civil rights and ban the bomb movements, he engaged in his songs with the terror of the nuclear arms race, with poverty, racism and prison, jingoism and war.[30]

Dylan often sang against injustice, such as the murders of

military-industrial complex as he was making his exit from the presidency. That spirit was in the air, and I picked it up." This understandably must have seemed a distinction without much of a difference to his many anti-war fans.[35] Similarly, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" (1963) was perceived by some as about the Cuban Missile Crisis, although Dylan had composed and performed it more than a month before John F. Kennedy's TV address to the nation (October 22, 1962) initiated the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dylan's initial and extremely fruitful 20-month period of overt protest songs ended in 1964, when he changed his musical style from what he termed "finger pointing" acoustic folk to increasingly personal, abstract lyrics. As he explained to Nat Hentoff in mid-1964: "Me, I don't want to write for people anymore – you know, be a spokesman. From now on, I want to write from inside me ... I'm not part of no movement ... I just can't make it with any organisation".[30] In 1965, however, he reproached fans in Northern England, when they booed him for allegedly abandoning the left, saying, "Come on, all my songs are protest songs."[36] Ray Pratt, professor of political science at Montana State University, believes that Dylan stopped writing anthems and other explicit protest songs because he felt that, under the highly repressive conditions prevailing at the time, there was no side with which he wanted to be associated: "'It's vulgar, the idea that somebody has to say what they want to say in a message type song ... 'Which side are you on?' That's such a waste? I mean, which side can you be on.'"[37]
His next explicit topical protest song would be "Hurricane", written twelve years later, in 1976.

Pete Seeger was a major civil rights advocate (1955).

Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the final lines were "Every time I read the paper / those old feelings come on / We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on." And it was not seriously contested[citation needed] that much of the audience would grasp Seeger's allegorical casting of Johnson as the "big fool" and the Vietnam War the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show, after wide publicity,[40]
it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers Brothers show the following January.

P.F. Sloan's "Eve Of Destruction", performed by Barry McGuire in 1965.[43][44]

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s often used

Everyday People
", which became the band's first number-one hit. "Everyday People" was a protest against prejudices of all kinds, and popularized the catchphrase "different strokes for different folks." The Family Stone featured Caucasians Greg Errico and Jerry Martini in its lineup, as well as females Rose Stone and Cynthia Robinson; making it the first major integrated band in rock history. Sly & the Family Stone's message was about peace and equality through music, and this song reflects the same.

In the 1960s and early 1970s many protest songs were written and recorded condemning the war in Vietnam, most notably "

Vietnam War draft. As an extension of these concerns, artists started to protest the ever-increasing escalation of nuclear weapons and threat of nuclear warfare; as for example on Tom Lehrer's ""So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)," "Who's Next?" (about nuclear proliferation) and "Wernher von Braun"[51] from his 1965 collection of political satire songs That Was the Year That Was. Folk/Blues singer Barbara Dane's protest albums during the Vietnam War included "Songs of the GI Resistance" with active duty GIs, and "I Hate the Capitalist System." The latter included the track "The Kent State Massacre" written by Jack Warshaw. Warshaw, a draft resistor exiled in the UK, wrote several anti-Vietnam songs during his period with The Critics Group specifically for their "Off Limits" series of radio shows aimed at GIs in Vietnam. In the mid-70s Warshaw wrote "If They Come in the Morning" aka "No Time for Love," recorded and widely popularised by Irish group Moving Hearts from 1980.[52]

Bob Marley's music impacted people in his native Jamaica, and around the world

In

reggae music addressed issues of all kinds, but it can be argued that Bob Marley had perhaps the most impact on a generation there, with songs addressing his views on nuclear proliferation, and slavery, in his famous "Redemption Song
", recorded shortly before his premature death shortly afterward. The song urges listeners to "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery," because "none but ourselves can free our minds."

The 1960s also saw a number of successful protest songs from the opposite end of the spectrum – the political right, which supported the war. Perhaps the most successful and famous of these was "The Ballad of the Green Berets" (1966) by Barry Sadler,[42] then an active-duty staff sergeant in the United States Army Special Forces, which was one of the very few songs of the era to cast the military in a positive light and yet become a major hit. Merle Haggard & the Strangers's "Okie from Muskogee" (1969), despite being strongly nationalistic, was listed in PopMatters's July 2007 list of the top 65 protest songs because it is, as the webzine puts it,

in fact a protest against changing social mores, alternative lifestyles, and, well, protests ... In a time when protest songs filled the airwaves, it is ironic that Haggard scored his biggest hit protesting the rise of a discontented culture.[48]

The Youngbloods, best known for the song "

Get Together", subsequently recorded "Hippie from Olema" in response to, and satirizing, Haggard. To prevent any ambiguity about who its intended target was, the song contained the line, "We still take in strangers if they're haggard". Chinga Chavin
wrote the vulgar parody "Asshole from El Paso" in response to Haggard's song as well.

Though originally and still largely Cuban, nueva trova became popular across Latin America, especially in Puerto Rico in the 1960s. The movements biggest stars included Puerto Ricans such as Roy Brown, Andrés Jiménez, Antonio Cabán Vale and the group Haciendo Punto en Otro Son.[citation needed]

1970s: the Vietnam war, soul music

"

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and "Bring The Boys Home" by Freda Payne (1971). Another great influence on the anti-Vietnam war protest songs of the early seventies was the fact that this was the first generation where combat veterans were returning prior to the end of the war, and that even the veterans were protesting the war, as with the formation of the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" (VVAW). Graham Nash wrote his "Oh! Camil (The Winter Soldier)" (1973) to tell the story of one member of VVAW, Scott Camil. Other notable anti-war songs of the time included Stevie Wonder's frank condemnation of Richard Nixon's Vietnam policies in his 1974 song "You Haven't Done Nothin'". Protest singer and activist Baez dedicated the entire B side of her album Where Are You Now, My Son? (1973) to recordings she had made of bombings while in Hanoi. Steely Dan's "King of the World" on their 1973 album Countdown to Ecstasy
joined the protest against nuclear war.

There has been speculation that the Guess Who's anti-war protest song "American Woman" (1970) is addressed to a female U.S. armed-forces recruiter by a draft-dodger.[citation needed]

While the subject of war continued to dominate the protest songs of the early 1970s, there were other issues addressed by bands of the time, such as

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter as a result of alleged acts of racism and profiling against Carter, which Dylan describes as leading to a false trial and conviction. "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go" is a funk/soul song originally recorded by Curtis Mayfield for his album Curtis
(1970). The song was meant to serve as a warning regarding the state of race relations and the tempest growing in America's inner cities.

Soul music carried over into the early part of the 70s, in many ways taking over from folk music as one of the strongest voices of protest in American music, the most important of which being

Inner City Blues", "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)", and the title track. Another hugely influential protest album of the time was poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron's Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, which contained the oft-referenced protest song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
". The album's 15 tracks dealt with myriad themes, protesting the superficiality of television and mass consumerism, the hypocrisy of some would-be Black revolutionaries, white middle-class ignorance of the difficulties faced by inner-city residents, and fear of homosexuals.

1980s: anti-Reagan protest songs and the birth of rap

Main article: Ronald Reagan in music

The

Iran-Contra Affair, in which it was discovered that his administration was selling arms to the radical Islamic regime in Iran and using proceeds from the sales to illegally fund the Contras, a guerilla/terrorist group in Nicaragua. A number of songs were written in protest of this scandal. "All She Wants to Do Is Dance", (1984) by Don Henley, protested against the U.S. involvement with the Contras in Nicaragua, while chastising Americans for only wanting to dance, while molotov cocktails, and sales of guns and drugs are going on around them, and while "the boys" (the CIA, NSA, etc.) are "makin' a buck or two". Other songs to protest America's role in the Iran-Contra affair include "The Big Stick" by Minutemen, "Nicaragua" by Bruce Cockburn, "Please Forgive Us" by 10,000 Maniacs, and "Managua" by Naked Raygun
.

The 1980s also saw the rise of rap and hip-hop, and with it bands such as

Stop the Violence Movement was formed by rapper KRS-One in response to violence in the hip hop and black communities. Including some of the biggest stars in contemporary East Coast hip hop (including Public Enemy), the movement released a single, "Self Destruction", in 1989, with all proceeds going to the National Urban League
.

Punk music continued to be a strong voice of protest in the 1980s, especially as relating to the Cold War, nuclear fear, and conservative politics. As the decade progressed, punk developed a heavier and more aggressive sound, as typified by Black Flag (whose debut album, Damaged (1981), was described by the BBC as "essentially an album of electric protest songs [... that] takes a swing at the insularities and shortcomings of the 'me' generation."[57]), Dead Kennedys (whose sweeping criticism of the U.S., "Stars and Stripes of Corruption" (1985), contains the lyric "Rednecks and bombs don't make us strong / We loot the world, yet we can't even feed ourselves"), and Bad Religion; a tradition carried on in the following decades more modern punk band like Anti-Flag and Rise Against. Of the few remaining old-school punks still recording in the late 80s, the most notable protest song is Patti Smith's 1988 recording "People Have the Power".

1990s: hard-rock protest bands, women's rights, and protest parodies

In 1990, singer Melba Moore released a modern rendition of the 1900 song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" – which had long been considered "The Negro National Anthem" and one of the 20th century's most powerful civil rights anthems – which she recorded along with others, including R&B artists Anita Baker, Stephanie Mills, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jeffrey Osborne, and Howard Hewett; and gospel artists BeBe and CeCe Winans, Take 6, and The Clark Sisters. Partly because of the success of this recording, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" was entered into the Congressional Record as the official African American National Hymn.

Rage Against the Machine, formed in 1991, has been one of the most popular 'social-commentary' bands of the last 20 years. A fusion of the musical styles and lyrical themes of punk, hip-hop, and thrash, Rage Against the Machine railed against corporate America ("No Shelter", "Bullet in the Head"), government oppression ("Killing in the Name"), and Imperialism ("Sleep Now in the Fire", "Bulls on Parade"). The band used its music as a vehicle for social activism, as lead singer Zack de la Rocha espoused: "Music has the power to cross borders, to break military sieges and to establish real dialogue".[58]

The 1990s also saw a sizable movement of pro-women's rights protest songs from many musical genres as part of the

Riot Grrrl movement, including a number of outspoken protest bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Jack Off Jill, Excuse 17, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, Sleater-Kinney, and also lesbian queercore bands such as Team Dresch.[59] Sonic Youth's "Swimsuit Issue" (1992) protested the way in which women are objectified and turned into a commodity by the media. The song, in which Kim Gordon lists off the names of every model featured in the 1992 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, was selected as one of PopMatters's 65 greatest protest songs of all time with the praise that "Sonic Youth reminds us that protest songs don't have to include acoustic guitars and twee harmonica melodies stuck in 1965. They don't even have to be about war."[60]

But, for the most part, the 1990s signaled a decline in the popularity of protest songs in the mainstream media and public consciousness – even resulting in some parodies of the genre. The 1992 film Bob Roberts is an example of protest music parody, in which the title character, played by American actor Tim Robbins, who also wrote and directed the film, is a guitar-playing U.S. Senatorial candidate who writes and performs songs with a heavily reactionary tone.

Twenty-first century

The Iraq War and the revival of the protest song

Living With War
.

After the 1990s, the protest song found renewed popularity around the world after the turn of both the century and the "Third Millennium" as a result of the

Guantanamo Bay
.

R.E.M., who had been known for their politically charged material in the 1980s, also returned to increasingly political subject matter since the advent of the Iraq War. For example, "Final Straw" (2003) is a politically charged song, reminiscent in tone of "World Leader Pretend" on Green. The version on their Around the Sun album is a remix of the original, which was made available as a free download from the band's website. The song was written as a protest against the U.S. government's actions in the Iraq War.

Waits has also covered increasingly political subject matter since the advent of the Iraq war. In "The Day After Tomorrow", Waits adopts the persona of a soldier writing home that he is disillusioned with war and thankful to be leaving. The song does not mention the Iraq war specifically, and, as Tom Moon writes, "it could be the voice of a Civil War soldier singing a lonesome late-night dirge." Waits himself does describe the song as something of an "elliptical" protest song about the Iraqi invasion, however.[62] Thom Jurek describes "The Day After Tomorrow" as "one of the most insightful and understated anti-war songs to have been written in decades. It contains not a hint of banality or sentiment in its folksy articulation."[63] Waits' recent output has not only addressed the Iraqi war, as his "Road To Peace" deals explicitly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East in general.

Springsteen was also vocal in his condemnation of the Bush government, among other issues of social commentary. In 2000 he released "

US Senate, in which he asked "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"[65][66] "Gypsy Biker" deals with the homecoming of a US Soldier killed in action in Iraq, and Springsteen has said that "Livin' in the Future" references extraordinary rendition and illegal wiretapping.[66] "Long Walk Home
" is an account of the narrator's sense that those people living at home "he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers." The recurring lyric "it's gonna be a long walk home" is a response to the violation of "certain things", such as "what we'll do and what we won't", in spite of these codes having been (in the words of the narrator's father) "set in stone" by the characters' "flag flyin' over the courthouse."

Protest against GMO

Promise of the Real, which includes two of Willie Nelson's sons, Lukas and Micah Nelson.[67] By the end of May 2015, the song which has attracted a lot of media attention was video of the week on the Food Consumer website.[68]

Bush administration

Conor Oberst, lead singer-songwriter of the band Bright Eyes, writer of the anti-Bush protest song "When the President Talks to God".

Modern-day mainstream artists to have written protest songs on this subject include

B-side to the track Cinnamon Girl in which he sings "Why should I sing 'God Bless America' / but not the rest of the world?" Singer-songwriter David Dondero
released a song on his 2003 album Live at the Hemlock called "Pre-Invasion Jitters", in which he calls George W. Bush an "illegitimate president" and criticizes "gung-ho war guys" for taking his word as "heaven sent."

In 2002, rock group Sleater-Kinney released the song "Combat Rock" from their album One Beat. In it, the group satirizes Bush's call to support the economy and live life as normal (a statement seen as a push to shop.) This is evident in lyrics such as "..Go out and spend some cash / Red white blue hot pants, doing it for Uncle Sam." In addition, the song opposed many ideals of the Bush administration, particularly criticizing his belief that those who were anti-war were terrorists.

The hip-hop group Beastie Boys had a number of protest songs on their 2004 release To the 5 Boroughs. Songs such as "It Takes Time To Build" and "Right Right Now Now" take particular aim at the Bush administration and its policies.

Green Day's 2004 album American Idiot contains several Anti-Bush songs. The song "American Idiot", was aimed at George W. Bush, and the song "Holiday" is a rant about the War in Iraq.

"Welcome to the War (It's Over)"
by Seriously, Argon Duck
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American avant-garde singer Bobby Conn wrote an album of anti-Bush songs with his 2004 collection The Homeland. Conn has stated that "[a]ll the records that I've done are a critique of what's going on in contemporary America".[72] Conn has admitted that while he actively protests what he sees as the evils of American society, he is not always at ease with such a label for himself. "I've always done lots of social commentary that I believe in pretty strongly but I am very uncomfortable with the role of the artist as a meaningful social critic ... my whole generation [is] a confused group of people with an ambivalent way of dealing with protest."[73] Discussing his 2007 album King for a Day, Conn stated "it's political, but just in a contemporary culture kind of way ... Two of the songs are about Tom Cruise, and I don't know if there's a more political statement than Tom Cruise. He kind of symbolizes a lot of what's going on in this country right now and how people are responding to it."[74]

Bobb Conn on being a "protest singer":

It's great when Curtis Mayfield does it, but when Mick Jagger writes about being a street-fighting man, it just kind of makes you sick. Or the Beatles singing about revolution. They're entertainers – it's a pose, it's bullshit. I'm more of a vaudevillian than I am a political commentator. I don't think people should turn to music for their serious information. People should read the newspaper.[75]

Grammy for "Best Rock Album" in 2005, despite its strong criticism of current American foreign policy and George Bush. The title track
from the album was described by the band as their public statement in reaction to the confusing and warped scene that is American pop culture since 9/11.

In particular, rapper Eminem has encountered controversy over protest songs directed towards George W. Bush. Songs such as "Mosh", "White America", and "We As Americans" have either targeted Bush or the U.S. government in general. Eminem registered to vote for the first time in 2004, just for the sake of voting Bush out of office.

Outside of pop music, folk, punk and country music continue to follow their strong traditions of protest.

Cry Cry Cry, has written many songs of protest since 9/11, including her tribute to that day – "Land of the Living" – however, her most recognised protest song to date is "Line in the Sand", which includes the line: "Another bomb lights up the night of someone's vision of paradise but it's just a wasted sacrifice that fuels the hate on the other side." Tracy Grammer's song "Hey ho", from her 2005 album Flower of Avalon
addresses how children are taught from a young age to play at war as soldiers with plastic guns, perpetuating the war machine: "Wave the flag and watch the news, tell us we can count on you. Mom and dad are marching too; children, step in line."

Punk rock still is a formidable force and constitutes a majority of the protest songs written today. Artists such as

wealth gap
specifically involving the United States' working class.

While country music has offered the loudest voice in support of the war through artists such as

Dixie Chicks ("Not Ready to Make Nice" (2006)) and Nanci Griffith
.

Black Lives Matter and police brutality

After the death of

Michael Brown, Black Lives Matter has become a widely known social movement.[76] Artist have begun creating songs in support of Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality. A primary protest slogan of Black Lives Matter is "I can't breathe" following the death of Eric Garner. These were Garner's last words before he died.[77] Garner's siblings, Ellisha and Steven, took his last words and made the song "I Can't Breathe". Garners family told Billboard the song is dedicated to "the struggle everyone is going through." During the song, Steven raps "A system that took my brother from me / No matter how much money I receive, I can hear my brother crying 'I can't breathe."[78]

Beyoncé has become a face of Black Lives Matter with her song, "Formation". In the music video for "Formation", there are images of Beyoncé laying on top of a sinking New Orleans police car and walls with "Stop Killing Us" painted on it. While she received criticism for her appropriation of Hurricane Katrina, her song still was representative of the movement. A leader of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, welcomed Beyoncé to the movement when the song was released. In an article Garza wrote for Rolling Stone, she applauds Beyoncé and says she "joins only a handful of celebrities courageous enough not just to reference a growing movement happening around her, but to proudly place herself within it."[79] Garza sees the song as support of the movement as she states "Bey told us who her people are, how that makes her who she is," and that the "best revenge is being successful; that she likes her men black, with the nostrils to match." Beyoncé continued her support when she performed the song at Super Bowl 50's half-time show which peaked at 115.5 million viewers during half-time.[80] When asked about critiques saying the song is anti-police, Beyoncé says "let's be clear: I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things. If celebrating my roots and culture during Black History Month made anyone uncomfortable, those feelings were there long before a video and long before me."[81]

Beyoncé continued her support of Black Lives Matter with her song "

Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin. In the video, the mothers are holding the pictures of their children. Beyoncé also had the mothers accompany her to the Video Music Awards in 2016.[82]

After the death of Michael Brown, J. Cole went to Ferguson, Missouri, to speak with the protestors who were outraged by his death.[83] In response to the shooting, Cole released "Be, Free". Cole wrote that "We become distracted. We become numb. I became numb. But not anymore. That coulda been me, easily. It could have been my best friend ... I made a song. This is how we feel."[84] The lyrics of the song include "I'm letting' you know / That there ain't no gun they make that can kill my soul / Oh, no." Cole performed "Be, Free" on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2014.[85]

On November 28, 2014,

shooting of Michael Brown. Rossi wrote and recorded a protest song expressing his feelings about a grand jury's decision not to charge a white police officer in the death of the unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri. "I wrote the song in five minutes as a way to express my emotions about the danger of trigger-happy police," Rossi said. "I filmed it on my laptop at my kitchen table and uploaded it to YouTube." Rossi uploaded the video on November 26, and provided the song's lyrics in the video description. Here is a sample from the song's beginning, printed in the Los Angeles Daily News: "Down at the courthouse on a Monday afternoon/Justice was thrown right out the window when a young white cop entered the room."[86]

Kendrick Lamar's song "Alright" has also become an anthem for Black Lives Matter. The lyrics include "Wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho'" and "My knees getting' weak and my gun might blow / But we gon' be alright." "We gon' be alright" has become a protest chant during the movements of Black Lives Matter.[87] Lamar discusses his song's relation with the movement during a New York Times interview in 2015. When asked if he knew it was becoming an anthem for Black Lives Matter he says, "When I'd go in certain parts of the world, and they were singing it in the streets. When it's outside of the concerts, then you know it's a little bit more deep-rooted than just a song. It's more than just a piece of a record. It's something that people live by – your words."[88] He also says that it is a "chant of hope and feeling." At a rally in Ohio, "Alright" became an anthem for the protestors. A 14-year-old boy got in a confrontation with police over an opened alcohol container. Protestors noticed the altercation and surrounded the police and boy. Once the boy was released into his mother's custody, the crowd began chanting the refrain, "We gon' be alright!"[89]

Janelle Monáe and Wondaland Records also recorded their own song in protest of the extrajudicial killings of African American men and women titled "Hell You Talmbout".[90][91]

In 2015, during demonstrations at Harvard University in support of Black Lives Matter, Joshuah Campbell wrote and performed Sing Out March On,[92] which he was invited to perform again during Harvard's 2018 commencement ceremony in honor of commencement speaker John Lewis.[93]

In 2018, Childish Gambino released "This Is America" along with an accompanying video that served as a commentary on the black experience and police brutality in the United States.[94]

In 2019, Raphael Saadiq released his album Jimmy Lee, an examination of traumas in the African-American community featuring the protest song "Rikers Island".[95]

In June 2020,

Rafa Pabón released the protest song and music video, "Sin Aire (Without Air)," in response to the murder of George Floyd and the killing of Eric Garner, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United States.[96]

On June 4 Los Angeles Rapper YG released a single titled "FTP", a nod to the N.W.A.'s song "F ----- tha Police."[97]

On June 12, 2020,

Billboard Hot 100
and was the highest charting song of his career at the time.

Despite its apolitical nature, "

George Floyd Protests as a rallying cry of defiance against police brutality.[98] In 2021, Rolling Stone called the song "the unofficial anthem of uprisings across the country".[99]

Protest songs continue to be written and produced in response to various current events issues surrounding police brutality and Black Lives Matter.

Trump administration

See also: Protests against Donald Trump

After the

K-12 (film), YG, recorded FDT, and The Bright Light Social Hour, released Tear Down That Wall, on Trump's Inauguration Day.[100]
In 2020, Demi Lovato wrote "Commander In Chief" to address Trump's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter.

Puerto Rican government

See also:
Diss Track calling for the resignation of Ricardo Rosselló.[102]

Criticism

Some artists who are not traditionally right-leaning have questioned the validity of the recent spate of anti-war protest songs. Florida-based punk band

White People For Peace
" that questions the effectiveness of people singing "protest songs in response to military aggression" when their governments simply ignore them.

More recently anti-globalization writer Naomi Klein has attacked the replacement of grass-roots protest by celebrity-endorsed festivals or events, such as the Make Poverty History campaign; a trend which she calls the "Bono-isation" of protests against world poverty. She is quoted in The Times newspaper as attesting that "The Bono-isation of protest, particularly in the UK, has reduced discussion to a much safer terrain ... there's celebrities and then there's spectators waving their bracelets. It's less dangerous and less powerful [than grass roots street demonstrations]."[103]

See also

References

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  19. ^ See "The Poison in Our System" (excerpt) by Carl Joachim Friedrich, Atlantic Monthly (June, 1941).
  20. ^ Compare Woody Guthrie's statement about folk music in a letter to Alan Lomax of 1940:

    I think real folk stuff scares most of the boys around Washington. A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it, or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is, or who's out of work and where the job is or who's broke and where the money is or who's carrying a gun and where the peace is – that's folk lore and folks made it up because they seen that the politicians could find nothing to fix or nobody to feed or give a job of work. We don't aim to hurt you or scare you when we get to feeling sorta folksy and make up some folk lore, we're doing all we can to make it easy on you. I can sing all day and all night sixty days and sixty night but of course I ain't got enough wind to be in office. (Woody Guthrie, Letter to Alan Lomax, quoted in Roy Pratt, Rhythm and Resistance: Explorations in the Political Uses of Popular Music, [1990] p. 115.)
  21. ^ It included "Venga Jaleo" an anti-Fascist song from the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish-language lyrics probably were not understood by most of the audience:

    translation:
    On the eighteenth of July,
    In the courtyard of a convent,
    The people of Madrid
    Formed the Fifth Regiment.
    Chorus:
    Come, clap out the rhythm,
    Dream of a machine gun
    And Franco will do the walking!
    And Franco will do the walking!

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  23. ^ Duberman p. 411[full citation needed]
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    All I can say is politics is not my thing at all. I can't see myself on a platform talking about how to help people. Because I would get myself killed if I really tried to help anybody. I mean if somebody really had something to say to help somebody out, just bluntly say the truth, well obviously they're gonna be done away with. They're gonna be killed" (Pratt [1990], p. 208).
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Further reading and listening

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