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Protest Songs

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Just had the following email from a teacher friend:

Am teaching a course on 20th (social) history…..I want to do it via protest songs and show them how they reflect the Zeitgeist/body politic etc and reflect the youth of the time.

I have The Specials (Ghost Town) lined up to do unemployment/racism etc, this gem from a little known Sunderland band

http://www.musicme.com/Trafalgar/videos/Aos3—Battle-Of-Trafalgar-5F4543707A794E36426B6B.html

for the Poll Tax riots and Dylan (Masters of War) to do anti-war 1960s etc. Can you think of any more that really hit the nail on the head and sum up a social trend/protest movement/key point in 20th century history?

Well, AWers, can you?

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Comments

  1. With two minutes thought, I’ve come up with

    Vietnam – Fortunate Son, Born In The USA, and Ohio to reflect the domestic unrest

    Falklands – How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead?, Spirit Of The Falklands, Shipbuilding

    Black militancy – Fight The Power, Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos, the whole of Ice Cube’s The Predator album as a primer on the 90s LA riots

    30s Fascism – Dancing (Zounds), Ghosts Of Cable Street (TMTCH)

    Miners Strike – Shirt of Blue (TMTCH), 1984 (NMA)

    there’s loads more out there. How about retroactive songs about suffragettes, songs from Greenham Common, songs about the fear of nuclear annihilation….?

    • I always thought of TMTCH’s Company Town from Silvertown as a protest song of sorts. It always made me think of Milton Keynes, where I lived for a while and the sanitisation and standardisation of our towns and cities.

  2. Personally, I had never heard of Nelson Mandela, the Sandinistas or Stephen Biko until The Specials AKA, The Clash and Peter Gabriel made me aware of them.

  4. Plenty from before the 60s – just Google Ewan MacColl, Pete Seeger etc. It didn’t start with Mr Zimmerman!

    For the Cold War there’s the mighty “Eve Of Destruction” from Barry McGuire, and for the ecotastrophe your pal’s students will shortly live through, there’s Zager & Evans “In The Year 2525”.

    Then there’s the Bard’s oeuvre – check out Talking To The Taxman and other albums from that period.

    For the racial tensions that bubbled up in the late 70s and 80s – and which are still with us – Linton Kwesi Johnson is a rich vein – as is classic 70s reggae in general on a worldwide scale – and more locally there’s the fabulous “Ku Klux Klan” from Steel Pulse.

    I’ll come back when I’ve had a bit more time to think.

  6. ‘Going Underground’ by The Jam; obviously it’s anti- Conservative, but sufficient refs about the arms race etc. to make it a ‘nuclear annihilation’ song? Maybe?

    ‘Town Called Malice’- another great anti-Thatch song, maybe too oblique.

      • 🙂

        About 11 years ago, I taught a lesson about social class through the medium of popular music, containing extracts from many of the songs already mentioned.

        A group of 16 year olds from Hackney just stared at me, utterly bemused.

        This was all before I was acquainted with YouTube, iTunes etc. It took me ages to prepare ‘n everything! Had to book a CD player ‘specially. And I had film clips. On video, I think.

        Ungrateful sods. Ha! I was like Mr. Kennedy from ‘Fist of Fun’.

          • I was actually wondering if I could find my lesson plan, which undoubtedly be very earnest and well-meaning with suitably right-on learning outcomes.

            They used to watch Dave Chapelle DVDs in the break which introduced me to ‘I’m Rick James, bitch!’ On reflection I probably shouldn’t have let them play it but it was funny at the time. Less funny when endlessly repeated and when shouted out in the middle of a lesson.

            They used to bring me bootleg CDs, bless ’em.

  12. Costello

    Shipbuilding (Falklands)
    One Bell Ringing (Jean Charles de Menezes shooting)
    Let Him Dangle (Capital Punishment)
    Tramp the Dirt Down (Thatch!)
    Pills & Soap (Early 80’s Britain \ tabloid press)
    20% Amnesia (Tax breaks leading to Tory 1992 victory – IHHO)
    Little Palaces (urban gentrification \ destruction of community)

  15. Two Tribes – Frankie Goes to Hollywood (Cold War)
    Killing in the Name – Rage Against the Machine (racism, police brutality)
    Strange Fruit – Billie Holliday (racism, lynchings)

  17. Going back a little further.

    My Chumbawumba Rebel Songs CD has a couple which get into the 1900’s. There’s the ‘Idris Strike Song’, sung in the Music Halls in 1911. Then there’s ‘Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire’. There are a load of other soldier’s songs from WWI, many included in ‘Oh what a lovely War’ or on Coope Boyes and Simpsons CD from last year.

    I can remember singing the Gresford Disaster song at school, without realising that the disaster was as recent as 1934.

    Moving to the U.S., there are the Dust Bowl Ballads and ‘This land is our land’. Most of the songs on Bruce’s Seeger sessions would fit in here. Does ‘Buddy, can you spare a dime?’ Count as a protest song?

    Others have suggested Civil Rights songs, but how about ‘Strange fruit’? That should frighten the kids a bit.

  18. Bear Family have several box sets covering protest/political songs (with lots of background information in the massive books that come with those boxes). The track listing of “Songs For Political Action” might give you some idea:
    http://www.discogs.com/Various-Songs-For-Political-Action-Folk-Music-And-The-American-Left-1926-1953/release/4437581

    Their Vietnam War box even covers the protest songs from the other side (the pro-war people) and the songs from the soldiers (during and after the war):

    https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/poprock/detail/-/art/Next-Stop-Is-Vietnam-The-War-On-Record-13CD-Buch/hnum/8977279

    • You could dedicate a whole lesson to the songs of Gil Scott Heron to name but a few:

      Anti nuclear power songs, Shut ‘Em Down and We Almost Lost Detroit
      Apartheid – Johannesburg
      Reagan – B Movie
      Apathy – South Carolina

      Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions also had a few civil rights themed songs:

      Mighty Mighty (Spade and Whitey)
      We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue
      Keep On Pushing
      This Is My Country.

      I shall have a think and come up with some more.

  22. Some areas not covered so far, at least not that I spotted

    Meat Is Murder – The Smiths
    Glad To be Gay – TRB
    SUS – The Ruts
    Police And Thieves – Junior Murvin/The Clash

  23. New Model Army are always good for a protest song

    51st State for there Americanisation of the UK (if you share that view) is a good place to start. Under 3 minutes long and a catchy singalong chorus.

    • The friend in question and I went to nearly every date on NMA’s Love of Hopeless Causes tour in 1993, so he’s probably got that one covered! Thanks anyway, always nice to hear a positive mention of my favourite band round these parts.

      • I loved them back in the 1980s when I was a student in Bradford. Rob the drummer used to frequent the main student nightclub (Pickwicks) and I got to know him a little bit.

        A nice bloke and a sad loss.

  28. Thatcher: Stand Down Margaret ( The Beat); Margaret On The Guillotine (Morrissey); Evil Woman (ELO) 😉

    Mid-80s Anxiety/State Of The Nation theme: Sign O’ The Times (Prince)
    Mid-80s Black Community protest: almost anything by Public Enemy and/or NWA
    Gay Protest: Sing If You’re Glad To Be Gay (TRB); No Clause 28 (Boy George)

  40. Some seriously good stuff in this thread. Here’s an obvious one, interesting for how it got co-opted by Ronald Reagan and the Republicans who clearly failed to pay attention to the lyrics.

  42. a couple from Nina

    Why? (the King Of Love Is Dead) recorded days after MLK was killed – this is the extraordinary full length version

    And she means every word of Mississippi Goddamn

  48. Not a contemporary anti-war song, (about John Maclean and Red Clydeside in WW1, but written by the late Alistair Hulett in 2000’s). Nevertheless it is a stirring song and I love to sing this one with me mates at the top of our voices after a couple of pints .

  49. A protest song about a protest singer (Victor Jara of Chile) written by a protest poet (Adrian Mitchell) and sung by another protest singer (Dick Gaughan).

    • This man did more to politicise me than any politician ever did. And I got to tell him that a few weeks ago when I shared a (pro SNP) bill with him. A giant.

  50. This one from The Super Furries is pretty relevant considering the results of the election in Scotland. Despite being from the Welsh perspective this seems to nicely sum up the feelings of the Scottish people that have led to them turning their back on the Westminster establishment

  52. Pretty much everything Consolidated ever recorded would probably qualify, but this – on the topic of Gun Control – is a particular personal favourite.

    “There’s no more tragic sight, than a heavily armed youth with no respect for life”

    (“Tool and Die” – Consolidated)

  53. Christian Fundamentalism (given that I’m sure you’ve got NMA’s “Christian Militia” yourself!)

    “These are the men who put the right in righteous, such hypocrisy and stupidity is truly out of sight”

    (“Jesus Loves Amerika” – The Shamen)

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