Protest Music Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Protest music encompasses many artistic forms, such as poetry, music, or satire with a dose of politics. As a genre, protest music exists in various cultures. Unlike military marches and national anthems, contemporary protest music and songs criticize a state’s establishment and propose another social vision.

There are numerous classic examples of protest music in the twentieth century. For instance, in Germany during the 1920s, Kurt Weil and Bertholt Brecht composed many subversive songs, which were appreciated by the socialists. In France, singer and songwriter Léo Ferré always defined himself as an anarchist, and even attacked Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in two songs, “Franco la Muerte” (1964) and “L’Espoir” (1974). In the United States, African American artists expressed their subversive feelings about poverty, life in prisons, and class tensions in the musical blues genre. For example, during the 1950s and 1960s, African American blues artist J. B. Lenoir wrote and recorded topical songs portraying America’s engagement in war during the cold war era, such as “Alabama Blues,” “Eisenhower Blues,” “I’m in Korea,” “Korea Blues,” and “Everybody Crying About Vietnam.”

Earlier, novelist and songwriter Boris Vian helped jazz become popular in France during the 1950s with his subversive songs. His most famous composition was “Le Déserteur” (1954), a strong antiwar song in which a humble man writes to the president, explaining in polite terms that he refuses to go to war. This song was released at a time when France was in conflict in Indochina, later to be called Vietnam. The words of the song refer to how soldiers are victims who lose their wives and souls while on the front. In the conclusion, the lyrics relay that if soldiers want to force the narrator to go to war, they will have to shoot him. The song was banned on the French radio because it was considered demoralizing for soldiers and an insult to the French army. However, Vian created many more antiwar songs, including “Le Petit Commerce” (The Little Commerce), in which a merchant explains he finally made a fortune by selling arms and tanks, but then loses all his friends who were sent to war. In another ironic song, “La Java des bombes atomiques” (The Java of the A-Bombs),Vian tells the story of an inventor who wants to show his new A-bomb to all presidents of the world, reunites them for a secret meeting, and then throws a little A-bomb on them. After his death in 1959, dozens of Vian’s subversive songs were sung by other artists.

Famous U.S. songsters such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger composed protest songs influenced by left-wing, socialist slogans during the 1940s and 1950s. Soul music from the 1960s was also a form of protest, such as James Brown’s “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud,” a funk song recorded in 1968. In Canada in 1973, Félix Leclerc wrote “L’Alouette en colère” (The Angry Lark) to protest the Canadian army, which—under a special War Measures Act during the October crisis in 1970—occupied Montreal and Quebec City, plus a part of the Ile d’Orléans.

Singer and songwriter Bob Dylan is often seen as the epitome of the protest singer, mainly because he succeeded in bringing protest songs to a large audience and indoctrinating his music into mainstream culture. Dylan’s songs, “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1962), “The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1963), “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (1964) are all examples. Beginning in 1965, Dylan transcended from the folk scene and brought his vision to mainstream radio.

Popular music, which was predominantly mainstream Anglo-American music, was a convenient means to bring easy listening protest music to the masses. The Beatles included pacific messages in their songs, such as the antiwar “We Can Work It Out” (1965) released during the Vietnam War (1959– 1975), or “All You Need Is Love” (1967), which was the first song performed live and simultaneously broadcasted on television via satellite worldwide. In the United States, music festivals such as Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969 contributed to broadening pop music’s audience beyond the sphere of hippies. Feature films from these two mega concerts were seen by millions, and still allow the twenty-first century observer to witness the high energy between protest singers and their audience.

Philosophers from the Frankfurt school, a neo-Marxist center, had a strong interest for popular music, jazz, and radio. While they were living in the United States during the mid-1940s, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, two of the school’s famous philosophers and sociologists, explained that mass culture does not emerge from the masses; it is rather conceived for massive audiences, produced and distributed as any industrial process. More recently, scholars in cultural studies question the former distinctions between high art and low art in terms of music, and focus on how audiences and individuals can appropriate elements of a specific popular culture into building their own identity. In many contexts, music has become an important part of social identity and systems of fashion.

Ethical dimensions of popular music appeared when cases of copyright infringements emerged. The limit between influence, inspiration, and plagiarism has always been difficult to indicate. For instance, composer George Gershwin could say he was “inspired” by traditional African American spirituals when he wrote “Summertime,” on his classic Porgy and Bess, when he in fact copied the melody of “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child,” and merely added new lyrics.

Bibliography:

Gray, Michael. The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. London: Continuum, 2008.
Komara, Edward, ed. Encyclopedia of the Blues. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Ness, Immanuel, ed. The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2009.
Philbin, Marianne. Give Peace a Chance: Music and the Struggle for Peace. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1983.
Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs. Smithsonian Folkways, 1992. Collective CD with extensive booklet.

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