Music is essential to social movements throughout American history. From the Revolutionary War to modern civil rights protests, music has invigorated the masses, served as a cultural touchstone for future generations, and galvanized communities to take action. This is true not only in the United States but throughout the world. A quick overview of protest music, with a look at the future of the form, is important to understanding the role of music in securing rights and freedoms.
The very first American protest song was written probably in 1755 by a British doctor. Known today as “Yankee Doodle”, it was originally written as a taunt to American colonists who were viewed as childish, immature and lacking in strength. When the American troops began winning battles during the Revolutionary War, they reclaimed it as a song of pride, and by 1794 composer Benjamin Carr interwove the tune into a suite of patriotic songs entitled “The Federalist Overture”. It was described as a “national air” by 1852, and today remains a readily recognizable symbol of American identity both at home and overseas. It should not be lost, however, that the song retains its significant cultural relevance because of its grounding in conflict.
“A pamphlet, no matter how well written, can only be read once, while a song can be sung over and over,” observed labor activist, songwriter and folk legend Joe Hill in 1914. Born as Joel Emanuel Hagglund in Sweden, he emigrated to the United States before 1903. In 1910, he was in charge of editing the third edition of the Little Red Songbook, a manual of protest songs sung by members of the International Workers of the World labor union. Many protest songs of this time were original compositions which were not always easy to learn. Hill revitalized the protest song by writing parodies of hymns, minstrel songs and popular tunes, adding pro-union messages, allowing most people to learn them quickly. His most enduring songs include “Casey Jones, Union Scab” and “The Preacher and the Slave”, which introduced the term “pie in the sky” to the American lexicon. He was executed in 1915 in Utah for a murder he almost certainly did not commit, instantly becoming a labor martyr. He has influenced a century’s worth of protest musicians and songwriters, from Earl Robinson in the 1930s to Phil Ochs in the 1960s to Utah Phillips in the 1970 and Billy Bragg today.
In the 1940s, the Almanac Singers advocated for a number of causes, including labor rights, civil rights and American victory in World War II. With a shifting membership that included at times Pete Seeger, Josh White, Sis Cunningham, Bess Lomax and Woody Guthrie, this veritable folk supergroup released only a handful of records. Yet some of their songs, together and individually, have become some of the most important songs in American history. Seeger, who began his career as an intern at the Library of Congress under folklorist Alan Lomax, wrote or revived folk tunes such as “If I Had a Hammer (the Hammer Song)”, “Goodnight Irene” (written by friend and colleague Lead Belly) and “Wimoweh,” which later became better known as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Guthrie, an itinerant musician, radio host and newspaper columnist, wrote numerous American classics. Songs like “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Pastures of Plenty,” “The Sinking of the Reuben James” and “The Biggest Thing Man Has Ever Done” helped ensure his reputation as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century. He also composed what many think of as an alternative national anthem. “This Land is Your Land” was written in 1942, shortly before he joined the Merchant Marine, as a response to “God Bless America,” a song he despised. He recorded the first versions in 1944, one with alternate lyrics. It became a hit single in 1962 for Peter, Paul and Mary, a highly successful folk group in the early 1960s who focused much of their material on the anti-Vietnam War effort. All of the members of the Almanac Singers have inspired numerous musicians since, including John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Joan Baez, Bob Seger and countless others.
The struggle for civil rights is ongoing, with roots deep and wide. James Weldon Johnson, at the time a school principal in Jacksonville, Florida, wrote a poem in 1900 to celebrate Abraham Lincoln. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson, set it to music, and the children at Weldon Johnson’s school sang it in April of that year. That song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” became widely popular with Black audiences, who bought the sheet music and played it at home. By 1919,it was declared “the Negro National Anthem” and was adopted by the NAACP, for whom Weldon Johnson worked as a secretary. Separate from spirituals, rural work songs or minstrel songs of its time, the song reinforced Black identity in positive ways at a time when such songs were quite rare. It remains one of the oldest and most important Black civil rights songs, sung recently by artists such as Alicia Keys and Beyonce.
In 1939, aspiring blues singer Billie Holiday was looking for material for her regular nightclub performances when she came across a song about lynching written by schoolteacher Abel Meeropol. Meeropol, who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Allen, composed “Strange Fruit” in 1938 after seeing a picture of a lynching victim. Holiday insisted on recording the song, going against her record company’s advice to release it on an independent label. It became her biggest-selling song, with over 1 million copies sold over her career. “Strange Fruit” was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2002 for its importance to American history.
Protest music, however, is not relegated to the past. Recent conflict in Ukraine and protests in the Middle East have led to an international surge in protest songs. “Hey Hey (Rise Up)” is based on a Ukrainian song dating to World War I. Singer Andriy Khlvynyuk sang it in protest in the city square in Kyiv after the war had begun, and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd set it to instrumentation. The song charted at #2 on the Billboard US Digital Song sales chart and, #22 on the Billboard US Alternative chart. In 2022, Iranian musician Shervin Hajipour released “Baraye”, a protest song in the Farsi language in favor of women’s rights and the right to protest. In September that year, he was arrested by Iranian police and is currently out on bail awaiting trial. In March of 2023, the song won a special Grammy award, the highest honor in the US for popular music. Although Hajipour has been temporarily silenced by the Iranian government, his music has become a rallying cry for protest in his home country and elsewhere.
Protest music is not the past – it’s a living art form intended to rally people to action and present information about social causes of all kinds, throughout the world. While its cultural roots run deep, its effectiveness cannot be denied, either historically or in the present day. Want to learn more about protest music and how it works? Looking for a new song to listen to? Curious about the history of protest music? Ask us! iueref@iue.edu or click here:
