begin quote from:Songs that defined history To actually hear a clip of some of these protest songs please click on word button two lines down:The new American protest anthem |
This is what protest sounds like
CNN's new original series "Soundtracks: Songs that Defined History" airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
(CNN)Black Lives Matter activist Zellie Imani remembers the moment civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson came to Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of Michael Brown's 2014 death.
Crowds
had gathered to protest the fatal shooting of unarmed, 18-year-old
Brown by a white police officer, and Imani remembers Jackson joining the
demonstrators as they marched toward a church.
But Jackson, it seems, had missed a crucial memo.
"I think he tried to have us sing 'We Shall Overcome,'" Imani recalls in the CNN original series "Soundtracks: Songs that Defined History," referring to the popular hymn that has been sung as a protest anthem around the world. The song has its roots in an African-American spiritual from the early 1900s, and became a call for resistance and freedom during the African-American struggle for civil rights.
"(But)
the song doesn't tell us when we shall overcome," Imani continues. "It
is saying that we will overcome someday -- and what we in the streets
wanted, we wanted justice now."
Wanting
justice now doesn't mean the newest generation of protesters failed to
see the value in having some sort of battle cry; a song that could unify
their movement, express their yearnings and provide a balm all at the
same time.
At this protest, Imani says, "people started to chant Kendrick Lamar's '(We Gon' Be) Alright.'"
This shift from church-ready protest anthems to something less gentle and more explicit has rubbed at least one civil rights activist the wrong way.
But
it also shows that the long-held American tradition of protest music
didn't fade away with the social revolutions of the 1960s and '70s.
Artists using songs as resistance, or protesters adopting their work as
de facto anthems, never went away -- with each generation, and with each
protest, there's been a new voice.
Scroll through the guide below to hear the evolution of American protest anthems:
Three women stand with nooses around their necks during a 1946 protest of lynchings.
The year: 1930s - 1950s
The protest: Lynchings of African-Americans
The anthem: "Strange Fruit," Billie Holiday
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than 4,000 African-Americans were lynched across 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. An image of one of these public lynchings so haunted Abel Meeropol, a Jewish teacher living in the Bronx, that he wrote the protest poem that eventually became Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit."
Using
the popular jazz of the era, Holiday bore witness to the atrocities
happening in the American South and turned protesting into art.
Unemployed men wait for a relief check in Imperial Valley, California, during the Great Depression.
The year: 1940
The protest: Economic opportunity
The anthem: "This Land is Your Land," Woody Guthrie
Today a favorite in kindergarten classrooms, "This Land is Your Land" started out as an annoyed response to the blinding optimism of late '30s hit "God Bless America."
American
folk legend Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land" in 1940 as an alternative,
standing in opposition of "Depression-enhanced economic disparity" and
the "greed he witnessed in so many pockets of the country," says American Songwriter.
A protester being taken away by police at a civil rights demonstration.
The year: 1962
The protest: Civil rights
The anthem: "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round"
There's
no way to separate the US civil rights movement from its music. The
song was so integral to its existence and purpose that in 1962 it
spawned the Freedom Singers, a quartet that sang songs steeped in
African-American gospel traditions.
"We
sang everywhere. We sang at house parties, at Carnegie Hall -- to take
the message of this movement to the North," Freedom Singer Charles
Neblett recalls in CNN's "Soundtracks." "Mass meetings, picket lines, in
jails -- music was the glue that held everything together."
Songs
like "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round" may sound like another
performance of a traditional spiritual, but listen closely and you'll
hear lyrics that spoke to the time: "Ain't gonna let no jailhouse turn
me round. Keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin', marching up to freedom
land."
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have A Dream" speech on August 28, 1963.
The year: 1963
The protest: The March on Washington
The anthem: "If I Had a Hammer," Peter, Paul and Mary
Originally
written by socially conscious folk icon Pete Seeger, it's the Peter,
Paul and Mary recording of "If I Had a Hammer" that took off in the
early '60s.
It was popular folk
music, but it also keenly reflected the times as an anthem of resistance
and fighting for justice: Peter, Paul and Mary sang "Hammer" at the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington to "express in song what (the) great meeting is all about."
Peter Norman (left), Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
The year: 1968
The protest: Black Power movement
The anthem: "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)," James Brown
The
assassination of MLK in 1968 not only altered the African-American
fight for equal rights -- it altered the music about the struggle, as
well.
Before MLK's death, "you had
the hymns of unity and change," music and culture journalist Richard
Goldstein explains. But with the rise of the Black Power Movement in the
aftermath of King's death, "the hymns fade and are replaced by much
more militant sentiments in the music."
Two women participate in a 1970s demonstration for equal rights.
The year: 1970s
The protest: Women's rights
The anthem: "I Am Woman," Helen Reddy
Australian
artist Helen Reddy didn't set out to become the voice of the women's
liberation movement, but that's what she became with this 1972 women's
empowerment single.
"I was looking for songs that reflected the positive sense of self that I felt I'd gained from the women's movement," she told Billboard magazine,
"[but] I couldn't find any. I realized that the song I was looking for
didn't exist, and I was going to have to write it myself." The song went
all the way to No. 1, making Reddy the first Australian solo artist to
accomplish that feat in the US.
Four students were killed when Ohio National Guard troops fired at demonstrators at Kent State.
The year: 1970
The protest: Anti-Vietnam War
The anthem: "Ohio," Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
Between
the civil rights movement and outrage over the Vietnam War, there were
more than enough social issues happening in the '60s and '70s to create a
new standard for protest music.
One
of the songs that emerged was Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's response
to the police-led shootings during an anti-war protest at Kent State
University in 1970.
The Guardian, which calls "Ohio" the "greatest protest record"
ever, notes that the song was born out of the now iconic images of what
happened at Kent State. "Neil Young was hanging out ... when his
bandmate, David Crosby, handed him the latest issue of Life magazine,"
the Guardian recalled. "It contained a vivid account and shocking
photographs of the killing of four students by the Ohio national guard
during a demonstration against the Vietnam war. ... Young took a guitar
proffered by Crosby and, in short order, wrote a song about the
killings."
The year: Late '80s - Early '90s
The protest: Systemic racism
The anthems: "Fight the Power," "F*** tha Police"
The
progress of the '60s civil rights movement could be found in the law,
but not necessarily in American communities. Racism and its impact was
still plainly seen in large and small cities across the United States,
as well as, protesters would argue, within those cities' police forces.
This
frustration was funneled into louder, angrier and more direct anthems
like N.W.A.'s controversial 1988 track "F*** Tha Police" and Public Enemy's 1989 anthem "Fight the Power."
A rainbow flag is waved in front of the Supreme Court in Washington.
The year: 2010s
The protest: Marriage equality
The anthem: "Born This Way," Lady Gaga; "Same Love," Macklemore
The marriage equality movement hit its stride in 2015 as the US Supreme Court heard a case that would decide whether same-sex marriage would be legalized across the country.
In
the buildup to this moment, popular culture played a role in pushing
back against hurtful stereotypes and championing equality regardless of
sexuality. It's no surprise that Lady Gaga's self-acceptance anthem,
2011's "Born This Way," and Macklemore's "Same Love," were both securely
in the US's Top 40 songs in the five years leading up to the Supreme Court's historic decision in favor of marriage equality.
In 2014, a protester stands in front of police vehicles in Ferguson, Missouri.
The year: 2010s
The protest: Black Lives Matter
The anthem: "Alright," Kendrick Lamar
Along with the rise of Black Lives Matter, a social justice movement that began with a hashtag in the wake of Trayvon Martin's death in 2012, has been the rise of a new era of protest music.
From J. Cole ("Be Free") to Beyonce ("Formation")
to Kendrick Lamar ("Alright"), these artists aren't making songs
tailor-made to be sung while marching, but they are overtly political
music in an era of increasing outcry at the deaths of black men and women by police.
Like
"We Shall Overcome" did more than 50 years ago, Lamar's "Alright" has
become an almost unofficial anthem for those protesting injustice.
"There are multiple messages," says Salamishah Tillet, an associate
professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "One, you're going to be
alright because we're going to get through this day and we're going to
be able to be here tomorrow; we're going to fight to save this nation
and fight to save ourselves."
"But," she continues, "it's also like, 'We're right' -- this is a morally righteous cause."
No comments:
Post a Comment