Features

Musings on Protest Music

On a day in which Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello is calling for 10,000 guitarists to join him in New York City as part of Occupy Wall Street’s May Day demonstration, we offer the first part of Pete Mason’s feature on protest music.

America’s musical canon has developed and evolved over the past two centuries, yielding genres that are as broad and wide-ranging as the backgrounds of its citizens. From religious music came folk, gospel, Appalachian and later bluegrass. Rock grew from jazz and blues while hip-hop and rap developed from the soul and R&B mixed with a dose of gospel and spoken word. Punk and metal added harder sounds to rock via the psychedelic era as the alternative and indie rock of the past two decades filled the voids overlooked by other styles of music. Intertwined in all these genres is protest music, which does not align itself within one style, no more than an idea is owned by only one group of people.

Protest songs can be written to fit any cause, any action or inaction by a government and give voice to the concerns of those who are otherwise unable to share their voice with others. The names Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, Fela Kuti, John Lennon, John Mellencamp, Megadeth, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Neil Young, Pearl Jam, REM, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day and U2 all come to mind when protest music is mentioned, yet the evolution of protest music as a popular form of music is as important as the development of our nation as a whole.

In the early 1800s, music often celebrated the causes of the time: abolition, abstention from alcohol, war, woman’s suffrage and patriotism, among others. Few of these songs last to present day in their original form, although some can find their musical roots in later songs. In the second half of the 19th century, there were more songs about freedom and abolition but it was not until the labor movement began to pick up steam around the turn of the century that songs of protest first took hold.

One of earliest and best known protest songs of the labor movement was by Joe Hill, an activist affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World. “The Preacher and the Slave” called for fairness and equality for those workers who contributed to the growth of the nation. The musical basis for “The Preacher and the Slave” was a Christian hymn “In the Sweet By-and-By,” dating back to the mid-1800s, and in the course of the lyrics Hill coined the phrase ‘the pie in the sky’, referring to the idea that when you die, you will (purportedly) get all the rewards you desire, yet meanwhile during life, the rewards are not so much. Other songs by of this era include “There is Power in a Union” by Hill and “Bread and Roses “by James Oppenheim and Caroline Kohlsaat, referring to the Bread and Roses Strike at a textile plant in Massachusetts in the winter of 1912.

When World War I began in 1914, America was neutral and songs of the era reflected America’s thoughts on The Great War. “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier” by Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi pointed out the degree to which Americans did not want to get involved in a conflict that was based in Europe and had little direct effect on this country. Sending soldiers to die for a cause overseas (and leaving children without a father, or in some cases a father without his child) was something nearly unheard of for this generation, having had only a short Spanish-American War in 1898 as the recent war of note.

The Great Depression brought about songs of despair and lament for a fair shake, very much like today. The most moving songs from the era, “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” is as relevant today as it was in the early 1930s. The lyrics evoke questions of the working class who put in their hours defending the country in World War One and built up the country upon their return, but once the tough times hit, they have nothing to fall back on and are in bread lines.

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?