(Sound) Waves of Protest

Social Movements & Consciousness

Social movements have existed since civilized societies began, from the ancient world and tales from The Holy Bible of the Israelites’ insurrection from Egypt to the 21st century call for global social justice and world peace, humans have fought for equality among class, gender, race, religion and sexual preference. Music has existed since humanity as we know it as well and has been an important and inextricable part of human culture and social movements as far back as the Paleolithic age. As technology allows us to become more connected and informed, and as we have access to more forms of media and messages than ever before in our known history, music is becoming a more and more powerful medium of expression and social equality than ever before. Here, we explore some of the many ways music has had a profound impact on changing societal structure, awareness and organization in America in conjunction with vast social movements.

Abolition and Woman’s Suffrage

Abolition• The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the

Abolition of Slavery (PAS) was the world’s first anti-slavery society, founded in 1775. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began publishing The Liberator, a famous anti-slave newspaper. Slave songs were heard constantly in the field and are the basis for much of folk, blues, country, rock and pop music today. In 1859, Baptist preacher John Brown led an unsuccessful raid at Harper’s Ferry to free and arm slaves, ending in his execution. “John Brown’s Body” was written by William Lloyd Garrison in memoriam to Brown and was sung by Civil War soldiers as they marched to battle.

Woman’s Suffrage• Woman’s Suffrage officially began in 1848 at the first

Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York after Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were barred from attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. The Civil War halted woman suffrage, but it regained momentum and the woman suffrage movement became a noisy one in the early 20th century, with sound, advertising and emotion propelling the message, a combination largely responsible for the 19th amendment’s passage through congress in 1919. Juila Ward Howe heard Union troops singing “John Brown..” and penned the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as an anthem for the woman’s suffrage movement.

Same Song, Different Voice

Bread & Roses Strike

The Bread and Roses strike began in Lawrence, MA on

January 12, 1912 as a result of long hours, poor working conditions and unannounced pay cuts propagated by the American Woolen Company. When women tried to send

their children to sympathetic relatives in other towns,

police and militia beat the women and their children at

the train station, the city declared marshal law,

prohibiting anyone from leaving town (Massachusetts

AFL-CIO).

Bread and Roses

Lawrence was a singing strike. The workers sang everywhere: at the picket line, at the soup kitchens, at the relief stations, at the strike meetings. Always there was singing.- Mary Heaton Vorse, on the 1912 Lawrence textile strike (Painter, P. 10 of Ch. 9)

James Oppenheim wrote the poem, “Bread and Roses” in 1911, inspired by women strikers carrying signs that said, “We want bread and roses too,” a call for both food justice and respect as women. Caroline Kohlsaat and Mimi Farina sang the words to music as an encouragement to women strikers during the strike (Bread and Roses Centennial Exhibit).

Labor Unions

• Many workers considered the development of Union organizations to be a saving grace that would mediate between employees and employers, ensuring workers fair wages, child labor laws, worker’s compensation, overtime pay and other benefits. Wealthy company owners and federal government entities supported by them viewed unions as a threat to profit margins and fueled a heated debate among labor protestors, using propaganda to encourage dissenters who would proclaim the unions another ruling party who would use workers’ voluntary adherence to union rules against them, a debate that is ongoing today. Interestingly, there are almost no anti-union songs, while there is a vast library of pro-union music.

As the labor movement grew, and with the growing popularity of the phonograph and musical recordings, union songs became more prevalent, stirring the hearts

and fortitude of mistreated workers and encouraging union support and formation. Joe Hill was a popular folk songwriter and union supporter who organized many

several successful strikes and penned the internationally-famous songs The Preacher and the Slave(1) and Casey Jones-Union Scab, before being likely framed

for murder and executed by firing squad in 2015 (AFL-CIO).

EducationWhile labor strikes focused on the

right to fair wages, a shorter workweek, overtime pay and safer

working conditions, education played a large role in the ongoing battle for better labor laws as child labor was not closely regulated. Although laws stated that children under the age of 14 must attend school, many parents lied about the age of their children in

order to gain the extra household income putting their child to work resulted in. The importance of a

proper education for America’s youth became an important focus for

protestors and songwriters of the time. 14-year-old dust bowl migrant

worker Lloyd Stalcup wrote and sang this song, recording it in 1940

(American Folklife Center).

Civil Rights and Feminism

• The battle for equality for African-Americans and women in the workplace and American society raged on and found an outlet for expression in music as songwriters and performers pushed for an end to segregation, better job opportunities, equal pay and respect. Folk music continued to be a favorite outlet for the championship of equal rights, and in the middle of the 20th century Soul, R&B, Blues and Rock & Roll entered the scene. The Civil Rights movement incorporated jazz, gospel, R&B and folk as a soundtrack to the push for equality led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and women became more popular as vocal performers. Billie Holiday sang, “Strange Fruit,” (written by Abel Meeropol, a white public school teacher in the Bronx, in the late 1930’s after seeing a photograph of a lynching) as an answer to racism and opposition to civil rights, reaching millions of people with the graphic lyrics and haunting melody, Aretha Franklin performed the Negro National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” (written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900) as the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1950’s, inspiring millions of people to continue the fight for equality; and Bob Dylan became a folk-music icon in the 1960’s with his song, “The Times They Are A Changin,” effectively capturing the essence of the turmoil and change surrounding the movement.

Songs For Civil Rights

Strange FruitLift Every Voice And Sing

Change Is Coming

The Times They Are A Changin’ Lyrical Analyzation

Civil Rights & Vietnam

• In 1964, the historic Civil Rights Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, ending segregation in public places, banning discrimination in the workplace based on race, sex, religion, color or national origin, followed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. African-Americans and women were now legally considered American citizens and voters with all the rights previously held only by white men, including going to war. Music changed drastically during the Vietnam War era in the 1960’s as American citizens at home protested loudly and fought amongst them selves over the moral basis of the war, the draft, the high death toll over seas and the resources being used on the war. With the accessibility of radio and television, music was used as a medium for a message to reach more people than ever before. For the first time, music was consistently influencing a global audience and having an big impact on citizens and governments of other countries while musicians and performers from those countries became enmeshed in the American music scene. As a result, popular music was open to a more diverse group of performers than at any previous time in American society.

The Sound of Protest

Eve of Destruction War

Half a Million Strong

In 1969, during the height of the Vietnam War, nearly half a million people gathered together at a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York to participate in “Three Days of Peace and Music” and listen to some of the most influential music performers of the era. The festival was used by many musicians as a vehicle to express opposition to the Vietnam War through music, a sentiment many of the attendees shared. The Woodstock music festival was so influential and representative of the youth counterculture at the time that the term, “Woodstock Nation” was later used to describe that segment of the population from the 1960s (History.com).

Woodstock!

Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag Soul Sacrifice

The New Face of America

Try Star Spangle Banner

Collective Identity

As America entered the 1970s, protest and social movements emerged as the most popular and powerful tool for common interest groups organized around a collective identity. “Collective identity is the shared definition of a group that derives from members’ common interests, experiences and solidarity,” (Freeman and Johnson, p. 170) marking a difference between recent social movements and the class-based movements of the past. The construction of collective identity implements three factors: Boundaries, which are social, psychological and physical structures that differentiate a challenging group from dominant groups; Consciousness, which “consists of the interpretive frameworks that emerge from a group’s struggle to define and realize its [common] interests,” ( Freeman and Johnson, p. 175) and Negotiation, which are the symbols and actions used by groups to resist and restructure existing dominant systems (Freeman and Johnson, p.176). Because of the wide accessibility of music in TV, radio, vinyl and 8 track recordings and live concerts, music became an even more important tool of social movements for negotiation, establishing boundaries and expression of collective consciousness.

Women’s Liberation Movement & Feminism

As more and more women chose to enter the workplace, political and community arenas, the women’s liberation movement took up where woman’s suffrage left off and demanded equal pay, equal job and political opportunities and recognition as strong, multi-faceted individuals who rejected the old-fashioned restrictions limiting their place in society to menial jobs and homemaking tasks. Many women found expression through the music of strong female icons like Carole King, Carly Simon, Helen Reddy, Joni Mitchell, and Aretha Franklin among many others. The female rock star was no longer an endearing anomaly but a legitimate contender on the music scene, rallying women everywhere to step out of stereotypical roles and attitudes and embrace a new feminist culture of intelligence, strength, capability and respect. The male-dominant population was largely unimpressed, however and radio stations refused to play Helen Reddy’s anthem, “I Am Woman,” during the summer of 1972 as music critics labeled it as representing “all that is silly in the women’s lib movement” (Wollman). The music and the woman persevered, however, and the song reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in December 1972.

Gay and Lesbian RightsAs the cry for gay and lesbian rights grew louder from the 1970s into the 1980s, a previously unknown virus called AIDS struck. Previously separated into gay male and lesbian female groups, the two united to support AIDS awareness, research funding and treatment. More musicians came out of the closet and some of the most popular male performers of the 1980s were openly gay such as Elton John, Freddie Mercury of Queen, George Michael and the Pet Shop Boys, but it wasn’t until the 1990’s that lesbian female rockers started to break into mainstream music with women like Melissa Etheridge, K.D. Lang and The Indigo Girls paving the way. Many performers, male and female, gay, lesbian, bisexual and straight, supported AIDS research and equal rights for the LGBTQ community. In 1985 artists Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Gladys Knight recorded the hit song, “That’s What Friends Are For,” the first song dedicated to raising AIDS awareness, raising $3 million for AIDS research and funding (dionnewarwick.us).

National and Global AwarenessDuring the 1980’s and 1990’s American society turned their attention toward widespread national and global issues of social justice and equality. Food rights were an important part of the social justice movement and music continued to play an ever stronger, more influential and increasingly financially beneficial role in social justice movements with huge benefit concerts like Live Aid, Farm Aid and Free Tibet becoming annual events raising awareness of social justice issues by reaching billions of viewers and raising huge sums of money for funding to provide food and support for the oppressed and underprivileged subjects of the benefit concerts. Band Aid (with “We Are the World”) and USA for Africa (“Do They Know It’s Christmas?”) were two supergroups comprised of many of the world’s most famous pop stars who joined together to record and perform songs to raise awareness, support and funding for global social justice causes.

Inspired by USA for Africa the first Live Aid benefit concert was simultaneously broadcast in Philadelphia and London on July 13, 1985 including beamed-in and taped performances from Holland, Japan, Austria, Yugoslavia, Norway, Germany, Australia and what was then still called the Soviet Union, a world and music first. Live Aid 1985 reached 1.4 billion viewers and raised $200 million for African famine relief. Live Aid musicians performed for free and included Queen, David Bowie, Elton John, Paul McCartney, the Pretenders, Adam Ant, INXS, Elvis Costello, B.B. King, Sade, Run-DMC, Judas Priest, Bryan Adams, the Beach Boys, Santana, Tom Petty, the Cars, Eric Clapton, Duran Duran, Mick Jagger with Tina Turner, Madonna, and Bob Dylan, who closed the show with a performance of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” featuring the Stones’ Keith Richards and Ron Wood. Led Zeppelin, The Who, Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young and Black Sabbath reunited for the performance (MTV news). The concert was put together in just three weeks and many of the performances were quite sloppy on a musical level as a result, but the spirit of the event inspired people, through music, to open their eyes, unite and help others, a spirit that lives on and grows larger in the 21st century. Live Aid proved that music truly could unite and change the world, inspiring countless future benefit concerts and musical collaborations to this day.

We Are The World 1985

Farm Aid

Highwaymen 1985Neil Young & Willie Nelson 1995

Tibetan Freedom Festival

Music is a Message