Protest Music is Alive and Kicking

By Laura McDowell, WireTap. Posted April 8, 2003.

There once was a time when a senseless war raged in a far-off land called Vietnam. A corrupt and deceitful government ruled our nation. Women, minorities, homosexuals, and basically everyone who was different from the "norm" faced discrimination here in the U.S.

Believe it or not, there were also people who spoke out against the atrocities they saw being committed in America. People like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell, and bands like Credence Clearwater Revival protested what they thought needed to be changed through their music. Festivals and concerts brought musicians and people together and served to raise social and political awareness and dialogue. This was a time of rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, walkouts, and protests of every kind, and the music reflected the spirit of the time.

Remember "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"? "Ohio"? Songs of social and political protest such as these are gone, dead. What do we have now? Ho's in different area codes and what Britney wore to the MTV Music Video Awards.

Sadly, many people believe that this is true. They have given up on protest music and have been sucked into our bubble-gum-and-sex pop culture. It would be obvious to assume that protest music is dead by just looking at that pop culture. America has become a nation more concerned with appearances than substance. We want the glitter of 'N Sync and the neatly produced grunge of Blink 182 -- as long as it's clean, non-threatening, and wholesome.

Well, wake up! Not everything is clean, non-threatening, and wholesome in this world, and there are musicians out there who are still fighting the good fight. They are fighting for what they believe in, against what they think is wrong, and they are fighting to be heard through the blind, or in this case deaf, patriotism of Americans.

Breaking the September 11-Induced Patriotism Blues

These days, when the word "unpatriotic" is hurled at you just for not having an American flag on the back of your SUV, it may seem like no one is speaking out against the government. This is simply not true. Many musical artists, in fact, are carrying on in the folksy, rootsy, revolutionary tradition of the 60s.

Bright Eyes
Check out Bright Eyes' new album, LIFTED; or, The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground. Not only is our scholastic education system criticized (a system that rewards one for simply memorizing facts and not understanding the theory or events that surround those facts), but the reaction of our government to the events of September 11 is seriously slammed. A picture is painted of "the cowboy president/So loud behind the bullhorn/So proud they can't admit when they have made a mistake," a president whose "approval rating is high/So someone is going to die."

The mainstream news stations -- ABC, NBC and, CBS -- also take a beating, when Conor Oberst, lead singer/songwriter of Bright Eyes, asks, do "they give us fact or fiction?" His answer: "I guess an even split." He goes on to say that they treat each "new act of war as tonight's entertainment." All valid points about how the media leads us to believe what the government wants us to believe, articulated well in an ironically upbeat song.

Ani DiFranco
Ani has been screaming her little lungs out and folking us up since 1989. Her songs and poems reflect political, social, and sexual injustices through beautiful music and lyrics. She founded her own record label, Righteous Babe Records, to escape the greed of the major labels.

She has always been vocal and active in defending and standing up for what she believes in. In one of her most recent poems, "Self Evident," which begins with a frightening account of the events of the morning of September 11 -- calling it "the day that america/fell to its knees/after strutting around for a century/without saying thank you or please" - she asserts her protest by saying, "you can keep the pentagon/keep the propaganda/keep each and every tv/that's been trying to convince me/to participate/in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution." The poem goes on to offer a toast to the people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, and El Salvador, those on death row, and doctors who provide women with a choice. The truths in this poem that we hold to be self evident are: "#1 george w. bush is not president/#2 america is not a true democracy/#3 the media is not fooling me."

Ani is also involved with Not In My Name, a group that protests against a war with Iraq. Her 2001 studio album, Revelling/Reckoning, is two CDs full of love, angst, and every emotion in between. She sings about race barriers, multinational corporations, capitalism, and right-wing politics.

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