The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once described the freedom songs of the civil rights movement as “ the soul of the movement .” Like the members of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and the Black Lives Matter movement, among others, music and protest go hand-in-hand.
“The genre that we think of as protest song has an immense amount of diversity around it,” said Dr. Elizabeth G. Elmi, assistant professor of music at Williams College. “Protest songs are inherently reflections of the cultures that are producing them, sometimes individually being created by specific artists, but also by collective groups and also by those who are receiving those songs and kind of building them into a popular consciousness that therefore sort of transforms them in a variety of different ways.”
Elmi said many of the most beloved protest songs in history, such as “We Shall Overcome,” are “memorable, easily repeatable in groups, easily teachable to lots of different people.”
Dorian Lynskey, author, journalist and podcaster, said another element of protest songs that span generations is a sense of vagueness or opacity that allows for the song to be applicable to many different kinds of movements or causes.
“(Bob Dylan’s) ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ I think, is a really interesting example of a song where you’re not quite clear what it’s saying, but it’s very powerful,” Lynskey said. “It’s a little in the vein of Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On,’ where it’s really full of questions rather than statements, and it is expressing an unease with the way that the world is. That must have seemed extremely topical when it came out, and yet, it still seems relevant now.”
For Boston musician and educator Lovely Hoffman, powerful protest songs are about authenticity and personal experience, even if the audience isn’t entirely privy to the artist’s life.
“Sometimes it’s more subtle, where the artist is very artful and crafty in the way they deliver their message,” Hoffman said. “Sometimes the audience doesn’t even know that they’re actually learning about or being exposed to some type of injustice or wrong that’s being done. But I also think that protest songs can be very impactful when the artist is speaking from their experience or as a member of a community who has been exposed to a wrongdoing or injustice.”
A more recent example of a well-known protest anthem that’s gone from the stage to the streets is Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” which exhibits all of the elements which Elmi, Lynskey and Hoffman said make a timeless protest song, with Lynskey comparing it to “We Shall Overcome” – a favorite of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement .
“The verse (of ‘Alright’) is very knotty and specific in some way. It’s sometimes angry, panicky, pessimistic. And then you get to the chorus, and it’s this release. But it’s that contrast – it’s not glib or banal, complacent, you know, ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ It’s, ‘Despite all the stuff I’ve just described in the verses, this is what I believe.’ But there’s something quite so provisional about it, and the idea that you have to fight for that; you can’t just expect that things are going to be all right.”
GUESTS
- Dorian Lynskey , journalist, podcaster, author of several books, including “ 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs ”
- Dr. Elizabeth G. Elmi , assistant professor of music at Williams College
- Lovely Hoffman , educator, singer, songwriter and award-winning musical theatre performer from Roxbury
