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May 16, 2019 · Music is a powerful tool that many singers, songwriters, organizers, and activists have used as a means of protest. From Woody Guthrie to Nina Simone and Dan Bern to Ani DiFranco, American history is filled with incredible activist musicians. These artists sang for Civil Rights, feminism, and peace movements.
- Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” This track has to be at the top of the list; it’s that influential. One of the first racism protest songs to be recorded in popular music, 1939’s “Strange Fruit” is based off a poem written by Abel Meeropol.
- Woody Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land” One of the most iconic songs in American lore, “This Land Is Your Land” is actually such an important protest song for the verses that aren’t typically sung.
- “We Shall Overcome,” Pete Seeger. Written as a gospel hymn by a Methodist minister in 1900 and originally adapted during a tobacco workers strike in 1945, “We Shall Overcome” came to represent defiance, endurance, tenacity and sheer determination.
- Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind” The tune that endeared Dylan to legions of card-carrying folkies, “Blowin’ in the Wind” remains the standard template for every protest song that’s come along ever since.
Political Folk follows in the footsteps of the legendary Woody Guthrie, whose highly polemical folk songs inspired a generation of tough-minded, activist singer/songwriters including Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs; simply, protest music follows the aesthetic traditions of folk, but with lyrics which take a definite, usually left-wing, political stance.
Feb 21, 2017 · As America enters its most turbulent political time in decades can folk regain the social relevance it once had as the musical voice of resilience and resistance?.
Political Folk follows in the footsteps of the legendary Woody Guthrie, whose highly polemical folk songs inspired a generation of tough-minded, activist singer/songwriters including Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs; simply, protest music follows the aesthetic traditions of folk, but with lyrics which take a definite, usually left-wing, political stance.
Jan 25, 2020 · For centuries, music has been used to make political points. Modern protest music got its start in the early part of the 20th century, when marchers on labor’s picket lines needed something...
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Oct 25, 2022 · From Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and The Weavers to later legends like Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, these early folk icons sang of economic inequity and racial injustice. Their songs were unabashedly political in nature, yet it was this unlikely subgenre that was largely responsible for first bringing folk music to the American ...
