World History of Revolutionary Music - Part 1: America

At the time of this writing, the world is not a stable place. From the massive amount of jobs, livelihoods, and lives lost to the looming threat of COVID-19 & the lockdowns, the constant shameful attacks on innocent people at the hands of police, to the pervasive civil unrest, there's a lot of things happening to make one feel a sense of hopelessness and defeat, as if stuck in a perpetual winter. Even I'm not currently in an ideal place in my life, on top of what's happening around me, there's a lot of personal baggage that I have to deal with on my end. It can be difficult and I often feel like quitting on myself. But I constantly have to remind myself that you can't achieve anything without struggle and that things that are valuable in life are worth fighting for. Of course, it's a lot harder to keep fighting if you're not motivated, but thankfully I have people in my life that keep reminding me that my troubles will be worth it in the end. Thanks to the power of music I have a voice to constantly remind me that even in the dead of winter, I must keep summer alive in my heart.

Lately though, I've been diving into my music catalog beyond City Pop, and noticed that many of my favorite songs were inspired by the desire to speak out against injustice & disparity. Not just songs made in America either, the human struggle for life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness is universal among all nations. If you listen, you can hear it in the music. I think if we really took the time to learn more about not just foreign music, but our own music, we'll see that humanity has a lot more in common than we realize.


I'm focusing first on the U.S. because right now Americans have created this false dichotomy that entertainment and politics shouldn't mix. This isn't a new notion. The same people who were upset at Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee against police brutality were the same type of people who were upset at the 1968 Olympic champions (John Carlos, Tommie Smith, and Peter Norman) for the Black Power salute. That's a sports example of course I've met people with a similar mentality towards music, especially when you try to start a conversation about hip hop. The obvious problem with this cognitive dissonance is that the fabric of American music was built off of struggle, oppression, and disparity. Considering that you can trace most, if not all, American genres back to the blues, it's only natural that many American musicians use their talents in order to address and fight against the different systems of oppression in America.

Bob Dylan – Blowin' in the Wind

You can't really have a conversation about protest music without mentioning Bob Dylan. I don't hear a lot of people talk about him as much as they have in the past, but I think that many of the rhetorical questions asked within the song are still very relevant. "How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?" This question in particular always gets to me for several reasons. It causes me to reflect on things that I've been ignoring, not just societal problems, but personal issues that I let hold me back and try to look away from. I'm reminded that in order for me to make effective change in the world I have to better myself. It also think of all the events that happen during Bob Dylan's lifetime that many people back then ignored, like the murder of Emmett Til, which he also made a song about.

Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit

I think it's both an amazing feat and a tragedy that such a powerful and sad song became the "song of the century". Mainly because it's indicative of the zeitgeist that existed in American society back then and still exist today. Strange Fruit was a song performed by Billie Holiday and written by Jewish communist teacher and civil rights activist from the Bronx, Abel Meeropol, who first wrote it as a poem inspired by a photo of a 1930's lynching in Indiana, comparing the hanged black men to "bitter fruit". When Holiday read the song, she said it reminded of her late father who was denied medical care because he was black

Billie Holiday decided to perform the song at West 4th's Cafe Society© in New York in 1939. She said that singing it made her fear retaliation, but she continued to sing the piece making it a regular part of her live performances. Holiday only performed the song under strict conditions due to its power of the crowd: she would always close with it; the waiters would stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday's face; and there would be no encore.

I'm often told that music can't change the world, and while there is some truth to that, I believe that music can expose people to where they are in life, especially since many people either don't know where they're at, or chose not to acknowledge where they are. And I think Strange Fruit does just that, it opened people’s eyes to the reality of the times and as a result it made people uncomfortable. Apparently, to the point where Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner Harry Anslinger had to sabotage Holiday's career and her life in response.

Woody Guthrie – Deportee

On January 28, 1948, a DC-3 plane carrying 32 people, mostly Mexican farm laborers, some from the Bracero Guest Worker Program, crashed in the Diablo Range, 20 miles west of Coalinga, California. When reporting radio and newspaper coverage of the plane crash, they did not give any of the victims' names, but instead referred to them merely as "deportees." This caught the attention of folk & country singer Woody Guthrie, who lived in New York City at the time, where none of the deportees' names were printed in the January 29, 1948, New York Times report. Only the flight crew and the security guard were named. Equipped with his "machine that kills fascists" Guthrie was inspired to write the song Deportee, as a memorial to the nameless immigrants, assigning symbolic names to the dead: "Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita; adios, mis amigos, Jesus y Maria..." He also took the time to address disparities faced by farm workers by the American government. Particularly, how they were forced to destroy crops in order to keep farm production and prices high, denying food to starving people.

The song actually inspired a further investigation of the crash by American writer Tim Hernandez, who discovered the true identities of the passengers, which you can read about here.

Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Such a famous saying has often been repeated by various hip-hop artists, it's only appropriate that the person who brought the phrase into the mainstream also happens to be the progenitor of rap music. African American poet Gil Scott-Heron is famous for asking, “what's going on,” years before Marvin Gaye did. From the 1940 Syphilis experiments in Tuskegee #626, to the 1966 Fermi 1 Nuclear meltdown in “We Almost Lost Detroit”, Gil's entire catalog of music is built upon exposing injustice and inequality in America. His most endearing song, however, has to be “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” not only because it's production influenced and foreshadowed the creation of hip-hop a decade early, but also because it makes an important statement that freedom is not a spectator sport. You will not be able to sit at home and see progress commence in the mainstream media, it has to be earned by taking charge of your life, education, and protection, in order to make a lasting change.

The song can also be seen as a critique on commercializing the struggle of black people. Time and time again we've seen so called political leaders and celebrities give fake solidarity through virtue signaling, whether it's celebrities pretending to suffer with us from their million dollar mansions, or political leaders who only become vocal about disparity when it's convenient for them. Even Scott-Heron takes a jab at NAACP leader Roy Wilkins for "Strolling through Watts in a red, black, and green liberation jumpsuit that he has been saving for just the proper occasion."

Lastly, I believe that “The Revolution Will not be Televised” is a reminder to take control of our own narratives, and not to rely on mainstream media, which is controlled by the government and their associates, to tell the whole truth.

Marvin Gaye – What's Going On

Possibly the most famous political song in the African American history mainly because it came from within the walls of Hitsville USA. However, many of us take this family BBQ staple for granted and have forgotten that the song is rooted in late R&B singer, Marvin Gaye's, own struggles with the injustices happening around him. Gaye mentions how the Watts Riots played a pivotal part in influencing his musical growth during the 1960's, prompting him to ask himself "with the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?". He even asked Berry Gordy if he could start singing more political music, for which Gordy chastised him.

Inspired by his brother’s tenure in the Vietnam War and the violence committed against anti-war protesters on "Bloody Thursday, the singer-songwriters Marvin Gaye and Renaldo Benson (Four Tops) came up with the iconic song, “What's Going On” in 1969. The song questioned the status quo on racism, police brutality, the fighting of unjust wars. This would be the first Motown song of its kind: a protest song. Something that producer Berry Gordy feared greatly as he was heavily against releasing the song. With the help of executives, Marvin had to release the single without Gordy's knowledge, and it became Motown's fastest selling single of the time.

Thanks to its overnight success, Marvin was given the go ahead to produce the full “What's Going On” album, which was released on May 21, 1971. It tackles many topics, like the mistreatment of veterans, (“What's Happening Brother”) to protecting the environment, (“Mercy, Mercy, Me”), and even urban poverty (“Inner City Blues”).

Stevie Wonder – Black Man

Now more than ever is it important that we take responsibility in making sure the truth about our history is heard. There's so much American history, especially black history, that isn't taught in schools and we can't rely on public institutions to tell the whole story. Stevie Wonder knew this better than anyone. The United States Bicentennial was underway at the time of recording in 1976. While everyone was celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of The United States, Wonder felt that people needed to be reminded that America wouldn't be where it is without African Americans. People who accomplished great feats despite slavery and oppression. The song’s first lyric refers prominently to Crispus Attucks, widely considered the first martyr of the American Revolution. Wonder then goes on to list all of the amazing contributions to American society by persons of color, including Caesar Chavez, politician & educator, Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa, co-founder of the Iroquois Confederacy, Hiawatha, and inventor Garret Morgan. The song admittedly uses some outdated terminology; (i.e. black man, red man, yellow, white, brown), but the message it gets across is timeless; we can't live in a country that only gives justice to a select few when it was immigrants from all ethnic groups that made helped this country survive and thrive.

Grandmaster Flash – The Message

Occasionally, when I engage in discussions about the evolution and direction of hip-hop, I fall into the camp of people who prefer more so-called "conscious" rap than the average bubblegum pop/dance club music that' circulates the mainstream. And that's not to say party music is bad by any means, just listen to anything by the Sugar Hill Gang and you'll see part of the foundation of hip-hop has always been disco. It's just that for me, I learned just as much about the world, if not more, from listening to music than just reading a book. Part of that experience is that it was Public Enemy that taught me about Malcom X and racist misrepresentation in the media.

Social Commentary in hip-hop is just as much part of its roots as dance party music, and that can be heard from the pioneers that excelled in both; Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, who released “The Message” in 1982. The lyrics were penned by group members Duke Botee & Melly Mel, in response to the New York City Transit strikes in 1980, painting a claustrophobic image of the pressures of urban city living, pushing the narrator to "the edge", the breaking point. In many ways it carries on the same message of disparity that Marvin Gaye did back in 1970, for a new generation.

The song’s most powerful part is actually towards the end, Melle Mel tells a story of a child being born in a poor community during the early Reagan years, who grows up only to be treated as a lesser, second-class citizens, resenting rich people and following in the bad examples of the thugs & criminals around him. The story ends with the kid growing up only to die in a jail cell alone, followed by an epilogue where we hear the Furious Five being arrested by police just for hanging out on the corner.


There's plenty more songs & albums I could have covered and there might be some obvious ones that I missed, so let me know what other songs that I should write about for this topic, I plan to cover protest songs from around the globe. People forget that music is a form of storytelling and the best stories have a lesson behind them, so I encourage you to learn as much as you can from what's out there. At this point it's obvious that American musicians have been telling us for years what's going on in America, and it's up to us to make a decision on what to do about it. Because at the end of the day when the time comes, the revolution will put you in the driver's seat.