Artist Ruth Ewan has been
researching and archiving protest songs from around the globe since 2003 and
uploading them into her artwork A
Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World. Ewan’s jukebox now finds
itself surrounded by a whole host of politically influenced international
artwork, and provides visitors to Art Turning Left a
soundtrack to their visit. Where else can you listen to Johnny Cash,
Black Sabbath, The Pixies or Woody Guthrie whilst taking in Jeremy Deller, Guerrilla Girls and The
Hackney Flashers? Inspired by Ewan’s merging of genres, I have compiled my own
protest song playlist.
This is by no means a
conclusive list of all protest songs, rather, it’s my selection of suggestions
from Tate Liverpool staff and songs I believe have held a powerful resonance.
I’ve tried to choose songs that span different decades and genres, exemplifying
just how diverse the protest song is. I hope you like it, and please do feel
free to contribute to this playlist in
Tate’s Spotify or by leaving a
comment below.
You can listen to the
playlist here with
a Spotify account
1. Woody
Guthrie — This Land is your land
Guthrie’s critical response
to Irving Berlin’s God
Bless America, which Guthrie considered unrealistic and complacent
‘In the squares of the
city/In the shadow of the steeple/Near the relief office/I see my
people/ And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’/If this land’s still
made for you and me.’
2. Public
Enemy — Fight the Power
Written for Spike Lee’s
film Do The Right Thing, the 1989 hip-hop song Fight the
Power orders the listener to fight authority and carries the message of
empowering the black community in America
3. Tom Robinson
Band — Glad to be Gay
An attack on British
society’s attitude towards gay people, Robinson criticises the police and their
attacks and raids on gay pubs once homosexuality had been decriminalized since
the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. Originally
written for a 1976 London gay
pride parade, the song was banned by the BBC and drills home
the insanity of the violence.
4. Billy
Bragg — Between the Wars
Working-class pacifism as an
alternative to gung-ho militarism
5. Billie
Holiday — Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit is a poem
written by teacher Abel
Meeropol, as a protest against the lynchings of African Americans in
1930s America. Originally performed by his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, as
a protest
song in New York, it is Billie Holiday’s version that brought it
to prominence
‘Southern trees bear strange
fruit/Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/Black bodies swinging in the
southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.’
6. Gil Scott
Heron — The Revolution Will Not be Televised
The song’s title was
originally a popular slogan among the 1960s Black Power movements in the
United States
7. Sam
Cooke — A Change is Gonna Come
Dylan’s Blowin’ in the
Wind inspired Cooke to take action. A Change is Gonna Come came
to exemplify the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement.
It was even paraphrased by Barack Obama in his 2008 victory speech.
‘There have been times that
I thought I couldn’t last for long/but now I think I’m able to carry on/It’s
been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come.’
8. Edwin Starr — War
Dramatic and intense,
Starr’s War depicts the general anger and distaste the anti-war
movement felt towards the war in Vietnam
‘War! It ain’t nothing but a
heartbreaker/War! Friend only to the undertaker/War! It’s an enemy to all
mankind/The thought of war blows my mind’
9. Robert Wyatt — Shipbuilding
Written by Elvis Costello
and Clive Langer about the Falklands War
10. Echo and the
Bunnymen — All that Jazz
‘No matter, how you shake
your fist/ You know, you can’t resist it’
11. Rage Against the
Machine — Killing in the Name
Perhaps Rage Against the
Machine’s most well known politically charged song (of which they have
many), Killing in the Name was written about the revolution
against institutional racism and police
brutality. More recently the song was the focus of a successful Facebook campaign
to prevent The X Factor winner’s song from gaining
the 2009 Christmas number one.
‘Some of those that were
forces are the same that bore crosses’
12. Johnny
Cash — San Quentin
‘San Quentin, you’ve been
livin’ hell to me/ You’ve hosted me since nineteen sixty three/ I’ve seen ‘em
come and go and I’ve seen them die/ And long ago I stopped askin’ why’
13. The Special AKA — Nelson Mandela
Released as part of the
anti-apartheid movement
14. Stiff little
fingers — Wasted Life
‘They ain’t blonde-haired or
blue-eyed/ But they think that they’re the master race/ They’re nothing but
blind fascists/ Brought up to hate and given lives to waste’
15. Steve
Mason — Fight Them Back
‘A weapon has been drawn
upon your face/ Since you were born’
16. Patti
Smith — People Have the Power
‘The power to dream / to
rule/ to wrestle the world from fools/it’s decreed the people rule/ it’s
decreed the people rule/LISTEN’
17. Bob
Dylan — It’s Alright Ma (I’m only bleeding)
The lyrics express Dylan’s
anger at hypocrisy, commercialism, consumerism, warmongers and contemporary
American culture
‘Money doesn’t talk, it
swears,’ ‘Although the masters make the rules, for the wisemen and the
fools’ and ‘But even the president of the United States sometimes must
have to stand naked.’
18. Nina
Simone — I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free
Simone’s 1967 recording of
Dick Dallas and Billy Taylor’s song quickly became the anthem for the
civil-rights movement
19. John Lennon — Imagine
I just had to include a song
from a native Liverpudlian, and Lennon’s Imagine continues to
encourage generations to imagine a world at peace without the divisiveness and
barriers of borders, religions and nationalities, and to consider the possibility
that the focus of humanity should be living a life unattached to
material possessions.
“Imagine there’s no
countries/It isn’t hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion
too/ Imagine all the people/Living life in peace”
20. Bob Marley — Redemption Song
‘Emancipate yourself from
mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.’
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