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by Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, 95.5 The Heat: Phoenix Radio Over the past several weeks, protests against the policies of the Trump administration have cropped up across the country. While some took to social media to speak out against the protests, others expressed support, or even attended or helped plan a local rally. Regardless of your views on Trump or the protests, most people notice something missing: new protest music. Where is today’s protest music, and where did it come from? The first protest song Define “protest song” as “Any song meant to raise awareness of an issue or inspire some type of action” and protest songs have existed throughout history. In the United States, protest songs began before the country itself, and were part of the unrest that would result in the American Revolution. Fast forward to the last one hundred years, and there is still no one definitive point in history that protest music began, or a single song that all reputable historians would agree was the first protest song, but many would name Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” first performed in 1939. “Strange Fruit” was written in the 1930s by a New York teacher and poet named Abel Meeropol. The song’s title and lyrics refer to the mangled bodies of Black people seen hanging from trees in lynching photographs. Meeropol himself was not in danger of being lynched, as lynching specifically targeted Black people, and Meeropol was not Black. However, the photos that he would have seen at the time were not censored or blurred as many photos of lynchings are today, and provided a clear view of this evil practice. One such photo, depicting the 1930 lynching of J. Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith in Indiana, inspired Meeropol to write the song. Photographs like the one that inspired “Strange Fruit” were not universally condemned as horrific. While a modern-day content creator would be roundly criticized and even lose much of their fan base for depicting images of anyone’s violent death, those who created and published lynching photographs in the 1890s-1920s and beyond were often seen as simply warning Black people of what could happen to them should they displease the wrong person. Many lynching photographs were kept as souvenirs, or family keepsakes. Some were even printed up as postcards. Strange Fruit” speaks out against both the violence depicted in these photographs and the racism that drives it. As with the protest music that would follow it, “Strange Fruit” was a dissenting voice from both Meeropol when he wrote it and Billie Holiday when she sang it. The song had an impact, and made people think, but it was far from universally praised or accepted. From 1940-1942 in New York state, the Rapp-Coudert Committee formed with the stated goal to “examine the extent of subversive activities in New York state schools and colleges.” A sort of precursor to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Rapp-Coudert sought to seek out and eradicate all extremism in New York schools, both right-wing and left-wing. Meeropol was brought before this committee and asked if the communist party had paid him to write “Strange Fruit.” They didn’t. “Strange Fruit” was a genuine protest song. Protest music grows If you were asked to plan a 1950’s themed event, protest music would probably be the last thing you would think to include. In the popular imagination, Americans of the 1950s had nothing to protest. It was all sock hops, drive-ins, and hanging out at the diner having burgers and shakes if you were a teen, going off to your dignified, well-paying job and coming home to a hot dinner and your newspaper and tv if you were an adult man, and reveling in your status as a housewife if you were an adult woman. Life may may have been at least somewhat like that for some people, but this view of the 1950’s is actually an aesthetic, or image, based on the idealized life of a white middle to upper-middle class family, not a thorough and accurate picture of real history. Life for people who were not white, not middle class or richer, disabled, gay, or in any other way different from the popular image was not so idyllic. Even many of those who seemed to live up to that image struggled with things like abuse, addiction, and illness. It just wasn’t talked about or dealt with in the open. Protest music written between the late 1940’s through the 1950’s tended to reflect the experience of being excluded from this pretty picture, particularly due to race and socioeconomic class. In 1955, Johnny Cash released “Folsom Prison Blues.” While the narrator does not protest being in prison, and in fact admits to deserving to be there, as he “shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” the song does bring awareness to the experience of being a prisoner, and hints at Cash’s later activism on the issue of prison reform. Other protest songs were written during the late 1940s and 1950s. Some would become anthems of the protest movements of the 1960s-early 1970s. The song commonly sung today as “We Shall Overcome,” was published in 1947 as “We Will Overcome” by Pete Seeger. His song “If I Had a Hammer,” written with Lee Hays, was written in 1949 in support of the labor movement. Despite the focus on the disenfranchised in protest music from this period, there was still the occasional song protesting an issue that impacted everyone. “We Will All Go Together When We Go,” released in 1959 by satirist Tom Lehrer, struck a goofy tone, but spoke out against the very serious dangers of nuclear weapons. As America entered the mid 1960s through the early 1970’s, protest music seemed to reach its peak. Protest songs were an integral part of the fights for women’s equality, racial equality and civil rights, and of course, an end to the Vietnam war. Vietnam war protest songs would grow so plentiful, they leave behind entire “top twenty” lists and about ten different Spotify playlists devoted to them alone. While some of these lists’ creators seem to misunderstand the term “protest song,” and have simply added anything written in the 1960’s, and others have protest songs that were not written in that decade despite the list’s title, there are still dozens of 1960’s-early 1970s protest songs still available today. “Blowin’ In The Wind” and “The Times They Are a Changin’” by Bob Dylan and Creedance Clearwater Revival’s 1968 “Fortunate Son” are just three of the most commonly featured songs on these lists, along with John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance (1969) and Marvin Gaye’s 1971 hit “What’s Going On.” Protest music appears to fade away...but a way is paved Like the 1940s and 1950s, the late 1970s through the 1990s is a time we don’t immediately associate with protest music. We think of the late 1970s as a time of hedonism, fueled by disco party tunes. Pop tunes about partying, crushes and romance and techno music about more partying is what many people mean when they say “1980s music,” though this was not really the case. Although it may not have been strictly protest music, alternative music existed in larger cities like New York City and Minneapolis during this decade. This music would continue into the following decades, and pave the way for the grunge scene the 1990s would become known for. Grunge, along with Rap and Hip-Hop, regularly protested social ills. In 1980, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released “The Message” in protest of policies that led to the conditions of poverty. Much Rap music of this time was criticized for glorifying violence, but in some cases, the songs were written and performed not to celebrate the violence the artists saw around them, but to protest the conditions that led to it. In the late 1980’s, NWA’s “F- The Police” (1988) and Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power” are just two of the most memorable examples. In alternative/grunge, protest songs were playing, they were just not immediately recognized as protest songs. Many American fans did not realize that the 1994 Cranberrries song “Zombie” was a protest song about the killing of children by the Irish Republican Army. The 1992 Hole album “Live Through This” featured a strong theme of protesting against violence perpetuated upon women. “Jennifer’s Body” does this by telling the story of a woman who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered. Protest music of the last 25 years “Boy bands” is likely one of the first terms that springs to mind when the topic of early 2000’s-2010’s music comes up. These manufactured groups offered up a slightly less technology-enhanced version of the pop music most people associate with the 1980’s. Once boy bands arrived on the scene, protest music appeared to shift from merely hidden and not quite as popular to gone. This was not quite what happened. Writing for Forbes magazine in January of 2017, former contributor Danny Ross details his picks for eight protest songs between 2000 and the year the article was written. His title “8 Protest Songs That Inspired Change (All the Way to The Bank)” seems to imply that nobody wrote sincere protest music during this time, and only sought to cash in on social issues to make money. Despite that implication, the article does indeed list eight protest songs written in those first seventeen years of the 2000s, though that list is obviously much smaller than those devoted to protest songs from the 1960’s. At this point in time, protest music did appear to be slowly fading away. Only Green Day’s 2004 “American Idiot,” a protest against the George W. Bush administration, is both mentioned in this article and regularly mentioned in other articles and lists about protest music in this time period. Even the website “The Ongoing History of Protest Music,” an online space devoted entirely to protest music and broken down by decade and then year, relies heavily on music that was not well-known in the United States. This all began to shift in 2013, as the Black Lives Matter movement was founded and gained momentum. While the cause always focused on the fact that the vast majority of targets of extreme police violence and brutality are Black, the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer named Derek Chauvin inspired nationwide protests. Some of the protest music from 2020 and later was written in direct response to this incident. “I Can’t Breathe” by H.E.R. refers directly to the last words uttered by Floyd as Chauvin knelt on his windpipe. The end of the song features a spoken word verse that directly refers back to “Strange Fruit” with a reference to the “strange fruit on my family tree.” “The Bigger Picture” by Lil Baby protests police brutality directed at Black people in general, an issue described as “bigger than black and white. It’s a problem with the whole way of life.” The song was released accompanied by a video featuring scenes from the Black Lives Matter protests. Rapper and Phoenix Radio DJ J Easy’s song “Black Lives Matter” also speaks out against racism and brutality directed at Black people, assuring listeners that the movement is not suggesting that other lives do not matter, only that everyone else is not speaking up for the loss of Black life. Rather than quoting snippets of lyrics, readers are encouraged to to click on the link on the main page and listen to the entire song. Anti-Trump protest music While no known songs were written specifically for the “Hands Off” or “No Kings” rallies of April 2025, the anti-Trump movement does appear to be renewing interest in protest music as a whole. On April 1, writer Robbin Warner published an article on the website “The Grassroots Connector” urging readers to choose from a selection of signs, social media graphics, and songs. There are even a few anti-Trump songs out there. Mackelmore’s “Wednesday Morning” was reportedly written in direct response to Trump’s first election as president. On February 21, 2017, the official website of Rolling Stone magazine featured an article by Jon Dolan, Hank Schteamer, and Suzy Exposito titled “13 Great Anti-Trump Protest Songs.” The piece goes on to describe a series of songs that had either been written or revised in response to Trump’s first term in office. The next crop of protest songs are currently being written by people who see the wrong in the world and feel called to use their musical gifts and their voices in service of others. Works Referenced in this article: Baker, CJ The ongoing history of protest music. https://www.ongoinghistoryofprotestsongs.com April 22, 2025 Dolan, J. Schteamer, H, and Exposito, S. (2017) 13 Great anti-Trump protest songs. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/13-great-anti-trump-protest-songs-197009/ April 22, 2025 Ross, D. (2017).8 Protest songs since 2000 that inspired change (all the way to the bank). Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/dannyross1/2017/01/30/8-protest-songs-since-2000-that-inspired-change-all-the-way-to-the-bank/ April 22, 2025 Warner, R. (2025) Preparing for April 5: Songs, signs and socials. Grassroots Connector. https://grassrootsconnector.substack.com/p/preparing-for-april-5-songs-signs?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share April 22, 2025
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