Protest Music
Inspired by a counter-fascist multi-organization demonstration I was at recently, at which an antifascist group played music at loud volume to drown out and de-platform a fascist speaker, I have created a playlist of protest music.
This is not meant to signal dissatisfaction with the selection of music I heard at that protest, or to throw any shade whatsoever at anyone else’s definition of protest music. I don’t mind Woody Guthrie, and there is a delicious, visceral feeling of satisfaction that I get from playing Rage Against the Machine or N.W.A so loud no one can hear themselves think. It’s a beautiful thing.
However, I do think that for many of us who are maybe new to protesting — or old to protesting — our conception of what relationship music has to revolution is too narrow, and that is what this playlist is meant to address. I have some thoughts on why I have not included a certain set of protest music, and then further thoughts on why I *have* included another set of music that you might not usually think of as protest music, but which I argue is, in fact, the protest music we need in 2018.
My first concern is the overwhelming masculinity of protest music. I think this has to do with two aspects of patriarchy, both of which I reject.
First, the anger of men is seen as legitimate while the anger of women is not seen as legitimate. Zack de la Rocha screaming, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me,” is seen as political, while Sara Bareilles singing, “Who cares if you disagree? You are not me. Who died and made you king of anything?” …isn’t.
Look, men are fine, but let’s be real. It’s 2018. It’s time to stop looking at what men do to express opposition as the gold standard of protest. That’s why this playlist has a few classic protest songs (including “Killing In the Name”) sung by men, but those songs aren’t my focus.
I’ll add that this bias about whose anger is respected is also racialized. Black men’s anger is feared, terribly, by white folks in America, but not taken particularly seriously as social critique, while the anger of black women is seen as just the way black women are. I’ve tried to account for race as well as gender in this playlist, and the representation of anger in the voices of black women is particularly present, from Nina Simone joking in “Mississippi Goddamn” about the song being a show tune: “Bet you thought I was kidding, didn’t you?” to Angel Haze (a black and native nonbinary person who uses she/her pronouns) in “Babe Ruthless,” spitting, “If you fucking with me I get gnarly/ drama get added then you get subtracted/ I’ve got the only thing left I can give you and that’ll be waiting on you in a casket.”
Second, traditionally, the proper sphere of women’s concern is not seen to extend beyond the household and/or romantic relationships, while men’s sphere encompasses all of public life, including the explicitly political. I reject this. There are many white men with guitars who sing against imperialism — and more power to them. But I don’t believe they are *protesting* any more legitimately than Nina Simone when she sings, “Black is the color of my true love’s hair… I love the ground on where he stands.”
Just like many of the political abuses women suffer happen at home, in our intimate relationships, in our physical bodies, women’s political protests are often also intertwined with our relationships. It’s easy to dismiss a song like Alessia Cara’s “Outlaws” as not political because it’s about a romance. Lines like “Let’s make forever in this moment/ Tell me you love me again,” don’t seem to have a lot to do with challenging capitalist authoritarianism — until you look at the whole of the song and realize that love is the force that frees us. Love gives us the strength to stand in solidarity against injustice, to persevere when all seems lost, and to eventually overcome.
Which leads into the second half of my song selection standards. It’s fashionable among a certain set of young folks these days to quote Lenin on revolution, but I’d rather quote Vaclav Havel: “Genuine civil society is the truest fundamental of democracy, and totalitarian rule can never, by definition, be reconciled with that.” [speech at Macalaster College, April 1999]
You can’t have both fascism and Big Freedia. So this playlist has some Big Freedia teaching us to turn the beat up, and some RuPaul teaching us to sissy that walk. Aretha teaches us to demand respect; Kylie teaches us to dance our way to the gallows. Kendrick teaches us to love ourselves; Tegan and Sara teach us that love will make us stronger; Mala Rodriguez teaches us not to covet power.
And Dead Sara maybe doesn’t teach us anything, but sure is satisfying to holler along to when she shrieks: “Fuck this playing around/ Don’t give a fuck if it’s allowed/ Well, fuck you Donald Trump/ Fuck this, fuck everyone!”
