Sing out in the face of fascism

Historic and modern protest music

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

Modern protest music owes its existence to centuries of disenfranchised, disillusioned and oppressed minorities sharing stories that unite and strengthen spirits separated by time, place, race, class and nationality. It is, for the most part, music stripped bare — with only a voice and simple percussion or a stringed instrument — leaving raw storytelling that often takes on the well-worn sounds of old folk tunes and spirituals.

As the U.S. continues to politically regress — donning the rags of bigotry, racism, sexism and homophobia as if they are trappings that will “make America great again” — voices sing out around the nation and the world. Protest music has experienced a significant resurgence in recent years, drawing on the power of an old cultural weapon to fight old enemies flourishing under inhuman, despotic regimes.

American protest music, as the world knows it today, rose from the struggles of everyday people living through the Great Depression, the deadly Jim Crow South and the backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. The artists who defined these decades were people like Billie Holiday — whose song “Strange Fruit,” with lyrics by Abel Meeropol, immortalized the images of people of color lynched in the South — and Nina Simone, who catalogued the oppression of systemic racism in songs like “Mississippi Goddamn” and “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free.”

At the same time, voices like Woody Guthrie — who famously displayed a “This machine kills fascists” sticker on his guitar — Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan advocated for racial equality and the rise of the working class — two ideas that were, and are, a threat to a government that relies on a divided and struggling populace to maintain power.

In a song discovered in 2016 that remains depressingly relevant, Guthrie even raged against President Donald Trump’s father (Fred Trump), and his racist business practices, singing, “I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate / He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts.” 

Those lyrics could have been written at any time during Donald Trump’s presidency, in which he continues to spread lies about immigrants and people of color, inciting violence while fabricating a scapegoat for the repercussions of his own disastrous policies.

Given that today’s societal and economic upheaval bears a striking resemblance to the rise of fascism before and during World War II — and the convenient ignorance of the ’50s and ’60s — it’s no surprise that protest artists are undergoing a surge in popularity. The most prominent figure to emerge from this trend over the past year is Jesse Welles, who NPR has singled out as a leader in the movement and many consider Guthrie and Dylan’s successor. His simple folk tunes each contain cutting and often satirical narrative retellings of recent news stories, beginning with his early hit, “War isn’t Murder.” In it, he critiques the genocide in Gaza, calling attention to American real estate interests in lines like “If you can’t see the bodies, they don’t bloat when they rot … So in a short 20 years, when you vacation the Strip / Don’t think about the dead and have a nice trip.” 

Songs about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“Join ICE”) and the assassination of United Health CEO Brian Thompson (“United Health”) have garnered equal praise for their concise yet powerful messages.

Artist Crys Matthews often adopts the lighter, lilting musicality of traditional folk, giving a soft delivery to difficult discussions of the Black Lives Matter Movement, gun violence and LGBTQIA+ rights in songs like “Like Jesus Would” and “Changemakers.” In collaboration with the Resistance Revival Chorus, her rendition of Peggy Seeger’s “How I Long for Peace” is a startling reminder of how long minorities and allies have been fighting for basic human rights.

Perhaps the most awarded modern protest artist is Rhiannon Giddens, who has breathed new life into American blues and folk as a solo artist and with the group Carolina Chocolate Drops. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera Omar, about the life of Islamic scholar, historian and theologian Omar Ibn Said, her folk music is equally as powerful. Songs like “Build a House” and “We Rise” act as both inspiring anthems of unity and resistance and retellings of the historical and current systemic oppression of people of color. Artists like Giddens not only fight for a better future, but also use a traditional art form to ensure America’s history of oppression isn’t forgotten, despite the best efforts of historical revisionists.