Onward: Songs of Protest part 4

We began this journey thinking about what songs of protest can do, what purposes they serve.

photo by Kerstin Riemer

We began with ideas of expressing anger, continued with anthems, stories, and solidarity as ways to explain ideas and reinforce connection.

We went on to consider songs of hope and of healing.

I continue to get the most questions from people seeking songs of anger, though. I also receive push back from those who see it as most important to share and encourage anger and that suggestioning any other use for music at this time is weakness or distraction.

Maybe expressing anger is what you need right now. I get that; there are certainly enough circumstances on every front to call forth anger and its companions, fear and despair.

There are people writing good songs of anger just now; in addition to the ones I pointed you to in that first episode of this series I will mention recent music from Eliza Gilkyson and Tim Grimm.

I’d mention in passing for you to consider, too, that the artists who write and sing those songs of anger, grief, and despair do not always stay there either.

When they find it is time for those songs, they have them. They have other music as well, though.

Myself, I cannot stay with the anger at this time, either in artistic practice or as a listener.

There have to be things to move toward. Ways to build and rebuild connection, community, courage.

Fortunately there is music to help with imagining and creating this sort of journey.

Musicians have taken clear eyed and clear hearted looks at anger, grief, despair, hurt, and have come up with other thoughts.

Consider this from

Carrie Newcomer

However unlikely it may seem, to borrow a lyric from a Gaelic song written by Ewen Henderson, the journey must be taken in pure hope of the horizon.

Wherever you are in your thoughts about songs of protest:

Come explore more of that idea, through songs and perhaps from artists you may not have heard.

Onward....