Stories and Solidarity: Protest Songs 2

Stories. Solidarity.

Both are ways of framing protest. Ways of framing songs of protest.

Stories are inherent in many songs. You heard stories among the songs you found in part one of this series.

Songs which focus on stories have their own roles to play when it comes to times of protest, though.

Stories remind why an individual or a community is moved to protest. Stories, both the telling and the listening keep people connected through time. Stories, and the songs which come from them, might suggest new ways to think about issues that have appeared before.

Songs of solidarity usually invite people to a common way of seeing a situation, and perhaps what to to about it.

In this second part of the series on songs of protest. I bring you to songs of stories and songs of solidarity from places ranging from the coal mines of Kentucky to roads at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Where are the protest songs today? That is a question I often encounter. People are writing new ones on the immediate situations, that’s true. Good songs of protest from recent and distant times last and still speak, too. Right here, and through history...

Caroline Herring was thinking about a time when the lives of a woman, her friend, a community, and a sheriff intersected when she wrote the song Camilla.

Caroline introduces it before she sings