Protest Music: From Billie Holiday to Black Lives Matter. An introspective ballad that suits the singer's thoughtful, melancholy approach, "The House We Live In" is the kind of call for compassion and hope made for vigils and late night weeping sessions — the occasion to light a field full of candles, or just one. Adia Victoria presents a defiant vision of dragging her home into a more equitable future in the form of a classic Southern rock jam — complete with foot-stomping drums and roaring slide guitar — which also makes this a reclamation of a genre that is built on Black musical traditions but has come to be associated with Confederate flag concert backdrops. With lines like "the screen won't stop scrolling, and look at you patiently waiting for rescue," Beauty Pill outlines the slow-moving claustrophobia that would soon grip the nation. One of the most striking ways we'll remember the music of 2020 — a year of serious social reckoning, especially during the resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May — was by the sounds of protest. Some continued career-defining legacies of pushing back against state violence; others began using their voice and platform to decry entrenched systems of power. "Go At It," however, is the album's most explicit call to arms. Hear her guttural, despairing exhortations on "Black Family" — "Affirm my family! As one of the great funk songwriters and performers of the '70s and '80s, Arrington himself is a major part of that history. Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images "What's Going On," the title track of Marvin Gaye's 1971 opus, is lyrically as relevant now as it was at the height of the Vietnam War. Why would we stand silent, or worse, get in the way of it being rectified?". (She is a blues poet, after all.) Public Enemy has been making hip-hop protest music as long as anyone, and the group's latest release, What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down?, is unsurprisingly full of confrontational, political songs. "I'm calling off this war inside me," Arlissa sings over a restorative piano line. It's a grounding detail in a statement full of specifics, a clear and simple plea for empathy. / Got no control, still forever yours." On her new single, "12 Problems," the North Carolina MC spits fearless bars about police brutality over hair-raising production, courtesy of Cubeatz and Don Cannon. From her evocative delivery of every harrowingly vivid detail to Younge's slick production, this requiem, nor the murder, loses none of its ineffaceable ache and horror: "Tears, blood and pain / All mixed in rage / Sorrow comes again / When I am there at heaven's gates / Will I be free?". Chuck is both furious and motivational, urging listeners to do whatever they can to help change the country for the better. But she went a good deal farther than that this year. 2 January 2021, 10:11 | Updated: 20 January 2021, 10:21. Presenting himself as a confused "white boy from Hickman" who once understood how the protests might feel like unnecessary trouble, Childers artfully bends perspective at the ballad's center, realizing that for all the times he'd belligerently questioned authority, he'd never felt like he might lose his life. Just about every 2020 best album list features some variance of 2020 was a shitty year, but at least we had plenty of good music to help get us through. With the help of producer DJ Harrison, a specialist in crafting fresh hip-hop from the sounds of the past, Arrington locates a clear-eyed musical optimism that places the song firmly in the lineage of Curtis Mayfield's great Civil Rights-era soul anthems like "Keep On Pushing" and "We're A Winner." Her salient lyrics slice through a neo-soul groove: "I'm kickin' out the old regime: Liberation, elevation, education / America, you a lie / But the whole world 'bout to testify." People laughed at her. In 1918, white residents of Valdosta, Ga., went on a lynching rampage after an abused worker shot the white owner of a local plantation; Mary Turner, 30 years old and eight months pregnant, lost her husband in the melee. Do we matter? Over a 9th Wonder drum loop, Phoelix sings, "They told me put my hands up behind my head / Then they told me if I move, they gon' shoot me dead." Five minutes and 22 seconds into the striking video, above, that Tyler Childers posted to YouTube today – a spoken liner note that sets up the title track from his surprise new album, Long Violent History – the much-beloved singer-songwriter utters the words, "justice for Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me." In the video, shot in quarantine, Overall attempts to reconcile his youth, through old snapshots and poignant reflections of his childhood, with the looming present-day reality of racial inequity faced by Overall, his brother, reedist Carlos Overall, and countless Black men everywhere. This time it's peaceful, a quiet night with a hopscotch grid scribbled on the concrete. From Ruby Bridges to Little Miss Flint, Black youth are forced to become symbols, martyrs, instruments, calling for change in a country that doesn't serve them. It revealed to the rest of the country that there were in fact two different "Americas": one for whites and one for Blacks. Rhodes is a music supervisor whose credits include the TV show "Queen Sugar." • A running Spotify playlist of 2020's noteworthy protest songs, • A historical list of songs by Black musicians protesting state violence. Black Lives Matter protests in London, August 2020. Breonna Taylor was asleep in her Louisville home when police entered and shot her to death. It's a stark opening line, a reminder that the forms of racism and oppression that can seem, to some, like distant history in high school textbooks are really not all that removed from our present. The biggest rapper of the year wrote, recorded and released this protest anthem less than three weeks after the killing of George Floyd and two weeks after protestors took to the streets in Atlanta, and it sounded like something a pop perfectionist could have worked on for months. With surgical precision, Rapsody breaks down what it means to protest in present times, stretching from the restrictions of the pandemic to the immediate power of social media: "I was supposed to resort in the Maldives, now / We in the rallies, now / Boxin' in IG, now. hide caption. The 50 best protest songs. Then he goes in, painting picture of what it would be like for white Southerners if "the smallest interaction with a public servant" led to being handcuffed, assaulted and possibly shot multiple times, as Louisville resident Taylor was by police who entered her apartment in a no-knock raid in March. "If there's no 'scared' option," sings vocalist Erin Nelson, referring to Facebook's quick emoji reactions, "'Sad' is alright.". For we cannot stop" — Cray's song is, as his music has been for four decades, direct and robust. A few frames later, directors Elliott Sellers and the members of Dinner Party return to the initial scene. Cray's anger is palpable in "This Man," as is his determination to stand up for safe spaces — the home, the polls and the polis itself. 10 new political albums that sum up 2020. Wake up! he asks. The song has stayed in the air, not only in Mexico, but across Latin America in a year of protests against gender-based violence: "Que resuene fuerte: ¡Nos queremos vivas! The lyrics are simple and straightforward although I'm fixated on the they he sings about. One of the most striking ways we'll remember the music of 2020 — a year of serious social reckoning, especially during the resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May — was by the sounds of protest. Watching Olu, one half of EARTHGANG, break into his best Motown falsetto in 2020 to deliver lines like, "Brother, brother, brother / There's too many of us dying" and, "Don't punish me with brutality" is a reminder that this moment is part of long lineage of Black protest in America, one that stretches back well before Marvin Gaye. Yet Taylor's self-directed music video invokes the radicalism of Malcolm X and shows footage of George Floyd being killed. The singer reminds them that they're anointed. Instead, she tells the land that she considers a living being, she will "drag you into the light." In it, illustrator Ryan Nelson draws three portraits — of Trump, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell — layering each of their faces with those of different animals (Trump becomes a wild boar; Graham becomes a dog; and McConnell becomes a wolf). On July 27, Warner Records released a remix of and a music video for "I Just Wanna Live" after signing Bryant. In 2015, Janelle Monáe released the visceral and raw "Hell You Talmbout," a protest song that directly listed the names of the Black lives lost at the hands of law enforcement and vigilantes, a nearly 7-minute journey. The video includes footage from a variety of protests related to racial injustice, including the 1992 Rodney King riots, and features Taylor dressing up like Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till's mother, Mamie. 2020 brought chaos, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction writ large across almost every spectrum of American society – perfect conditions for protest music to proliferate in almost every musical genre. It's a cycle he raps about having seen before — the marches, the looting, the police violence, the incremental reform. "My great-great grandmama was a slave," Steve Arrington sings at the start of "Make A Difference." Citing the Battle of Blair Mountain, the labor uprising led by coal miners in 1921, he reckons that if they were in such danger, white Southerners (and others) would certainly react. "Ferguson - An American Tradition" reminds us that #BlackLivesMatter is rooted in a continuum, a cycle of oppression. —Ann Powers, Last year, Ana Tijoux "Cacerolazo" sounded the cazuelas in solidarity with the Chilean population protesting economic strain under President Sebastián Piñera. There are certain things children shouldn't have to worry about. Recent events have made the threat to personal space tragically palpable. Figures like Angela Davis, Muhammad Ali, Toni Morrison, Stacey Abrams, and Maxine Waters are featured prominently, Black thought provokers, leaders and politicians who have pushed for societal upheaval. If anything, she's rushing forward to meet them head-on. There, Andra Day raps about her unhealed inner child ("They gon' tell you, 'Shut up, angry black girl'") while IDK shows how burdened children grow up into adults who demand justice by any means necessary ("Throw a molotov at the cop / Whether he crooked or not / Until them killing us stops"). Wang is a culture writer and DJ. But its messaging remains just as urgent. The video of Jacob Blake trying to climb into his car — where his children sat in the back seat — before being shot seven times by police has shocked millions. On his debut album, Omega, Wilkins fully employs the potential of the jazz quartet to reconstruct scenes of terror within compositions that crawl and crash and soar. But could they be the Black parent who has that first "talk" with their child about what to do when they encounter a police officer in order to stay alive? "Heaven's angels are shining down on us," she asserts. Rereleased just one month later, to memorialize the time of his untimely death, she enlisted an arsenal of collaborators for the project, including Los Angeles-based producer Adrian Younge. Likely borrowed from the famed Langston Hughes poem, the notion of a "dream deferred" repeats throughout "I Think I'm Good," which ultimately lends a portrait of a young Black artist (and man) reexamining his life and purpose. Protest Songs of 2020 By Spartucus Jones. The slippery convolutions in the song also speak to the power of resistance; not for nothing does this track come right after one titled "Warriors." Protest is stoked by the spark of oration and kindled by slogans chanted in the street. —Lars Gotrich, Immanuel Wilkins is an alto saxophonist with a glowing tone, a sharp working band and all manner of smart ideas about song form. 43. Directed by filmmaker Noah Porter, with several cameos including Macklemore (Overall's high school classmate), the film turns its focus on its lead Miguel McDaniel, cast as a food delivery person (à la Uber Eats) making the rounds. In a simple but chilling chorus, the thirteen-year-old singer appeals to a higher power: "I just wanna live / God protect me". When Mamie Till made the decision to have an open-casket funeral procession for her recently slain 14-year-old son Emmett Till, it laid bare not just his body, ravaged and mutilated after being horribly beaten and lynched for a crime he did not commit. We Insist: An Introduction To Our Timeline, Dinner Party 'Freeze Tag' Is A Reminder Of Life's Fragility, Kassa Overall's Video For 'I Think I'm Good' Is A Deep Exploration Of Contrasts, Beauty Pill's 'Instant Night' Sets A Dreadful Moment In Motion, Sunny War Has A Message For The 'Orange Man', A running Spotify playlist of 2020's noteworthy protest songs, A historical list of songs by Black musicians protesting state violence, health professionals received in neighborhoods all over, Public Enemy Urges You To Get Involved On 'Go At It', SAULT's 'Little Boy' Is A Tribute To Fragile Childhood Innocence, only one police officer was indicted in the death of Breonna Taylor, Tyler Childers Pushes Back On Southern Values And Our 'Long, Violent History', On '12 Problems,' Rapsody Tackles Injustice From Every Angle, Janelle Monáe's 'Turntables' Stresses 'Liberation, Elevation, Education', Teyana Taylor Drops Provocative Music Video For 'Still', Steve Arrington Bridges Generations On 'Make A Difference', ALA.NI Orchestrates 'Lament For Emmett Till' With Help From Adrian Younge, Adia Victoria's 'South Gotta Change' Is A Reckoning In Love And Fury, Arlissa's 'The House We Live In' Calls For Compassion Amidst Sorrow, Brittany Campbell Asks Old Questions On 'Matter', Robert Cray's 'This Man' Is A Rallying Cry For Reclaiming Space, Immanuel Wilkins's 'Mary Turner' Is A Powerfully Relevant Memorial, Jorja Smith Finds Strength In Numbers In 'By Any Means', EARTHGANG's Olu Covers Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On', Black Children Grow Up Too Fast In Keedron Bryant's 'I Just Wanna Live', More from We Insist: A Timeline Of Protest Music In 2020. Russian protest punks Pussy Riot released their new song “1312” with Argentinian musicians Parcas, Dillom, and Muerejoven on May 29, along with an animated music video. This series — titled We Insist, a nod to Max Roach's 1960 protest album of the same name — attempts to document the songs and videos that will come to define the summer of 2020 and the months leading up to what will certainly be a contentious presidential election. 2020 was defined by the sounds of rage, resolve, mourning and solidarity. With Mama,You Can Bet!, she borrows from her rich jazz lineage to mine through the divisiveness that was 2020. Five years later, Monáe returns to the movement, with "Turntables," a marked difference of energy, delivery and presentation. The video for "Instant Night" is also a form of protest. During the video's three minutes, Monáe finds herself on a beach, a symbol of freedom, and in front of a U.S. flag, an emblem that has recently been seen as a mark of oppression for Black Americans. "When you get older," a woman declares, "you can ask me all the questions, and I'll tell you the truth about the boys in blue. Music The Music Club, 2020 Entry 5: This was a great year for protest music. With each keystroke and chord, hammers strike internal tuning forks, or tines, creating an ethereal, celestial resonance. It's a sentiment that risks venturing into slightly-cliched "be the change you want to see in the world" territory, but Chuck presents the message with so many layers of bombast and righteous anger that the song feels like a genuinely urgent call to get up and go do something. It's an extraordinary memorial that makes an immediate connection with the wrongdoings and responses of today. YG, Che Lingo, Kendrick Lamar: the protest songs of Black Lives Matter 2020 The demonstrations against the killing of George Floyd have brought a wave of powerful protest music… That wouldn't be the case. Jorja Smith puts a "face" to that very issue in the accompanying video for "By Any Means," rather highlighting the many faces of color who comprise the U.K. Please remember these souls and say their names out loud. Others produced new, provocative videos for older songs that spoke to the moment. These 20 songs and albums represent some of the best protest music of 2020. From filmmakers like Ava DuVernay and Yance Ford to the dancers who did the Harlem Slide across New York's avenues to the muralists who've made memorials in every American city, artists have found ways to go beyond words to convey this year's revolutionary spirit. Childers has taken a chance with this song – in the video, he explains that the eight instrumental songs that precede it on his new album were well-considered as stage-setters for this final, controversial act. The song becomes protest by probing at the very concept, and by Starlito speaking his truth even if he doesn't have all the answers. —Otis Hart, Though he usually has a trumpet in his hands, on "Hooded procession (read the names outloud)" Ambrose Akinmusire brilliantly plays a Fender Rhodes, all by himself, with profound reverence. Visually, Janelle Monáe sends subtle, but key, messages about the embattled U.S. You don't love us!" Featured on his 2020 album That's What I Heard and released this month with a new video closing with the late freedom fighter and Senator John Lewis's words at the historic March on Washington — "we must say, 'Wake up, America! Jazz was born out of slavery and some real travesties, and so to parade around like it’s just a swing and a happy-go-lucky, roaring ’20s kind of thing— that’s not what we do. —Ann Powers, Hopping from hardcore punk to lo-fi hip-hop, from spoken word to sound collage, Pink Siifu's NEGRO presents a portrait of American racism as broad and incicisve as any piece of writing to come out this summer. Campbell wrote the song after a difficult conversation with a friend in Los Angeles whose parents' store was destroyed during a Black Lives Matter protest. After young Till's assailants were acquitted, just months later, they reportedly confessed to their crime in a magazine interview, knowing that there wouldn't be any actions taken. In "Matter," Campbell moves beyond the politics of riots and looting to share her frustrations about the poisons Black people in America are fed. Here, Dinner Party flips the notion of a childhood game into a grim portrayal of police brutality in the United States. 10 new albums to help vote out Donald Trump. The rising jazz drummer and producer explores such contrasts throughout the short film, which features selections from his album of the same name (released on February 28). As McDaniel approaches the steps of his first house, we hear Overall's stark opening on "Please Don't Kill Me": "Please don't kill me in your sleep / I can't breathe when I get down / I could drown in your weep." The color shifts to a dramatic black and white as Martin, Glasper and company scatter. Robert Cray growls as this fierce, creeping blues ensues, executing a guitar line as powerful as the current through an electric fence. "They won't go away, God has chosen us.". The world's defining voice in music and pop culture since 1952. When compared to the exposed pain of "Hell You Talmbout," "Turntables" sounds sleeker, more palatable and mainstream. And he's done something more: the psychic journey toward empathy that "Long, Violent History" represents, set to a plaintive and singable tune, offers fans of such music a place to consider America's past and present without nostalgia and its aftereffect, the false rationalization of present inequities. By flipping his own material as a member of revered Southern rap crew Three 6 Mafia — as hip-hop's leading emcees have done with fervor in the past few years — Juicy includes his voice in the alarm being sounded across the globe: "Enough is enough," he chants throughout the track. Four years ago, I was, thankfully, challenged to think more globally about Black Lives Matter. This one hits hard by confronting its likely audience. "Our house," here, is America itself. —Nate Chinen, Photo Illustration by Renee Klahr / NPR / Getty Images. "I was a joyous child, if I ever was a child," utters Kassa Overall as he walks along the shores of his hometown of Seattle in the video for "I Think I'm Good." He's joined other artists on the border of country and Americana music, like Margo Price and Chris Stapleton, by sharing his support for Black Lives Matter in unambiguous terms. While "Still" is soulful and moving, no one would have called it a protest song when it was originally released. Protest Songs of 2019. The tune ends with a sonic invocation of the long, violent history of American white supremacy: a few lines of "My Old Kentucky Home," a minstrel ballad written by Stephen Foster, complete with racist depictions of enslaved people. ", The chorus of the song, a reimagining of Jay-Z's "99 Problems" (which took its own chorus from Ice-T's song of the same name), feels especially evocative; as Rapsody ventures into explaining her current set of issues, she twists her vocals in a sorrowful direction, sounding as if she's drawing from personal experiences: "I got 99 prooooblems / 12 still the biggest / I got 99 prooooblems / Baton, bullets, triggers.". Protest music has come "roaring back to life" when we need ... irrelevance," a statement that clearly didn't understand America's ongoing injustices and certainly had no clue what 2020 … — Jon Lewis, Starlito sounds exhausted on "Paternity Leave Intro." ("Are we here? Toward the end of the song, Rapsody speaks candidly to anyone willing to listen and learn about the Black experience of 2020, one that involves mental stresses that stem from involuntarily seeing Black people being murdered over and over again, at the hands of police and vigilantes. On International Women's Day this year, the song echoed throughout Mexico City as Quintana and thousands of women marched and sang. Lest those lyrics and their intent be misconstrued, Childers does the explaining elsewhere: In an accompanying video message, he explains, "If we didn't need to be reminded, there would be justice for Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me, and countless others." Let’s skip all of that, and get straight to the list of the 40 best protest albums of 2020. If you see chants you’d like to see transcribed, or music you find interesting, please drop me a line. Taylor received criticism on social media from those who questioned the effectiveness of the visuals. The seven-minute "Ferguson, An American Tradition" follows the path of shock, grief and outrage Michael Brown's shooting by police officer Darren Wilson inspired, but backwards, from quiet clarity into a full clamor. The tenderness and insistent strength in Arlissa's delivery is its gift: Life is fragile, it reminds us, and infinitely worth the struggle. Using protest music to inspire in the "I Can't Breathe" era. 6. protest music 2020. —Suraya Mohamed, The video for The Dinner Party's "Freeze Tag" brought back some not-so-fond childhood memories. This instrumental is a soundscape to honor all Black men and women who have been killed by police, become victims of vigilantism, racism, hatred, violence, the list of atrocities is too long. Both the video and song depict the left's current mood, and with the 2020 election just a few days away, it's a not-so-subtle reminder to vote like your life depends on it. —Stefanie Fernández, "South Gotta Change" functions as both an ambivalent love letter and a statement of purpose. CJ Baker and Kevin Gosztola feature ten albums of protest music from 2020, including Irreversible Entanglements and Run The Jewels. Artists across styles and genres expressed rage, resolve, mourning and solidarity. This week they each picked three songs that make up their protest soundtrack for 2020. But nowadays, with the global pandemic in full swing and police still killing unarmed Black people at an alarming rate, they're exposed to despair much earlier than usual. Over a blown-out guitar loop, Chuck D shouts rhymes like declarations of war in the same booming voice he has been using for decades. On his exceptional debut album, Omega, he updates the postbop language for his generational cohort — and makes a point of speaking out about the long arc of racial injustice. "Would that be the start of a long, violent history?" London-based vocalist ALA.NI released "Lament for Emmett Till" on July 28, commemorating what would have been Till's 79th birthday with a rendition of journalist Claudia Jones's 1955 poem of the same name. ", In its finished form, "Instant Night" unpacks the fear associated with Donald Trump's then-pending U.S. presidency. Artists Inducted Into The Protest Music Hall of Fame. Olu's bedroom cover also captures the quieter side of a civil rights struggle constrained by a pandemic, in which the coronavirus has forced many to participate in the movement while stuck in their homes. Childers, who's emerged in recent years as the foremost roots-music representative of the white working and underclass of the mid-South, directly addresses those among his fan base who've been "taken aback" by what they perceive as the inexplicable violence of this summer's Black Lives Matter protest. Adia Victoria, born in South Carolina with more recent ties to Nashville, locates the contours of her own body and being in the Southern earth, and this blues-driven oracular statement is her pledge to it, in love and fury. November 25, 2020. Lewis himself encouraged people to do so in a farewell essay published on the day of his funeral in the New York Times. To the mournful sound of a country guitar, Indigo Girl Amy Ray confronts the South that made her — and the white pride she was taught by antebellum romances, battle hymns and Confederate statues — and makes it clear that what needs to go in the grave is racism: "The epitaph I long to read is, here lies slavery." It could obviously be the command from a cop. That image — her confrontation with monumental, historical oppression, simultaneously a mystical union with a landscape and Black heritage that welcomes her — epitomizes Victoria's mission to refresh overtold Southern stories by finding herself in them. The video for Dinner Party's newest single, "Freeze Tag," is centered around an age-old tradition in the Black community: the cookout.
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