{"id":2293188,"date":"2024-07-12T05:00:01","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T09:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/against-protest-songs-washington-examiner\/"},"modified":"2024-07-12T05:09:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T09:09:15","slug":"against-protest-songs-washington-examiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/against-protest-songs-washington-examiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Against protest songs &#8211; Washington Examiner"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fagainst-protest-songs-washington-examiner%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2293188&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The \u2064article discusses the potential revival of protest songs in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/blur-frontman-says-taylor-swift-doesnt-write-her-own-songs-swift-thats-really-fed-up\/\" title=\"\u2018Blur\u2019 Frontman Says Taylor Swift \u2018Doesn\u2019t Write Her Own Songs.\u2019 Swift: That\u2019s \u2018Really F***ed Up\u2019\">modern music<\/a>, focusing \u2062on the impact of political fears at home and\u2063 abroad. It\u2062 highlights the emergence of political \u200bmusic genres like protest songs and their\u2063 evolution over time. The author examines the history of protest songs, their relationship with political movements, and the role of artists like \u2062Bob Dylan in shaping the genre. Additionally, the \u200darticle critiques the effectiveness and aesthetics of protest songs in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/fetterman-tells-colbert-america-is-not-sending-their-best-and-brightest-to-dc-without-a-hint-of-irony\/\" title=\"Fetterman: DC lacks America&#039;s finest minds, says Colbert\">conveying political messages<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><br \/>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\"><br \/>\n<?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><html><body><\/p>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-header-search-button-mob dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><a class=\"tdb-logo-a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" title=\"Washington Examiner\"><span class=\"tdb-logo-img-wrap\"><\/span><span class=\"tdb-logo-text-wrap\"><span class=\"tdb-logo-text-title\">Washington Examiner<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search\" aria-labelledby=\"td-header-search-button\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search-inner\">\n<form method=\"get\" class=\"tdb-search-form\" action=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\">\n<div class=\"tdb-search-form-inner\"><input class=\"tdb-head-search-form-input\" placeholder=\" \" type=\"text\" value name=\"s\" autocomplete=\"off\"><button class=\"wpb_button wpb_btn-inverse btn tdb-head-search-form-btn\" title=\"Search\" type=\"submit\"><span>Search<\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/form>\n<div class=\"tdb-aj-search\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/#\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"Search\" class=\"tdb-head-search-btn dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><a class=\"tdb-logo-a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" title=\"Washington Examiner\"><span class=\"tdb-logo-img-wrap\"><\/span><span class=\"tdb-logo-text-wrap\"><span class=\"tdb-logo-text-title\">Washington Examiner<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div class=\"tdb-sacff-txt\">Magazine &#8211; Life &#038; Arts <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<h1 class=\"tdb-title-text\">Against protest songs<\/h1>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-title-line\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div class=\"tdb-author-name-wrap\"><span class=\"tdb-author-by\">By<\/span> <a class=\"tdb-author-name\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/author\/david-polansky\/\">David Polansky<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><time class=\"entry-date updated td-module-date\" datetime=\"2024-07-12T04:55:00-04:00\">July 12, 2024 4:55 am<\/time><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p>The past several months have provided much fuel for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/section\/politics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>political fears<\/a> both at home and abroad. But there is one worrisome political development in particular that has received too little attention: Are we in danger of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/magazine-life-arts\/1131159\/where-have-all-the-protest-songs-gone\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>protest song revival<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>In May, for instance, the rapper Macklemore released \u201cHind\u2019s Hall,\u201d a song about the pro-Palestinian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/campus-protests\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>protests on college campuses<\/a>, to surprising acclaim. Before this, Macklemore was primarily known for two things: accepting a Grammy with a particularly obsequious speech and appearing onstage in a costume that he, and virtually no one else, claimed was not <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/antisemitism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>antisemitic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Illustration by Tatiana Lozano \/ Washington Examiner; Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>What was particularly interesting about this track was that it garnered a good deal of (mostly positive) commentary that was almost entirely independent of the song\u2019s aesthetic merits. That such a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/1086390\/protest-song\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>protest song<\/a> existed at all was in itself apparently meritorious. Thus, in a strange way, Macklemore\u2019s track represents a kind of postmodern apotheosis of the protest song as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/music\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>musical form<\/a> \u2014 at least until someone manages to earn plaudits for merely announcing the intention to write a protest song.<\/p>\n<p>The protest song was always a curious subgenre. Within the annals of musical history, it is a relatively recent invention. It is important to distinguish it from the much older style of lamentation, a rich poetic form found throughout most of the world\u2019s great traditions, expressing grief and anguish without necessarily seeking an appeal of grievances. For most of history there was no popular audience to appeal to that might also be considered a political agent anyway. If you required recompense, you had to appeal to a narrower hierarchy. (Think Niccolo Machiavelli\u2019s dedicatory letter at the beginning of <em>The Prince<\/em>, addressed to the scion of the same family that had recently had him tortured.)<\/p>\n<p>Protesting as an art form required first the democratization of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/historic-significance-of-georgia-senate-contests\/\" title=\"Historic Significance of Georgia Senate Contests\">political life<\/a> in modern times.\u00a0And before the rise of the protest song, there was protest fiction \u2014 some of it, like Emile Zola\u2019s, quite excellent. But\u00a0in his remarkable book <em>The Hero and the Blues<\/em>, the American essayist Albert Murray compares protest fiction unfavorably to what he terms the \u201cheroic tradition\u201d of literary art, in which he includes American blues. For a blues singer faces death and destruction squarely; there is no cosmic court of appeals for such things. Thus, a figure like Robert Johnson is a kind of heir to Beowulf who knows the dragon he fights will be his death. Both see the terrible reality of things and do not look away. By contrast, the protest genre seeks to shame the dragon into improving, perhaps a politically worthwhile endeavor but not an aesthetically or philosophically interesting one:<\/p>\n<p>In effect, protest or finger-pointing fiction such as <em>Uncle Tom\u2019s Children<\/em> and <em>Native Son<\/em> addresses itself to the humanity of the dragon in the very process of depicting him as a fire-snorting monster: \u201cShame on you, Sir Dragon,\u201d it says in effect, \u201cbe a nice man and a good citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In any case, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/coachella-and-stagecoach-music-festivals-canceled-for-third-time\/\" title=\"Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals canceled for third time\">popular music<\/a> overtook literature as a dominant medium, the protest genre followed suit. Protest songs are of their nature tied to immediate context \u2014 be it a war, economic conditions, an unpopular government, or what have you. But pop music is, after all, itself largely ephemeral. Everyone by now knows the boomer litany, predominantly associated with the 1960s, and one can aurally anticipate them when the relevant documentary footage starts rolling: \u201cFor What It\u2019s Worth,\u201d \u201cFortunate Son,\u201d \u201cOhio,\u201d \u201cGive Peace a Chance,\u201d et very much cetera. This era proved relatively brief. It\u2019s not very nice to say, but what truly killed it off was Nixon\u2019s decision to wind down conscription, finally ending the draft altogether in 1973.<\/p>\n<p>The protest song subsequently evolved into what might be termed a broader form of socially and politically conscious music, cutting across other musical genres. The most durable of this is probably post-\u201960s album-oriented soul music, which saw artists like Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, War, and Stevie Wonder, among others, making veritable masterpieces, many of which remain among the peaks of popular recorded music. <\/p>\n<p>Contrary to that decade\u2019s superficial image, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/broadways-big-return\/\" title=\"Broadway\u2019s Big Return\">political music<\/a> wouldn\u2019t disappear entirely during the 1980s, but it would become more indirect. For example, I\u2019m reliably informed that R.E.M.\u2019s \u201cFall On Me\u201d and \u201cOrange Crush\u201d are about, respectively, the environment and the U.S. military\u2019s use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. But I would defy most listeners to pick up on this subtext in the absence of Wikipedia. Similarly, Bono famously introduced U2\u2019s hit \u201cSunday Bloody Sunday\u201d in concert by insisting, \u201cThis is not a rebel song!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bruce Springsteen has always been at least semipolitical, and during the mid-\u201980s, he produced a colossal hit with \u201cBorn in the USA,\u201d a highly protest-y song not generally received as such by listeners. Here one must insist on the point that pop music as a form is essentially about surface pleasures, and there\u2019s a reason that The Boss chose to release the anthemic electric version of the song rather than its sorrowful acoustic demo, and that reason isn\u2019t irony.<\/p>\n<p>The 1990s saw a sort-of revival of more obviously political music, but this tended to reflect a more generic attempt to signal one\u2019s commitment to vaguely left-liberal causes \u2014 e.g., supergroups Temple of the Dog\u2019s \u201cHunger Strike,\u201d with its immortal opening line, \u201cI don\u2019t mind stealin\u2019 bread from the mouths of decadence.\u201d Most of this managed to come off both lazy and sanctimonious. This development reached its nadir with 4 Non Blondes\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s Up?\u201d which is widely viewed as one of the worst songs ever written by anybody.<\/p>\n<p>In the \u201990s, there have been some protest song-adjacent entries into popular music in rap and rock, such as \u201cFight the Power\u201d by Public Enemy or much of the oeuvre of Rage Against the Machine, which evokes a highly specific set of left-wing obsessions that seem like the band might have gotten its politics by reading Howard Zinn on PCP. None made anything more than ripples in political music history. And since then, political music has been an intermittent phenomenon at best, perhaps because during the years of the Trump presidency, COVID lockdowns, Black Lives Matter, and so on, the political energy once reserved for art (not to say actual politics) was channeled into social media.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, one cannot discuss the protest song as a genre without bringing in one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/bob-dylan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Bob Dylan<\/a>, who penned more of them than anyone, save perhaps <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/magazine-your-land\/933086\/its-not-your-land-says-woody-guthries-estate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Woody Guthrie<\/a>. These include most famously \u201cBlowin\u2019 In the Wind,\u201d \u201cMasters of War,\u201d and \u201cThe Times They Are a-Changin.\u2019\u201d Perhaps the most artistically successful of these, and a short-list candidate for Dylan\u2019s greatest-ever songs, is \u201cA Hard Rain\u2019s a-Gonna Fall,\u201d which deals with the theme of nuclear war but does so in such oblique fashion that it feels timeless rather than topical.<\/p>\n<p>But Dylan has a complicated relationship with the protest song \u2014 not that anything about the man is really straightforward. In a career that now approaches its 65th\u00a0year, he has scarcely written a protest song for 60 of them. Indeed, as early as 1964, he had already recorded \u201cMy Back Pages,\u201d which is widely interpreted as a rejection of his political phase, with its lilting refrain \u201cBut I was so much older then\/ I\u2019m younger than that now.\u201d True, he did once describe the later \u201cRainy Day Women #12 and 35\u201d as one of the \u201cprotestiest\u201d things he\u2019d ever written, but in that same interview, he also claimed to be Swedish and was apparently high on amphetamines.<\/p>\n<p>Dylan himself has proclaimed Jimmy Cliff\u2019s \u201cVietnam\u201d to be the greatest protest song ever written, and here one must defer to the master. The lyrics to the song are straightforward to the point of simplicity: The narrator\u2019s friend writes him a letter from Vietnam, where he\u2019s stationed. One stanza later, his mother receives another letter informing her of his death. But Cliff, who had one of the great voices of the classic rocksteady and reggae era, sings the hell out of it. And like the kids on <em>American Bandstand<\/em> used to say, it\u2019s got a good beat and you can dance to it. <\/p>\n<p>This alone places it above just about every other protest song I\u2019ve heard and surely contributes to its durability long after the end of the titular war. Indeed, I\u2019m listening to it now.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>David Polansky is a Toronto-based writer and a research fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. Find him at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.strangefrequencies.co\/\"><em>strangefrequencies.co<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><a class=\"tdb-logo-a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" title=\"Washington Examiner\"><span class=\"tdb-logo-img-wrap\"><\/span><span class=\"tdb-logo-text-wrap\"><span class=\"tdb-logo-text-title\">Washington Examiner<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Polansky, a writer and research fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, discusses the potential revival of protest songs in popular music. He highlights the history of protest songs, their evolution, and their impact on political and social movements. Polansky also reflects on the work of artists like Bob Dylan and Jimmy Cliff, who have made significant contributions to the genre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3291,"featured_media":2293189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/culture-against-protest-songs-david-polansky-071024B1R-1024x591.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3704,34757,32076],"class_list":["post-2293188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-against","tag-protest-songs","tag-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/culture-against-protest-songs-david-polansky-071024B1R-1024x591.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2293189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}