Music in Political Movements
Image: Netflix
On Christmas, I watched a movie on Netflix called “I Am Woman”. It’s based on the life of Helen Reddy, an Australian born singer-songwriter from the 1970’s who created the hit song “I Am Woman”, which topped the Billboard 100 in 1972 as the number one hit single.
The early 1970’s was a period when the women’s rights movement was starting to grow and the song became adopted as an unofficial anthem of the movement. National Organization for Woman founder Betty Friedan describes the impact of song at the closing of the NOW annual convention. “Suddenly, women got out of their seats and started dancing around the hotel ballroom and joining hands in a circle that got and larger until maybe a thousand of us were dancing and singing, 'I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman.'”
This movie inspired me to explore the role music has played in political movements. I found a fascinating article by Mikalah Hodge which explores this topic in “The Pitches of Protest: How Music Makes Movements” (https://harvardpolitics.com/pitches-of-protest/).
From “Yankee Doodle” to Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly,” music has always acted as a vessel for change. Melodies can be more than just pleasing notes — they can have the power to function as rallying calls as well. Similar to protesting, music is meant to be heard, and both practices draw on the innate human need for connection.
Hodge charts a fascinating narrative of how music has been used in political movements throughout US history and what makes it so powerful.
Hodge starts with the well known children’s song “Yankee Doodle”, which started out as a way for the British to mock the American colonists during the Revolutionary War. The words “yankee” and “doodle” were equivalent to “uneducated” and “hick” and British soldiers sang the song to mock American soldiers during the Battle of Lexington and Concord. After the British defeat at that battle, the American colonists sang the song back at the British as they retreated. As the war continued, what once began as a satirical musical piece soon turned into a powerful rallying cry and uniting force for the colonists. The song came to represent colonists’ frustrations with being treated like second-class citizens and their deep desire for freedom.
Hodge writes that in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights movement, music was used to unite people. Songs like “People Get Ready” by The Impressions, was a tune that inspired American citizens to join the civil rights movement, by motivating and uniting Black protestors while sharing the story of the Black struggle with their White counterparts.
In an interview with the HPR, Trey Carlisle, programming director for Music in Common, expressed that music was so integral to the [Civil Rights] movement because “during marches like the Selma to Montgomery march or during the protests folks would engage in, Black and white folks and folks of different religions were singing the same songs together during their marches to not only uplift their spirits, but also expressed their collective calls for change.”
Hodge concludes that music is powerful because the act of listening to it opens yourself up for an emotional response, and that an emotional response works well for a protest song.
