Stand up, sing out: the contemporary relevance of protest song

Sound is an integral part of protest, and singing is a way for ordinary people, as well as amateur or professional musicians, to sonorously raise their voices in an appeal for justice. The intimate and sensuous activity of singing, in solo form or as part of a collective, has a power and persuasiveness beyond mere rhetoric. Because of music’s ubiquity, its presence in all cultures, and its fundamental ownership by all human beings, it is a medium and a performance act that is essentially recognisable, familiar, and translatable; therefore, it has the potential to reach across social and political divides, or, at the very least, reveal our shared humanity. Music, of course, is not intrinsically good or inherently utopian, even if, in making music – in musiking - people celebrate not only who they are, but also often who they hope to become (Small 1998: xi). Like any medium, music can be used for malign propaganda purposes. It can disinform, it can proselytise, it can incite, and it can exclude; singers, song texts and performance activities may, in fact, be part of the very systems that reproduce oppressive structures and behaviours (Turino 2008). But when singing is mobilized in order to counter injustice, to challenge inequality, to rise above hate and fear, to appeal against the normalisation of bigotry, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a myriad of other anti-democratic, anti-human practices, then the power of song is revealed as affective, persuasive, ethical and hopeful.