LibGuides: Louder Than Words: Rock, Power and Politics: Social Justice

Associated Search Terms

Citizenship
Civil rights
Human rights
Identify
Labor movements
Minorities
Patriotism
Political activity
Political aspects

Protest movements
Protest songs
Racism
Radicalsim
Segregation
Social aspects
Social conditions
Strikes
Working class
Work songs

Articles

These articles are available via the database Rock's Backpages. Access to articles may require you to be on-site at the Library & Archives.

Phil Ochs and Protest Songs - Jane Heil, Hit Parader, January 1966
Gil Scott-Heron: You Won't Be Able to Tune In, Turn On and Cop Out... - Davitt Sigerson, Black Music, April 1976
Never Argue With A Pregnant Indian: Buffy Sainte-Marie - Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 May 1976
Curtis Mayfield: So Proud — The Moral Standard of Soul - Paolo Hewitt, New Musical Express, 9 July 1983
Stevie Wonder Has a Dream - Carol Cooper, Face, The, June 1984
Public Enemy: Strength to Strength - Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 17 October 1987
AUDIO: Billy Bragg (1990) - Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 1990

Google Books

Theses/Dissertations

The influence of protest songs on the U.S. public : a Vietnam War perspective by Juan Rene Carrillo
ISBN: 899285749
Publication Date: 2014
A rhetorical and cultural analysis of the protest rock movement, 1964-1971 by B Keith Murphy
Call Number: ML3918.R63 M87 1988a
Publication Date: 1988
Working class heroes : counter-cultural politics and the singing hero in twentieth century America by Wayne Hampton
Call Number: ML3551 .H36 1983a
Publication Date: 1993
"It's bigger that hip hop" : popular rap music and the politics of the hip hop generation by Derek Evans
Call Number: ML3918.R37 .E93 2007a
Publication Date: 2007
People get ready : race, place and political identity in post-civil rights black popular music, 1965-1975 by Michael Stephen Hanson
Call Number: ML3918.P67 H36 2002a
Publication Date: 2002

Books

33 revolutions per minute : a history of protest songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day by Dorian Lynskey
Call Number: ML3780 .L96 2011
Popular Music and Human Rights by Ian Peddie
Call Number: ML3918.P67 P67 2011 v. 1
Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa by Ingrid Monson
Call Number: ML3508 .M66 2010
Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow by Karl Hagstrom Miller
Call Number: ML3551 .M55 2010
Ready for a Brand New Beat: How "Dancing in the Street" Became the Anthem for a Changing America by Mark Kurlansky
Call Number: E185.615 .K87 2013
Right to Rock: the Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race by Maureen Mahon
Call Number: ML3918.R63 M24 2004
Live Aid: World Wide Concert Book by Peter Hillmore; Bob Geldof (Introduction by)
Call Number: ML36.L58 H55 1985
Everybody Says Freedom by Pete Seeger; Robert S. Reiser; Jesse Jackson (Foreword by); Bob Reiser
Call Number: ML3551.5 .S44 1989
Hip Hop Movement: From R & B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation by Reiland Rabaka
Call Number: ML3479 .R33 2013
Strike Songs of the Depression by Timothy P. Lynch
Call Number: ML3780 .L963 2007

Scores

Carry It On by Pete Seeger; Bob Reiser
Call Number: M1977.L3 C37 1985
Sing for Freedom: the Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs by Guy Carawan, Candie Carawan, editors
Call Number: M1977.C47 S56 2007
Songs of work and freedom
Call Number: M1630.18.F69 S66 1960

YouTube Videos

Archival Resources

Listed below are notable collections and items from the Rock Hall's Archives. You can find more by searching our catalog here.

Amnesty International Photographs
Artists Against Apartheid
Bluefield Auditorium Posters The collection consists of seven concert posters for performances held at the auditorium in Bluefield, West Viriginia. Performers included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Ruth Brown, The Coasters, Fats Domino, The Five Satins, Ernie Freeman, Etta James, Little Richard, and "Big" Joe Turner. The collection provides a glimpse into the types of acts that appeared at Bluefield Auditorium and, most importantly, how the shows were promoted to a segregated audience. Seen in a broader context, the collection provides insights to the musicians that performed during the mid- to late-1950s, and the types of venues at which they performed.
Concert for Bangladesh
Earth Day Jubilee
Farm Aid
Live Aid
Rock Against Racism
Rock the Vote
Sing Out! Records The Sing Out! Records document folk music and its related genres throughout the decades of the 1940s to the present. The photograph and subject files in this collection were originally a part of the Sing Out! Resource Center, created in the 1980s to document the diverse nature and history of folk music in order to better serve the folk community. Because Sing Out's mission is focused not on folk music but the "people's music," the collection documents a wide range of musical genres and styles, including blues, folk, alternative, country, rock, and world music; as well as festivals and organizations related to the creation, performance, and dissemination of the music. The collection also documents music as it serves "the common cause of humanity," and therefore, contains information and imagery related to a variety of social and political issues, including the civil and women’s rights movements, labor rights, economic and social justice, freedom of assembly, and the anti-nuclear and anti-war movements. The collection is particularly rich in its documentation of women and minorities in music. In addition to the archival materials in the collection, a large number of periodicals, books, and LPs were added to the library’s research collections.
USA for Africa

Digital video (available onsite only):

American music masters: Sam Cooke. Julian Bond address. Peter Guralnick keynote. Rock Hall President and CEO Terry Stewart introduces Civil Rights leader and politician Julian Bond who speaks briefly and then introduces keynote speaker and rock, soul, and blues scholar Peter Guralnick. Bond discusses Guralnick’s importance in terms of discussing issues of race in the music of Sam Cooke. Guralnick speaks about Sam Cooke as a creative artist, including his determination and songwriting.
American music masters: Woody Guthrie, part 5. Politics panel discussion. A panel consisting of Woody Guthrie and labor scholar Ron Cohen, musician and activist Billy Bragg, folk music promoter and Weavers manager Harold Leventhal, Guthrie's longtime friend Jimmy Longhi, and music author and editor Dave Marsh discuss the politics of Woody Guthrie. Topics include grass roots movements, peace and war, civil rights, and labor unions.
American Musicological Society lecture: Mark Clague. Clague argues that as an ongoing process of commentary, the many versions of Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" move deftly between protest and patriotism. At once, Hendrix’s reconceptions show great sensitivity to Francis Scott Key’s lyrics while exploding this text to question who is American and how one should practice the art of citizenship. Clague believes one should reconsider the Woodstock Banner in context of Hendrix as a political commentator by comparing this singular, well-known version to dozens of lesser-known renditions that shed light on his thought and artistry. Clague argues that Hendrix’s Banners start as an offshoot of the eulogistic Civil War bugle call "Taps," and develop in an aesthetic of free jazz as a wide-ranging pictorial improvisation. By Woodstock, Hendrix’s Banner had coalesced as a set of compositional possibilities, offering an eloquent statement that resonated deeply with the counter-cultural energies of Woodstock as youth utopia.
Immaculate funk, the Jerry Wexler story: Al Bell, part 1 Stax Records co-owner Al Bell discusses producer Jerry Wexler with film director Tom Thurman, including Wexler's work with Ivory Joe Hunter, Ray Charles, and Otis Redding; segregation in the record business, and Jerry Wexler's role in changing the term "race records" to "rhythm and blues" and the impact that had on the marketing of the music. This is an unedited form of an interview featured in the documentary film, Immaculate funk : the story of Jerry Wexler (2000), directed by Tom Thurman.