Music & Social Action

So my last post was about how music can be used to spread hate, which, well, sucks. So how about thinking about how music can be used to further a cause? To build community, inspiration, and action? I saw Ani DiFranco in concert this week here in Arcata (side note: a benefit to living in a small community along the tour route between big cities means some big names come through town and play at ridiculously small venues! Rad.). Anyone who knows Ani DiFranco's music knows she is a long-time feminist/activist/anti-corporate musician. She has written and performed many, many politically-minded songs, never hiding her views. She sang brutally honest criticisms of George W. Bush throughout his presidency. Tuesday night she sang a song called "November 4th, 2008," about Obama's victory:

What I really loved about it was that before she played this song, she said she was annoyed by people saying Obama hasn't done enough yet. Ani said it is our duty to encourage and support him so that he can continue to make social change and not get bogged down in the negativity. I appreciated that, because I've personally found myself criticizing him now and again. Not that we should blindly follow him- but I think we put so much hope on him, that it's easy to highlight what he's not doing. But hello, have we already forgotten BUSH?!
Anyway, the other super-duper radical, inspirational, I-wanna-go-out-these-doors-and-start-a-revolution song was a cover of an old labor union song from the 1930s, "Which Side Are you On?" I researched it, and found that it was written in 1931 by Florence Reece. An online article states:

"In 1931, coal miners in Harlan County were on strike. Armed company deputies roamed the countryside, terrorizing the mining communities, looking for union leaders to beat, jail, or kill. But coal miners, brought up lean and hard in the Kentucky mountain country, knew how to fight back, and heads were bashed and bullets fired on both sides in Bloody Harlan.

It was this kind of class war -- the mine owners and their hired deputies on one side, and the independent, free-wheeling Kentucky coal-miners on the other -- that provided the climate for Florence Reece's "Which Side Are You On?" In it she captured the spirit of her times with blunt eloquence.

Mrs. Reece wrote from personal experience. Her husband, Sam, was one of the union leaders, and Sheriff J. H. Blair and his men came to her house in search of him when she was alone with her seven children. They ransacked the whole house and then kept watch outside, ready to shoot Sam down if he returned.

One day during this tense period Mrs. Reece tore a sheet from a wall calendar and wrote the words to "Which Side Are You On?" The simple form of the song made it easy to adapt for use in other strikes, and many different versions have circulated.

Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer, Songs of Work and Protest, New York, NY, 1973, p. 55."

Both Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were known to sing the song. Here's Pete Seeger singing it:



And here's a video of Ani's version:


In undergrad, one of my upper-division Sociology classes was "Music & Social Movements." It was a fascinating class, to study songs and musicians that helped shape and propel movements (sidenote: unfortunately the professor did not present a single song related to the Women's movement; so I did a class presentation on a Riot Grrrls song). So much can be gained by social action through music- solidarity in a message, singing it all together; energy released and created by singing and dancing; fun and positivity as an anti-violence tactic; and a memorable link to the issues and experiences.