On a day in which Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello is calling for 10,000 guitarists to join him in New York City as part of Occupy Wall Street’s May Day demonstration, we offer the first part of Pete Mason’s feature on protest music.

America’s musical canon has developed and evolved over the past two centuries, yielding genres that are as broad and wide-ranging as the backgrounds of its citizens. From religious music came folk, gospel, Appalachian and later bluegrass. Rock grew from jazz and blues while hip-hop and rap developed from the soul and R&B mixed with a dose of gospel and spoken word. Punk and metal added harder sounds to rock via the psychedelic era as the alternative and indie rock of the past two decades filled the voids overlooked by other styles of music. Intertwined in all these genres is protest music, which does not align itself within one style, no more than an idea is owned by only one group of people.

Protest songs can be written to fit any cause, any action or inaction by a government and give voice to the concerns of those who are otherwise unable to share their voice with others. The names Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, Fela Kuti, John Lennon, John Mellencamp, Megadeth, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Neil Young, Pearl Jam, REM, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day and U2 all come to mind when protest music is mentioned, yet the evolution of protest music as a popular form of music is as important as the development of our nation as a whole.

In the early 1800s, music often celebrated the causes of the time: abolition, abstention from alcohol, war, woman’s suffrage and patriotism, among others. Few of these songs last to present day in their original form, although some can find their musical roots in later songs. In the second half of the 19th century, there were more songs about freedom and abolition but it was not until the labor movement began to pick up steam around the turn of the century that songs of protest first took hold.

One of earliest and best known protest songs of the labor movement was by Joe Hill, an activist affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World. “The Preacher and the Slave” called for fairness and equality for those workers who contributed to the growth of the nation. The musical basis for “The Preacher and the Slave” was a Christian hymn “In the Sweet By-and-By,” dating back to the mid-1800s, and in the course of the lyrics Hill coined the phrase ‘the pie in the sky’, referring to the idea that when you die, you will (purportedly) get all the rewards you desire, yet meanwhile during life, the rewards are not so much. Other songs by of this era include “There is Power in a Union” by Hill and "Bread and Roses "by James Oppenheim and Caroline Kohlsaat, referring to the Bread and Roses Strike at a textile plant in Massachusetts in the winter of 1912.

When World War I began in 1914, America was neutral and songs of the era reflected America’s thoughts on The Great War. “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier” by Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi pointed out the degree to which Americans did not want to get involved in a conflict that was based in Europe and had little direct effect on this country. Sending soldiers to die for a cause overseas (and leaving children without a father, or in some cases a father without his child) was something nearly unheard of for this generation, having had only a short Spanish-American War in 1898 as the recent war of note.

The Great Depression brought about songs of despair and lament for a fair shake, very much like today. The most moving songs from the era, “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” is as relevant today as it was in the early 1930s. The lyrics evoke questions of the working class who put in their hours defending the country in World War One and built up the country upon their return, but once the tough times hit, they have nothing to fall back on and are in bread lines.

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

In 1999 Time magazine named “Strange Fruit,” written by Abel Meeropol and first recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939 as “Song of the Century.” “Strange Fruit,” references the racial barriers of the Depression era in lyrics that refer to the plight of African-Americans as they fought for freedom and equality in society, despite the Constitution granting freedom and citizenship more than 60 years before this song’s appearance.

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Woody Guthrie spent much of the 1930s traveling with migrant workers in the West, an experience reflected in his best known composition “This Land Is Your Land” as well as 1940’s “Tom Joad.” The latter song shares the story of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath character who chose to break his parole in order to help his family during the Dust Bowl Era. Guthrie’s1940 album, Dust Bowl Ballads, tells similar stories such as “I Ain’t Got No Home,” which took a Baptist melody whose original lyrics referred to accepting your lot in life and waiting for salvation in the next life, juxtaposed with Guthrie’s lyrics in which he describes hard-working farmers who lose their farms to the banks: “Rich man took my home and drove me from my door.” To be clear where his mindset was, Guthrie’s guitar was affixed with a sticker that read ‘This Machine Kills Fascists’, an idea later borrowed by Pete Seeger for his banjo (his reads “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender.” )

Pro-union songs led to the birth of Pete Seeger’s illustrious career as a folk singer with The Almanac Singers (a group that also included Guthrie) singing classics “Which Side Are You On?” and “Union Maid” , both of which have remained relevant as causes changed over time. With The Weavers, Seeger sang “If I Had a Hammer” , which caught the attention of the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee and led to his blacklisting in the late 1950s. For a few years, he was unable to perform in public without catching the ire of many local towns, but soon after performing at Carnegie Hall to great acclaim in 1963, he became a voice for the budding anti-war movement and later wrote “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” a song inspired by seeing a photo in a newspaper of soldiers crossing a river. A later, more obscure song by Len Chandler titled “Beans in my Ears” was covered by Seeger and included references to a young boy named Alby Jay who put beans in his ears and couldn’t hear what others said to him. Seeger recorded the song in 1966 and Alby Jay’s behavior reflects that of President Johnson as he ignored the cries of anti-war protestors.

But before Vietnam would become a main focus of protest songs (and in effect, a large swath of popular music over the course of the 1960s), many Americans began writing and performing music that reflected the struggle for civil rights. “We Shall Overcome,” which took the tune of a Gospel song was originally a union song popularized by Pete Seeger. Eventually Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. thought so much of it that one day while driving to a speech in Kentucky, he remarked to a mutual friend of his and Seeger’s, “‘We Shall Overcome,’ that song really sticks with you, doesn’t it?”

“Blowin’ in the Wind” was adapted by Bob Dylan from the old Negro spiritual “No More Auction Block.” Also recorded by Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary and many others, the song addressed a variety of concern, before returning to the refrain “The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” With the winds of the national culture changing, the answer was not what it had once been. Similarly, Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” spoke volumes about the changes taking place in America and that indeed, the present state of the country was changing. Dylan told Cameron Crowe for the liner notes to his 1985 album Biograph, that with a reference to the “Gospel of Mark” he used lyrics to create “a song of purpose, influenced by Scottish and Irish ballads” :

Come Senators, congressman, please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
……
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’_

A few years later, in “Southern Man,” Neil Young sang out against the continued racism in the south and a call for amends is made. Meanwhile a related cry appeared in another context as Sly and the Family Stone wrote “Everyday People” calling for equality and peace among all peoples, one of the most positive-thought evoking songs of American history.

In 1968 both Dr. King and Robert F Kennedy were assassinated. The loss of these two leaders, along with John F Kennedy five years earlier led to “Abraham, Martin and John,” which Dion recorded in 1968. The lyrics are similar throughout the song, except for the change of the names with each verse.

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham/John/Martin?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he’s gone.

With their passing so too did the era lose a certain measure of innocence, which inspired additional songs of protest.

Click here to read part two of the feature.