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Chapter 1: What recent events have sparked protests across the country?
All right, y'all, we are just two weeks into January, but already this year has been eventful. There's Trump's attack on Venezuela or last week's ice shooting in Minneapolis, which led to protests all across the country over the weekend. And these protests on the street are connected to what I want to talk about today. A new era of protest music online. You probably don't need a ship.
This past year in particular, there's been an uptick where I feel like every time there's a really big thing happening in the news, ICE raids, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, these have all been moments where I've seen a lot of people use songs and in particular these very like folk plain spoken guitar driven songs on social media as a way to kind of respond to these moments.
This trend is kind of surprising to me. When I think of protest music, I think of like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, you know, their heydays were more than half a century ago. Here's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, reporter for NPR Music, who wrote a story on this trend.
Chapter 2: How is TikTok influencing the revival of protest music?
It's like a throwback to what we think of as like Vietnam War singer-songwriter era protest music. So why is this new version of protest music going viral? Stomp Clap 2.0 era is here. Ah! We had like the Lumineers and Mumford and Sons, like this is the new version of that, I feel like.
Who needs evidence when your pal's the president and you're standing with the great wizard of all.
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. So first, I want to know, who are some artists that you've been watching that you spoke to for your story? Like what are the kinds of things they're singing about?
Chapter 3: Who are the key artists contributing to the new protest music trend?
Yeah, there's three main artists that I've been sort of keeping tabs on. The first one is Jesse Wells. He's an Arkansas singer-songwriter. He's often compared to like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan. His whole thing is singing the news. So he's cranking these songs out.
Like, you know, he's made songs about what's happening in Gaza, about the Trump administration's trying to draw links between Tylenol use and autism.
Tylenol Our problems start with Tylenol I'm so glad we found the one and only Cause of it all
there's two other artists one of them is Monrovia he's an Afro-Appalachian singer that also has this very sort of earthy folk sound his music is really about identity in a lot of ways but also protests oppression and the government and like a lack of collective care and empathy in today's society do you see the man on the street just fighting for immunity you can write him off as a lunatic but
And then the third one is Jensen McRae.
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Chapter 4: What themes are prevalent in the songs of modern protest artists?
She's like an indie rock folk singer of the 21st century. And, you know, she's open for Moona and Noah Khan. And she's like a folk artist with a more acoustic pop angle.
As long as I live, I'll remember the names of your things.
But she's also released a few protest songs on her social media channels that aren't, like they're not on her albums. She's just someone who will respond to something big happening in the news by writing these songs and posting them directly on TikTok and Instagram.
I wonder also too, like, you know, in thinking about the kind of music that like each of these artists make, right?
It feels like there's like aesthetically some overlap there between like this kind of folk protest music and country music. And country music is like so popular right now.
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Chapter 5: Why did folk protest music decline in popularity over the years?
I feel like this very folky Americana thing is having a really big moment. And because it is aesthetically reminiscent of that like 60s, 70s Bob Dylan, Joan Baez thing, I think it only makes sense that we're also getting people who are adding a political layer back into that music with this aesthetic.
So it's like the aesthetic is already kind of like coming back. And given our political climate where so many people are feeling upset, it makes sense that a political message would also come and emerge at the same time. It's like the music aesthetically is kind of begging for it. And also like the times are kind of begging for it in a lot of people's minds as well.
Exactly. Yeah. And it's like an accessible thing, too.
Chapter 6: How are social media platforms reshaping the music industry for protest artists?
You know, I think it's a lot easier to write a few lines and play it on your guitar and record yourself and put it on TikTok than it is to produce a whole song. I think it's accessible from a creator's standpoint and also as an audience member. Like, I think these are very straightforward lyrics that are very clear and explicit about what they're talking about.
That folk music, protest music sound, Pete Seeger or like Joan Baez. Why do you think that kind of musical style became less popular until now? Because I will say, like, I know that people like Joan Baez and literally Pete Seeger, like Pete Seeger was playing, I feel like up until the day he died, he was playing at whatever protests would have him still.
But still, that musical style was not like the style of the day, you know, for a long time. Why do you think that kind of musical style became less popular? And why do you think it's coming back now?
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question because I think, to your point, those artists who were making that music never really went away.
Chapter 7: What challenges do artists face when using platforms like TikTok for activism?
Joan Baez performed with Jesse Wells recently. She joined him on stage. Those people have still been around. And there's been new generations that have obviously kept making folk music, protest music, you name it. But I think...
After the 60s and 70s, when there was that heyday of, you know, protests for civil rights, protests against the Vietnam War, all of this sort of social change happening in the country, the music industry really started to change. This is a question I asked musicologist Tammy Kernodle. She also teaches at Miami University. And this is what she told me.
When we started to move into the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century,
Chapter 8: Can modern protest music translate into real social change?
is that those messages started to be filtered out because of the infrastructure and how music became so vastly commodified because of its globalization. The industry began to work against it.
So, you know, like the 70s, the 80s, you start to see the rise of like MTV and capital P pop music. And like this folk protest music doesn't really go away, but it becomes way less central to like mainstream culture. And I will say, you know, there's definitely a lot of politics in other kinds of music, like pop music is political in its own way.
And you have the rise of all of these genres like pop. you know, hip hop and into the 90s and 2000s, you have reggaeton and all of this music that, you know, pushes for a lot of political and social change. But it just doesn't really have that same aesthetic as, you know, the really folk guitar singer songwriting protest music.
I think about the chicks. They're not folk, you know, per se, they're really pop country, but they were really, really vocal about their stance on the invasion of Iraq and their opposition to the president at that time, George W. Bush, who was also from Texas, like the Chicks. They famously said that he made them feel ashamed to be from Texas. And a lot of stations stopped playing their music.
Yeah, I think we start to see a lot of backlash in the 2000s whenever artists are willing to take that kind of a political stance and especially make music that is infused with those politics. I think what happened to the chicks and the backlash that they received is something that we see generations fear for decades.
Taylor Swift talks about that in her documentary Miss Americana, how she was so scared to take a stance or align herself with any political party because of what had happened to the chicks. And artists get told to kind of stay in their lane if they want to be Shut up and sing.
Exactly. Shut up and sing. But it got refashioned for protests, specifically in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. It's something that I think people still have an appetite for and still find that they need in times of protest.
Totally, yeah. Because, I mean, it's not like we stopped protesting from the 70s to now. I think it's really important that you bring up someone like Kendrick Lamar and BLM because I think rap, it carries the torch of social protest, I think, for the past two decades.
And now what we're seeing is that, you know, even having a pop artist like Beyonce, right, reclaim her roots on Cowboy Carter or having Bad Bunny reclaim his roots with this last album, De Mi Tirar Más Votos, like, those things are protests in their own way. But I think, like you're saying, they have to strike a really fine balance of how they're sort of
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