Crank the volume

Where are the new Marleys and Lennons?o?= Download the 25 best protest anthems today -- for free -- including several exclusive to Salon from Rickie Lee Jones, Xiu Xiu, Yuka Honda and more.

By Thomas Bartlett

Sept. 1, 2004 | Last Sunday I took part in a protest here in New York City that you probably read about, marching with a loosely organized, unrehearsed pickup band playing a mix of improvisations, classic marching songs ("When the Saints Come Marching In") and old protest songs (Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up"). No songs, though, specifically addressed the issues at hand. Why? Because we didn't know any that did. To the extent that there exists a unified cultural movement in opposition to the Iraq war and to the policies of George W. Bush, it is a movement without an anthem. What excited other protesters the most was our rousing rendition of Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On."

Protest songs, I think it's fair to say, are out of vogue, despite the perhaps unprecedented number of politically motivated concerts, tours and recordings over the last year. The desire to get George W. Bush out of office has mobilized musicians and artists like nothing else since, possibly, Vietnam. Artists who previously never felt a need to are making their political views public and taking very partisan stands, as Bruce Springsteen did recently in the New York Times. And yet, despite all this political involvement, few high-profile musicians are writing explicitly political songs. There have been flurries of excitement and press coverage each time a famous musician releases a protest song, precisely because it remains so unusual.

In the majority of the anti-Bush concerts I've attended, the Bush bashing has occurred during the in-between song banter, not in the songs themselves. Even on the recent "Future Soundtrack for America," a CD to benefit MoveOn.org and other organizations -- featuring a very impressive lineup including David Byrne, R.E.M, Tom Waits, the Flaming Lips and more -- surprisingly few of the songs are explicitly political. (Full disclosure: I appear on the compilation as the keyboardist in Mike Doughty's band.) Similarly, few of the songs posted on the Web site for Music for America, a large and well-organized nonprofit dedicated to political action through music, are protest songs. Many high-profile musicians are lending their time and fame to support their political beliefs. Relatively few are writing songs that directly articulate those beliefs.

I had encountered so few recent protest songs when I set out to write this column a week ago that I was worried I wouldn't be able to find enough of them. How foolish of me! The Internet is teeming with them, if you only look. There were so many protest songs readily available that it made me start to take seriously for the first time the complaint I'd heard from a number of politically oriented musicians: that their music was ignored simply because it was political. But then I started listening to the songs. This music isn't ignored because it's political. It's ignored because it's bad. Dreadful, actually. I don't think I've ever listened to so much bad music in one week. If I were in a meaner mood I'd devote this column to the very worst songs I encountered this week, and we'd all have a good time -- bad protest songs are a terrific source of unintentional humor. If you're in the mood to laugh, just Google "protest song" and "Iraq war" and "George W." and you'll find plenty of specimens that are delicious in their awfulness.

But I wanted to spotlight the best protest songs. (Among the most exhaustive compilations on the Web is Protest Records, the product of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Chris Habib.) Some of the following songs I like, some I think are genuinely great, and some I don't plan to ever listen to again. But they're worth your attention -- and they're all free, including five exclusive tracks offered just to Salon readers -- so listen and choose for yourself.

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