Protest History: The Beginnings of Social Awareness

Protest music, to use the understood definition, is music that had its start in the American folk tradition and gradually became more and more mainstream in the 1950's and 1960's. This "type" of protest music has its own sound, a sound readily definable to most Americans over the age of fifteen.

Defining protest music in this way, however, raises difficult questions. We all know Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth is protest music. But what about more recent examples? What about some of the newer genres that all were born out of the folk/protest hybridation? Is not Seattle-born grunge in some way protest music? What about some alternative musicians? Could they not also be filed under the label "protest?"

The definition of protest music, then, is intrinsically linked to personal views about both music and protest in general. Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, & Mary says, "I feel the term protest music is a misnomer. From my own perspective, it's music of affirmation. Unlike some of the nihilistic messages in art that we have seen emerge musically or cinematically, it was very clear that something very positive was being embraced and supported. It was not simply railing against injustice, but a clear proposal for an alternative."

Applying this definition, all music with environmental messages could technically be classified as protest music. However, for the sake of this assignment, I will define protest music as music from the 1950's through the 1970's, stemming from the "folk sound" tradition, with a definite purpose and aim.

Protest music was born and took shape during the Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975 and consumed nearly a full generation of American youth. It was during this time in American history that young people really took a stand and started paying attention to their rights as individuals. The voting age was lowered, during this time period, from twenty-one to eighteen across the nation. This was a direct result of American youth's refusal to go to war without the power to make decisions about their government. "We can die for our country but we can't vote," was a common phrase used by young men who had been - or potentially could be - drafted.

Vietnam was, more than any other war, fought by young people. It consumed a generation, and only now is the remainder of that generation able to begin to look at it with any sort of clarity. Those that did not fight protested--nobody within the Vietnam generation was exempt. The war changed those who fought for it and those who fought against it.

To a large extent, artists and musicians at this time fought against the war, largely on idealistic principles. They did not believe America should be fighting to maintain democracy in a tiny country across the globe. In a docu-drama about the 60's, aired on NBC, one young man comes home from Vietnam on leave and tells his father, "This is the wrong war for your principles." The father replies, "Principles are principles--that's why they don't change." This is an example of the disillusioned and disaffected quality that many young people felt during this time. They felt that the older generation did not understand them, which in a large part was entirely true. Their parents were not used to the "free" way of thinking that was beginning to sweep the country, the beginnings of social protest and the hippie movement. They did not know what to think when their children began to say, "No," and mean it.

And thus protest music was born, music created by and for young people. As stated, it was used as a device for social change. Not only did it criticize world leaders for their actions, but it suggested avenues for change. Nothing was sacred, but the voices were gentle in their criticism. Unlike the voices of today's rap and hip-hop artist like Emineim, protest musicians did not advocate hate. They advocated love. They advocated peace if possible, and violence only if it leads to positive, peaceful social change. Through the principles of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., they strove for peaceful protest, and nonviolent change. One of the avenues of nonviolence they actively pursued was music.

Protest Musicians: Folk Overlap

Because of protest music's close ties to folk music, many folk musicians had dual roles as protest musicians. Some of the most important protest musicians with ties to the environmental movement are detailed below.

• Buffalo Springfield - Buffalo Springfield epitomized the protest music scene, the turbulent decade of the 1960's. As one biographer put it, "In 1967, the Buffalo Springfield captured the restless, confrontational mood of that generation railing against the establishment and went on to be revered as one of...music's most influential groups" (Einarson & Furay). Their song For What It's Worth "[has] come to symbolize the turbulent decade of the 1960s. Employed in virtually every documentary, television special, and feature film (including Forrest Gump and Oliver Stone's Born On The Fourth Of July) chronicling that era in America, For What It's Worth has transcended the pop charts to become an anthem, a touchstone for an entire generation" (Einarson & Furay).
• Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan, arguably one of the most important American musicians, no matter the genre, began his career as a folksinger along the lines of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He was "discovered" after moving to Greenwich Village, New York City, which was the hub of subversive political activity and art in the 1950's and 1960's. His first album was comprised mostly of "public domain" folk music, traditional music with no apparent composer or lyricist. He included two of his own compositions, including the sentimental Song to Woody, an ode to the incomparable Woody Guthrie. After these original songs were well-received, he began composing in earnest, and to date has become one of the most prolifent American musicians of the last century. Some of his most famous songs include The Times, They Are A-Changing; Blowing in the Wind; Chimes of Freedom; Mr. Tambourine Man; All Along the Watchtower; Mr. Bojangles and Highway 61 Revisited.
• Pete Seeger - Famous until this recent generation, Pete Seeger was one of the great American troubadours (traveling musicians), eclipsed on the folk scene perhaps by only Woody Guthrie. Pete Seeger started out as an amateur banjo player and a music historian, using the newly-mastered technology of the magnetized audio tape in the 1930's and 1940's to record the "old-timey" folk songs of the Appalachian and Ozark mountains, backcountry places where tradition hails back to the founding of the nation. He founded several folk music revival bands and several publications including the famous Sing Out! periodical that ran for many years. Alternately loved and hated by the government, accused of subversive and Communist activity, and hailed as the true American musician, Pete Seeger has had a full and distinguished career. Among the songs he both wrote and re-wrote from old folk tunes are Where Have All the Flowers Gone, (Turn, Turn, Turn) To Everything There is a Season, If I Had a Hammer, Well May the World Go, and Garbage.
• Peter, Paul & Mary - Peter, Paul & Mary got their start in the 1950's and are still going strong, singing the songs they love to sing. Like Seeger and Guthrie, they started singing traditional public-domain folk songs, and also well-known protest songs of the times, including songs by giants such as John Denver and Bob Dylan. They also began recording their own music, and outside of their musical careers they used their fame to protest and lobby for civil rights, environmental rights, and other issues they found important. Peter says, "[W]e are all living with oceans that are no longer safe and under skies that are no longer unpolluted. No naïve response such as ‘taking cover’ under one’s desk, the way we did in elementary school during nuclear attack drills, makes any sense. We’re at a global saturation point, which is creating the impetus for new political advocacies. Such times of crisis have inevitably brought ‘music of conscience’ to the fore and I expect we will be hearing more and more of it in the immediate future. When people feel empowered to come together and raise their voices, also will mean raising their voices in song as well." Famous Peter, Paul & Mary songs with environmental themes include The Coming of the Roads, Power; Somos el Barco, El Salvador, and There But For Fortune.

Environmental Involvement

During this period of social upheaval, scientists began to realize that the way humans were treating the world was definitely having visible ramifications on the environment. Young people started "speaking their minds," as Buffalo Springfield says in one of their songs, and one of their chosen issues was that of environmentalism. Eastern philosophy, food, and music was in vogue, and with it came ideas about living "softly" on the land, something native inhabitants of America had been saying for generations. Slowly, American youth began realizing that the way their parents lived was neither sustainable nor wise, and that eventually one of the generations down the way was going to have to pay.

Environmentalism, in this sense, grew out of an era of much more generalized protest. Young people growing up during the Vietnam years realized that they could not necessarily trust their parents or their government to do what was best, which was how previous generations had operated, under the faith that their government and their elders knew what was best for them. The Vietnam generation, for many different reasons, lost this implicit faith in the goodwill of humanity in general and the older generations in particular. Bob Dylan's infamous The Times, They Are A-Changing epitomized this with its stark, stirring lyrics. It became the call of a generation:

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changing.

Environmentalism was, for the protest-generation, merely one of many causes to support, and the causes were very much born of an anti-establishment attitude. They supported the environment because their parents supported industry. They supported peace because their parents supported war. It was a big break from how things worked in the past. And eventually, those individuals who had joined the protest for ideological reasons won out over the people who just wanted to go against the older generations, and slowly the movement turned from one of resentment to one of ideological values.

It was at this time as well, however, that reactionary strategies for winning battles came back into vogue. Violence against unions had (for the most part) ceased twenty or so years ago by 1960, and diplomatic compromise had been the key for getting through the 1950's. Then came the tumultuous late '60's, and during this time "political" groups run by college students and other young people began attempting to enforce their idea of social order by disrupting practices which they felt were abusive to the world, to animals, or to other people. Spiking timber became popular in areas with large logging industries, and setting small land mines to disrupt commercial mining operations in heavily-mined areas. Radical reactionaries broke into and blew up laboratories where animals were being used to test products. Others took over offices and held unarmed sit-ins. People chained themselves to trees, or lived up in their branches to keep them from being cut down. Cases were sensationalized, and parents wondered where they had gone wrong raising their children. The era of social battle had begun.

Musical Samples

Instructions: Right-click and choose "Save Target As" to download file samples. All music files are saved in .zip format; use a program such as WinZip to unzip the files.

Not all of these songs are necessarily environmental in nature, but they are samples of the protest music genre. Songs with (*) indicate a particular emphasis on environmental themes.