I go to the movie, And I go downtown. And somebody keeps telling me, “Don’t hang around.” It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know A change gon’ come. Oh yes, it will!
Sam Cooke – “A Change is Gonna Come!”
If you scour the Internet, you may agree that there have not been many protest songs over the past decade. There have been far fewer than in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The 1960s produced the most protest songs and decried the seemingly endless deaths in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
We need some new movement melodies!
Black folks’ protest songs have always been akin to the story of little David, who took the fight to the Philistine giant, Goliath. The more unjust and insane, the better when it comes to Black movement melodies.
Nina Simone sang her protest about Southern lynchings. Public Enemy was vocal that they didn’t “give a damn” about America’s wild west poster boy, John Wayne. Sam Cooke crooned his protest. But each of their works has a place in our freedom struggle.
Just as the 1970s began, Marvin Gaye wrote “What’s Going On” and that put our protest songs on the map forever. Marvin Gaye’s groove was quite different from the Bob Dylan, Joan Baez folksy style of the 1960s. Marvin was among the first Black artists who could delve into the art form and survive the politics.
“What’s Going On” had simple lyrics with a complex reality. Protest music takes on many forms, but Black music tends to concentrate on the pressing issues of Blacks as a minority trying to reason with the majority.
History says that one of Marvin’s peers who sang with the Four Tops happened to be at the University of California in Berkeley and saw police beating up anti-Vietnam War protesters. He wrote the tune, but Berry Gordy, and Motown were weary of rocking the boat.
Gordy had successfully navigated Black rhythm, blues and soul away from what was once known as “race music.” His artists had successfully crossed the chasm of race over into integrated audiences and made it profitable.
The Four Tops did not have the political moxie to persuade Gordy to record “What’s going on.” But Marvin Gaye, who was by now a surging superstar in his own right, was in the perfect position to speak up and speak out. Gaye, who could go from love ballads to pop hits to protest music instantly, did just that.
But what made this movement melody so unique was that he fused the ills of a brutal war abroad to the brutality forced on inner-city Blacks by White cops who were funded by Black tax dollars.
Singing, preaching, and teaching about the inner-city blues, a mixture of neglect, poverty, and abuse, was new. In many ways, Cooke and Gaye initiated the first significant era of Black protest music post Jim Crow segregation.
James Brown, “The Godfather of Soul, “probably threw the most potent punch to cross all racial and social boundaries.
His 1968 hit “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” was more profound than most of America could ever discern. White people, who never suffered slavery, or its cruel spinoffs, still misinterpret our need for self-affirmation.
Before Marvin’s protest manifesto, Brown ushered “Black Pride” into the national conversation. In 1968 Black people were uncomfortable being called Black. The miseducation and self-loathing of Negroes was so pervasive that one of the worst pejoratives Blacks put on one another was calling one another Black.
James Brown’s hit, along with the Black Power movement of the Black Panthers and other “protest groups,” moved the Black experience from Ebony and Jet to People and Life magazines. Being Black was finally “in vogue” and a badge of honor rather than a source of shame.
By the mid-1970s Gil Scott Heron showed up. Gil’s height and afro made him an imposing sight and a curious spectacle. He was an amazing lyricist and a wizard on the Fender Rhodes keys.
But the musical focus he trained on South Africa helped to create an anti-apartheid
movement among Blacks and later all of America.
We are arguably living in one of the most chaotic periods of American history. Racism is at a fever pitch. Donald Trump has created a civil war among Whites. Mass shootings and teenage suicides are growing in number. The misery index in 2023 is comparable to where it was in 1963.
We need some movement melodies, and we need them now!
Special Thanks to singer/producer/musician Chadney Christle, who inspired and co-wrote this perspective!
Vincent L. Hall is an author, activist, and an award-winning columnist.
