Editing Protest song (section)

{{short description|Song associated with a movement for social change}}
{{about||the Prefab Sprout album|Protest Songs (album){{!}}''Protest Songs'' (album)|the album by The Specials|Protest Songs 1924–2012}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2024}} <!-- most countries included use dmy -->

[[File:Bob-Dylan-arrived-at-Arlanda-surrounded-by-twenty-bodyguards-and-assistants-391770740297_(cropped).jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Bob Dylan]] songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" became anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s.]]
 
A '''protest song''' is a song that is associated with a movement for [[protest]] and [[social change]] and hence part of the broader category of ''topical'' songs (or songs connected to current events). It may be folk, classical, or commercial in genre.

Among social movements that have an associated body of songs are the [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolition]] movement, [[Prohibition in the United States|prohibition]], women's [[suffrage]], the [[labour movement]], the [[human rights movement]], [[civil rights]], the [[Native American rights]] movement, the [[Jewish rights]] movement, [[disability rights]], the [[anti-war]] movement and 1960s [[counterculture of the 1960s|counterculture]], [[Repatriation (cultural property)|art repatriation]], opposition against [[blood diamonds]], [[abortion rights]], the [[Feminism|feminist]] movement, the [[sexual revolution]], the [[LGBT social movements|LGBT rights]] movement, [[masculism]], [[animal rights]] movement, [[vegetarianism]] and [[veganism]], [[gun rights]], [[legalization of marijuana]] and [[environmentalism]].

Protest songs are often situational, having been associated with a [[social movement]] through context. "[[Goodnight Irene]]", for example, acquired the aura of a protest song because it was written by [[Lead Belly]], a black convict and social outcast, although on its face it is a love song. Or they may be abstract, expressing, in more general terms, opposition to injustice and support for peace, or [[free thought]], but audiences usually know what is being referred to. [[Ludwig van Beethoven]]'s "[[Ode to Joy]]", a song in support of universal brotherhood, is a song of this kind. It is a setting of a poem by [[Friedrich Schiller]] celebrating the continuum of living beings (who are united in their capacity for feeling pain and pleasure and hence for empathy), to which Beethoven himself added the lines that all men are brothers. Songs which support the status quo do not qualify as protest songs.<ref>"To protest is to verbalize a dissatisfaction with the status quo," Elizabeth J. Kizer, "Protest Song Lyrics as Rhetoric," ''Popular Music and Society'' IX, No. 1 (1983): 3.</ref>

Protest song texts may have significant specific content. The labour movement musical ''[[Pins and Needles]]'' articulated a definition of a protest song in a number called "Sing Me a Song of Social Significance". [[Phil Ochs]] once explained, "A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for BS."<ref name="people.ubr.com">{{cite web | url= http://www.people.ubr.com/artists/by-first-name/p/phil-ochs/phil-ochs-quotes/a-protest-song-is-a.aspx | title= 'Phil Ochs' Quote | publisher= UBR, Inc. | url-status= dead | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080228183134/http://www.people.ubr.com/artists/by-first-name/p/phil-ochs/phil-ochs-quotes/a-protest-song-is-a.aspx | archive-date= February 28, 2008 }}</ref> Some researchers have argued that protest songs must express opposition or, at the very least, offer some alternative solutions if they are limited to drawing attention to social issues.<ref name="Haynes2008">{{Cite journal|last=Haynes|first=Louise|date=2008|title=From Vietnam to Iraq: A content analysis of protest song lyrics of two war periods|journal=人間文化研究|volume=10|pages=247–261|url=http://id.nii.ac.jp/1124/00000230}}</ref> A broad definition, which does not exclude any upcoming form of creativity, defines a protest song as one performed by protesters.<ref name="Kowzan2023">{{Cite journal|last=Kowzan|first=Piotr|date=2023|title=The humiliated began to sing: How teachers on strike tried to teach society|journal=European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults|volume=14|issue=1|pages=125–143|doi=10.3384/rela.2000-7426.4207|s2cid=256880151 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

An 18th-century example of a topical song intended as a feminist protest song is "Rights of Woman" (1795), sung to the tune of "[[God Save the King]]", written anonymously by "A Lady" and published in the ''Philadelphia Minerva'', October 17, 1795. There is no evidence that it was ever sung as a movement song, however.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite web|url= http://www.mcgath.com/freesongs.html| title= Songs of Freedom| access-date=November 3, 2007|publisher= Gary McGath}} The song contains such lines as "God save each female's right", "Woman is free", and "Let woman have a share".</ref>