Why We Abandoned Our Most Effective Tactic

Why don't protests in the US feature live music anymore?

“The song is a weapon of struggle, an instrument of the people.”
Victor Jara

“The song is the torch that lights the path of resistance.”
Ahmad Kaabour

“A song can make the powerful tremble.”
Georges Brassens

“Music is the weapon of the future.”
Fela Kuti

“I sing because the people sing with me.”
Mercedes Sosa

“Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.”
Pete Seeger

Last month my singing partner and I were in Mexico City to sing at a festival. One of the folks we talked to was a former guerrilla fighter with the FMLN from El Salvador. At some point in our conversation I mentioned how in the US we almost never have live music at protest rallies anymore. Our friend was aghast.

"But music is the beating heart of the resistance," he said.

He said a lot more, but that was the gist of it.

Last weekend Kamala and I were in Scotland -- singing, among other places, at a protest in opposition to Israel's ongoing genocidal war against the Palestinian people.

On the same day that we were singing in Paisley, there were somewhere around 1,200 rallies happening all over the United States, the theme mainly being opposition to Trump's agenda, especially the aspects of it that are also opposed by the Democratic Party.

I have many longtime friends who have not been previously involved with activism to speak of, who have recently gotten mobilized in the movement against the ongoing purges or complete eliminations of entire government agencies. Many are employed by the federal government.

As a social movement aficionado, I was curious to see if this new movement springing up would break with any of the trends that have beset so much of US society in recent years and decades that have resulted in, among other developments, the almost complete lack of live music anywhere to be seen in the midst of a protest rally or march.

I have tried through various means to get an impression of what was going on at those 1,200 rallies. I hope after I publish this piece I will hear from lots of people telling me my impression is woefully mistaken, but from what I have managed to gather, the vast majority of those 3 million or so people who came together across the US last Saturday spent a couple hours listening to speeches and chants, and, with only a handful of exceptions that I've heard of thus far, heard no live music in between those speeches and chants.

So, the anti-music trend continues. But why?

I've spent a lot of time writing about why live music is such an effective tool for any social movement for bringing people together, fostering and sustaining a vibrant feeling of community and purpose, and making movement gatherings of any kind something people find inspiration from, in the face of whatever horrors they're facing.

I've written a lot about how music is so vital to social movements around the world today and historically, and I've tried to illustrate my writings with lots of pertinent examples. I've written about how the past 10 or so years of an almost completely nonmusical resistance in the US is a rare exception in history, a real outlier, and also an inherently doomed one.

What I haven't put much effort in to is trying to flesh out how this situation arose. What factors have gone into people across the US who are organizing protests over the past decade or so generally deciding not to have live music at their events? How did so many people get the impression, all at the same time, that live music at protests was a bad idea? What are the rationales for excluding the beating heart of the movement from the movement? Why treat the beating heart as if it were cancer, and remove it? How did this happen?

For my purposes here, I will take it as a given that we all agree that music is the beating heart of any potentially successful social movement. Around the world, protest rallies involving people facing the most dire of circumstances, from Egypt to Yemen to South Africa to Chile to Mexico, can very aptly be described as festivals of resistance, with an emphasis on the festival part -- rallies in most countries are characterized by music, and everyone singing together. Everyone in most of the world who is a participant in a social movement knows how important the music is for the movement.

Lots of people in the US know it, too, if they're old enough to have lived through movements in which music and culture also played a central role.

Rather than spending any more effort convincing people of the obvious and dire need for much, much more music within the landscape of whatever constitutes the resistance, the left, the opposition, or whatever we may call it, I'll assume we all understand keenly the need for music, and I'll explore some of the reasons why it may be that it's not happening.

I hope that my exploration of the reasons organizers choose not to involve live music in their protest rallies will be helpful, specifically for those organizers out there who see the importance of including live performers in protests, but are getting voted down when they propose the idea, and they'd like to have more arrows in their quiver of arguments in favor of music.

Before I get into the various particulars that I've become familiar with around how these things happen -- or don't -- I'd make the overall point about each of the justifications for excluding music that they all have merit, which is why they seem so convincing to many. But while each justification for excluding music has merit, if the concern in question leads to the conclusion, "and therefore we'll skip having live music at the rally," then something is probably very wrong with the logical process that got you there.

The answer is always to have live music at the rally -- never not to. If you arrive at the answer that it shouldn't be part of the rally, then the process through which you arrived at that answer needs to be thrown out, or seriously reoriented. If it's a matter of picking one performer over another, that's different, and necessary for any competent organizer to engage in making such calls, around programming decisions for both performers and speakers (unless you're hosting an open mic, which can also be a fine thing to do to bring people together and help sustain community).

I don't know if any of these points below seem strange, but they're all the kinds of rationales I've encountered regularly, which is why I'm including any of them.

OK, reasons for excluding live music from the program, and responses to them.

1. A festival atmosphere is inappropriate for having a protest around such important, serious issues.

When we look at the world around us -- not necessarily around us in the contemporary US, but around the world beyond the US -- and historically in the US and most everywhere else -- we can see that music is the beating heart of any resistance movement.

So how would it be that anyone would come to think there is something frivolous or unnecessary about music?

We can explore this question in all kinds of ways, but the answer comes out the same regardless -- whatever form of logic caused anyone to draw the conclusion that "therefore live music is superfluous and we won't have it in our rallies" is working with a flawed understanding of how social movements have grown and sustained themselves around the world and within the US over the generations and centuries.

It may have been a flawed understanding derived from the influence of Puritanism or some other anti-musical tradition, or a flawed idea introduced by nefarious actors seeking to make sure your movement doesn't grow, or it may have come from some other source. But it's a hypothesis with no evidence to back it up, whereas the evidence for music being the lifeblood of a social movement is tremendously abundant and global in scope.

2. A festival atmosphere reminds us and everybody else of the 1960's, and sex, drugs, rock & roll, and hedonists who weren't serious about social change.

In post 1960's USA we are still living in the shadow of the 1960's, and there are reasons for this.

The biggest social movements and the ones that were most threatening to the status quo in the history of the twentieth century in the US have been intensely musical ones -- notably the radical labor movement led by the Industrial Workers of the World in the early part of the century, the Communist Party and associated groups in the 1930's, and later the Civil Rights and antiwar movements of the 1950's and 1960's.

At the time the 1960's antiwar movement was happening and up to the present day, this movement has been dismissed by the mainstream media as consisting of drug-addled, sex-obsessed freaks for whom activism was some kind of a distant afterthought.

Few things could be further from the truth of the matter, and that is actually why this movement continues to be so rejected by the corporate media and other such institutions. The antiwar movement in the 1960's employed the use of music, in the form of free festivals, antiwar coffeehouses outside of every military base in the country, and so much more. This movement successfully demilitarized the hearts and minds of millions, and was acknowledged by the leaders of the country at the time to have had a tremendous impact on the ability of the leaders of the country to keep drafting new soldiers, and in their efforts to make them obey orders.

Music was so central to this movement, that any association with it must today still be a negative one. To actually learn from the past would be far too dangerous. So, they were just a bunch of ridiculous, utopian hippies. Look the other way.

3. We are protesting around a specific set of issues and demands, and musicians are likely to go off-message, possibly in a way that offends someone and/or dilutes our message.

While it is always worth watching out for nefarious actors who want to come ruin your event for you, the vast majority of musicians who are interested in playing for free at a protest are in it because they want to support the cause, and perhaps because they know that their participation in the protest will serve just such a purpose. Good musicians, of all people, tend to understand the value of music.

It is true, however, that they may not stick to a particular message. The question is, does that actually matter? What I think you'll find if you explore the world and the protest rallies that are out there all over it, is that there is no need for all or even most of the music people might play on a stage at a rally to stick to a particular message. It's not what the vast majority of people there are expecting, or looking for.

When songs are really good and really on-message, this can absolutely be the most powerful moment in a protest rally. But when songs are about other subjects, or about nothing in particular at all, they still serve a vital purpose as part of a protest rally, to sustain a sense of community and togetherness in between the speakers -- who are hopefully striving to do exactly the same thing, in a different medium.

4. Having a band would require a bigger and better sound system, which we don't have or can't afford to rent.

A chronic problem with protest rallies in most of the US for decades has been bad sound systems operated by people who don't have a very deep understanding of how they work best. This happens when the political activist scene is chronically disconnected from the music scene.

If you're involved with putting on a protest rally and you don't have access to a good sound system, it's almost certainly because you don't know enough musicians. Almost certainly, if you live in a city, somewhere in that city there are many different musicians who own sound systems that are better than anything you've seen at a protest in your lifetime, if you're young. Some of these musicians would love to support the cause with their music and with their sound systems, if someone asks them to.

5. There's a band we'd like to have play, and they can bring their own sound system for the rally, but they don't want to just play for ten minutes.

Of course a lot of work goes into planning a rally, effectively getting the word out about it, setting up the stage if you have one, and a lot of other things that go into it. Most musicians probably don't want to over-emphasize the amount of work that goes into getting the drum set into the van and transporting all the necessary gear to the rally site and setting everything up there, but it is a lot of work, and may involve renting a vehicle and other expenses.

What often clinches it as far as musicians doing all this work are concerned is the idea that they're doing it all just so they can play a 10-minute set following 2 hours of speakers. They know, viscerally, that this is a miserable program, people will be fleeing the rally long before they do their set, and that it would only make sense for them to be given more time, and for there to be more music in the program. Seeing the plan, they say they want to play for more time, or skip it.

They may thus come off to some as prima donnas driven by narcissism, but in all likelihood that is not the case at all, and what would make a lot more sense, rather than not having them play, is having them play for longer.

6. This protest is about issues, not about famous people or cults of personality.

Some people worry about musicians that may have a following distracting people from the important issues at hand. Much more likely is they'll help get a bigger crowd, without distracting from anything, and they'll be a good reason why some people want to come back to the next rally.

This is likely going to be the case whether you have a famous musician on the stage or a little-known local one who is good. Good musicians naturally will aim to sustain the mood that's present, and lift spirits in some way. Which is a good thing, because most famous musicians won't actually want to sing at your rally, except for the rare few who regularly take strong stances on different issues.

Most successful musicians tend to want to avoid identifying themselves with a group or perspective that may be loved by half the society and hated by the other half. This is a bad marketing strategy, so you may find that even if you want to have a rock star join your protest, you won't get one. But you will find lots of good musicians out there who aren't stars who will be happy to play and help you build the movement by doing so.

7. We'd like to have a band at the rally, but the only ones offering to play for free are made up entirely of white men.

Protest organizers these days more than ever are looking for a diverse spectrum of people to be on the stage at their rallies. Where I live, in Portland, Oregon, many groups have long had a policy that means that it's very rare that anyone speaking at a rally is white, unless they can lay claim to some form of marginalized status, like they're Jewish, trans, etc.

Although seeking to have a diverse array of people represented on the stage makes sense for so many good reasons, when you take things to such extremes as not having white speakers or musicians on the stage in a white-majority city, especially if the movement you may be involved with is already overwhelmingly involving white participants, you are really shooting yourself in the foot with such policies.

There are big historical reasons why the vast majority of successful rock bands throughout the history of what the music industry calls rock & roll have been made up entirely of white men. This was, and often still is, the policy of the music industry. R&B is for Black musicians. Rock & roll is for white ones. This is how the industry created its racially-categorized music genres.

The damage this kind of industry practice has done to society and to the many musical cultures within it would be impossible to quantify. But we're not going to make it all go away by pretending it's different than it is. For a whole variety of socioeconomic reasons, if you want to have more diversity on the stage, this often requires more resources. Otherwise you may be stuck with the volunteers coming your way being overwhelmingly white.

Here it may be worth noting that white people are also a majority of the country's population, and not a group you want to ignore if you want to have a successful social movement. It really is OK to have some white people on the stage now and then -- good, even.

8. We can't have a whole band at our protest. We were, however, considering having a solo act, but decided against it, because almost all the solo acts offering to play at the protest were white, and therefore don't represent the diversity we would like our movement to project.

As with the racialization of rock & roll by the music industry long ago, the ranks of what the industry came to call "folk" music as well as bluegrass was designed to be a white phenomenon, for the most part. The Black roots of bluegrass and Appalachian music generally have been largely erased from the collective memory, and now forms of music still deeply loved in so many parts of the country and the world are perceived by some as being at least a vaguely racist form of music.

With socioeconomics being as they are, with institutional, multi-generational forms of racism endemic in society, and with an overtly racist music industry pushing a segregationist agenda for so much of the twentieth century, it is no wonder that the powers that be have had some success in their project of racializing different forms of music in the popular consciousness.

However, even if most people volunteering to play at your event who are solo performers may be white people with guitars, if they're good, and if other good performers aren't coming forward, you need someone to serve the vital purpose music has to offer, and there are plenty of highly competent white musicians who can fill that role -- and should, especially if you can't find other ones you'd prefer. Err on the side of yes to music, not no.

9. We wanted to have music at our protest, but the only people interested in performing represented only one kind of musical tradition. Folk songs make some people cringe, while other people don't have a taste for hiphop, or they think punk rock is just noise, so it's safer just not to have any live performers.

While it can be very good to be considerate of audiences, and maybe not have a really loud, sweary hardcore band playing for the preschoolers, if the musicians are good, most people won't be offended by their musical style. They'll appreciate it, and they'll appreciate a program that includes different musical styles. Whether they love all the music, most people will appreciate your effort at inclusion, rather than be upset about your choices that they may have been less impressed by.

10. We wanted to have live music, but there aren't any performers around here who have recorded songs about the issue we're protesting about.

It's relatively unusual for a songwriter or a band to have a song about a particular current event that may be happening. Most musicians aren't really part of the overtly political musical traditions you can find on the margins of the folk, punk, hiphop, and rock scenes, among other places. But if you give an artist or a band a little advance notice and they know what the protest is about, watch what happens. If they're decent artists, and not just someone you chose at random, then in all likelihood they will come up with a set of songs they may have in their repertoire, or ones they may learn for the occasion, which fit the protest at hand.

11. It didn't occur to us to have music at the rally.

This probably should be the first thing in the list of excuses, because it's probably the most common reason, in the modern age.

Most young people in the US today who have been to a protest have probably never been to one that involved live performers. Many older folks haven't been to such a protest either. Many of the folks at any given time who are getting involved with organizing protests have never done such a thing before, and only know what they know. The vital importance of most of the program being music just isn't one of those things people tend to know, in contemporary US life.

12. We were thinking of having a certain performer at the rally, but then we got word that they had written or said something offensive at some point.

Especially the chronically-online among us are often intensely sensitive to falling victim to a trolling campaign, or otherwise being forever canceled by cancelation campaigners, and we often are living cautious lives full of trepidation about this happening to us. When we hear of someone who has some kind of blemish on their reputation, our first instinct is to pull back, disassociate, keep our distance, and not be tainted.

This tendency in modern society is completely self-destructive. Our first assumption should be that people are good and the rumors are false. The maxim of innocence until proven guilty was one of the best advances that civilization ever made, and where it is truly practiced, civilization is so much better for it. When the maxim is instead to vet everyone for possible past misstatements before associating with them, you will never build a movement that is bigger than a clique.

We can look out for each other and try to protect each other from all harm, and that's a beautiful thing, but we can do it while also operating under the assumption that the rumor mill is churning, and most of what it is working with is nonsense that is best ignored, along with all of your social media accounts.

13. We'd like to have music at the rally, but we're concerned about it being culturally appropriative.

The idea of cultural appropriation is more well-known now than it probably ever was, and in effect, it can serve to scare people off from associating with anyone who is playing music that we may consider to be from a culture other than the one the player is from, particularly when that musical tradition has a history of being a colonized one, while the musician playing it may be from a background more associated with the colonizers.

For the vast majority of musicians in the world I've ever known or heard about, the racialized system of music genres imposed by the segregationist music industry is something to be abhorred, along with the notion of some people getting recognized as authors of songs because they're white and represented by a record label, while the authors of the songs live and die in poverty.

While we can find this sort of arrangement repulsive, we can simultaneously recognize that especially when the music industry more or less leaves us alone, the natural state for musicians is to cross-pollinate. If a musician who plays one kind of music is in a land where they play other kinds of music, musical cross-pollination will happen, and most every musician in the world understands this, and thinks it can be a really wonderful thing.

Through this kind of cross-pollination -- for example, African and Irish peoples living in the same hollers together in Appalachia was the genesis for what we today know of as bluegrass, Americana, or country music -- greatness abounds. Without pretending that the whole process that led to the creation of these forms of music was OK, we can simultaneously see that this music belongs to everyone, and you don't need to be either white, Black, from the hollers of West Virginia, or from the skyscrapers of Manhattan, to equally embrace any of these forms of musical expression.

In conclusion: more music may help build your movement, less music won't. And no music will kill it off quickly.

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