Protest Music Since 1920

Catalog description

This course will examine the role of musical activism over the past century, in both Western and non-Western societies. As a product of society, all music is political at some level. Yet nowhere is the potential of music as a political tool more fully realized than in music of protest. When used in protest, music becomes both the voice of the disenfranchised as well as a political call to action. Topics will include the role of music in the labor movement following the Great Depression; the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s; protest music in the classical music world; and contemporary examples of protest music such as that from modern racial justice movements.