The ego function of protest songs: An application of Gregg's theory of protest rhetoric

1991 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles J. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Protest Songs ◽  
Protest Rhetoric

scholarly journals Transcending the moment

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-508
Author(s):  
Martin J. Power ◽  
Aileen Dillane
Keyword(s):  
Folk Song ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Protest Songs ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Ordinary Person ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Traditional Structures ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Political Songs

Abstract Our paper argues that British singer Billy Bragg performs protest songs that cleverly draw upon musical forms underpinning his positioning as a voice of, and for, the ordinary person, ultimately disenfranchised by governmental adherence to neoliberal policies. While political songs are a product of their time, many of them can also transcend that historical moment and have a longer shelf-life in terms of their capacity to inform political thinking and action. Our song(s) of choice in this paper do so not just in terms of the relevance of their ‘literal’ message but also in how they draw upon traditional structures of feeling and generic elements of folk song to underpin this sense of ‘grass-roots’ critique via a modified, acoustic ballad form and a performance style. This serves to authenticate and legitimate the singer and his message and, in turn, allows Bragg to accumulate political and cultural capital.

Labor and Industrial Protest Songs in Canada

1969 ◽  
Vol 82 (323) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Fowke
Keyword(s):  
Protest Songs

Protest Songs from the Textile Mills and Coalfields

2020 ◽  
pp. 176-180
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Coal Dust ◽  
Coal Mines ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Southern Appalachians ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Textile Mills ◽  
Protest Songs ◽  
Traditional Ballads ◽  
A Site

Protest songs have sustained strikers on picket lines, memorialized disasters, galvanized support for unions, sparked folk revivals, and established Appalachia in the national consciousness as a site of labor struggle. In Coal Dust on the Fiddle (1943), a collection of songs from the bituminous coal mines, George Korson explains that the folk songs of immigrant miners, traditional ballads of the Southern Appalachians, and African American spirituals combined in music that documented and commemorated life in the mines....

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