Music and Social Protest

4 credits · Undergraduate

The course explores the intersection of music, politics, and social transformation through a survey of ethnographic accounts of musical protest from the US to Egypt, South Africa, Chile, Japan, and beyond. Examples will include songs that critique gender, class, and racial inequalities, violence, environmental damage, greed, complacency, and the notion of “protest music” itself. Students will examine what the function, potential, and limits of musical protest have been in transforming civic life; the role of musical sounds in mediating and contesting oppressive regimes, structural inequalities, and social injustice; and how music might offer creative rethinking of the relationship between critical attention, compassion, and commitment.