Soundtrack to Revolution: Black Protest Music from Slave Ship to Soundcloud

3 Credits

Invites students to hear a tradition of black protest music that reverberates from the slave ship to Soundcloud and beyond. Together we will ponder how black people have created, performed, broadcast, and mobilized music for protest, self-making, community-building, cultural critique, agitation, venting, healing, and joy. To hear what protest music sounds like, we will listen to Paul Robeson, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Public Enemy, NWA, Lil' Kim, Lauryn Hill, Beyonce, and others. Must protest music set overt political statements to melody? How have black people mobilized music and art to shape their political conditions? What can music accomplish that artforms like literature and visual art cannot? How have various social justice and liberation movements deployed music? How has new media technology transformed protest? How does revolution sound to you?