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“Which Side Are You On?” – The Coal Miners’ Anthem
In 1931, the miners and the mine owners in southeastern Kentucky were locked in a bitter and violent struggle called the Harlan County War. In an attempt to intimidate the family of union leader Sam Reece, Sheriff J. H. Blair and his men, hired by the mining company, illegally entered their home in search of Reece. Reece had been warned in advance and escaped but his wife, Florence, and their children were terrorized. That night, after the men had gone, Florence wrote the lyrics to “Which Side Are You On?” on a calendar that hung in their kitchen. She took the melody from a traditional Baptist hymn, “Lay the Lily Low”, or the traditional ballad “Jack Munro”. As a result, Harlan County miners were paid significantly less than their unionized peers for doing significantly more labor. In 1922, for example, a day’s work in an Illinois mine would net you 42 percent more money than it would in Harlan County. Part of the problem was that the bosses were known to short-weigh the coal loads so they could short-change the laborers, who also weren’t paid at all for the several hours of clean-up required after a loading shift. Harlan County’s workforce suffered these injustices mostly in silence until the Great Depression devastated business to the point of threatening their very lives. Steady work became scarce, wages fell, and malnourished children started dying by the dozen. When wage rates were slashed another 10 percent on February 16, 1931, the miners decided they had no choice but to unionize, no matter the cost.
The Lost Verses of “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie
Folk singer Woody Guthrie was sick of THAT song. The year was 1939, and everywhere he wandered, “God Bless America” was playing on the radio. It was driving Guthrie nutty. Guthrie felt that Irving Berlin’s song was too sappy, too blindly patriotic, and too cut off from the hard-knock life many Americans were facing as the Great Depression dragged into its 10th year. In the “lost” fourth verse, Guthrie decries the notion of private property, suggesting America is being carved up by the wealthy: There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me. The sign was painted, said: ‘Private Property.’ But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing. The sixth and final verse in the original manuscript references the poor folks Guthrie saw living on government assistance during the Great Depression: One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple, By the relief office I saw my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if God blessed America for me? The verses critical of America are not often performed in schools or official functions. They can be best interpreted as a protest against the vast income inequalities that exist in the United States, and against the sufferings of millions during the Great Depression. It may have had something to do with the mounting anti-communist furor that would lead to the Red Scare of the late ’40s and early ’50s. As a pro-union communist sympathizer, Guthrie and his fellow rabble-rousing folky buddy Pete Seeger had already faced industry blacklisting in the early ’40s.
Nina Simone’s Secret Weapon: “Mississippi Goddam”
“Mississippi Goddam” is a song written and performed by American singer and pianist Nina Simone, who later announced the anthem to be her “first civil rights song”. Composed in less than an hour, the song emerged in a “rush of fury, hatred, and determination” as she “suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963.” The song was released on her album Nina Simone in Concert in 1964, which was based on recordings from three concerts she gave at Carnegie Hall earlier that year. “Mississippi Goddam” was banned in several Southern states. Boxes of promotional singles sent to radio stations around the country were returned with each record broken in half. The song captures Simone’s response to the racially motivated murders of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers in Mississippi, and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four black children. “At first I tried to make myself a gun. I gathered some materials. I was going to take one of them out, and I didn’t care who it was,” Simone famously said after hearing of the Birmingham bombing. “Then Andy, my husband at the time, said to me, ‘Nina, you can’t kill anyone.” Writing and performing it felt “like throwing ten bullets back” at the four Ku Klux Klan members who planted the dynamite, she said.
The FBI File on Phil Ochs
Phil Ochs emerged as one of the most uncompromising voices of the 1960s folk revival, wielding his guitar like a weapon against the establishment. His songs cut deep into the American psyche, challenging everything from the Vietnam War to the complacency of everyday citizens. Unlike many of his contemporaries who softened their edges for mass appeal, Ochs never pulled his punches. His performances were political rallies disguised as concerts, where each song felt like a declaration of war against injustice. The FBI took notice of his activism early on, opening a file that would eventually span several years of surveillance. Agents monitored his concerts, tracked his associations with other activists, and documented his increasingly radical statements against government policies.
Punk’s Political Heartbeat: Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia”
The Dead Kennedys burst onto the punk scene in the late 1970s like a molotov cocktail thrown at polite society. Their 1980 track “Holiday in Cambodia” became an underground anthem that radio stations wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. The song’s biting critique of American foreign policy and Western hypocrisy was wrapped in a package of aggressive punk rock that made it impossible to ignore. Jello Biafra’s sneering vocals delivered lines that felt like slaps across the face of comfortable suburban complacency. The track spread through the punk underground like wildfire, passed from hand to hand on cassette tapes and bootleg recordings. It became a rallying cry for a generation of disaffected youth who saw through the sanitized version of American involvement in Southeast Asia.
The Prison Roots of “We Shall Overcome”
The power of “We Shall Overcome” didn’t come from concert halls or recording studios – it came from behind bars. Civil rights activists arrested during protests would sing this song in cramped jail cells, their voices echoing off concrete walls and through iron bars. The song gained its spiritual weight from being sung by people who had literally put their bodies on the line for justice. In Albany, Georgia, Birmingham, Alabama, and countless other cities, protesters would be arrested by the hundreds, only to turn their jail cells into impromptu churches. The song’s simple melody made it easy to teach to new prisoners, creating an instant bond between strangers who shared the same cause. Police officers would often hear the haunting harmonies drifting from the jail blocks, a constant reminder that their attempts to silence the movement had failed.
Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is a satirical poem and Black Liberation song by Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron first recorded it for his 1970 album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, on which he recited the lyrics, accompanied by congas and bongo drums. His poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, delivered over a jazz-soul beat, is considered a major influence on hip hop music. To paraphrase Chuck D, Gil Scott-Heron’s music was a kind of CNN for black neighborhoods, prefiguring hip-hop by several years. It grew from the Last Poets, but it also had the funky swing of Horace Silver or Herbie Hancock—or Otis Redding. The blend of conga drums, Black-inflected spoken-word poetry, and denunciation of the politics and culture of the United States makes the album an important foundational work for hip-hop music. “He was one of the forefathers of rap,” said Common, who was introduced to “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” as a kid and was blown away by how it sounded “so rebel.” “His poetic approach was guiding a birth of rap in certain ways and the mentality of what hip-hop would begin to be as a revolutionary art form.”
Rage Against the Machine’s Radio Censorship Battles
Rage Against the Machine faced an impossible paradox – they were signed to a major record label while simultaneously calling for the destruction of the very system that gave them a platform. Their explosive track “Killing in the Name” became a lightning rod for controversy, with its explicit lyrics and anti-authority message making radio programmers nervous. After the September 11th attacks, the band’s entire catalog was placed on Clear Channel’s infamous list of “songs to avoid,” effectively banning them from mainstream radio. But the underground kept their music alive through bootleg recordings, file sharing, and word-of-mouth networks. Concert bootlegs became precious commodities, traded like underground currency among fans who craved the raw energy of their live performances. The band’s message spread through alternative channels – underground radio stations, college campuses, and the early internet – proving that revolutionary music would find a way to reach its audience regardless of corporate censorship.
“Strange Fruit” and the Risk Billie Holiday Took
When Billie Holiday first heard “Strange Fruit” in 1939, she knew it would change her life forever – but she had no idea it would also put her in mortal danger. The song’s haunting metaphor of lynching victims hanging from trees like “strange fruit” was unlike anything being performed in American nightclubs. Record companies refused to touch it, radio stations banned it outright, and club owners begged her not to perform it. But Holiday insisted on closing every show with the song, turning off all lights except a single spotlight on her face. The FBI began monitoring her performances, building a file that would eventually be used to prosecute her on drug charges. Government agents would sit in nightclub audiences, taking notes on her performances and tracking her associations. The persecution intensified when she refused to stop performing the song, leading to multiple arrests and harassment that would continue until her death in 1959.
Indigenous Resistance in Song: Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Blacklist
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s powerful voice carried songs of indigenous resistance that made the American government deeply uncomfortable. Her 1964 anti-war song “Universal Soldier” challenged the Vietnam War before it became fashionable to protest, while her songs about Native American rights exposed decades of government broken promises and cultural genocide. What Sainte-Marie didn’t know was that her music was being systematically suppressed by a coordinated campaign between the U.S. government and radio stations. According to documents that would later surface, the FBI allegedly pressured radio stations to blacklist her music, effectively silencing one of the most important indigenous voices in American music. For decades, her songs were virtually impossible to hear on mainstream radio, despite their artistic merit and cultural importance. The blacklist was so effective that an entire generation of Americans grew up never hearing her music, while her international career flourished in Canada and Europe. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the full extent of the suppression became known, revealing how far the government would go to silence dissenting voices.
What did you think would happen when powerful voices spoke truth to power?
Christian Wiedeck, all the way from Germany, loves music festivals, especially in the USA. His articles bring the excitement of these events to readers worldwide.
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