Popular music has always been involved in social change. Social change has been pushed forward by the influence of popular

music and, frequently, been driven by it. The American Labor Movement of the early twentieth century was sustained and

spread by the songs of Joe Hill and Aunt Molly Jackson €” songs that are still sung in union halls across the nation. The

explosion of religious fundamentalism and revivalist church movements in the late nineteenth century that led to the

Second Great Awakening was, in large measure, both a product and an outgrowth of interest in the Negro spiritual and the

religious fervor that it brought to black Baptist church services. The Jazz Age referenced jazz music, not only as an

emblematic appellation, but also as the central embodiment of a time when America broke from the attitudes and conventions

of the past to enter a new age that celebrated spontaneity and personal freedom. And, for those who lived through the

1950s and 60s, popular music was the wellspring of change that reshaped their lives and altered the course of history in

the second half of the twentieth century.

Sometimes social change was addressed directly in popular music as in Bob Dylan’s protest songs of the early 1960s, Sam

Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come in 1963, Neil Young’s Ohio in 1970, U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday in 1983, Public Enemy’s

Fight The Power in 1989, and, more recently, Tom Morello’s One Man Revolution. More often, popular music has been an

indirect €“ but powerful €“ force for social change by changing people’s attitudes and beliefs. The emergence of rock and

roll in the 1950s was not intentionally focused on creating a social or cultural change in the United States, but rock and

roll brought enormous change to America in our attitudes about race, behavior, sex, lifestyle, and, especially, young

people. The music of the counterculture in the 1960s and 70s pushed the boundaries of social conventions to the extreme

and sex, drugs, and rock and roll not only described the content of popular music but the sweeping changes in our social

fabric that counterculture music advocated and produced. Hip-hop began as an isolated musical phenomenon in the Bronx in

the 1970s that eventually ed up the popular mainstream to new ideas about what music could be and, simultaneously,

made the culture of America’s inner cities a powerful force across the full spectrum of our society. Almost every movement

in popular music from jazz in the 1920s to pop-punk in the 1990s has produced a collateral change in our culture and

society.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT

Offer an informed opinion on ONE of the following topics (pick only one):
One €“ Songs of Influence
If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.
€“Phil Ochs

Songwriters have a way of reaching into our conscience, heart, and soul as only poets can. And when a singer gives voice

to the written word, change may come about. Pick a song on a particular topic from the past that you believe was

instrumental in bringing about social change. Describe the topic and its relationship to social change, then tell the

reader how the song addressed that topic, and, finally, offer an informed opinion as to the effect of that song in

bringing about social change.

As example:
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Strange Fruit was written by a New York City public school teacher named Abel Meeropol as a poem originally titled

Bitter Fruit that he first published in 1937 under the pseudonym Lewis Allan. Meeropol had seen a postcard of the

lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana in 1930 that was made from a photograph taken by Lawrence

Beitler. Photographic postcards of public lynchings were common in the 1920s and 30s and were often taken as souvenirs of

such events (http://withoutsanctuary.org/). It is estimated that more than 4000 lynchings took place in the United States

between 1890 and 1940, most in the South, and most of the victims were black.

Meeropol set his poem to music in 1939 and took it to Barney Josephson, the owner of Café Society. Café Society was the

first fully integrated nightclub in New York City and became a haven for both jazz musicians and audiences who wanted to

hear jazz presented with dignity and respect. Billie Holiday was the first performer to play at Café Society and she was

a regular for two years. Meeropol approached Josephson in hopes that Holiday would perform his song. Holiday agreed and

she and her pianist, Sonny White, refashioned Meeropol’s simple tune into what would become her signature song. Holiday

closed every set with it. Barney Josephson remembered, When she sang Strange Fruit,’ she never moved. Her hands went

down. She didn’t even touch the mike. The tears never interfered with her voice. But the tears would come€¦

Holiday wanted to record the song, but even John Hammond, who held Holiday’s recording contract, was reluctant. Holiday

persisted and Hammond allowed for a one-session release from her contract for Milt Gabler at Commodore Records to make the

recording. Sonny White provided a 70 second piano introduction and Strange Fruit became Billie Holiday’s biggest selling

record.

Strange Fruit exposed the American public to a particular and horrific aspect of racism in the United States and created

a public outcry that eventually led to the enactment of anti-lynching laws in all fifty states€¦after the failure of the

U.S. Congress to enact federal anti-lynching legislation. Missouri Congressman Leonidas C. Dyer had proposed an anti-

lynching bill in the U.S. House of Representatives as early as 1918 and that legislation was subsequently passed by the

House in 1922. However, Southern Democrats defeated the bill when it came before the Senate. In 1935, the Costigan-Wagner

Anti-Lynching Bill was introduced in the Senate and, again, the Southern block defeated the legislation. Over time, more

than 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress and three were eventually passed by the House, but the Southern

block in the Senate defeated all three. The ideological justification for the intransigence of the Southern states to

support anti-lynching legislation was perhaps best stated by Senator and former Governor of South Carolina Benjamin

Tillman, who campaigned as the Champion of White Men’s Rule and Woman’s Virtue in the 1890s. Tillman, from the floor of

the Senate, declared:
We of the South have never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never

believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and

daughters without lynching him.

The public awareness that was created by Strange Fruit brought the issue of lynching before a national audience and was

instrumental in changing public opinion about one of the darkest tragedies in our racial history. Today, Strange Fruit

continues to be sung as a reminder of that dark chapter in our nation’s history and as a cautionary warning about the

pernicious effects of human injustice on our national character.

In 2005, the U.S. Senate passed a non-binding resolution to apologize for its failure to enact anti-lynching legislation.

One of the sponsors of the resolution, Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, submitted a copy of Strange Fruit to the

Senate Record when introducing the resolution and said, Something in the way she sang this song, something in the

pictures that described the event, must have touched the heart of Americans, because they began to mobilize, and men and

women, white and black, people from different backgrounds, came to stand up and begin to speak€¦while the Senate of the

United States, one of the most noble experiments in democracy, continued to pretend that this was not happening in America

and continued to fail to act.

(741 words exclusive of song lyrics€¦and this would be an A paper. It should go without saying that Strange Fruit is

not an acceptable topic for this assignment.)

Topic Two €“ Popular Music and Social Change in the Present

Although protest songs and songs intent on social change have a long and rich history in the United States, the last

decade of the 20th century saw a marked decline in the tradition of socially conscious music and protest songs. However,

the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and, more recently, the Occupy

Wall Street movement have provoked renewed interest in protest songs and those that promote social commentary. As in the

topic above, pick a song €” or songs €” that actively address a contemporary social issue and you believe are or may be

instrumental in bringing about social change. Describe the topic and its relationship to social change, then tell the

reader how the song or songs addressed that topic, and, finally, offer an informed opinion as to the effectiveness of that

song or those songs in bringing about social change.

It is, of course, advisable to cite outside sources for support and frame your argument in the form of a formal essay

(Look over Presenting Arguments, Tips On Writing Papers, and Critical Thinking in the Syllabus).