In 1969, members of Ton Steine Scherben—amongst the first proper rock bands to sing in the German language, playing punk before punk was even conceived—wrote what was only supposed to be a song for a comic play as part of their Berlin theatre troupe. Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht (Break what breaks you) was the title, and by Christmas 1970, it as their first ever single had sold over 6000 copies. The addendum of the song is an adaptation of the Brecht-Eisler collaboration Einheitsfrontlied—a 1934 worker’s protest song, both of which end with the sentence, “Reih dich ein in die Arbeitereinheitsfront, weil du auch arbeiter bist (Join the Worker’s United Front, for your are a worker too).”
The posit here is that politics have always been entrenched within art, and more specifically, popular music. Therefore the debate lies not in the justified presence of it, but rather how must the masses engage with it. The cardinal rule of musical theatre (and therefore life, as some may argue), is that when words alone cease being sufficient in expression, music must be the progression. That is to say, when one cannot say something, one must sing it.
From McCarthyism (perhaps more aptly, Hooverism) to the anti-Vietnam war movement, no philosophy had been more true. While persecution was often arbitrary and songs often recorded, singing would be far more secure than writing or speaking. Though prominent entertainment figures like Pete Seeger, Leonard Bernstein, and Woody Guthrie have made appearances on Red Channels, or otherwise, in court and prison—none had their careers irrevocably assassinated as much as the politicians and civilians. After all, to capture rhetoric through song is to capture it in the most human way—insofar the most paradoxically apolitical way. What can be construed as dogma on paper may thus be simply folk music through a microphone, for folk is nothing without the voices and sentiments of the people. Therefore, how can the most American of all music be tried for treason?
Such was the protest scene in the 60s. Through Bob Dylan’s Masters of War, to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Give Peace a Chance, popular music was critically political, and that was the norm. To understand its decline, one must first understand its success. The golden age of the protest song was one unique in its proximity to conflict, especially in the privileged West. Americans finding their neighbors, siblings, co-workers, and children drafted en masse was one for outrage yet also one not atypical. Even music inspired by foreign conflicts, like the Troubles in the North of Ireland, as documented by Wings (Paul and Linda McCartney) in Give Ireland Back to the Irish, concerned Western frictions and anglophone stakeholders.
The examples of non-white protest songs such as Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, and Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised—both on the Civil Rights movement, though different eras—are diverse testaments to consistent resilience that sadly are still required of some groups and not others. The very continuation of hip-hop and rap in being explicitly political—even today, with Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer winning album, DAMN.—is quite possibly because issues of social justice still remain relevant to them. A simple fact is that once something ceases being local for a group, it ceases being relevant. As we progress through the 20th century, we begin to see not a lull in conflict, but a tendency towards war across the water—where the closest one can get to unimaginable violence is through television screens and statistics. In other words, as conflict becomes less and less contiguous to the people, the more people fail to care.
When we say the protest song is fading into obscurity, we mean for the West, the English speakers—the Americans. Yet to say that is to attest to our own ignorance, for the protest song is the voice of the people, and the people will always protest as long as there is conflict in the world. Just because the consequences of imperialism happen to deal the deck away from the “first-world” (contentious), does not mean that conflict ceases to exist—and by that extension, protest music is well-alive if one cares to look. In Chile, Víctor Jara’s Manifiesto still rings out as the youth take to the streets, while Palestinians have been singing for liberty and peace for decades.
The only death protest music can be said to have suffered is one in the charts. It is true—bar from the catastrophe that was the American military operation in Iraq during the aughts which inspired a brief renaissance in protest songs—that popular music is less and less political. Whether that is due to political apathy, or growing distillation of art and politics, it remains certainly cause for concern. Why is it that our most famous artists either do not write political songs, or write only political songs that can slot neatly into the fabric of our establishment (i.e. restating the fruits of finished protests of yesteryears)? Why is it that our populist taste has shifted away from political activism, in spite of the time of increasing polarization?
While it is certainly true that celebrities should not be held to be our second politicians, and celebrity activism carries with it many of its own troubles and affairs, this reflects an individual symptom of the larger aversion to politics society carries. Sure, politics in art can at times get preachy, sanctimonious, and straight up nescient, but the simple truth is that art captures all that is apposite to life, and politics will certainly be, regardless of if we’d like it or not. The key phrase here is apposite to life—life is something that is much larger than the American suburb, than the European Union, than the benefactors of oppression. Forgive the kitsch, but if music is constantly heralded as an unifying factor, it’s perhaps time to return to just that. There’s so much merit in love songs—so much merit in love songs despite wartime, but there’s just as much in protest music in wartime, in foreign wartime. If the people are angry, we must hear it.
In 1987, American alternative rock pioneers R.E.M released their fifth studio album, Document, to widespread popular and critical acclaim. It created some of their biggest singles to date, including Its the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), as well as their first top 10 hit, The One I Love. What I want to bring to attention, however, is their third track, by sequence—Exhuming McCarthy, which evidently also lends its name to this essay.
“You’re beautiful, more beautiful than me. Honorable, more honorable than me. Loyal to the Bank of America.” These are the first lines, and immediately, the listener is privy to the terse satire that will ride through the rest of the song. R.E.M have always been a political band—especially early on—and Exhuming McCarthy is far from the only political song on Document. The climate of 1987 was one dictated by Reagan in his second term, and the analogy is an obvious one. The Cold War had always been a constant, but displeasure with the government was another; AIDS, trickle-down economics, Grenada—Reagan and McCarthy would be an even bet in a popularity contest. “All you have to do is turn on the TV,” Peter Buck, R.E.M’s guitarist, in 1987, “And you’re inundated with complete lies from people who are supposed to be running the country.”
There’s a particularly clever lyric couplet in the song, where Stipe sings “Enemy sighted, enemy met, I’m addressing the realpolitik. Look who bought the myth—by jingo, buy America.” A homophone hides here with jingo; obviously unchecked and uneducated nationalism is a clear pipeline to fascism and bigotry that’s alarmingly effective, but another reading (or listening really) supplies another word—jingle. It’s a transparent lie to say capitalism has no effect on political organization, and what we see time and time again from Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg is that our society is much more consumerist than we thought. A jingle is a short melody used prominently in advertising; in a world where we listen to Wendy’s on social media—by jingle, buy America.
If all this sounds familiar, it is. Trump is the bogey-word, but alas, we must invoke it. He’s a record-breaker, in all the worst of ways. As the inauguration day looms closer, America must prepare for another 4 years of uncertainty, doubt, and undeniably anger. The nation exhumes McCarthy yet again, and perhaps America is of the inclination to join the world in direct conflict (though they started all the messes), perhaps not. But if they do, inaction and apathy must not be the reply. We should yet be seeing another resurgence of protest songs, and this time, let’s hope it’s here to stay—if not about America, then about the Hong Kongs, Palestines, Yemens, Lebanons, and Koreas around the world. Change will always come with a mobilization of the masses, and often, these masses are boisterous, and this noise is called music. So let’s all take our shovels and dig.
