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READ: “We Insist: A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence”
February 23 | 12:00 am - 11:59 pm
READ: “We Insist: A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence”
The 50 songs discussed in this list often describe specific acts of police violence but they are not limited to that subject. Together they construct a kind of timeline of an ongoing movement within American music, stretching back more than a century. It is meant to be revelatory but not complete. The songs here take on some of the ugliest stories with which America — and, since it goes international, the world — has to reckon. They mourn the dead and fight for the living. Some are easy to identify as protest songs; others feel like a party. Many address police violence directly decades before that subject became a lodestone in hip hop. Some of these songs have been misinterpreted even when their messages are perfectly clear. All contribute to the history of Black people showing what America’s official histories would hide in plain sight: the destructiveness of white supremacy and the uprisings against it that are not only organized and political but personal. Like music itself, this spirit of resistance takes many shapes but has never been silenced. As Baraka said of Coltrane, all you have to do is really listen.