Hip-Hop Continues a Protest Tradition That Dates Back to the Blues
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The sound of Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power†blared as face-masked protesters in Washington, D.C., broke into near the White House.
It was the morning of June 14, and an Instagram user captured the moment, commenting: “If Trump is in the White House this morning he’s being woken up by … a Public Enemy dance party.â€
Coming amid widespread protests over police brutality and structural racism in the United States, the song is an apt musical backdrop. It opens with a quote from civil rights activist before going into a sample-laden funk rap track referencing past Black protest songs from the and .
Demonstrators in other parts of the country similarly used hip-hop as a form of sonic protest. In New York, protesters as they were penned in on the Manhattan Bridge by police officers.
Footage of the crowd singing, “Move b—, get out the way. Get out the way b—, get out the way†to uniformed officers seemingly got the approval of Ludacris, who reposted a video on his Twitter account .
Protesters chanting Ludacris’ lyrics on the Manhattan Bridge: “Move bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way”
— Trending (@Trends4USA)
No one who has listened to hip-hop since its should be surprised that rap music has become the soundtrack to protests in the wake of George Floyd’s while in police custody.
Hip-hop artists have protested police violence in their music for decades. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, rappers from different corners of the United States described the brutal and discriminatory police tactics they witnessed in their communities.
Most famous perhaps is N.W.A.’s from 1988. Fellow Los Angeles rapper Ice T after his metal band, Body Count, †in 1992.
In the Geto Boys’ Ҡfrom 1993, the Houston rap group bears witness to racial profiling and police violence in the so-called , before asserting: “Mr. Officer, crooked officer, I wanna put your ass in a coffin, sir.†In the same year, New York’s KRS-One referenced the in “,†connecting the violent tactics used against enslaved Africans to the NYPD of the late 20th century and referring to an officer as a “wicked overseer.â€
Minneapolis goddam?
As a , I know that the rich history of protest in Black American music started much earlier than hip-hop. The tradition is as old as Southern blues and continued through jazz and rhythm and blues.
Take, for example, the “,†a song that likely originated in the late 1800s. According to folklorist , Black residents of the Mississippi Delta used the earliest versions of the song to describe a White sheriff named Joe Turner who sent Black men to chain gangs or to work on building levees.
The lyrics recount a lover’s tale of loss: “They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone. Got my man and gone.†References to police officers in songs like “Joe Turner Blues†also link that tradition to the songs of enslaved Africans who warned about in search of runaways.
As with hip-hop, protest against law enforcement came from communities of color in different parts of the country.
From east Texas, blues musician Texas Alexander describes false accusations of murder and forgery in “.†He laments, “They accused me of forgery; I can’t even write my nameâ€â€”a statement that indicts both the segregated public school system of Texas and corrupt law enforcement officials.
Soul rebels
In the 1950s and 1960s, jazz musicians contributed to through songs such as Charles Mingus’ Ҡand Nina Simone’s “.â€
Black musicians also made direct references to racial profiling and police brutality. Marvin Gaye tackled police violence on his 1971 album, “What’s Going On.†“Trigger happy policing†is one of the many social problems mentioned in “,†and he demands, “don’t punish me with brutality†on the .
Protesters also co-opted seemingly nonpolitical Motown songs as part of their struggle against police brutality. As uprisings against violent police tactics erupted in places such as Watts, Detroit, and Newark between 1965 and 1967, Ҡby Martha Reeves and the Vandellas became part of the .
Expressing anti-police sentiment in song is not exclusive to the Black American experience. Texans of Mexican descent have detailed their run-ins with law enforcement in Spanish for centuries through – narrative ballad songs.
Like much of the blues played by Black Americans, the corridos that emanated from the Rio Grande Valley in the 19th and early 20th century often described conflicts between Anglo-American law enforcement and Mexican Americans. Ҡrecounts an actual event from 1901, when an Anglo-Anerican sheriff shot a man named Romaldo Cortez. His brother Gregorio then shot and killed the sheriff before eluding the Texas Rangers for 10 days.
Gregorio is celebrated as a hero who resisted Anglo-American domination: “They had a shootout, and he killed another sheriff. Gregorio Cortez said with his pistol in his hand, ‘Don’t run you cowardly Rangers, from one lone Mexican.’â€
New protest songs
Whether emanating from blues or corridos, Mexican and Black American music protested the ways that police buttressed White political, economic, and social power. Similarly today, Latino activists point to for Black Lives Matter.
Meanwhile, recording artists are continuing the tradition of using music to protest police violence in communities of color. Los Angeles rapper YG called “FTP†on June 4, in a nod to N.W.A.‘s “F— tha Police.†And hip-hop producer Terrace Martin likewise commenting on the current unrest: “Helicopters over my balcony. If the police can’t harass, they wanna smoke every ounce of me.â€
This article was originally published by . It has been published here with permission.
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