We are extremely grateful to everyone who came out and enjoyed Dr. Guy’s Musiqology Presents “Everybody’s Protest Music” at the Annenberg Center on October 16th. It was a sold out performance and a powerful night of music and reflection.
If you missed the performance, or if you want to revisit it, Musiqology Advisory Board Member, Mark Anthony Neal (@NewBlackMan) wrote a beautiful review that chronicles the powerful highlights from that night and why 21st Century protest music is still central to our quest for black liberation.
Read an excerpt below and the full piece at New Black Man.
One of the criticisms directed at contemporary Black artists, by their kinfolk, is that the music is no longer attuned to the “struggles” of Black people, as if the people don’t struggle to be loved, touched, caressed, doted on, inspired, spiritually fed, desired, and indulged. What folks are really asking for is music to protest to–marching music, classic anthems like “Aint Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” or Janelle Monae’s recent “Hell You Talmbout.” There is of course need for such anthems; there is no movement without bodies, and simply put, bodies need something to move to.
Yet to consider a protest tradition, a Black Protest Tradition in this instance, is to consider a tradition that not only inspires folk to take to the streets, but to imagine a future and a freedom, where such instances are no longer necessary. Freedom is about the will to dream it, and the struggle to create the space for that dreaming. Freedom is the late Sekou Sundiata reminding us that we are the dream of “some slave…whenever they got a little space to climb inside their heads and be free.” Protest music, is thus also about finding the collective rhythms, melodies–lower frequencies, to again embrace Iton from the land of The Black Fantastic.
When Tsitsi Jaji asks “The question is, do we want to be free?” she conjures an open query well known in the tradition, finding resonance in Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” or Les McCann and Eddie Harris’ or Roberta Flack’s (by way of Eugene McDaniels) “Compared to What?” If Everybody’s Protest Music had a center, it was the band’s rendition of the McCann and Harris classic, which has been a regular go-to for contemporaries from MeShell Ndegeocello to John Legend and The Roots to the folk at Coca-Cola. Ramsey’s genius–borne out the the utility of needing to make everybody feel at home during a career that has spanned from the requisite teen-aged Funk band, to choir director, to University of Pennsylvania professor, to this October moment of leader of a seasoned groove collective–was in the arrangement. Indeed Ramsey’s ability to re-imagine the music in ways that bridged generations and genres was a highlight of the evening.
Please enjoy the rest of Mark Anthony Neal’s response over at New Black Man.
Tags: Guthrie Ramsey, protest music, upenn
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![[VIDEO] Black Music and the Aesthetics of Protest](http://musiqology.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/onlynchings1-225x225.jpg)
