‘There is no protest without music’: WMass singers bring songs of dissent to the people
From start to end, a Labor Day rally in Holyoke featured a plethora of musicians: Ben Grosscup performed his version of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," a brass band guided protesters through the streets, and afterward, a singer led the crowd in songs of solidarity and support for Gaza.
"There was this buoyant energy that was happening at the rally that I think set a really powerful tone," said Anne Louise White, who co-leads a group of singers called Show Up! Sing Out!, which helped provide music at the event.
Over the last few months, some composers in the area have written new songs, choral directors are hosting community sings, and others are teaching their neighbors how to lead songs at protests.
If their work is successful, more melodies could be coming to a protest near you.
White, a retired music teacher from Leverett, said Show Up! Sing Out! is working to connect with protest organizers to bring more music to area rallies. She's also helping to create a website, showupsingout.org , to compile lyrics and recordings of people singing protest songs.
"What we're trying to do is … have the people themselves, not just a performer, singing, and when we're marching, singing or doing chants. I haven't seen tons of that," White said.
Show Up! Sing Out! began a series of community sings at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst in August, where it projected lyrics on a wall, playing with harmonies and getting folks familiar with the songs, some drawn from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa or from old labor struggles, for instance.
"It's not just about learning songs," White said. "It's about really learning the history of movements in the past. And I think that's really important, because I think people are so demoralized right now and feel so helpless."
Lara Shepard-Blue, of Amherst, who helps lead Show Up! Sing Out!, said music has been a fixture of many a picket line; for example, a Spanish-language version of "We Shall Not Be Moved" has been sung as part of a housing protest organized by Springfield No One Leaves. But with the Trump administration's recent actions, such as sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles, California, and Washington, D.C., the situation became urgent, Shepard-Blue said.
"Throughout all of the resistance movements, from the very beginning, music has always played a central role," Shepard-Blue said.
The Expandable Brass Band led protesters at a labor rally at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Aug. 27. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
Mare Berger, of Northampton, co-taught an online workshop on leading songs at protests earlier this month at the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership in Springfield, an organization started in the nascent months of President Trump's first term as a place to teach "movement building skills" in the Connecticut River Valley. At the workshop, Berger said she taught some songs and how to demonstrate a melody with their arms.
She also helps organize with Jewish Voice for Peace, whose protests she enjoys because of the Jewish tradition to sing at protests.
Berger, who got her start leading songs at protest when she was attending Occupy Wall Street rallies in Brooklyn, said Western Massachusetts touts a sizable song circle community, and songwriters, too, which might be why singing is popping up at protests in the region.
"Singing creates joy and ease in our bodies, and it makes the protest more alluring," Berger said. "We want to bring in lots of people in this moment, and if we're singing, and if there's an element of joy, then more people will participate."
Rebecca Curzon, of Amherst, who makes up part of the rhythm section of the Expandable Brass Band, joined the Labor Day protest in Holyoke, playing maracas.
"There is no protest without music," she said.
The Expandable Brass Band at a labor protest at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Aug. 27. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
The band is a performance troupe with about 45 active members, Curzon said. It's leaderless and operates on consensus, she said, but it takes paid gigs to help pay for a rehearsal space. The group also will attend rallies if invited by the organizers.
In addition to playing in the Paper City earlier this month, some band members also attended protests elsewhere in the valley earlier this year.
"There were a couple that were rainy and cold," Curzon said, "and we showed up, and people said later they stayed for an hour in the rain because we were there, because the music helped them cheer and shout and wave their signs, and get passing cars to honk and to be present."
The Expandable Brass Band plays at a labor protest at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in August. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
Tom Gardner, of Amherst, who attended the Labor Day rally and participated in Show Up! Sing Out!, said music was critical during his time working in the Civil Rights Movement, where he once chaired the Southern Student Organizing Committee. When the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee planned a series of workshops at the University of Virginia, the most important lesson was about music, he said.
"They told us, 'You can't organize for civil rights unless you know these songs,'" Gardner said.
The "spirited choral singing" of that movement drew from the music from Black churches, Gardner said. Protests now draw a diverse number of people who don't share the same ages, religion or cultural backgrounds, Gardner said. Older protesters might draw from the songs they learned from demonstrations from days gone by.
The Expandable Brass Band plays through the streets of Holyoke during a protest over teachers salaries on Labor Day on Sept. 1. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
Singing during protests, Gardner said, keeps participants' spirits up. Songs like "We Shall Not Be Moved" gives confidence to participants singing together, he said.
"A movement needs hope," Gardner said. "It needs a sense that, 'If we keep marching, if we keep going, if we keep singing, if we keep doing whatever we're doing, that we're going to win.'"
The effort to get people singing at protests comes at a time of change in the music industry.
Ravi Krishnaswami, a Connecticut composer who has written music for Super Bowl commercials and video game franchises, such as "Fallout" and "Wolfenstein," recently taught a class at Amherst College exploring popular music as political speech.
Generally, popular music doesn't carry the same influence as it did decades before, he noted.
The Expandable Brass Band at a labor protest at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in August. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
"We live in a very different time period in terms of personalization of taste," Krishnaswami said. "It's more common to meet young people who are completely siloed in their own genres and micro genres of interest and have tuned their algorithms and made their playlists, then are listening to completely different music than their peers."
When political music breaks through in the popular sphere — such as Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime performance — the piece appears layered in a way that it can be sliced, shared and discussed across social media, Krishnaswami said.
Kendrick Lamar performs during halftime of the NFL Super Bowl 59 on Feb. 9 in New Orleans. (Matt Slocum / Associated Press, file)AP
Ben Grosscup, of South Deerfield, who draws inspiration from musicians such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, has shown up for protests and picket lines with his guitar for years. With efforts in Boston to create a mega-choir, BVOCAL , to show up at protests and labor events, for instance, he's beginning to see a "resurgence of interest in those kinds of big group singing things in a specifically activist context," Grosscup said.
He said musicians seeking to bring political music to protests should work with organizers to make sure the music aligns with the rally's goals. He said he tries to find the balance between selecting songs that folks might know and lyrics that speak to a particular moment, because doing so connects the heart with the mind — and the body, too, if dancing is involved.
"We're here to use a tool of communication that goes back to the beginning of humankind to strengthen the political message that the movements are trying to put out to the world," Grosscup said.
A Springfield music teacher leads educators and parents in singing a protest tune calling for better funding of education in 2019. (Jeanette DeForge / The Republican, File)
Geoff Hudson, a classically trained composer from Pelham, said it felt like society reached a crisis situation in March — a month in which Trump's tariffs went into effect, the first waves of federal worker firings took place, war reached a fever pitch in Gaza and Ukraine, with deadly clashes also in Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, to name a few. Hudson said he thought music could help encourage turnout at rallies.
"In our current cultural moment, you don't run into situations where you're suddenly in a group of 200 people singing," Hudson said. "If you don't go to church regularly, you're not going to experience that. And it's magical."
Hudson, who conducts a couple choruses locally, said he invited the singers to local protests.
"I thought that I could go to the singing people that I know and say ... 'You have a skill, you have a tool, you have a power that we need right now,'" Hudson said.
The singers showed up for a protest in Amherst in April, and then a few weeks later, they showed up for a protest in Northampton.
Hudson, who has composed a choral orchestral piece about climate change to be played in concert halls, has written a couple songs intended to be sung communally at protests. Some use quotes from U.S. Sen. Cory Booker or the late Civil Rights leader Rep. John Lewis as inspiration. He said his goal is to get hundreds of people singing together.
"It's so much harder to write simple music," he said, "because you can't add any unnecessary flourishes or complications. Anything that complicates it is going to weaken it."
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