Songs of Protest

The Nation magazine notes

that just as Bob Dylan moved the Vietnam era, many modern-day acts are eloquently calling for change in America.

An audio/video sampling of protest:

From the editors of The Nation:

There may never be another Bob Dylan. But there will always be protest music of the sort that first endeared Dylan to a mass audience, and that confirmed the power of song to move not just a generation but a nation. Dylan was not the first protest singer; indeed, a good deal of his early Dust Bowl-poet persona derived from Woody Guthrie. And as his more overtly political compatriot Phil Ochs noted in the mid-1960s, Dylan was never comfortable in any movement, a fact that eventually led him to shed his topical-songwriter trappings to become the mythical character that Richard Goldstein examines on page 11. But the artful approach to political songwriting that Dylan pioneered remains an inspiration to today’s musicians. And what they sing and say still matters, as the first skirmish of the Iraq War–the frontal assault on the dissenting Dixie Chicks after their lead singer criticized George W. Bush–confirmed….

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