Bulletin

Issue: May/June 2007

News

Sing a song of protest – for lessons in world history

What do you do as a lecturer when you get that ‘nobody home’ response – the 21st century attention deficit malaise? La Trobe arts academic Dr Sue Gillett, below, has her own surefire solution – she puts on an old vinyl 33 or new CD and engages the class with protest music: anything from African-American freedom songs to rhythm and blues or the music of Indigenous Australians like Yothu Yindi or the Warumpi Band.

Often, in good voice, she sings the songs herself. This not only gets her students’ attention, it’s also evidence of the robust longevity of her subject matter: the history of protest music.

In the process her students learn how to write and critique protest songs, and potentially earn a further 20 credit points towards their Arts and Creative Writing degrees.

Beginning with the freedom songs of American slaves and winding up with the contemporary music of Australian and American anti-war songsters, Dr Gillett’s students review large slabs of world history through the folk music of the times.

Apart from the sheer novelty of learning to the beat of Go Down Moses, Let My People Go, Follow the Drinking Gourd, or Billie Holliday’s jazz version of the antilynching song Strange Fruit, they’re also gaining insights into the American civil rights movement – through the folk songs of Pete Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, folk-gospel singers Odetta and Mahalia Jackson, and pop star Harry Belafonte, among others.

They get another retrospective on modern political history through John Lennon’s iconic response to Vietnam Give Peace a Chance, and the trans-national post-Vietnam peace songs of Sinead O’Connor, U2, Elvis Costello, Midnight Oil, and Tracy Chapman.

Then they experience postimperialist history in Australia through musicians Yothu Yindi, Tiddas, Kev Carmody, Archie Roach, Christine Anu and Neil Murray, singing protest songs about land rights, the stolen generations and other indigenous issues.

If it’s true that you can’t separate protest songs from their context, poet, singer-songwriter and academic Sue Gillett is better qualified than most to teach both theory and practice.

A long-time sociology, literature, film and cultural studies teacher, she makes no bones about her life-long passion for social justice and world music – but the connection between them, she says, is for students to explore themselves.

‘We play the songs, look at the lyrics, discuss the music, and I ask the students to discuss the relationship between the lyrics and the music. Then we work our way into the context.’

Dr Gillett encourages her students to bring in protest songs of their own choice, and to write their own, and hasn’t been surprised to discover many contemporary songs she hadn’t heard – mostly about the Iraq War.

‘There’s a lot of despair around. I notice my students, saying “what can we do? Where are the songs like Give Peace a Chance or We Shall Overcome? What’s happened? Why are there no political protest songs any more?”

‘I’ve taken on board the students’ despair and I’m hoping this subject will be a force against that tide, against the despair itself, and the events that cause it.’

Just to write or sing a song of protest is an act of empowerment, Dr Gillett says, because music is both personal and communal, and even sad songs can be joyous.

‘People can be singing about horrendous experiences, but to listen to those songs, or to sing them, is to feel connected to the people who’ve had those experiences. Even a song you sing by yourself links you with the rest of the human race.’