Contributions of African American Anthems for Social Justice and Equity

TY - CHAP

T1 - Contributions of African American Anthems for Social Justice and Equity

AU - Mills, John T.

AU - Miller, Demond S.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Lakeyta M. Bonnette-Bailey and Jonathan I. Gayles; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.

PY - 2023/1/1

Y1 - 2023/1/1

N2 - African American artistic expression through music continues to reflect and shape “culture” in this country. Musicians have used their talents to challenge and illuminate the oppressive structural and systemic practices that perpetuate economic, judicial, and political inequities for the marginalized. As such, protest anthems of the 1960s and 1970s, including Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam! (1964), James Brown’s Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud) (1968), and Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Get Up, Stand Up (1973), continue to serve as iconic standard-bearers of avant-garde Black popular culture and are globally recognized social justice anthems that express an array of concerns, foster an understanding of injustices, and promote individual and collective liberation. These anthems of protest are now being carried on in Hip-Hop songs, including Niggaz Wit Attitudes’ Fight the Power (1989), Tupac Shakur’s Changes (1998), Kendrick Lamar’s Alright (2015), and Lil Baby’s The Bigger Picture (2020). This chapter highlights anthems within a socio-historical context and the legacy of the protest anthems from a historical trajectory offering continuity of both the past and the current social justice struggles. These songs and media forms continue to speak to the current generation as they spoke to past generations and will speak to future generations.

AB - African American artistic expression through music continues to reflect and shape “culture” in this country. Musicians have used their talents to challenge and illuminate the oppressive structural and systemic practices that perpetuate economic, judicial, and political inequities for the marginalized. As such, protest anthems of the 1960s and 1970s, including Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam! (1964), James Brown’s Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud) (1968), and Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Get Up, Stand Up (1973), continue to serve as iconic standard-bearers of avant-garde Black popular culture and are globally recognized social justice anthems that express an array of concerns, foster an understanding of injustices, and promote individual and collective liberation. These anthems of protest are now being carried on in Hip-Hop songs, including Niggaz Wit Attitudes’ Fight the Power (1989), Tupac Shakur’s Changes (1998), Kendrick Lamar’s Alright (2015), and Lil Baby’s The Bigger Picture (2020). This chapter highlights anthems within a socio-historical context and the legacy of the protest anthems from a historical trajectory offering continuity of both the past and the current social justice struggles. These songs and media forms continue to speak to the current generation as they spoke to past generations and will speak to future generations.

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U2 - https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003308089-8

DO - https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003308089-8

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781032306643

SP - 67

EP - 82

BT - Black Popular Culture and Social Justice

PB - Taylor and Francis

ER -