US demonstrations inspire new protest songs
The killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown have inspired a musical outpouring.
CALIFORNIA (AP) - Protest songs are taking their place alongside chants of "I can t breathe" and "Hands up, don t shoot" as demonstrators raise their voices to condemn the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police. There s something happening here.
The killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown have inspired a musical outpouring perhaps unseen in the U.S. since Pete Seeger helped make "We Shall Overcome" a civil-rights standard in the 1960s. Older songs are being redeployed for a new generation. New compositions are being widely shared, including some from major-label artists. And holiday classics are being rewritten, such as a barbed spin on "White Christmas."
"Facts aren t fueling this fire. Feeling is what is fueling this fire, and until we express those feelings and those feelings are understood, we aren t going to get too far," said Daniel Watts, a Broadway performer who starred in a professionally choreographed Times Square flash mob in response to Eric Garner s death.
One of the tunes gaining a following on the streets and social media was penned six weeks ago by Luke Nephew, a 32-year-old poet. It has four lines, starting with "I still hear my brother crying, I can t breathe. Now I m in the struggle singing. I can t leave."
Hundreds of people sang those words last week as they blocked bridges and got arrested in New York on the night after a grand jury declined to indict the white officer who used a chokehold on Garner. That so many knew the hymn-like song, and the way it has caught on since then, might owe as much to savvy preparation as the power of the lyrics.
Nephew first introduced the song at an early November meeting of activists preparing for the grand jury s decision. The participants agreed to share it with their members so as many people as possible could join in when the time came. A recording was posted on YouTube and links made the rounds on Facebook and Twitter.
Gospel singer and radio host Darlene McCoy, founder of a group called Mothers of Black Sons, heard the protesters in Manhattan singing as she watched the news at home in Atlanta and immediately recorded herself and posted the file on Instagram, challenging other singers to do the same. At least 45 people have done so, including Catrina Brooks, a former "The X-Factor" contestant, whose rendition has been viewed nearly 750,000 times.
Some protesters find fresh relevance in popular music of the past
Sam Cooke s "A Change is Gonna Come" or Michael Jackson s "They Don t Really Care About Us."
Questlove, drummer for the hip-hop band the Roots, urged fellow musicians via Instagram and Twitter last week "to be a voice of the times that we live in," noting that "protest songs don t have to be boring or non-danceable."
Several professionals have already released home-produced tribute songs to Brown and Garner, including Alicia Keys, Long Beach rapper Crooked I, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morelo and hip-hop producer J. Cole.
