Protest songs

It is ‘pavement poetry [that] vibrates with commitment to speaking for voiceless’ says
Micheal Eric Dyson about Hip Hop according to The Economist. Hip-hop like all other forms of art
claims to bearing a message. But does it truly have an impact? It is the issue addressed in the corpus
composed of a cartoon by Mark Lynch from www.artizans.com and an article from Musicradar
published by Tim Cant on February 6, 2017, which both claim that music cannot change politics. The
three others, one from The Economist entitled ‘The politics of Hip-Hop. Can rap change the world ‘,
the second from The Guardian by Jonathan Lumoore and Christine Ellis, and finally one by Spinditty
entitled ‘How Hip-Hop Music has Influenced American Culture and Society’ are more nuanced about
this matter. To what extent can Hip-Hop truly influence the political arena?

First, as Kathleen Odenthal Romano reminds the readers, Hip-Hop has shown itself to have an
undeniable influence on the African American community. It created a place where artists could bring
true issues and give a voice to minorities. Its popularity gives it the ability to touch the youth and get
them interested in political matters again. The example from The Economist of P.Diddy and his song
‘Vote or Die’ epitomizes this phenomenon.

Nevertheless, Tim Cant thinks otherwise. For him, protest songs can only have a limited
impact on society and could even disserve the artist’s political beliefs. He states that Facebook being
the first source of information for the youth makes it nearly impossible to reach the opposition and
even if an artist succeeded, however good one’s beat may be, simple lyrics cannot change someone's
opinion on political subjects. In the context of social media, viewers who support an artist’s beliefs
feel as if they participate in the movement by simply liking or commenting when it does not have that
much of an impact. It is precisely the point made by Mark Lynch in his cartoon, singing along or
sharing is not going to make global warming or hunger disintegrate.

Finally, according to The Guardian, music used to be a powerful tool truly carrying political
messages like with Bob Dylan or Joan Baez. But what about the current music? As maintained by
Jonathan Luxmoore and Christine Ellis, nowadays, artists tend to focus on less relevant and less felt-
hearted subjects. More driven by economic means, their songs are slowly losing meaning, as
depicted in Mark Lynch’s cartoon : in a goal to gather more people, artists address every other
subject, even if they do not have any common points .