Oh, You Can't Scare Me, I'm Stickin' to the Union

The musical landscape of the past few years has been pervaded with dubstep wub wubs, indie pop/rock with esoteric, impressionistic lyrics, and hip-hop that I find down right intelligible (Lil Wayne, anyone?). Given the current milieu of bland, manufactured sounds marketed at any number of demographics and psychographics, it is easy to forget that music can have a rhetorical purpose, directly aimed at ridding the world of an exigence. There is a rich history of protest music in American culture, and the twentieth century saw a transition from lyrical content that was targeted at a specific exigence to being more introspective or introverted and less rhetorical, if rhetorical at all. Utah Phillips best encapsulates the difference between modern protest music and songs that were sung during the first half of the twentieth century: “There's a lot of difference between 'How many miles must a white dove sail before it can rest in the sand?' and 'Dump the bosses off your back!'”

An Example: Florence Reese's "Which Side Are You On?" pulled from Kopple's documentary film Harlan County, U.S.A.

In this clip, Reese very clearly delineates the two "sides" of her rhetorical situation: that of the striking miners, and that of the "scabs and gun thugs." It is very interesting to me that Reese simultaneously polarizes the two groups, but also unifies them under the banner of "workers." The lyrical content of this song serves to illustrate this polarization by declaring that in Harlan County, "there are no neutrals there. You'll either be a union man, or a thug for J.H. Blair." For her purposes of the 1973 Brookside Mine strike, Reese's lyrics not only serve to polarize and demonize those opposed to the union, but also as a rallying cry for the UMWA miners.

In addition to polarizing and unifying, these songs can also serve as a call to action, to inspire people to protest. In the example to the left, "Ain't Done Nothin' if You Ain't Been Called a Red," the lyrics tell various anecdotes from the life of an organizer/agitator and subsequent accusations of being a communist. The chorus implies to the audience that if you aren't being accused of being a pinko commie leftist, you aren't doing enough for the proverbial cause. My previous two examples have assumed an exigence of exploitative working conditions and that folks should be doing something about them. Let's look at one that clearly explains this exigence: Pete Seeger performing "Banks of Marble."

The lyrics of this song set the stage of exploitative material conditions that unions and radicals fight against, detailing the labors of farmers, dock workers, and miners and how despite their efforts, they lose their homes, find themselves out of work, or are unable to provide for their families. All the  while, the bank vaults are "stuffed with silver" that workers have no access to. The song ends with the vision of these workers organizing so that they can take the wealth their labor has produced and distribute it amongst the rightful owners, if you will.



Each of these songs are rhetorical in that they address a targeted audience in relation to a specific exigence that must be eradicated. Furthermore, the fact that they engage public discourse in an effort to affect change also makes them rhetorical artifacts. Protest music   persists today, but as I've said, its largely introverted. However, there are artists that still  engage with perceived exigences and make calls to action. No matter how many white doves find peace in the sand, there are still musicians who dream of a better world and articulate the paths to them through song. And for that I'm grateful.