How Does Protest Music Affect The Civil Rights Movement?

Music is an indispensable part of human life. Like the other arts, with a powerful expression, music shows with all that pertains to human life: joy and sorrow, struggle and survival, aspiration and dreams of happiness, ethnic pride and the desire to find the rights. And no exception for protest music, it was constituted at the time when people cannot give their views about some things that affect their benefits. In the article Protest Music, Cohen R. states that protest music is created to challenge the status quo, such as civil rights, communism, peace and justice, women rights, or gay rights (2007). In other words, “the music has evolved over the years as new voices have found the right to share their thought” (Hill, 2016). Protest songs
During Civil right movement, protest songs are called "Freedom song" that is "the type of music you could expect to hear at the civil rights movement’s mass meetings and protest rallies" (Paul, 2013). Paul also points out that freedom songs reflected exactly what activists were confronting (2013). Moreover, Gross said in civil right movement, music is an important part that used as entertainment and joy when negative occurs (2012). In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther Jr. also gave a speech "if you think for a moment, you realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music. The freedom songs are playing a strong and vital role in our struggle" (Morrison, 2010). In a result, writers wrote songs with their emotion and life events by the optimistic and hopeful rhythm. Carlton Reese Memorial Unity Choir wrote a song "This Little Light of Mine", and the song became protest song when Reagon sang it in jail with other protesters after a mass arrest following a demonstration (Crawford,
The protest music developed significant popularity in the ’60s and ’70s because of Vietnam war with estimates ranging from one to three million total deaths (Hill, 2016). There were many people died during the Vietnam war, so these songs attracted many agreements when they published. In a result, people wnat to end the war, so most of the songs' lyrics were about peace and through patriotism or homesickness to say people do not want to hold a weapon to fight anymore (Hill, 2016). For example, 'the song “Lorena” may have been primarily about a Union soldier’s longing to be with his lover, but also reflected a desire for the fighting to end" (Hill, 2016). Similar to freedom songs, peace songs also reflect real situaion that people were confronting, but peace song is seen as a fire to help people stand to protest for war ending (Schifferes, 2005). For example " Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind - had as its last verse "how many years can a people exist before they're allowed to be free." and "Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows. That too many people have died?" ( Schifferes, 2005). Also, many famous anti songs were sung and spread quickly such as “Give Peace a Chance”, "For What It's Worth", or "War (What it good for?)" (Ten Top Anti-War, 2010). Consequently, most of popular songs in that time were for appealing to a wide audience that was against the war (Hopkins, 2012). Also, musical