Political Songs Research Articles

The effect of political songs on choice of candidate, political ideology, and party loyalty among young Nigerians

ABSTRACT Using political songs as a campaign strategy during the election period in Nigeria has exceeded other campaign activities like posters, jingles, and debates. However, there is a need for more information about how listening to political songs affects youths’ behaviour during elections. Like the past elections, political songs played a role during Nigeria's March 2023 general elections. Politicians seek the help of musicians to distribute campaign messages through songs or to compress long speeches and political manifestos into songs so that the message could reach a wider audience. The study employed a grounded theory approach to analyse interviews with young Nigerians aged 18–29 on the influence of listening to political songs on their choice of candidates, political ideology, and party loyalty. The findings indicate that listening to political songs influences the choice of candidates, political ideology, and party loyalty, especially among those with weak political affiliations.

“Go, Sirventoys, Swiftly as an Arrow”: The Unbound Transmission of Song in Crusading Contexts

ABSTRACT Available documentation of medieval music is almost exclusively limited to bound codices. Against this backdrop, this article explores how musical information was also communicated via more easily transportable, inexpensive material forms during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with an emphasis on leaflets that circulated independently of codices. I shall focus on three song genres that can be found in the context of the crusading enterprise: the Old French political song; the Latin liturgical prosa; and the Latin secular lament. Transmission across long distances was especially relevant in this crusading context – between the east and west of the Mediterranean as well as within the so-called crusader states. By integrating textual, musical, musico-palaeographical, and codicological methods of analysis, this article assesses the social and political significance of these songs and uncovers the motivations to disseminate them using such patterns of communication among crusader communities.

Textual Analysis of Conflict and Political Songs of the Dentsefo and Tuafo Asafo Companies of Effutu, Winneba

Despite the global recognition of political messages in music, it is evident that such expressions often lead to friction and disagreement among the warrior groups. This study aims to investigate the political expressions and conflicts within the music of the Asafo companies in Winneba. The research utilizes participant observation and semi-structured interviews as its primary methods, drawing inspiration from existing literature. The perspectives of 10 Asafo company leaders are examined to discern the factors contributing to conflicts in their songs. The data collected through participant observation and interviews is subjected to textual analysis. The study’s findings reveal a consistent theme across all Effutu songs emphasizing conflicts and wars. These musical expressions are characterized by explicit elements of rivalry, provocation, and challenge. The study suggests that stakeholders should redirect their efforts towards using music as a means to foster peace and harmony among the Asafo groups in Winneba, rather than allowing them to serve as tools for conflict. This implies a need to rethink and restructure the current approach to musical expressions within these communities, emphasizing their potential for promoting unity rather than discord.

We have fed you all 1000 years: nineteenth-century radical song and the rise of North American labor

ABSTRACT Political song, especially that which fits new words to existing melodies’ semiotic associations, has been used by Americans as an oppositional tool throughout the history of the United States. Activists employed tunes’ “virality” to disseminate political stances and these practices played a key role in the rise of the modern labor movement. This article traces that history, through a succession of contextualized examples linking nineteenth-century political song to contemporary activism.

Uncovering the Underlying Messages in National Political Songs under the Nasery Regime

This study is a Critical study that applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) principles on a group of national songs. The selected songs are by AbdelHalim Hafez due to the fact that he was known to be ‘the voice of the 1952 revolution’. Narrative analysis and features of involvement analysis are conducted on the selected songs.
 This study attempts to clarify how ‘the self’ is presented against ‘the other’ in national songs under the Nasery regime, the thesis defines who the self is and who the other is. Moreover, it shows the functions of national songs under the Nasery regime as a method of communicating ideologies to the public. This study, also, traces evolution of CDA theory by reviewing the works of Norman Fairclaugh (1989) and Van Dijk (1994, 1999 a. 1999 b, 2001, and 2006). The discursive recourses of manipulation in national songs are uncovered by applying van Dijk’s (1994) ‘Socio-Cognitive Approach’. The study analyzes the narrative structure that is used in national songs under the Nasery regime, and uncovers the ideologies embedded within. On the subsequent section, features of involvement are analyzed; the social implications of these structures and the ideologies they entail are elucidated. The thesis concludes with the findings of the study and recommendations for further research

The spatialization of music and politics in festival spaces: The social, symbolic and emotional structuring of the Festival of Political Songs in the German Democratic Republic

This article examines the genesis and development of the Festival of Political Songs ( Festival des Politischen Liedes) in East Berlin under the German Democratic Republic from 1970 to 1990, looking at it as one of the main engines of the German Democratic Republic-musical field in the last twenty years of its existence. In this regard, the analysis of the empirical material (in-depth interviews and video recordings) serves first to outline the main social and cultural processes which interested the Festival from its inception to its end, and second to reflect upon some specific features of the Festival as an ‘extraordinary event’ in light of Bourdieu’s concept of field. Departing from this perspective, I examine the genesis and development of the Festival, focusing especially on the contrasting effects produced by its institutionalization and internationalization and the ways these impacted both the Festival and the musical field: from the creation of music scenes, to the development of professional careers in different fields of cultural production and the mixing of mainstream and alternative musical trends. The final aim is to highlight the different understandings of publicness and openness associated with the Festival that defined its social, spatial and emotional structure during its twenty-year lifespan.

Ton Steine Scherben: A Unique Hybrid of Psychedelic Rock and Battle Song

ABSTRACT This article will examine the relationship of the anarchist rock group Ton Steine Scherben to the tradition of the German battle song. After setting the group in the context of the countercultural scene of West Berlin of the 1970s, the article will identify a key battle song trait in the group's militant lyrics that, combined with the music, are geared towards inspiring direct political action rather than mere critical contemplation. In this respect parallels will be drawn with approaches to radical political song from the 1848 Revolution and the Weimar Republic.

Gatekeeping Through Music: A Case of the Patriotic Front in Zambia

What can music used by politicians during campaigns tell us about their behaviour, character and their rule? The article responds to this question by analysing political songs used by Patriotic Front (PF) in Zambia, before winning the 2011 elections and the subsequent elections. This article argues that music can be an important unacknowledged tool for understanding the behaviour of political leaders, and in this case, their gatekeeping behaviour that aims at sustaining the ruling party in power by undermining the opposition.

Autonomous and Between Worlds: Musical Manifestos for Anti-Capitalist Futures in Post-Wall East Berlin

AbstractThe opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 provided a spectacular climax for Samuel Huntington's third wave of democracy. It represented the triumph not only of a people over their oppressive regime but also, ultimately, of Western economic liberalism; the post-socialist democracy of German reunification was a singular one with consumerism at its core. In the early 1990s, many East German reform socialists resisted this inevitability, and exploited the temporary political and bureaucratic void that emerged in East Berlin as a space in which to imagine alternative democratic futures from the socialist past. In this article I explore the attempts by two very different East Berlin musical communities to incubate anti-capitalist worlds from the legacies – both official and unofficial – of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). First, I reflect on the autonomous musical worlds that were created by members of the GDR's alternative bands in occupied buildings in Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte. Second, I consider the articulation by the ZwischenWelt-Festival, a reincarnation of the GDR's Festival of Political Song, of a more outward-looking future for East Germany, based on the ideals of international solidarity.

Een liedeken van den slach van Blangijs

Een liedeken van den slach bij Blangijs (‘a song of the battle of Blangijs’), printed in the Antwerp Songbook of 1544, is a popular political song which stands out for its substantial Flemish identification. The lyrics chant the Habsburg victory over the French in 1479 but must date from a later time because of literary and political discrepancies. Compared to other narrative sources regarding the event, the song resembles the sixteenth-century Habsburg memory tradition concerning the battle. These discursive resemblances, the intense Flemish identification and a call for a new victory in the last verse situate the song’s creation and performance in the early sixteenth century. In the 1520s, the memory of the battle must have been relevant again during a Habsburg campaign against the French. This article emphasizes the importance of both the historical and the literary background of a political song. Only multidisciplinary analysis can connect the sung events to events of singing, to finally shed light on a medieval song’s political function.

The Gathering of the Protest Songs: Cuba, Thirdworldism, and the Birth of the Protest Song Movement (1967–1970)

ABSTRACT This article explores the efforts of the Cuban government to shape the content of political songs through its cultural institution, Casa de las Américas. Influenced by the spirit of the Tricontinental Conference (1966), Casa de las Américas organized in 1967 “El Encuentro de la Canción Protesta,” a global gathering in Cuba with musicians from Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and even the United States. This event aimed to push the musicians who attended the Encuentro to define “what a protest song was” and “what was the political potential of music.” Following this international gathering, they aimed to create a playlist, a standardized set of songs that were exchanged, learned, and translated across a variety of languages yet which retained their original/vernacular sonorities. The event resulted in the configuration of an alternative left-wing global music market and the creation of a transnational network of musicians that aimed to address music as a tool to make the revolution.

Singing a Great Dream: The Revolutionary Songs and Life of Khusiram Pakhrin

Singing a Great Dream: The Revolutionary Songs and Life of Khusiram Pakhrin

The Borrowings of Bob Miller, Hillbilly Music’s Premier Event Songwriter

Bob Miller is known as one of the most prolific early country songwriters, but it is not as widely known that he was a blues composer in the 1920s whose songs were recorded by several of the classic female blues singers from the early part of that decade—Clara Smith, Viola McCoy, Lizzie Miles, and others. He is also thought to have written leftist political material, but these political songs spoke more to common sentiments during the Great Depression than any true political position. Miller’s diverse songwriting career resulted from his creative output being influenced by the direction of commercial music. His first “hillbilly” song, “Eleven Cent Cotton, Forty Cent Meat,” became a Depression-era hit that was recorded by multiple artists, including himself. While he did not write more than seven thousand songs as he claimed, he did write a high number. Part of what contributed to his large catalog was that he was adept at tweaking preexisting songs, and much of his output was modeled after other songs. This study analyzes and discusses the commercially influenced direction of his career as well as his possibly misascribed political leanings.

‘The Azure Generation’: Liberal Youth Politics in Greece and the Politicization of Music, 1982–1984

This article focuses on the years 1982–1984, which witnessed the first systematic effort to establish a moderate right-wing youth organization in Greece during the Cold War. It shows that the invention of the political songs of the Liberal youth ONNED underpinned its mass mobilization in 1982–1984. In this vein, our analysis enriches recent historiographical approaches that focus on cultures of Conservatism and on political and cultural changes in post-authoritarian Southern Europe in the 1970s to 1980s. Those political songs were linked to both the rhetoric and the practices of ONNED cadres and members. Their lyrics conveyed anti-Communist post-memories of the Civil War in Greece (1943/1946–1949), as reconfigured and filtered through the experiences of ONNED cadres and members in the aftermath of the 1967–1974 dictatorship and the electoral victory of the Socialists in 1981. Thus, the study of the Liberal youth complements the analysis of moderate right-wing subjects in Spain, for whom the Civil War was no reference point after democracy was restored in 1975. Simultaneously, the article enriches research on the Greek Liberal youth so far, which has neglected how this subject reconfigured its approach to the Greek Civil War in comparison to the Right in the preceding decades. Our article also shows that the songs under study accompanied a wide range of ritualistic and prosaic practices of ONNED cadres and members. Listening to and singing those songs was part of a double demarcation process between ONNED cadres and members and their left-wing opponents, as well as within ONNED. For instance, in Thessaloniki, the more Conservative members embraced those songs in their leisure activities and their everyday spaces. By contrast, the more centre-right members were more critical, but still tolerated such music. The everyday life and spatial history approach is crucial to illuminating the varying reception of the political songs of ONNED within this organization.

Political Song in Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbooks: A Multifaceted Commemoration of His Presidency

The political songs in a scrapbook volume attributed to Thomas Jefferson record a multi-faceted commemoration of a presidency that spans both personal and public commemoration practices at the local and national levels. To analyze the significance of political song at this nexus of personal and public commemoration, this article considers the scrapbook as both a physical artifact and as a commemorative work in progress. Creating the scrapbook during a transitional period in American collecting that was bound up with practices of reading, writing, and commemoration, Jefferson organized the political songs to bracket off a major period in his life while emphasizing public commemorative practices. Jefferson used the collection to track domestic political developments among a larger republican constituency and record Americans’ responses to international struggles, including those that developed into the greatest challenges of his second term. Reading the political songs in conjunction with Jefferson’s correspondence deepens our understanding of how music and politics relate in practices of commemoration, while considering the collection’s temporality nuances our understanding of its intersections with Jefferson’s concern with self-assessment, public assessment, and reputation.

Introduction

Abstract We present the structure and guiding principles of this Special Issue, with a brief description of the participants’ contributions and the relations holding between them. The intersection between aesthetics and ethics as a field of philosophical enquiry is presented under the guise of a ‘layer cake’: at the top layer we find the most general metaphysical and epistemological issues concerning the nature of value, aesthetic and ethical; the middle layer encompasses several normative issues about the interactions of aesthetic, moral and cognitive values in art; finally at the bottom layer we introduce issues of a more restricted focus, like the aesthetic peculiarity of political songs and the ethics of artistic appropriation.

Is There an Aesthetics of Political Song?

Abstract Some think politics and art should not mix. The problem with this view is that politics and art were always entwined. Human experience is structured politically, even if much of it is not. Here, I illustrate this with a series of artistic examples that take us from work songs in a Mississippi 1940s forced labour camp to a desolate dead forest landscape in a former Krasnoyarsk gulag, evocative of a Paul Nash World War I painting. Powerful artworks help us to come to grips with human experience, more than merely “expressing emotion”. I treat songs as representations, looking for a way their political significance is part of their aesthetic value. To do this, I defend James Young’s (2001) concept of “illustrative representation” as bridging the gap between formalism and contextualism. But instead of Young’s “Wollheimian” (resemblance between experiences) approach to how such representation works I draw on Kulvicki’s (2020) notion of “syntactic parts”, combining it with Carroll’s (2016) concept of form as the “ensemble of artistic choices”, and Black’s (1954-55) frame-and-focus model of meaning in metaphor. Hopefully, in the end I will have clarified the ways in which (some) songs are both politically and aesthetically meaningful.

The mindset of extreme right-wing youth in neofascist songs from the late seventies

ABSTRACT The article analyses the mindset of right-wing extremist youth during the second wave of the protest movement in the seventies, making use of a source that historians have totally overlooked, namely neofascist political song. These songs were all but entirely self-produced, independently of the record industry, and scarce availability has led to them being largely forgotten. However, thanks to recent publications, along with many original audio files uploaded to YouTube, it is now possible to access this documentary heritage and enter a world of images, symbols and portrayals that, in the second half of the seventies, represented a clean break with classical neofascist iconography.

The Spanish War as Dress Rehearsal for Paul Robeson’s Political Song

During the time Paul Robeson lived in Britain he became a global star: a singer, film and stage actor, and in due course a political activist. It is to this time that scholars attribute his political awakening, which entailed, a broadening of his outlook to encompass an internationalist perspective. The Spanish Civil War galvanized the singer to action. His involvement in the war, which included regular appearances at rallies in Britain and singing to the troops in Spain in early 1938, was, by the singer’s own estimation, a turning point in his life, and a catalyst for the singer’s turn to activism. The claim I make is that Robeson’s internationalist politics was not only expressed in song but emerged through it. I identify several strands to Robeson’s musical internationalism, showing how the field of war provided a platform for the song strands to coalesce into a meaningful statement.

Radical Nostalgia

Radical Nostalgia