33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day

by Dorian Lynskey

From one of the most prominent music critics writing today, a page-turning and wonderfully researched history of protest music in the twentieth century and beyond

Nowhere does pop music collide more dramatically with the wider world than in the protest song, which forces its way into the news and prompts conversations from Washington to Westminster. Rather than being merely a worthy adjunct to the business of pop, protest music is woven into its DNA. When you listen to Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Public Enemy, or the Clash, you are not sitting down to a dusty seminar; you are hearing pop music at its most thrillingly alive.  33 Revolutions Per Minute  is the story of protest music told in 33 songs. An incisive history of a wide and shape-shifting genre, Dorian Lynskey's authoritative book takes us from the days of Billie Holliday crooning “Strange Fruit” before shocked audiences to Vietnam-era crowds voicing their resentment at the sounds of Bob Dylan to the fracas over the Dixie Chicks’ comments against George W. Bush during the Iraq War.
For anyone who enjoyed Alex Ross’s  The Rest is Noise , Bob Dylan’s  Chronicles , or Simon Reynolds’  Rip It Up and Start Again ,  33 Revolutions Per Minute  is an absorbing and moving portrait of a century when music was the people’s truest voice.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Politics, Punk, Cultural, Biography

684 pages, Paperback

First published January 22, 2011

About the author

Dorian Lynskey is a British music journalist who currently writes for The Guardian, among other publications.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t understand why it took me 15 years to find this magnificent book. The detailed history of angry political music? Yes! That is just my cup of tea! Free Nelson Mandela! Free Satpal Ram! Free whoever happens to be in jail now for some intemperate remark they made online when they reeled back from the pub after quaffing more than a few Napoleon brandies! Actually I’m not sure about the last bit – it all used to be so clear (We Shall Overcome, Give Peace a Chance, Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud) but that damned internet has handed out electronic megaphones to every dunderhead who wouldn’t give peace a chance if it appeared to them in the form of a large-eyed kitten with a leg missing.



Our author begins with Strange Fruit in 1939

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

As soon as she came across it Billie Holiday knew this was a defining statement. The way she did it was this – she saved it to the end of her act - the club manager instructed all the waiters to stop serving before this last song – the lights all went out, leaving a single spot on her face – she sang the three verses and then she disappeared – no encore. Imagine the effect – the audience were not expecting to be traumatised.

For the first 250 pages this book is all American with one solitary British appearance (Give Peace a Chance). We are escorted once again through the thickets of dense 50s, 60s and 70s paranoia and you might think you’ve been there too many times already but this tour guide has different eyes and ears. It struck me that if Greil Marcus or Clinton Heylin had got the idea for this book (and they might have) it would have been UNREADABLE – Dorian Lynskey is a just-the-facts guy, all purple prose is laid aside. But wait, you do find beautiful sentences too – talking about Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come he says

He sings the title four times during the song, his conviction increasing each time, like someone testing a rope to see how much weight it can bear.

And here he is talking about War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo

There was already an eschatological strand in protest songs (Eve of Destruction, Ball of Confusion) but it took reggae, grounded in the arcane cosmology of Rastafari, gravid with symbols and portents, to establish a richly persuasive vocabulary of apocalypse, both thrilling and terrifying, which would go on to inform the catastrophists of punk and hip-hop.



Each chapter focuses on one famous song – This Land is Your Land, Masters of War, Living in the City – and a few that aren’t remembered as much – The Revolution will Not be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron - but this one song is like the head of the comet, dragging many others in its wake. Inching through the decades, each chapter eats up all the relevant history and what a lot of history there is, Okies in the 30s, the civil rights explosion in the 50s, Freedom Riders, KKK terrorism*, Vietnam, yippies, tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we’re finally on our own, Black Power, the Black Panthers, the assassinations - Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby? Can you tell me where he's gone? I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill with Abraham, Martin, and John – life in the ghettos – and not forgetting the White Panthers (“I mean, on the one hand we were serious political revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the government – on the other hand , we were on acid”). And on and on it goes.




The focus switches to the UK for the punk rock period then back to America to catch Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and their foundational text “The Message”**, and so on all the way down to American Idiot by Green Day.

I will admit that the first 400 pages were more interesting to me than the next 300 – and also that the American story was more compelling than the British – anarcho-punks like Crass come across as joyless lumbering literalists moaning and groaning about Thatcher and the sinking of the Belgrano and the miners’ strike – the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Crass and all those impolite British boys somewhat pale in the shadow of all the American dramas. And they gradually became aware of how ridiculous they were :

“You’d end up with forty bands doing songs about Cruise missiles, all dressed in black”

Says Steve Ignorant of Crass. He also recalled intense late night discussions around the Crass kitchen table.

“What can we do to actually bring it home to people? Do we have to throw a corpse into the audience? Is that how far it has to go?”



Favourite album title from this period : Flux of Pink Indians’ first release : Strive to Survive causing Least Suffering Possible

I will also admit that the history of protest songs goes further back than Strange Fruit – Dorian Lynskey knows this of course – and I realise that if you were going to bring in blues and folk songs you would be up around the 1000 page mark – still, it’s a shame there is no detailed consideration of items like the Black-Leg Miner –

And even down near the Seghill mine,
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat, to break the spine
Of the dirty blackleg miner.

But of course if all of that stuff had been included I would have had to give this book SIX stars, which is, under current rules, not possible.



*****

*15 September 1963, 16th Street Church, Birmingham Alabama – a bomb consisting of 19 sticks of dynamite with a timer goes off in the church during a Bible class for teenagers, 4 girls killed, over 14 others injured

** In another book I found out that the Four Tops pleaded with Berry Gordy not to release Reach Out I’ll Be There – they hated it! It’s a terrible song, they said! No, please. So he released it and it was a giant number one. They came back to see him and said sorry, if we ever tell you what we think of any of our records, just ignore us from now on! And likewise Grandmaster and the guys thought The Message was terrible – who wants a record that talks about depression and desolation? Hip hop is party music!

Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat

But the woman who ran the record label said nope, it’s going out.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spanning from the 1930s to the 2010s, from Woody Guthrie to PJ Harvey, Lynskey chooses a protest song for each era and builds the social, political, and cultural context around each choice to present a broader history of dissent in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A scintillating sprawl, an essential tome for anyone foolish enough to believe in the power of art to transform the world.

[Donovan Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Pet Named Peeves

One of my wife’s biggest pet peeves occurs when I mumble meaningless words to the melody of a song. For her, if you don’t know the lyrics, don’t sing the song. I, sadly, find lyrics difficult to remember.

Since I play guitar, my ears focus on the music first. I can hum textured instrumental melodies much quicker than I can sing a chorus. In fact, sometimes lyrics aren’t necessary. Sigur Rós, one of my favorite bands, sings partly in Icelandic and partly in a made-up language with indiscernible results. I like them, first and foremost, for their beautiful musical melodies.

In short, my mind wanders more toward the composition and less toward the message.

The Lyric

This disposition, however, orients me away from a close understanding of an artist’s true message. Of course, many musicians let the music portray the message, but on the whole, the lyric provides a framework for a musician’s message. Some sing strictly about relationships, other lyricists yearn to escape these mortal coils, and a select few utilize the lyric for revolution.

Protest Songs

The protest song becomes the body of a countercultural dogma. With 33 Revolutions per Minute, Dorian Lynskey chronicles the history of the protest song, from Billie Holiday to Green Day. During these 70 years, the protest song exists as a counterweight to a rather tumultuous period in global politics.

With a storytelling style, Lynskey cites 33 songs – one per chapter – as the threads of the protest movement throughout the years.

Lynskey often interjects fun stories amongst the typically depressing battle protest singers engage with the status quo. Speaking of Country Joe McDonald, he writes,

“They returned to their hotel after the second concert on Saturday night, with Joe carrying a human skull, a gift from a fan. ‘I got into the elevator and this guy looked at me and said, “I fought in Vietnam for guys like you.” And he hit me once in the face and broke my nose. I remember thinking, “Throw the skull at him!” And then I thought, “No, it will break and I really like it”’” (101).

Additionally, Lynskey spends necessary time exegeting the famous moments in the history of music. Referencing Woodstock, he proclaims,

“Another key performance was Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ without a doubt the most eloquent instrumental protest song rock has ever produced. Hendrix didn’t so much cover the national anthem as napalm it, but the wrenching eloquence of his playing made it into a sonic Rorschach blot, allowing each listener to decide what it represented. He was either putting to the torch the failed experiment of America or evoking the birth pangs of a new, less pernicious brand of patriotism: either the Death Society of the beautiful shipwreck” (106).

The Better I Know the Artist, the Better the Chapter

While the book, on the whole, remains interesting throughout, the artists of which I am a fan contained the most interesting sections. In particular, I found U2 especially fascinating. Lynskey describes them:

“The members of U2 were never much good at being punks. Not enough vinegar. Coming together at school in Dublin in September 1976, they were, and remain, an alliance of divergent, though mutually sympathetic, personalities. Bono has the silver tongue of a raconteur, the taut, jabbing body language of a retired boxer, and the focused charisma of a politician, fervently convinced of the power of words to change minds. Guitarist the Edge is as still and softly spoken as a monk, except when his eyes crinkle slightly in concentration or mirth. Bassist Adam Clayton has the louche bearing of a disgraced aristocrat, and a perpetual air of mild and mysterious amusement. Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. tends to lean forward with earnest intensity, punctuating his speech with apologetic grimaces: he is U2’s restraining anchor, the equal and opposite force to Bono’s grand gestures” (370).

Compared to many artists referenced in 33 Revolutions per Minute, U2 take a unique path. Where most are self-proclaimed Marxists or vigilant protestors, U2 find protest through faith:

“In 1978 they began holding Bible meetings, which the Edge compares to Rasta reasoning sessions ‘but without the weed.’ This gradually brought them into contact with a radical Christian group called Shalom, who believed in miracles and speaking in tongues. After Boy (1980), with its themes of faith and loss, the meetings became more intense and some Shalom members pressured Bono, the Edge, and Mullen to abandon U2 and devote themselves to the faith. Mullen left the meetings, while Bono and the Edge announced they were leaving the band. Their formidable manager Paul McGuinness put the counterargument: ‘Do you really think you’re going to be more effective by going back to your kind of normal lives? Or do you think taking this opportunity to be a great rock ‘n’ roll band is, in the long term, going to have more value?’ Bono and the Edge decided to distance themselves from Shalom, and reconcile their faith with their music” (371).

The Death of a Protest Artist

Of course, many musicians live and die by the political process. It all begins with the unquenching belief that a song will change the world; it ends with despair, pessimism, and, occasionally, death. Billy Bragg, a left wing activist and rock musician finds a balance when Lynskey interviews him,

“As he talks over a bowl of chips in a bookshop café, what seems unusual is not so much his unfussy eloquence as his unquashable optimism. Unlike many political songwriters, he does not sigh or wince at the memory of compromises and setbacks. He long ago accepted that political progress is won by inches, not leaps and bounds” (400).

Unapologetically Partisan

Although 33 Revolutions per Minute is an enjoyable read, it is not for everyone. First, it is unapologetically partisan. Those who acknowledge a right wing background will find frustration with Lynskey’s us-versus-them writing style especially evident when he states,

“Bush was, by some reckonings, the worst president the country had ever had: the architect of two interminable, unpopular wars, the man who allowed 2005’s Hurricane Katrina to become not just a tragedy but a national disgrace, and a divisive ideological bully” (522).

Those left-leaning individuals, though, will enjoy the book. With unabashed politics and excellent songwriting, most protest singers have furthered the industry in undisputable ways.

Will the Revolution Be Written?

For me, 33 Revolutions per Minute kept me entertained but seemed monotonous at times. While the cover suggests that each chapter is devoted to one song and one artist, Lynskey uses each chapter to discuss genres as a whole and their relationship to the political realm. Moreover, in an attempt to touch every genre interacting with politics, Lynskey elaborates on genres for which he writes with less enthusiasm.

Nevertheless, 33 Revolutions per Minute reminds me of lyrical value. Since I too often focus on the music instead of the lyric, Lynskey’s tome reminds me of the life-changing influence lyrics possess. While the politics don’t bother me, I am positive they will bother some. If you are a fan of music, lyrics, and the far left, I recommend this book.

Originally published at http://wherepenmeetspaper.blogspot.com

[John Defrog: global citizen, local gadfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up in an indie bookshop in Hong Kong that specializes in the kinds of books the govt doesn’t especially want us to read. This may or may not be one of them – it’s a history of protest music (and the protest movements that inspired them) in Western pop summed up in 33 songs. Music journalist Dorian Lynskey starts with Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and ends with Green Day’s “American Idiot”, and covers a lot of ground in between – most of it in the US and UK, although he does cover some international artists like Victor Jara, Fela Kuti and Max Romeo & The Upsetters. A lot of the usual suspects are here: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Gil Scott-Heron, Plastic Ono Band, CSNY, the Clash, Dead Kennedys, Crass, the Special AKA, U2, Billy Bragg, Public Enemy, Steve Earle, Rage Against the Machine etc. There’s also a few surprises (REM, Stevie Wonder, Carl Bean, disco in general, etc).

Interestingly – and perhaps usefully – each chapter isn’t so much about the song itself as the context in which it was created. In that sense, the songs serve more as a writing prompt to explore the various protest movements of the 20th Century and the music world’s response to them. This does mean each chapter spends maybe a third of its space talking about the actual song. On the other hand, this enables Lynskey to expand the scope to mention other songs and artists, some of whom arguably deserve their own chapter. It also gives him room to explore the broader theme of whether pop protest songs (and musician activism in general) ultimately make a difference in political movements, and do they still matter in an era where most people nowadays adhere to the “keep your politics out of my music” ethos?

Like with any good music book, there’s a lot to argue about here, from Lynskey’s song choices and criteria for what counts as a protest song (vs a song with social commentary), to his conclusion that by the 2000s, protest music was a dead genre – not because no one was making protest songs, but because no one seemed to take them seriously anymore. (To be fair, the book was published in 2011 and Lynskey has since revised his assessment in the wake of #BLM, Trump and Brexit, etc ). Also, by his own admission, he can only cover so much ground, so there’s quite a few gaps here, particularly when it comes to feminism and the equal rights movement – Riot Grrrl gets a chapter (via Huggy Bear’s “Her Jazz”), but apart from Holliday and Nina Simone (who represent the civil rights era), most women music artists are mentioned as asides. Anyway, it’s a fascinating slice of music history and protest movements and a great way to start arguments in radio stations at 1:30 in the morning. The playlist in the extensive appendix section is also most welcome.

[Stewart Sternberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to critique. I give it high grades for effort and quantity of content but question the author's sense of history. The book is massive, and could have been published in different volumes, each dealing with a decade. Or, it would have been more effective narrowing focus to different countries and the emergence of protest music in those volumes.

Instead we have a thundering clumsy monster that can overwhelm, and while I may trust the author's fascination with British rockers from the 80s and 90s, a period he obviously feels closest to, probably due to his age, I question his objectivity and perspective.

This is an interesting book, and I understand some colleges even use it as a text book (although I'm not sure for what class). As a read for entertainment or a casual study? No.

The message at the end is that there is too much shallowness and apathy today. This was obviously published before Trump's igniting the left. Although, to be honest, I'm not aware of many protest tunes out there. So....

and ..post script..if you do a revision of this book, may I suggest including the feminist perspective as well, and including I AM WOMAN? Leaving out that anthem was a glaring error, but then again, so many errors...

[Eduardo Higueras · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disfruté este libro porque me apasiona la relación entre música y movimientos políticos y sociales. El autor es un buen narrador, no le falta capacidad de análisis histórico y tiene algunos momentos realmente inteligentes. No veo un problema la extensión ni la abrumadora cantidad de referencias que maneja. Incurre, eso sí, en el error habitual en el ámbito anglosajón de olvidarse de la inmensa producción cultural en idiomas diferentes al suyo. En definitiva: no es una historia de la canción protesta a secas, solo en el ámbito de EEUU, Gran Bretaña, Jamaica y poco más. Sí que hace una visita al Chile de Víctor Jara, pero casi lo hace de la mano de Phil Ochs. Con acotar el título bastaría. En cualquier caso, aprendí y disfruté con un libro por el que desfilan muchos de mis músicos preferidos, y también me ayudó a comprenderlos mejor.

[Bea Elwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie, if it had not been for COVID-19 and the shelter-in-place mandate I would not have finished this book. As it was, the history is like taking a college master's course, and it's been a long time since I've had to look up the meaning of so many words. The list of songs referenced in the book is 25 pages long! But by the end you want to wake up and shake off the apathy, even if the read was herculean and should have been cut down into volumes instead of the 538 page tome. At least then he could write a new section for the last nine years, because surely protest songs are needed now...

[Kavanaugh Kohls]

Loaned to be by a colleague, and what a long term loan it was. This thing is massive.

A compelling dive into the history of popular resistance music, from folk to the BlackEyedPeas. Lynskey makes the case over and over again that the success of the song commercially is not what really matters, but its use as a common cultural touchstone.

While there are some clear modern political stances Lynskey takes in the last few chapters that I don't personally don't agree with, his arguments are consistently consistent and well sourced.

I've never read a book that quotes Will.i.am this much, and probably never will again.

[Stefan Szczelkun · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is so bulky with its 843 pages that it almost needs a lectern. Is it worth the weight? I had a week in bed after a hospital operation and I still found it difficult to get through it, as well as hold it. What it does achieve is to talk a lot about the context within which political musics happened and in that it does achieve a magesterial sweep of history within a particular geography. And what I thought might bore me with banalities in dealing with the obvious candidates, the biggest hitters, the overplayed anthems, actually works because you don’t have to hear anything and yet many of the tunes mentioned are probably in the back of your head. And he can write well enough.
On the other hand such a sweep by a young writer must inevitably mean that the selection of a path through the thickets of the history the English speaking Northern hemisphere is both gauche and somewhat random (inevitabley bumped in directions by his own deep history or subject position which is nowhere evident.). There’s just enough nice quotes to keep the reading running down a slope:

Allen Ginsburg: “National politics was theatre on a vast scale, with scripts, timing, sound systems. Whose theatre would attract the most customers, whose was a theatre of ideas that could be gotten across?” p.122

But apart from that there is little in the way of cultural or political theory to help us to think more clearly about what was going on. No position taken, bar a vaguely leftfield journalist who can be sage with the benefit of hindsight. He seems to think ‘free everything’ is an absurd demand and yet it was a realistic political demand to the unmentioned SF Diggers and a broad hippie programme with roots in the political theory of anarchy – which is so central to so much of this counter cultural era that the first 271 pages are centered on.
Social Class. Although there are some nice anecdotes about class aspects of music (eg p.131) it was class antagonisms as much as race, which he deals with in some detail, that was the generator of much artistic rebellion. The complexities of being withdrawn from your class by the exigencies and alienation of becoming a pop star, or as with Huey Newton being wined, dined and seduced by the glamourous elite do not seem to be appreciated. Generally it seems to lack an understanding of any class analysis of culture, His treatment of Lennon is unsympathetic about his inner turbulence. Whilst he is better at gently deflating James Brown’s undoubted ego. The same is true with ideas about the relation of oppression to music.
Still there is lots of interesting stuff for someone like me who does not read music books as a rule, like Motown being run like the Ford production factory at Detroit. Like the idea that ‘Ball of Confusion’ was written by Motown’s hack/genius Norman Whitfield who seemed only motivated by commercial criteria. p.194
A lot of it also hit on or paralleled my own life. Country Joe and the Fish and ‘Fixin to Die Rag’ was one of my own protest song favs in the late Sixties and I’d hadn’t realised just how big it was in the States.
There are the odd insights that are like gems that can get lost in the pure mass of words: Quoting Georgia activist Vernon Jordan on p. 57

“The people were cold with fear, until music did what prayers and speeches could not do in breaking the ice.”

This really gets to the heart of what is crucial about music, and in particular singers, role in liberatory politics. What were limits to singing as a way to deal with the fears of oppression? The above quote refers to singing together, rather than the more isolated activity of writing an recording and even performing on a big stage. Too often people turned to drugs do deal with or suppress these feelings with disastrous effects. The book alludes to but cannot digress to explain, the ways that drugs fucked up creative radical energies and focus.
Another insightful quote that could have done with more follow through is on the idea of what is necessary for a moment of creative condensation to come about: Quoting Neil Young’s writing of the song 'Ohio' (1970):

“Things like that don’t happen every day, so you gotta have an artist at a point in his or her life where the artist is vulnerable, open and feels completely what has happened so they can put it into words or some kind of expression. All those things gotta come together.” p. 221

The underlying instinct of the book is commercial and relating the idea or fact that high sales, and hits determines 'historical significance'. This is a simplistic notion of how cultural influence works and how culture effects politics, but it obviously works in terms of the books saleability in that readers will likely, as I have said, to have heard of many of the songs referred to. The selection is also largely US based (in the first half at least) whilst Lynskey is a UK journalist – is this is because a the US book market is much larger – I think so. The second part of the book is more UK orientated for those with great reading stamina. A middle section tries to readjust the West-centric view by doing a section which zooms through Chile, Nigeria and Jamaica. I’m glad I persevered with this because the part on Victor Jara the revolutionary singer for Allende contains Jara’s rough and ready critique of the US protest music. And it is refreshing to have some analysis even if it is borrowed. The segues is via Och’s trip to Chile. Jara is reported as thinking his American (sic) counterparts were at best pampered and trivial and at worse manipulated to sinister ends by two means: First the insidious effect of commercialisation and second the elitism of the star system. These effects ‘neutralise the inate spirit of rebellion of young people’. Jara prefers the term revolutionary song and soon after meeting Ochs dies with many others in Pinochet’s coup p.278.
The stuff on punk has been covered in so many ways… and 340 pages in, it brought the boredom I had feared. The Linton Kwesi Johnson piece that followed was more useful, as although I lived in and near Brixton through the period I’d never read an article about him so, I guess you can pick and choose in a book this rambling. Almost a reference work with sections in roughly chronological order with often arbitrary linkages and shifts of location. I think this sort of book would be enhanced in an electronic format so images and sounds bites could be conjured up at will. This book falls between an encyclopeadia, a genre that is probably now extinct, and a set of more focused articles that have been strung together without an arguement to drive them. A world history of Protest Music is probably an impossible object. There can only be a history within a geography and time limit or strict criteria like ‘protest hits’. And it is the criteria of commercial ‘success’ equated to volume of sales that haunts most of this account.
One of the ways I enjoyed this book, in spite of it taking more than a week of my life, was when it echoed with my current activities. I was preparing a performance of John Cage’s ‘Song Books’ and one of the singers that vounteered her services was an ex-singer in Crass. I’d completely missed out on Crass at the time, and so was happy to have this gap in my knowledge filled in on this band whose success was not on the usual commerical model. Also the chapter ended with the best quote so far was from Penny Rimbaud writer and instigator with Crass, who the author seems to have interviewed himself:

“…That was the viciousness of Thatcher. It wasn’t that she thought coal was a bad idea – she thought working class culture was a bad idea.” p.450

Another project I’m involved in at the moment is a big effort to to activate the archive of a massive open collective I was part of: Brixton Art Gallery 1983-86. Jerry Dammers had just DJ’d for the launch of the project in the Brixton Arcade and Linton Kwesi Johnston was also part of the context in Brixton that led up to the formation of the gallery. So, whilst the early chapters had reflected often distant aspect of my life and musical influences, here, the events of the Eighties in London are still engaging my attention.
In relation to Bono and Springsteen he asks the pertinent question:
“Can you become part of the establishment without being neutered by it?” p.470.
But then he dismisses Dead Prez and The Coup as “destined to be niche concerns” (p.566) whilst narrating Ice T’s controversy-chasing at length. Ice Cube couldn’t have had the platform to spout the stylish aggro that he did without ‘the establishment’ wanting to profit from the energy of the scene he occupied and led for a time. As a mainstream journalist Lynskey is party to that establishment, part of the conferment of platforms and publicity. How about if he had dismissed Ice T’s antics briefly and looked more closely at those the system marginalises. Is their music less of a protest or less significant because it doesn't achieve hit level sales?
Lennon is really the person who felt this force the most as his consciousness developed after he was already a myth. As I have said Lynskey finds it difficult to deal with him well. His concept of politics is grandiose and a musician like Ray Davies who is not really dealing with that kind of politics gets reduced to a footnote. Pity.

PS As to a question in response to the book of why women are not better represented Lynsey squirms in answer but provides a useful playlist in response on his blog:
http://33revolutionsperminute.wordpre...

[Joseph Crupper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally finished this. It was very dense and at times interesting, but the chapters are more like mini essays on the time period around a song rather than a detailed biography of the song itself. You won’t even find the songs lyrics in the book for the most part. I think that is more what I was expecting and therefore it was difficult to complete.

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was required for one of my college courses. I will admit that I skim about the last half of the book. I'm not sure if this says something about the quality of the book or about my desire for the semester to be over. I did, however, read the afterword despite all of my skimming of the latter half.

Overall, it wasn't a terrible book. I thought Lynskey provided quite a bit of great information given the limited space and the decades he covered. It was just missing something for me and I'm not 100% sure what it was. Again, my view may be skewed because this was tied to a college class for me and I was getting a bit antsy for summer break.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

33 Revolutions per Minute covers the history of the 20th century protest song through 33 songs from different eras, covering a period of roughly seventy years. A passionately told socio-cultural history of the music and the times it was written for, it does, as the author notes toward the end, feel like something of an elegy. That political music has no place in our contemporary cultural landscape feels like something of a loss, no matter how commercially co-opted the protest songs of the past have become, that lack of urgency, that seemingly innate generational apathy is disheartening. It's difficult to think of any song post-"American Idiot" that speaks its politics as loudly and proudly as anything covered in these pages.

Each chapter focuses on one particular song, from the well known to the relatively obscure, and covers a period of history that that particular song spoke for. Within these chapters, Lynskey also contrasts and compares the song, or the artist themselves, with other artists or songs of the time which creates a greater sense of cultural enmeshment, a dialogue with history and culture, as well as highlighting ideological inconsistencies and contradictions. Though a largely Western representation is on offer here, the few chapters on world music never feel tokenistic, especially as these artists and their music go on to influence the bands and artists of the chapters to follow. It's a great narrative set up, which allows the book to be read either one chapter at a time or as a whole. This running narrative thread breaks somewhat in the chapters from the late 80s onward, as the music seems to diversify and have less of a story in common with the next song. Later chapters are far too short to contain entire subcultural histories - especially the rave chapter, something I never would have expected to be interested in - nonetheless offering an interesting summary of events, using the song as a sort of basic touchstone for the period.

Despite covering the major social and political movements of the 20th century, feminism doesn't really get a look in until much later in the piece in a chapter on riot grrl. An interview with the author I heard on the radio mentioned this oversight, stating that feminist songs were less forceful, more attuned to the personal. The beauty of the instant response the internet gives us, Lynskey responded to gender bias criticisms on his 33 Revolutions blog by posting a list of personal-is-political songs by female artists.

My main interest in 33 Revolutions per Minute however was the Manic Street Preachers chapter, a surprising entry but a well deserved one. I loved how the Manics chapter is comparatively insular, with only passing reference to the politically ambivalent Britpop musical landscape that the Manics' charged third album The Holy Bible was released into. They seem to be completely alienated from the rest of the music world, their revolution, their message, their protest is solely their own. This is one of the many reasons why I love them so, and Lynskey's chapter on "Of Walking Abortion", the disappearance of Richey Edwards and the Manics continuation in his absense is eloquent, respectful and elegiac.

33 Revolutions per Minute is for those interested in a history of social protest movements of the 20th century, the powerful combination of politics and pop, with a vaguely leftist political sympathy, and music history in general. It may have taken me about five months to get through it but I loved it, it introduced me to some new artists, as well as reigniting my love for some musical favourites. Brilliant, engaging, important.

[Diogenes Grief · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I began this book intending to write a history of a still vital form of music. I finished it wondering if I had instead composed a eulogy."

33 Revolutions Per Minute is an engaging examination of, and unique approach to, a social-political history using "pop" "protest" music (air quotes emphasized and explained by Lynskey up front to help readers like me not pick it apart by the minefield of such terms). This is a musical history of dissent in the US and Britain--with nice side-roads into Chile, Nigeria, and Jamaica--looking at all main genres as they rose and fell in favor during specific eras. The author's skills as a music writer shine through. For example, he describes a Sex Pistols' song as such:

"'Anarchy in the UK' was a thunderclap, a declaration of war, a sick joke. Johnny Rotten introduced himself to the world with the words 'Right! Now!' a stage laugh, and an assault on the language itself, rolling his rs with satanic relish and forcing anarchist at gunpoint to rhyme with antichrist. His bandmates' love of rock 'n' roll, beefed up by Chris Thomas' production, gave it an irresistibly thrilling muscularity, a wild, liberating glee. It is at once absurd and genuinely disturbing: comic-strip villainy warping into real slash-and-burn rage. Who, or what, you might have asked in 1976, is this creature? And what does he want?"

From Nina Simone's powerful "Mississippi Goddam" to Rage Against the Machine's "Sleep Now in the Fire," this book is at times truly thrilling, but ultimately--as Lynskey's quote above laments--sad. As we've witnessed over and over again, peaceful protest does absolutely nothing to challenge authority, upend hypocrisies, or unseat the sins of governments and their handmaidens. I won't soapbox; read for yourselves. Knowledge is power.

And yes, there are chapters on Disco and gay expression (and the subsequent epidemic of AIDS), as well as a very nice chapter on feminist punk in the 1990s. He ends the book with an appendix listing every song mentioned in the text, so you can easily track things down on your favorite music service (I penciled a long list over the last two weeks ;)

As a metalhead myself, I'm disappointed that Rage was as heavy as Lynskey went, and shocked that Black Sabbath's 1970 "War Pigs" was ONLY mentioned in passing when someone covered it 30 years later (and it wasn't Faith No More). Regardless, this book was a brave undertaking and an interesting way to analyze social forces at work. If you're a socially conscious music lover, you will enjoy this. If you prefer twerking pop pap, then continue reading monster erotica or mindless mysteries.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As music writing goes, this is surely on the more noble end of the scale, right? I like Dorian Lynskey as a journalist. So I was excited about reading this even though I've always felt (with some exceptions) that protest music is what happens when John Lennon starts taking heroin and stops being funny, and therefore something to be sorely lamented, not an ideal topic for a near 800 page breezeblock.

I ended up a bit conflicted about this book. It's ambitiously researched and detailed in its (obviously left-leaning) historical accounts. Those accounts were often fascinating in themselves. But in the end, I was reading it for insights into pop music and its power to change its environment and I didn't come away with much sense of that.

I mean, would the US civil rights movement have taken longer without Strange Fruit, or James Brown, or Aretha Franklin? If this book is arguing that protest music is important I think Lynskey should have tried to answer questions like that. But each chapter ends with pop stars imploding, turning their back on politics following a media backlash or some other dour defeatist note.

Having said that, one conclusion I did draw was that once a song becomes associated with politics for whatever reason, it draws infinitely more power from its context and audience than its (often passionate, but normally young and naive) pop star can give it him/herself. Inevitably the songs became too heavy for them to carry and you can hardly blame them for stepping back.

Nevertheless there aren't many conclusions to be drawn from this sprawling thing. There are some great insights but also restraint in the editorializing. Although he does reserve a very special tone of snark for John Lennon, and imho he likes the Manic Street Preachers WAY too much.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

For anyone interested in music and its function in the political and social realm, here's a useful compendium on western protest songs in the 20th century. For the most part, the information is very readable, despite each chapter being packed to the gills with references to specific people, places, events, and music.

Lynskey has taken an almost unmanageable amount of music history and pared it down to the most important protest music from each definable chunk of the last hundred years. Although the book is divided into chapters by song title, it could just as well have been organized by historical event; each chapter's title song is discussed within the context of the movement or event that was its impetus, the surrounding political and social climate, and other songs that spring from the same source. I appreciate that the author also offers a couple appendices at the end with additional lists and information, recognizing that his previous 500+ pages are in no way exhaustive.

Towards the end, the book feels like it loses the wide-angle perspective it has taken for most chapters and begins to descend into a few rounds of opportunistic Bush-bashing (as opposed to simply writing about anti-Bush and anti-war music); then again, any kind of recent history - music or otherwise - is difficult to write objectively.

This is a great book for musicians to have around the house for reference or to pick up and read a chapter at a time between other reads.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 4 out of 5]

“33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day” by Dorian Lynskey

Invaluable resource for it's thorough research and references. Some books are to be rad, some are to be read and studied. Great book. ****

Quotes include:
'Strange Fruit' .. [sung by Billie Holiday] did not stir the blood; it chilled it. 'This is about the ugliest song I have ever heard,' Nina Simone would later marvel. 'Ugly in the sense that it is violent and tears at the guts of what white people have done to my country.' … Up to this point, protest songs functioned as propaganda, but 'Strange Fruit' proved they could be art. (p5)

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

'Strange', however, evokes a haunting sense of something out of joint. It puts the listener in the shoes of a curious observer spying the hanging shapes from afar and moving closer towards a sickening realization. (p7)

The description of 'Strange Fruit' in the last paragraph of page 9 is brilliant.
- -

'The Grapes of Wrath' … One epic, wine-fueled writing binge later, he had seventeen verses of 'Tom Joad'. … Steinbeck laughingly grouched, 'That fuckin' little bastard! In 17 verses he got the entire story of a thing that took me two years to write!' (p25)

The final verses of 'Tom Joad' by Woody Guthrie on the album 'Dust Bowl Ballads'

"Ever'body might be just one big soul
Well it looks that a-way to me
Everywhere that you look, in the day or night
That's where I'm a-gonna be, Ma
That's where I'm a-gonna be

Wherever little children are hungry and cry
Wherever people ain't free
Wherever men are fightin' for their rights
That's where I'm a-gonna be, Ma
That's where I'm a-gonna be"
- - -

Fecund = the ability to produce an abundance of offspring or new growth; fertility.
- - -

In 1963 he [Bob Dylan] was a hero, in 1964 a conundrum, in 1965 a traitor. (p52)

Protest music was one thing before Bob Dylan came upon it, and quite another thing afterwards. (p53)

'Blowin' in the Wind': The central image, he later explained, was that of 'a restless piece of paper' which nobody thinks to pick up and read, an idea uncannily close to Guthrie's comparison of himself to a 'blowing' scrap of paper. (p55)

'Protest songs are difficult to write without making them come off as preachy and one-dimensional,' Dylan writes in 'Chronicles'. 'You have to show people a side of themselves that they don't know is there.' To do this … was to blow a hole in a dam and hope that you didn't drown in the torment. (p55) [note Chronicles Volume One, by Bob Dylan (London: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 54.]

… no pacifist could have written 'Masters of War.' (p56)

'Masters of War' is the most evil-sounding protest song Dylan ever recorded. He used to refer to his 'finger-pointing songs,' and 'Masters of War' points the finger with the baleful power of a witch's curse. 'You' – yew – he sneers at the warmongers, bringing to bear all of his poisonous rage, 'you ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins.' In the final verse, Dylan tracks his quarry's coffin to its resting place and stands over it 'till I'm sure that you're dead.' You imagine that he might clamber down into the grave, crack open the casket, and give the corpse a good kick just to be sure. He turns the topic of the military-industrial complex into an ancient horror story in which a wrongdoer is pursued by a vengeful spirit. It is also a form of generational warfare. In 'The Times They Are a-Changing,'' Dylan would soon ask his elders to 'please heed the call' but there is no room for please in 'Masters of War,' only bitter sarcasm. He admits he is young, and that there's a lot he doesn't know, but he knows enough to damn his targets to hell.
'I'e never really written anything like that before,' said Dylan in the liner notes to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. 'I don't sing songs which hope that people will die, but I couldn't help it with this one. The song is a sort of striking out, a reaction to the last straw, a feeling of what can you do?' (p57)
- - -

“.. rather it confirmed what he [Bono] already believed, namely that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and that the path to political progress is paved with diplomacy and compromise. The story could not have a found more receptive audience because it involved Martin Luther King and the benefits of tact, both of which had informed the riting of U2's breakthrough internaional hit, “Pride (in the Name of Love),” over a dozen years earlier.” (p369)
- - -

“Take the Power Back” - “Was it still possible for apolitically engaged rock band to be subversive? (p492)

Morello's mother had a picture of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
By the time he left high school, he had worked through the canon of radical literature. .. turning his guitar into an air raid siren or a buzzsaw. (p493)

“Nobody will ever write a line in a protest pop song as perfect as 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!” (p494) [quote Steven Wells, 'Marx Out of Tension' NME, June 18, 1994]

The description of Rage Against the Machine's debut album is awesome! (p493-4)

* Phonyphobia = Phonophobia is defined as a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of sound.

Rage Against the Machine was who you wanted to hear when you were facing a phalanx of riot police or llaying siege to Starbucks. (p502)

On September 14 [2001, following 911] several media outlets .. listed over 150 'lyrically questionable' songs to be avoided by DJs, including 'War,' 'Imagine,' 'Eve of Destruction,' and the entire back catalog of Rage Against the Machine. … As Tom Morello commented, 'If pr songs are 'questionable' in any way, it is that they encourage people to question the kind f ignorance that breeds intolerance. Intolerance which can lead to censorship and the extinguishing of civil liberties, or at its extremes can lead to the kind of violence we witnessed.' (p506-7)

[Rob Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starting with Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit and moving through musical history ending at Green Day's American Idiot, this is more than a list and description of great protest songs, it as a story of our shifting culture with music as its soundtrack. Each chapter focuses on one protest song but rather than an in-depth analysis of the song, each chapter describe what was happening in the culture, socially, politically and economically which made each song particularly powerful, relevant and historic. Some chapters were more interesting than others with a few chapters being lackluster. I found it interesting what role the artists played in their songs history as well. Some were intentional about their protest, such as Billie Holiday, The Clash and U2, while others were reluctant in their role in the protest like James Brown. This is a good read for anyone interest in the intersection of music, politics and culture.

[Du · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't warm up to this book. It was another one, I thought sounded great and grabbed, without flipping through it, at the library. I am not exactly sure what was wrong with it, other than it didn't grab me. The book is broken down into chapters, each chapter focuses on one song and the formulation of it, as well as its importance. Initially I thought I'd learn new things and be entranced. Reality was that the chapters slogged and didn't flow well. Like a reference book, you don't need to read each chapter in order to learn, but that means you are prone to skip chapters, as I did once or twice.

A better book with a similar concept (tracing the history of a style of music) is Mansion on the Hill.

[Paul Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting catalogue of how music has been used to speak about/against topics of the last several decades. Each chapter focuses on one song and the situation it was written about but goes deeper into each topic covering other material of the same period.

The best thing was reading it alongside YouTube so I could listen to the songs I didn't know as I worked my way through the 33 chapters.

Worth a read to anyone with any interest in music.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read this year - four stars as it could do with volume two (for all the missing songs)

[Zachary Barker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about the history of modern (20th century) protest music. Each of the 33 chapters chart this history through 33 songs.

Right from the start the author poses the view that any musical artist who ventures into protest music takes risk from the start. They are taking the risks of being seen as ‘fake’ or ‘preachy’, by listeners. Why risk them when songs for sheer entertainment are surer shots at success? This theme is cleverly returned to at the end of the book.

The author starts with the hard hitting “Strange Fruit”, sang by Billy Holiday but written by a Communist activist. Right from the start the author exhibits an impressive knowledge of 20th century music traditions and music. But therein lies a double-edged sword in this book.

The structure, 33 songs over 33 chapters, seems to make sense at the start. But as the book carries on the dedication to telling the story of the songs tends to become more unfocused to becoming detailed narratives about musical movements. At times it is relevant and even entertaining, but I have admit there were times I inwardly groaned when I saw some chapters meander. Because of this tendency to meander, I would not call this book an easy read but still a worthwhile one.

What I think the author does well is to convey the emotional links of the artists to their subject matter. Neil Young wrote “Ohio” in a pique of sorrow and anger at US anti-war students being gunned down by the US National Guard at Kent State University. Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddamn” after White Supremacists bombed a church which murdered young black children. For the most part the choices were apt, although I felt there were some odd choices by the author. For instance, the U2 chapter was meant to be about “Pride”, but more was said in this chapter about what I felt should have been the U2 song the author made central: Bullet the Blue Sky.

The argument started in the introduction was brought to a thoughtful conclusion in the epilogue. I felt this was a bit of a brave decision given the length of the book, I just remembered the start of this argument myself. But the point was well made nonetheless. Protest Music probably is a threatened tradition. In the very “me” conscious generation people are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Talking about politics in general is frowned about, especially in the UK. Why go playing in minefields when you can make it as an artist going for more crowd pleasing subject matter? I hope future artists think differently and have the courage to be bold.

[Matt Glaviano · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading this book for 11 months.

This is far from my normal procedure as a reader. I'll usually have multiple books going -- often one fiction, one non, and one juvenile -- but I try to make regular progress in each.

33 Revolutions became a sporadic background book. There were times I read this relatively steadily -- 50 to 100 pages in a week -- but just as frequently I go a month or so without picking it up.

That each chapter focused on individual songs -- or more frankly, individual moments in history -- lent itself to this approach. I could dive back in after a lot of time away without much slippage -- it was just that now I was reading about R.E.M. instead of Joe Strummer. Lynskey's conclusion does tie much of his disparate texts together, but any coherent narrative that exists throughout the book can still be comprehended through sporadic reading.

I have some pretty mixed feelings about this book. First, I had really hoped for more info on the songs and the creations of the songs themselves. That's not what Lynskey's after here, though; while there are details and choice quotes about that part throughout a chapter, Lynskey's focus is rarely just on the song or the artist who created. It's best to view each chapter as a little expository essay on a moment in history, musical or sociopolitical (or both). That decision was what I liked the most and the least about the book. The more I knew about a period in history or an artsist, the less I liked the chapter. But as overviews as introductions to eras, I could see Lynskey book being invaluable for the right reader. If you're writing a report on a specific one of these, all the details are there, and some of the chosen quotations are perfect.

So a useful tool, perhaps, but a less than perfect book. I liked Lynskey's conclusion, but I did not always feel like he kept his own feelings about an artist from coloring how he interpreted their impact on music history or the historical period about which he was writing. Could be a useful tool for a subject specific reference collection (Ed. Note: While doing a practicum at Otterbein University's library, I was given funds to buy some new books. This was one I bought for them. Wonder if it has circulated).

Nice to move on. This has really tied my hands in regards to reading other music books.

[Aris Setyawan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the interesting ideas of this book is when Dorian Lynskey describes that the main purpose of social protest music, or any form of art with political consciousness, is not to change the direction of the world, simpler than that, social protest music should only be about changing people's opinions and views .

I agree a little bit with that idea. In the local domain, for example, many times Herry "Ucok" Sutresna explained that Homicide music was not created to bring down tyrants from the throne. Instead the music was made as a form of solidarity with combatants who fought at the grassroots.

This book is a history book that is easy to read because it is not only talking about numbers and years. Incidentally Dorian Lynskey, the author, is a music critic for The Guardian. So, the writing is in the form of a kind of feature that is readable, flowing, and is very easy to describe the history of song protest.

In this 900-page book, Lynskey recorded the history of protest songs since Billie Holiday in the 30s to Green Day with "American Idiot" in the 2000s. The framing described by Lynskey is clear: protest music is not merely a political case. He also spoke about racism and civil segregation exactly the song "Mississippi Goddamn" Nina Simone, John Lennon's anti-war kick, to Green Day's punkrock sarcasm.

This book is suitable to be read by those who still want to care: this world that seems to be fine turns out to be 'smoke and screen', in fact there is still a lot of injustice happening. Imagine music as a journalistic product, so he must report (reportage) the incident. The case of the protest song was able to beat the heads of the tyrants to make them aware of other matters, the more important matter was to show solidarity for combatants at the grassroots.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I learned a lot from this book--I'm a novice when it comes to musical history--but I didn't love the writing and by the end I felt overwhelmed with all of the random names and references that were being thrown in.

There are 33 chapters and each chapter focuses on one song--but also covers other bands, songs, musicians, and important figures for what's happening socially and politically at the time the featured song came out. For me this was both a strength and a weakness of the book. The earlier chapters, and a few of the others where I was more familiar with the music or time period being referenced, were easier for me to place into context and better understand the role that music was playing as a "protest." And the few chapters that focused on international movements also did a relatively good job of explaining context and impact. But especially as the book went on I felt myself losing focus as the chapters dove deeply into politics (esp. British politics) that I wasn't familiar with, lots and lots of name-dropping and references to less famous musicians and music journalists, and confusion about why some of the songs were chosen at all (U2's Pride?!). The argument could have been made that the reason the later chapters were less clear about impact was because protest songs have lost their power--something that he hinted at in the epilogue but didn't dive into in the book itself, which seems like a missed opportunity.

Overall I'm glad I read the book--I especially appreciated learning about how musical genres built off of each other in the 20th century--but by the end I felt the book had lost its way a bit.

[Rick Burin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful, moving and at times very funny history of message music, with a flair for both the anecdotal and the analytical, looking (as the terrific title suggests) at 33 emblematic protest songs, and the events and artistic movements that spawned them.

Lynskey’s chapters on Dylan, the Pistols and the Manics are so precise and perceptive, with such sharply drawn character studies, that when he was dealing with artists of whom I knew nothing – like Crass, Fela Kuti and the Dead Kennedys – I was sure I was in safe hands. The chapter on Chilean folk hero Jara is particularly affecting, and it’s lovely too to see the committed, mercurially gifted ‘60s lefty Phil Ochs given his due. (Conversely, I always find middle-class white people pontificating about hip hop slightly embarrassing, but this may be a problem with me; Lynskey does it with humour – and his eyes wide open.)

There are some gaps in the narrative – the author deciding to link his chapters, then not quite going all the way – and at this length it’s perhaps inevitable that Lynskey’s vocabularly becomes a little exhausted by the end (I looked up ‘détourné’ the first time, but didn’t need to the seventh).

He’s a fine writer, though, capable of summarising political context in a few well-chosen phrases, then delving deep into the pop: eliciting rare insights from inspired voices, drawing fascinating parallels between apparently disparate artists, and examining the compromises, contradictions and consequences of protest music in all its irrelevant majesty.

[José Contreras · Rating 5 out of 5]

"El mayor problema para un intérprete con la cuestión de las canciones protesta es que generan cierta autocomplacencia. El público de los conciertos suele mostrarse deseoso de ponerse del lado del cantante y una canción protesta agudiza esa adulación: sabe cuándo reír, cuándo vitorear y cuándo abuchear".

De los mejores libros que he leído. Un material muy preciso, largo, pero muy bien explicado, con una meta ambiciosa pero que se cumple, a mi entender: repasar una forma de expresión cultural y política en un lapso de varias décadas. La gracia, en todo caso, no está necesariamente en el repaso, sino que en la forma en cómo va ubicando cada una de las canciones escogidas por el autor en un contexto sociocultural, lo que permite entender mejor la razón de fondo de cada tema.

Salvo un par de imprecisiones en el capítulo dedicado a Víctor Jara, pero no quita la valiosa investigación de Lynskey. No es solo un repaso de temas, sino un modo de ir revisando, a través de ellos, cómo se va desarrollando el mundo y cómo estos cantantes o grupos toman y van interpretando esos cambios en sus canciones, plasmando en ellas gritos de auxilio, llamados de atención o declaraciones de principios. Si algunas de estas canciones, sueltas, ya son capaces de remecer o impactar, puestas en un entorno se vuelven elementos clave para comprender el mundo de los años donde aparecieron y ese es el principal valor de este libro. Un fijo para los amantes de la música, la sociedad, la cultura y la política mirada desde otros puntos de vista.

[Eric Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a thorough and well thought-out narrative on the history of protest songs. I personally enjoyed it, however, I felt that there were some parts missing. And the subject of certain chapters got overshadowed by another act during that specific period. Take, for example "John Walker's Blues" by Steve Earle, Lynskey starts out by talking about his courage to speak out against George W. Bush right after 9/11 and getting trashed for his opinion because no one dared to say anything bad about the president. But he was a blip on the radar, the focus behind the chapter then quickly shifted over to the Dixie Chicks and their remark about Bush and his eagerness for a war with Iraq, that Steve Earle and his song that the chapter was supposed to be about were virtually forgotten as he shifted his focus to something more interesting. I feel mainly that some of the chapters could have been refocused or left out in favor of other songs (Fortunate Son was briefly mentioned, but not given a whole chapter?!) All griping aside, this was a great course on music history and I highly recommend it.

[Robert Traller · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the 1930s to the early 2000s this book attempts to cover the history of protest music, its place in the culture of the times and its impact; it does a pretty good job. The book is Anglo and America-centric but does look at some music from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, especially when it comes to the anti-apartheid movement. From overt protest songs to songs whose message is more encoded and even songs not originally intended as political which nevertheless became an anthem for a movement. Although nicely written it is long and full of detail about bands some of which will be unknown to many readers. I found myself regularly leaving the text to listen to music mentioned either to acquaint myself with it or listen for lyrics not previously noticed.

[Thaddeous Wayne Hanson]

What surprises I ran across. Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." is far from being a patriotic anthem. Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" probably isn't what you think. Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" isn't intended to be a song of appreciation for America.

I appreciated the in-depth historical analysis of 60's music, my favorite era. I was expecting to come away with some added appreciation of what other musical eras had to offer, but did not. It's a book about protest music, events that made the music happen, as well as happenings caused by the music. Musicians caught up in it became activists, sometimes to the detriment of their music. Some were not so sincere. In the end, they were just musicians trying to make it in the business.

[Arthur Ruiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be truthful I haven’t actually read this entire book through, I’m just having quite a bit of trouble with it. There is no real problem with the actual book, I just find it’s a bit hard to keep track of and understand at the present. I’ll come back to it when I have more mental energy for it, it just feels a bit heavy and encyclopedic. I had very high hopes for this book and it’s not that it’s necessarily bad it’s just a different type of read than I was maybe expecting. I’ll read it someday, though. I read the Green Day chapter, and Strange Fruit, and plenty of others, and I do think it’s worth reading. I just have to stop reading so many books at once that I ignore the ones that are less easy reads!! When I return the rest of my books to the library I’ll check it out again, but for now I’m shelving it to read and coming back to it when I’m ready.