• Advertise
  • Donate
  • Subscribe
    • Become a print subscriber
    • Sign up for e-Newsletter
    • e-Editions
Thursday, September 28, 2023
No Result
View All Result
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
  • News & Features
    • National
    • Local
    • Special Editions
      • MLK Legacy
      • Black History Month
      • The MSR Celebrates Women’s History Month
  • All Sections
    • Opinion
      • Mellaneous by Mel Reeves
      • Word on the Street
      • Reaching Out From Within
    • Health + Wellness
      • Women’s Wellness
      • Parenting Today
      • Minnesota Cancer Alliance Breast Cancer Gaps Project
    • Sports
      • Timberwolves/NBA
      • Lynx/WNBA
        • 20 in 20
      • Twins/MLB
      • MN Wild/NHL
      • Vikings/NFL
    • Business
      • Small Business Month Celebration
      • Black Business Spotlight
      • Finances FYI
    • Arts + Culture
    • Photo Galleries
      • Photo of the Week
    • MSR Forefront Digital Roundtable Series
      • MSR Forefront Highlights
    • Go Green
    • Education
    • Bulletin
    • Jobs & Notices
      • Legals
      • Announcements
  • Events
    • Submit an event!
  • Obits
  • Sister Spokesman
  • e-Editions
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
  • News & Features
    • National
    • Local
    • Special Editions
      • MLK Legacy
      • Black History Month
      • The MSR Celebrates Women’s History Month
  • All Sections
    • Opinion
      • Mellaneous by Mel Reeves
      • Word on the Street
      • Reaching Out From Within
    • Health + Wellness
      • Women’s Wellness
      • Parenting Today
      • Minnesota Cancer Alliance Breast Cancer Gaps Project
    • Sports
      • Timberwolves/NBA
      • Lynx/WNBA
        • 20 in 20
      • Twins/MLB
      • MN Wild/NHL
      • Vikings/NFL
    • Business
      • Small Business Month Celebration
      • Black Business Spotlight
      • Finances FYI
    • Arts + Culture
    • Photo Galleries
      • Photo of the Week
    • MSR Forefront Digital Roundtable Series
      • MSR Forefront Highlights
    • Go Green
    • Education
    • Bulletin
    • Jobs & Notices
      • Legals
      • Announcements
  • Events
    • Submit an event!
  • Obits
  • Sister Spokesman
  • e-Editions
No Result
View All Result
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
No Result
View All Result

Hip hop is the soundtrack to Black Lives Matter protests

by Tyina Steptoe
July 6, 2020
28
SHARES
566
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on LinkedIn
AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez Rapper YG, center in white, at a June 7 protest over the death of George Floyd.

This continues a tradition that dates back to the blues

The sound of Public Enemy’s classic 1989 song “Fight the Power” blared as face-masked protesters in Washington, D.C. broke into a spontaneous rendition of the electric slide dance near the White House.

It was the morning of June 14, and an Instagram user captured the moment, commenting: “If Trump is in the White House this morning he’s being woken up by … a Public Enemy dance party.”

Coming amid widespread protests over police brutality and structural racism in the United States, the song is an apt musical backdrop. It opens with a quote from civil rights activist Thomas “TNT” Todd before going into a sample-laden funk rap track referencing past Black protest songs from the Isley Brothers and James Brown.

Demonstrators in other parts of the country similarly used hip hop as a form of sonic protest. In New York, protesters chanted the hook to Ludacris’s 2001 song “Move B—-” as they were penned in on the Manhattan Bridge by police officers.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Footage of the crowd singing, “Move b—-, get out the way. Get out the way b—-, get out the way” to uniformed officers seemingly got the approval of Ludacris, who reposted a video on his Twitter account accompanied by a raised fist emoji.

No one who has listened to hip hop since its origins in the 1970s should be surprised that rap music has become the soundtrack to protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis on May 25 while in police custody.

Hip hop artists have protested police violence in their music for decades. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, rappers from different corners of the U.S. described the brutal and discriminatory police tactics they witnessed in their communities.

Most famous perhaps is N.W.A.’s “F— tha Police” from 1988. Fellow Los Angeles rapper Ice T faced backlash after his metal band, Body Count, released “Cop Killer” in 1992.

In the Geto Boys’ “Crooked Officer” from 1993, the Houston rap group bears witness to racial profiling and police violence in the so-called Dirty South, before asserting: “Mr. Officer, crooked officer, I wanna put your ass in a coffin, sir.”

- ADVERTISEMENT -

In the same year, New York’s KRS-One referenced the racist origins of American policing in “Sound of da Police,” connecting the violent tactics used against enslaved Africans to the NYPD of the late 20th century and referring to an officer as a “wicked overseer.”

Blues roots

As a cultural historian who studies connections between race and music, I know that the rich history of protest in Black American music started much earlier than hip hop. The tradition is as old as Southern blues and continued through jazz and rhythm and blues.

Take, for example, the “Joe Turner Blues,” a song that likely originated in the late 1800s. According to folklorist Alan Lomax, Black residents of the Mississippi Delta used the earliest versions of the song to describe a White sheriff named Joe Turner who sent Black men to chain gangs or to work on building levees.

The lyrics recount a lover’s tale of loss: “They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone. Got my man and gone.” References to police officers in songs like “Joe Turner Blues” also link that tradition to the songs of enslaved Africans who warned about the slave patrols who combed the South in search of runaways.

As with hip hop, protest against law enforcement came from communities of color in different parts of the country. From east Texas, blues musician Texas Alexander describes false accusations of murder and forgery in “Levee Camp Moan Blues.” He laments, “They accused me of forgery; I can’t even write my name”—a statement that indicts both the segregated public school system of Texas and corrupt law enforcement officials.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Soul rebels

In the 1950s and 1960s, jazz musicians contributed to the emerging civil rights canon through songs like Charles Mingus’ “Original Faubus Fables” and Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam.”

Black musicians also made direct references to racial profiling and police brutality. Marvin Gaye tackled police violence on his 1971 album, “What’s Going On.” “Trigger happy policing” is one of the many social problems mentioned in “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” and he demands, “don’t punish me with brutality” on the album’s title track.

Protesters also co-opted seemingly nonpolitical Motown songs as part of their struggle against police brutality. As uprisings against violent police tactics erupted in places like Watts, Detroit and Newark between 1965 and 1967, “Dancing in the Street” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas became part of the soundtrack for urban protest.

Expressing anti-police sentiment in song is not exclusive to the Black American experience. Texans of Mexican descent have detailed their run-ins with law enforcement in Spanish for centuries through Southwestern corridos—narrative ballad songs.

Like much of the blues played by Black Americans, the corridos that emanated from the Rio Grande Valley in the 19th and early 20th century often described conflicts between Anglo American law enforcement and Mexican Americans. “El corrido de Gregorio Cortez” recounts an actual event from 1901, when an Anglo Anerican sheriff shot a man named Romaldo Cortez. His brother Gregorio then shot and killed the sheriff before eluding the Texas Rangers for 10 days.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Gregorio is celebrated as a hero who resisted Anglo-American domination: “They had a shootout and he killed another sheriff. Gregorio Cortez said with his pistol in his hand, ‘Don’t run you cowardly Rangers, from one lone Mexican.’”

New protest songs

Whether emanating from blues or corridos, Mexican and Black American music protested the ways that police buttressed White political, economic and social power. Similarly today, Latino activists point to shared concerns over race and law enforcement in their support for Black Lives Matter.

Meanwhile, recording artists are continuing the tradition of using music to protest police violence in communities of color. Los Angeles rapper YG released a single called “FTP” on June 4, in a nod to N.W.A.‘s “F— tha Police.” And hip hop producer Terrace Martin likewise dropped a track, “Pig Feet” commenting on the current unrest: “Helicopters over my balcony. If the police can’t harass, they wanna smoke every ounce of me.”

Tyina Steptoe is an associate professor of History at the University of Arizona.

This article is republished with permission from The Conversation.

Support Black local news

Help amplify Black voices by donating to the MSR. Your contribution enables critical coverage of issues affecting the community and empowers authentic storytelling.

Donate Now!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...
ADVERTISEMENT
Previous Post

Dreaming big for local change

Next Post

Signs available for lower speed limits in the Twin Cities–while supplies last

Tyina Steptoe

You Might Also Like

What should the community do with the Third Precinct now?
Local

City Council reneges on Third Precinct proposal

Stanley Nelson’s doc ‘Sound of the Police’ dissects police in Black communities
Arts & Culture

Stanley Nelson’s doc ‘Sound of the Police’ dissects police in Black communities

Racism takes a toll: the challenges to African American longevity
National

Racism takes a toll: the challenges to African American longevity

Former Minneapolis Police Chief reflects on 30-plus years of public service
Local

Former Minneapolis Police Chief reflects on 30-plus years of public service

Last former MPD officer sentenced for George Floyd’s murder
Local

Last former MPD officer sentenced for George Floyd’s murder

DOJ seeks community input about the future of MPD at upcoming listening sessions (updated)
Bulletin

DOJ seeks community input about the future of MPD at upcoming listening sessions (updated)

Next Post
Signs available for lower speed limits in the Twin Cities–while supplies last

Signs available for lower speed limits in the Twin Cities–while supplies last

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
ADVERTISEMENT

Upcoming Events

Sep 12
September 12 @ 6:30 pm-December 18 @ 9:30 pm Recurring

Vic Volare Presents MUSIC FOR MARTINIS ft: Vic’s Fabulous Nightclub Academy

Sep 28
7:30 pm-9:30 pm Recurring

Ayodele Casel Rooted

Sep 30
9:00 am-1:00 pm Recurring

Cars and Caves

Sep 30
10:00 am-12:00 pm

dem Blessings for Parents: A Morning of Creative Nourishment with Sharon Bridgforth

View Calendar
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Read our latest e-Edition!

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Subscribe

  • Home/Office Delivery
  • Weekly e-newsletter
  • e-Editions

Support

  • Donate
  • Subscribe
  • MSR Newsstand Locations

Connect

  • About
    • MSR Staff
  • Contact
  • Send a news tip
  • About
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms

© 2023 Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder

No Result
View All Result
  • News & Features
    • Local
    • National
  • All Sections
    • Arts & Culture
    • Health & Wellness
      • Women’s Wellness
      • Parenting Today
      • MN Cancer Alliance Breast Cancer Gaps Project
    • Business
      • Black Business Spotlight
      • Finances FYI
      • Small Business Month Celebration
    • Opinion
    • Sports
  • Events
  • Obits
  • Sister Spokesman
  • Donate
  • Subscribe

© 2023 Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder

 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: