Rachel Maddow reported on Monday that at last weekend’s demonstration in Atlanta there was a moment when the police stood between the No Kings demonstrators and some counter demonstrators from The Proud Boys. Things looked tense; but then, a voice called out, “One! Two! Three!” and then drums, a tuba and trombone broke in with a compelling, quick tempo bass line, the saxophones joined in with a Klezmer dance tune. It was irresistible. And soon almost everyone was moving and clapping — including the Proud Boys group! While tempers remained high and there were still middle fingers waving, the joyful music brought the mood up and defused a situation that might have become violent.
I keep hearing the question, where is the protest music of our era? It’s true that we don’t have the gospel and folk music singers that we had in the 1960s. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bob Marley, Pete Seegar, Odetta, these are people from what is now a bygone era, but those voices came out of the baby boom era when a large percentage of the population were very young. Maybe we are listening in the wrong place for our music. We should listen, not at what is in the past, but to the music that is actually happening in our streets. Popular music has become very much a creation of the electronic studio and the internet; but our current situation demands that we get our from behind our devices and earphones—because we need to be in the streets. And the music needs to be music that is in the streets—and it probably needs to be loud. So, unless we want to be dragging our batteries and amplifiers around with us everywhere we go, we may need to relearn how to do portable noise, music not sung into microphones and from behind guitars on stages, but made from mallets, drums and brass.
“Everyone loves a marching band, right? Whenever a marching band comes through a town, people come out of their houses … music turns what might otherwise be a boring gathering into a fun time … music makes people dance and sing.”
I don’t know the name of Rachel’s band in Atlanta, but it might have been one of the Atlanta Freedom Bands, which represents Atlanta’s LGBT community with various band—Marching Band, Color Guard, Concert Band, and the MetroGnomes Stage Band. In Boston there is BABAM!, an association of volunteer musicians (many of them also associated withThe Freedom Trail Band, Boston’s LGBTQ band) who are available to create pick-up bands of available members for local demonstrations. I don’t yet have a comprehensive list of bands nationwide, but you can find a lot of them from Honk Festival.
LibertyScore.us is my contribution to our musical presence at demonstrations, marches, vigils and rallies. My goal is to provide musicians with resistance songs and other music with downloadable sheet music that includes notated music, chord symbols, lyrics and, sometimes, arrangements.