Tag Archives: Marches

El pueblo unido (The People United)

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Download PDF of El pueblo unido
Download PDF of El pueblo unido, arranged for band
Download MuseScore file of El pueblo unido

There are several chants that I feel should be retired. As the Peace Poets say on their website, “Hey, hey, Ho, ho,” has got to go! Also tiresome is, “The people united will never be defeated,” or that’s what I thought until I heard the original version in Spanish. Here, the chant is presented in counterpoint to the really thrilling melody of, El pueblo unido jamas será vencido. Listen to the video below and you will hear what I mean.

I am a sucker for a great melody. It’s all very well to chant and yell, but sometimes letting your real voice out and really singing with your brothers and sisters is a liberation of the soul—the foundation of solidarity.

EL PUEBLO UNIDO

De pie, cantar que vamos’a triunfar.
Avanzan ya banderas a’unidad.
Y tú vendrás marchando junto’a mí
y’a sí verás tu canto’y tu bandera florecer.
La luz de’un rojo’amanecer
anuncia ya la vida que vendrá.

¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!

THE PEOPLE UNITED

Stand up and sing for we are going to win.
Advance the flags, the flags of unity.
And you have come to march, to march with me, and thus you’ll see
your songs and banners come to brilliant flower. The light, the light of a red dawn
anouncing now the life that is to come.

The people united will never be defeated! The people united will never be defeated!

I don’t know where or when this video was recorded.

Here is a recording by Inti Illimani. I don’t find it as exciting as the one above, but I had some trouble fitting the words to the melody when I was transcribing this song and here the words are clearer.

Rich Man’s Strategy

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Download PDF of Rich Man’s Strategy

This is a very effective chant. It is primitive in the sense that it sticks to the pentatonic scale* (or, actually, the tetratonic scale, in that it uses only four notes). It works well with a drone on LA**, and some kind of very repetitive rhythmic ostinato. In the PDF of this song I have added in a steady drum beat.

If the response part to this is sung by a group of singers, there is a lot of room for harmonic improvisation; in fact, because of its harmonic simplicity, this would be a good song for less experienced singers to get a start on improvised harmony. If you stick to the notes in the pentatonic scale, you can’t really sing a note that is “wrong.”

*The pentatonic or gapped scale skips FA and TI. In other words the scale goes DO RE MI SO LA (DO). In this song, you start on LA instead of DO, so it goes: LA DO RE MI SO (LA).
**In movable DO solfege, DO is the tonic of the major scale and LA is the tonic note of the minor scale.

Everybody’s Got a Right to Live

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Download PDF file of Everybody’s Got a Right to Live!

This song was written for The March on Washington in 1968. It was originally directed at the way racism resulted in poverty. Both the original words and the simplified words are included on the PDF. It’s a great song when you have a bunch of people who don’t know many songs. The words are simple and the tune is easy to learn in a call and response way.

The is a video from the Poor People’s Campaign in 2021

Here are Rev. Frederick Douglass KirkPatrick and Jimmy Collier, who wrote this song, singing the original version in 1969.

Everybody ought to know

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Download PDF of Everybody Ought to Know
Download MuseScore lead sheet for Everybody Ought to Know

Everybody Ought to Know is a good song for kids. I have added some suggested chord symbols and raised the key from C Major to F major (otherwise it starts on a low G and children should learn to use the higher registers of their voices!). The kids here sound great (if someone has some money to send them to tune the piano, I bet they would love it!) and the song has a lot of potential. It’s a song for which you can make up new verses as needed, add harmonies (as able), add percussion, clapping, etc., and add simple dance and mime movements.

With kids, I think this should be sung antiphonally, with half the kids singing the “call” and the other half singing the “response”; then, everybody sings the last line together. It would be easy to write a simple, two-part harmony for the last line if your kids are up to it.

Here is a YouTube video of by the kids from the Erickson Elementary School in Ypsilanti, Mississippi singing Everybody Ought to know.

I am Not Afraid

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Download PDF file of I am not afraid
Download MuseScore file of I am not afraid

This is a great song to sing at a march or any action where people might get arrested, ICE is present, there is danger from hecklers, or at any action that is focused on the danger we are all in because of Trump and the forces of Authoritarianism. It’s a simple melody and one that can be enhanced by clapping and other percussion, and by improvised harmonization.

Here is a YouTube video that was made at at The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Theomusicology and Movement Arts Gathering in Raleigh, NC February 2018.

Battle Hymn of the Republic

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Download PDF of Battle Hymn of the Republic
Download MuseScore file of Battle Hymn of the Republic

Another great song from the Civil War—though this one may be more familiar to many as… 

“Glory, glory hallelujah,
Teacher hit me with a ruler,
Knocked her on the bean with a rotten tangerine
And she sunk like a German submarine.”

The original tune for this song was, John Brown’s Body. A song about the abolitionist, John Brown, who was put to death after a raid and incitement of a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859. If we allow ourselves to feel it, this song, with it’s simple, repetitive rhythm and it’s three-chord harmony, is still a stirring evocation of the righteousness we long for as a people.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic (LYRICS)

1. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

2. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

3. I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal;”
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.

4. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

5. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Link to Odetta singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic

The Battle Cry of Freedom

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Download PDF of Battle Cry of Freedom

This is a great, patriotic song from the Civil War. It can be sung indoors with a piano or, if you are lucky enough to have some band instruments for accompaniment, sing it at a rally or demonstration. I love this kind of music and have discovered rather late in life that I am a radical, left wing, commie, pinko, gay, effete intellectual snob because I am, underneath it all, a devout patriot who believes in the founding principles our nation is built on.

Battle Cry of Freedom (Lyrics)

1. Yes we’ll rally round the flag, boys, we’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom,
We will rally from the hillside we’ll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom.

CHORUS
The Union forever, Hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Down with the Traitor, up with the Star;
While we rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom!

2. We are springing to the call for
Three hundred thousand more,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom,
And we’ll fill the vacant ranks of our brothers gone before,
Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom.

3. We will welcome to our numbers the loyal true and brave,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom,
And altho’ he may be poor, he shall never be a slave,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom.

4. So we’re springing to the call from the East and from the West,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom,
And we’ll hurl the rebel crew from the land we love the best,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom.

Link to a choral version of Battle Cry of Freedom from the movie, Lincoln.

Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round

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Download PDF of Ain’t gon’ let nobody turn me ’round

Download MuseScore transcription of Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round

This is a classic protest song that was used in the fight for integration starting in the 1950s and ’60s, but going back much farther. It is worthwhile, when organizing music for rallies, to vary the mood and tempo of the songs. This song, which, often sung in a “happy-clappy,” summer camp style, can be very powerful and dignified when sung to a slower tempo. The version in the video below by Sweet Honey in the Rock illustrates what I mean.

Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round (LYRICS)

Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round, Lord,
Turn me round, turn me round,
Ain’t gonna let nobody, turn me round,
I just keep on a-walkin’, keep on a-talkin’,
Marching up on freedom land.

…Jailhouse,
…Fire hose,
…Segregation,
…no dogs, Lord,
…No War, Lord,
…Intolerance,
…Oppression,

(Other words ad lib.)
…no ICE-man
…Soldiers
…Steve Miller
etc.

Link to YouTube Video by Sweet Honey in the Rock