Tag Archives: Rallies

We Have Come with a Force More Powerful

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Music is sometimes more effective than words This is another of the Peace Poets short chants. They call this “a Deescalation song to honor the strength of our love.” Non violence is in its essence a method of communication by taking down walls and, if possible, making friends with the enemy and convincing them to change their ways. We always hope for that possibility. Often, we can do this work better through music than we can by yelling and arguing. Here‘s an interesting clip from The Tennesseean showing a confrontation at the No Kings demonstration in Nasheville between the police, a group from The Proud Boys and a crowd of demonstrators. A lot of protestors were yelling and swearing; but a brass band stepped up and started playing O Bella Ciao. By the end of the song, the tension had dissipated and everybody, even the Proud Boys, were clapping and cheering for the music.

Listen to the YouTube Video: We Have Come With a Voice More Powerful

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.

Don’t you want to vote?

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Download MuseScore file of Don’t you Want to Vote?

This is fun, short and really adaptable.

Come on, come on, come on
Don’t you want to vote?
Come on, come on, come on
Don’t you want to vote?
Come on, come on, come on
Don’t you want to vote?
Yes, I want to vote!

Have you registered somebody?
Don’t you want to vote…

Will you meet me at the polling place!
Don’t you want to vote…

Go and raise your voices!
Don’t you want to vote…

Yaray Allen Leading her song, Don’t You Want to Vote?

I am Not Afraid

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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 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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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 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