Do you think there's no good protest music these days? So did I, until I started looking for it. Every month, I listen to it all, then select the best that relates to that month’s political news. Here’s the round-up for July 2024.
1. DAVID ROVICS & KAMALA EMANUEL - MINISTRY OF CULTURE: LIVE AT ECOSOCIALISM 2024
Radical Melbourne punks Diploid released their new album, Mantra, on July 5. In an interview about it a month earlier, European media asked them what they thought of Australia's government banning Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled from appearing in person at the Ecosocialism conference in Western Australia at the end of June. Bassist Reece Prain replied: "I feel a lot of people would be all for her speaking at the Ecosocialism conference. Not only is she very relevant right now in this day and age, she is just an interesting historical figure for Palestinian freedom and revolution... Our news media has got people who probably never even thought about Israel and Palestine before being pro-genocide and pro-colonisation.... Ultimately, I’m against Leila being censored." Three weeks after the conference, veteran US protest musician David Rovics released an album of his live performance there. LISTEN>>>
2. ANDREW GURRUWIWI BAND - SING YOUR OWN SONG
In his diary about his Australian tour, Rovics said international delegates at the Ecosocialism conference noted an uncomfortable fact: that as they discussed problems in far-away Palestine, just outside, Aboriginal people were suffering homelessness on the streets. Days after the conference, oil and gas firm Woodside - notorious for its desecration of Aboriginal sites in Western Australia - announced it was paying $1.35 billion to become a liquefied natural gas "global powerhouse". The move angered its investors, who want it to transition away from the fossil fuel. Even more livid at such colonial destruction is north-east Arnhem Land's Andrew Gurruwiwi Band, who released their unique "Yolngu funk" album on July 5 to critical acclaim. "Once upon a time, there was a war in Arnhem Land," they sing on "Once Upon A Time". "Killing our people, destroying our land, destroying our culture." LISTEN>>>
3. KOBIE DEE - CHAPTER 26
Such anger spilled onto the streets on July 12, when thousands marched for National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) week. The marches came after Megan Krakouer, director of the National Suicide Prevention and Trauma Recovery Project, told the Ecosocialism conference the jailing of Aboriginal people was “out of control” and linked to suicide rates. Making the same connections was Indigenous emcee Kobie Dee, who put on a flawless performance for Australia's largest Aboriginal community, Blacktown in Western Sydney, as part of NAIDOC. "I'm a Black man living in this country, where it's normal to be sent, to a place where my people make almost 50%," he raps on his new EP, released days later. "That's half of the population in our prison today. We only make up 3% of the country ain't that a shame... And suicide is oh too common, about 10 that I've known myself." LISTEN>>>
4. VARIOUS ARTISTS - SONGBIRDS 4 - BALLADS BEHIND BARS
Also as part of NAIDOC week, Sydney's Art Gallery Of New South Wales hosted Blak Country, a night of live Aboriginal country music, on July 10. Between the performances, a deejay played tunes from Songbirds, a series of compilation albums featuring songs by Indigenous prisoners locked up in New South Wales jails, the latest volume of which was released just days earlier. "You can hear the enjoyment in the songs," said the gallery's assistant First Nations curator, Liam Keenan. "The inmates really pour everything into the music. I think that the country songs that come out of the Songbirds program are some of the most original and unique examples of Indigenous songwriting anywhere in the country right now." Blak Country came nine days after Victorian coroner David Ryan said "a series of missed opportunities culminated in the preventable death" of Yorta Yorta and Gunaikurani prisoner Joshua Kerr. LISTEN>>>
5. RADICAL SON - BILAMBIYAL (THE LEARNING)
The Songbirds program is run out of Sydney's Long Bay Jail, where Tongan and Kamileroi man David Leha once served time in solitary confinement for bashing prison guards. Leha, now better known as rapper and soul singer Radical Son, released his new album on July 12. "Jail made me a worse person," said Leha, who released his previous album with a special show for offenders at Parkville Youth Justice Precinct. Discussing his new album, he said: "Even though I wish I'd had a stronger connection to Culture and Country, even though there was a real disconnect and Culture and Country was not something I had a deep understanding of, still so much of my music is about my mob, my culture, my heritage." On the album's centrepiece, "Elder", he sings: "I wish to be an elder, an old man of this land. I want to grow old with her, and I've held her in my hands." LISTEN>>>
6. MELISSA ETHERIDGE - I'M NOT BROKEN (LIVE FROM TOPEKA CORRECTIONAL FACILITY)
Leha was lucky to leave jail at a relatively young age. But on July 3, Native American activist Leonard Peltier was again denied parole after being given two controversial life sentences in 1975 for his role in a shootout between activists and FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Six days later, US country musician Melissa Etheridge released a powerful new album of her wild concert at a women's prison. On its opener, "All American Girl", she sings: "Her eyes are black as leather, and her hair is killer red. How could she keep the baby, when she can barely keep her head? She's an all American girl, and she will live and die in this man's world." On July 13, a product of that man's world, Donald Trump, survived an assassination attempt by a gunman. The narrow escape by the self-described "most pro-guns president in history" seemed as remarkable as the fact that he had so far eluded jail. LISTEN>>>
7. MOLLY NILSSON - UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES
Two days later, the 78-year-old Trump announced that his running mate for president would be 39-year-old JD Vance. Ailing President Joe Biden then stepped aside and backed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to run against Trump. Vance was then revealed to have called Harris a "childless cat lady", showing his views may be more backward than a man twice his age. Hitting back, former attorney Harris said: "I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers... So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type." Trump responded by calling Harris a "radical left lunatic". Such red-baiting is mocked on Un-American Activities, the new album by Swedish-born singer Molly Nilsson. Its exploration of McCarthyist blacklisting draws parallels between “the persecution of leftists and socialists” in the ’40s and ’50s and the rise of the far-right today. LISTEN>>>
8. JESSE WELLES - HELLS WELLES
Trump's son-in-law, property developer Jared Kushner, is mocked on the new album by viral protest music star Jesse Welles. On "War Isn't Murder", Welles takes aim at Kushner's plans to turn the Gaza Strip into prime real estate after Israel's genocidal bombing of the Palestinians. "War isn't murder, there's money at stake," he sings in his cool, cracked drawl. "Hell, even Kushner agrees it's good real estate... War isn't murder. It's the vengeance of God. If you can't see the bodies, they don't bloat when they rot. And the flies don't swarm. And the children don't cry. If war isn't murder, good men don't die. So in a short 20 years, when you vacation the Strip, don't think about the dead, and have a nice trip." The song's online success, hailed as proving "there’s room for social media and protest singers to coexist", is no fluke. It's one of 20 gems on what could be the protest album of the year. LISTEN>>>
9. ZESHAN B - O SAY, CAN YOU SEE?
Also standing up for the oppressed is former Casteless Collective rapper Arivu with his new album, released on July 18. Discussing it, the Tamil emcee explained how, as a child, he was told he could not study because of his caste. Now, as he put it: “I am the wildest dreams of my ancestors.” The record came days after Narendra Modi's Indian government enforced new anti-protest criminal laws that threatened low-caste Dalits and indigenous Adivasis. Over in the US, first-generation Indian-American Zeshan B served up his latest classy protest album on July 26, sounding like a modern-day Marvin Gaye. It's executive produced by a former US Attorney for New York’s Southern District, Preet Bharara, who shares Zeshan's "passion for social justice through art". As Zeshan put it: "All Preet's life, he has fought for justice in the courtroom. All my life, I’ve fought for justice with a microphone." LISTEN>>>
10. BERWYN - WHO AM I
Also no stranger to the law is Trinidad-born musician Berwyn, whose new album, released on July 18, describes his struggles growing up as an undocumented immigrant in Britain. "I was the first boy in my family to not go to jail before 16," he said. "So I wanted to change the narrative a bit.” But it was hard amid the racism whipped up by then-Prime Minister Theresa May. “I’m sitting down watching the news and accepting the idea that I am enemy to the state. I’ve accepted that narrative from being a young child.” Three days earlier, Adrian Flanagan released his new EP, which is no less scathing of the Tories, despite him being a white British passport holder. Discussing its song "Aerodomes", while listing his 10 favourite protest songs, he said: "The UK was built on immigration. My grandparents were immigrants who came from the old Yugoslavia and the Ukraine." The EP is a fundraiser for Palestinians. LISTEN>>>
[Mat Ward has been writing for Green Left since 2009. He also wrote the book Real Talk: Aboriginal Rappers Talk About Their Music And Country and makes political music. This month, Mat Ward released his new album, Take The Rad Pill.]
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Read about more political albums.
Stream our new “Best protest songs of 2024” playlist on Spotify. This replaces the previous “Political albums” playlist, that was getting too big at more than 700 albums.