Some years ago, I was in my car with my music on shuffle, and NIN’s “Head Like A Hole” came up. It struck me how entirely relevant and appropriate that song still is today. And I wondered: What’s the angry protest music that kids listen to today? Who are the pissed off bands raging against the status quo?
I try to keep up with the new music scene, but I couldn’t think of anything. I asked around people I know who have kids and they told me there mostly isn’t any. They say their kids don’t listen to protest bands the way earlier generations did.
That thought makes me immeasurably sad. It really bothers me to think there’s no new protest music being made by and for young kids today. I mean, NIN is still awesome and the anger is still powerful, but new generations deserve better than to borrow the music of their parents and grandparents.
Or so I thought. I think now that I’m wrong about this.
I heard Chappell Roan playing the other day: her overt embrace and performance of queer identity, on such a massive mainstream stage, is a fundamental rejection of the status quo and a powerful stance against intolerance. She’s protest music. Not raging like the music of my youth, but still protest.
The civil and queer rights movements both teach the absolute importance of joy as an act of resistance. Joy as the ultimate act of refusal to be beaten down. Protest doesn’t need to be angry.
This all came up in a conversation recently with a younger coworker. She said something revealing: Her experience is that the angry protest music of her parents’ and grandparents’ generations didn’t fix anything. It didn’t work. Things today are so much worse than they were even back then. Why would they turn to the same failed strategy?
(I’m also very aware that young people currently are heavily into late-80s/early-90s grunge, so…)
She has a point, but I also think she’s wrong. I think about the original Luddites and their quest to stop technology from destrying their skilled labor. It didn’t work, they didn’t stop anything. But they raised popular awareness of the dangers of technology, shifted some of the cultural perspective of it, and directly inspired the labor movements that followed, which did win real concessions and improvements for working people.
Protest can change the world. Protest music is part of that, a necessary expression of a culture fighting against what it doesn’t want. Protest music in-and-of itself isn’t going to fix what’s wrong, but it’s certainly sand in the gears, wrenches in the machinery. It pushes against, and slows down how quickly things can get worse. It maybe even ameliorates the worst possibilities. As the soundtrack of protest, it matters.
Maybe it’s just because I am, at my core, deeply anti-authoritarian, but I need there to be new, vibrant music of protest. I think there is. It’s just not the kind I grew up with.
That’s probably better.
