Laying the Foundation
Music as Activism
 The Imperatives of Social Change:
EXPOSE Injustice.
OPPOSE Injustice.
PROPOSE Solutions.
Without all three of these imperatives, we fall short of positive change!!
With these in mind, we can get to strategies of effective musicking to facilitate the EXPOSING, OPPOSING and the most challenging and important PROPOSING.
INTRAMUSICAL STRATEGIES (it's in the music…):
In order to generate awareness of important issues, aim to make the COMMUNICATION of the message as EFFECTIVE as possible. Here are some useful strategies to keep in mind:
1. The HOOK
The 'hook' must be viral, that is, it must be: 1, easy to get, and 2, more powerful as it spreads. This is probably the most powerful tool of music in terms of activism. Repetition makes you remember. Repetition makes you remember. It's the same principle that gets catchy pop songs in your head. In a live situation, getting one's audience to join in on the chorus/hook section is the easiest way to encourage awareness about an issue.
 2. Put Your Message in the TITLE
This is especially useful when combined with humour. For example, a bunch of culture-jammers in the U.S. started a campaign entitled: "Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)". Brilliant because it is the title of the group AND it is a message in and of itself. Imagine a music group called: "CEOs for WAR". Simple.
3. Call and Response
Many times things are better understood within conversation than they are just by listening to one speaker/singer, or reading one writer. The technique of call and response is a very effective way of displaying a more natural way of learning, and thus a smoother method of getting a message into someone's head.
4. POSITIVE LANGUAGE
The importance of this one often gets lost. Most people speak in terms of anti-war instead of pro-peace. "Anti-war" exposes and opposes. However, "pro-peace" exposes and opposes implicitly, and proposes peace explicitly. Positive language is where most PROPOSING can take place.
5. Perspective Taking
Writing a song/piece from a perspective that is not your own can do wonders both for your own understanding and the way the piece is ingested by an audience. For example, writing a song for peace that is from the perspective of a twelve-year old living in Iraq or from the perspective of one of Bush's daughters.
6. One at a time
There's so much negativity going on in the world that many folks seem bent on changing the whole world at one time or doing nothing at all. Change happens in steps; one thing at a time. Focus on affecting one person or one audience at a time, and positive change will spread like a virus.
7. Balance Music & Message
Think of music as a rhetorical device, and the message as a dialectical device. Combined they are much more effective than either isolated. Aim to balance. If there is too much music and not enough message, you may have a great song, but you're not doing much for activism. If there is too much message, you may not get the attention of the people who really need to hear what you are trying to say.
EXTRAMUSICAL STRATEGIES (beyond the music)
How do we spread the musical message and get it heard? This is a difficult question both for musicians and activists, let alone musical activists. The following is a point form list on possible ways of accomplishing this message distribution:
- GROUND-ZERO DISTRIBUTION --hitting the streets and selling/giving CDs away while playing your music with some sort of portable device.
- Organize your own LIVE EVENTS
- Organize MUSICIAN COLLECTIVES that perform at protests.
- RELEASE FREE music on the internet
- Random PUBLIC SING ALONGS --you might be surprised by how effective this can be!
- MEDIA STUNTS: For example: organize a band called. 'CEOs for War' at an anti-globalization rally.
- Get music out to COLLEGE RADIO STATIONS
- Record music and DISTRIBUTE WITH A LABEL (Note: getting a major label to sponsor political music is sometimes tough and might not get the respect you are after)
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