Americana for Justice: A Social Justice Playlist
Photo by BP Miller via Unsplash, 2021
I’ve been wanting to write something along these lines since we started this site. Initially it was going to be a roundup of great social justice and protest Americana songs.
Then the Morgen Wallen incident happened—you know the one—and I started thinking about the endemic racism in country music—exacerbated back in the day when the music industry started separating “race records'' from “hillbilly music.” I thought about the initial whiteness of Americana when it started to become a defined genre, the exclusion of many Black (especially Black women) artists from pop country radio—(look, “Old Town Road'' may have been a novelty hit but it’s ten times more “country” than a lot of what’s on the country charts these days), the fact that Wallen’s selling more records than ever before...well, as you can see, the initial idea became a dozen topics and I wasn’t sure what my contribution to the conversation should look like.
And then, God. In early April, my family got pulled over for speeding. We got through it with a warning, but we are a mixed-race family, so it was stressful for all of us, especially my Black family members. About a week later, Daunte Wright was senselessly murdered during a traffic stop, and I couldn’t help but think how our stop might have gone differently had my white husband not been driving.
On April 20, the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial here in Minneapolis brought a swelling of joy and triumph to our community, but also intensified the grief over George Floyd’s murder, and outrage that it had taken so long for this kind of accountability to happen (Chauvin is the first white cop ever to be found guilty of murder in the state of Minnesota, though he’s far from the first one to have committed it).
As a white person with Black family, I get a close perspective on how racism affects them, but having lived in my white skin all my life, I still can’t possibly know what it feels like to live with the weight of it day in and day out. In light of all this, my article felt very small.
But, in the end, I decided to stick with what I originally intended—a writeup of social justice songs I love. After all, promoting and supporting artists and music is our main mission at Adventures in Americana. And these songs are powerful and important contributions to the conversation. But click any of the links throughout this intro for articles that can speak much more comprehensively and intelligently about these issues as they relate to country and Americana music than I can.
Please know this isn’t a “one and done” article—we’re going to keep promoting and supporting artists who sing about social justice as well as non-white, women and LGBTQ artists throughout our adventures. As a Rolling Stone editorial recently put it, “No more bystanders.” Holly G. of Country Queer agrees, exhorting us to “Keep talking.” And as Jason Isbell sings in a song that almost made this list, “If your words add up to nothing, then you’re making a choice to sing a cover when we need a battle cry.” We’re with you fellers.
Photo by Ian Nguyen via Unsplash, 2021
Without further ado, here are 10 of my favorite social justice Americana songs of the last few years! You can listen along with our handy dandy Americana for Justice playlist on our YouTube channel.
Amythyst Kiah, “Black Myself.” Originally appearing on the collaborative album Songs of Our Native Daughters, this song recently got a powerhouse upgrade in terms of arrangement and delivery, but the incredible words thankfully stayed the same. Every line packs a punch about various aspects of systemic racism and racial prejudice, but my favorite is about the ridiculous notion that country isn’t Black music: “I pick the banjo up and they sneer at me / 'Cause I'm black myself.”
Jason Isbell, “White Man’s World.” Truth be told, I hadn’t willingly listened to modern country music since the 1990s when a friend told me about this song back in 2017 or so. I’d dismissed popular country both because I felt it had moved too far from the original art form and because I thought it had nothing of substance to say. This song busted that second assumption to hell and in the process opened me up to more modern-sounding country. As with Kiah’s song, every line in this concise song is a winner, but my favorite stanza is “There’s no such thing as someone else’s war / Your creature comforts aren’t the only things worth fighting for.” It so precisely gets at the fear and innate selfishness of the defensive posture many white folks have taken against fighting for the rights of others.
The Cactus Blossoms, “Downtown.” This band has an understated way of inserting messages into their songs; for a while after the 2016 election, they took to playing Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” and replacing “Milo Venus” with “Michelle Obama was a beautiful lass…” “Downtown” is their most direct protest song and its lyrics cut to the devastating chase about income inequality. My favorite lines are the ones that offer a glimmer of hope for change: “Trouble knocking on the door / You're used to it if you’re poor / Tables have been turned before…”
Annie Mack, “Judge and Jury.” This is a subtle and universal song that could be read a few different ways, but I always read it as being about the microaggressions of superiority and fake compassion that come from white people trying to police Black people’s behavior and lives. I’m really struggling to whittle it down to a favorite line, so here’s a stanza I adore: “You get all up in arms / Wanna do my spirit harm / Tryin’ your best to shame me / Busy praying for a flood / So you can drag me through the mud / Trying to hide my humanity.”
The Younger Brothers, “No Justice, No Peace.” No subtlety here; this Philadelphia folk-pop duo wears their hearts on their sleeves in this earnest call for justice, and I love it. The song evokes images of the marches that took place around the world in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. My favorite line, which always brings tears to my eyes, is simple and sweet: “Darling, know that you’re not really gone / Living in the souls of everyone.”
Luke Callen, “Staten Island Ferry.” Speaking of no subtlety needed, I’m always floored and moved by the raw anger in this Midwest folk singer’s protest song about the individual who murdered Eric Garner and the system that let him get away with it: “Now I heard about the chokehold that put him to rest / But he shouldn’t’a been selling them loosey cigarettes.”
Ondara, “God Bless America.” This Minneapolis folk artist moved here from Kenya, so his gentle lullaby to a (hopefully not fatally) flawed United States, which interrogates its prejudices against immigrants and other groups, is especially moving: “Will you let me in / Or are you at capacity? / Will you set me free? / Are you holding on to history?”
Tyler Childers, “Long Violent History.” Taking to heart that white people ought to take responsibility for their friends and neighbors’ racism, Childers not only wrote a song speaking directly to white Appalachian folks, he even released a companion video further explaining the song to make sure there was no way to misinterpret it. The lyrics ask rural white folks to put themselves in the shoes of Black folks to truly understand their anger: “Could you imagine just constantly worrying / kicking, and fighting, and begging to breathe?”
Rhiannon Giddens, “Better Get It Right the First Time.” I was surprised by but instantly fell in love with this song on an otherwise quite old-timey album. Combining rootsy instruments with a 70s funk vibe and even a guest rap in the middle, it definitely stretches the boundaries of Americana, but coming from an amazing artist reclaiming Black heritage in old-time music and giving voice to generations of oppressed and fallen people, it belongs on this list. Favorite lyrics are probably this chilling stanza, punctuated by the refrain “Young man was a good man”: “Did you stand your ground / Is that why they took you down / Or did you run that day / Baby they shot you anyway.”
Vince Gill, “March On, March On.” It’s great to have newcomers disrupting the airwaves with protest songs, but I also love that a giant of country music weighed in on #blacklivesmatter with this heartfelt anthem that he debuted on national television. My favorite lines acknowledge that the beginning of slavery is the beginning of our nation’s deep sickness but express hope that change is in the air: “400 years of history couldn’t be more wrong / A reckoning is coming—march on, march on.”
Bonus Track: Johnny Cash, “The Man in Black.” Okay, so this song came out in 1971. But I just couldn’t have a country playlist about justice without it. Johnny Cash often sang about the struggles of the oppressed and unfortunate—he viewed their struggles as his own. This song explains, “I wear the black for the poor and beaten down / Livin’ in the hopeless hungry side of town / I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime / But is there because he’s a victim of the time.” It’s a lot like Jason Isbell’s when he says “There’s no such thing as someone else’s war.” Heck, if more white guys had used their platforms more through the years between Cash and Isbell to speak out against injustice, the state of the music and the country might just be in a little better place.
What song do you wish was included here? Drop us a line and we’ll add it to our Youtube playlist!
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra via Unsplash, 2021
