The Role of Music

The spirituals — "Go Down Moses," "Follow the Drinking Gourd," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" — were the first truly American music. Created by enslaved people who could not speak freely but could sing, they encoded messages of resistance, escape routes on the Underground Railroad, and an unbreakable faith in ultimate freedom. They are the foundation of virtually every distinctly American musical form that followed: blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, rock, and hip hop. Democracy's musical story begins here, with people who had no rights singing about freedom.

The first great soloist in jazz history and one of the most influential musicians America ever produced. Armstrong transformed jazz from ensemble music into a vehicle for individual expression — a deeply democratic musical statement. His virtuosity, warmth, and joy made jazz America's first global cultural export. In 1957, when President Eisenhower hesitated to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Armstrong publicly canceled a State Department tour, saying he couldn't represent a country that treated its Black citizens that way. The government eventually relented — and Armstrong went on the tour.

Jazz and blues singer whose 1939 recording of "Strange Fruit" — a devastating depiction of Southern lynching — is one of the most politically courageous acts in American musical history. Time magazine named it the Song of the Century. Jazz writer Leonard Feather called it "the first significant protest in words and music, the first unmuted cry against racism." The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, led by Harry Anslinger, harassed Holiday for years specifically because of the song — targeting her drug addiction as a pretext to silence a political voice. She sang it until she died.

Oklahoma-born folk singer who became the voice of Depression-era dispossession. His guitar bore the words "This Machine Kills Fascists." His song "This Land Is Your Land" — written in 1940 as a direct response to what he saw as the empty patriotism of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" — has become one of America's most beloved songs, its more radical verses largely forgotten. Guthrie's tradition of using folk music as political speech directly inspired Bob Dylan and a generation of protest singers.

One of the greatest contraltos in history, denied the use of Washington D.C.'s Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1939 because she was Black. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest and arranged for Anderson to perform at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. Seventy-five thousand people attended; millions heard it on radio. A performance became a civil rights statement. Anderson later became the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in 1955.

The most important songwriter in American popular music history. Dylan fused Guthrie's political folk tradition with poetic ambition to create a body of work that defined the protest era. "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) became the Civil Rights Movement's anthem. "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1964) captured a generation's sense of inevitable change. Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 — the first popular musician so honored — in recognition that his songs are literature as much as music.

Gospel-trained soul singer who wrote "A Change Is Gonna Come" (1964) after being turned away from a whites-only motel in Louisiana and after hearing Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." His song became one of the Civil Rights Movement's most powerful anthems. Cooke's combination of extraordinary commercial success and political awareness showed that Black artists could reach mainstream audiences without abandoning their identity or their cause. Murdered in a still-disputed incident at age 33 — a profound loss for American music and for the movement.

Classical pianist, singer, and the self-described "High Priestess of Soul" who became one of the Civil Rights Movement's most uncompromising musical voices. After the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham killed four Black girls in 1963, Simone wrote "Mississippi Goddam" in an hour — her first overtly political song and one of the most furious protest songs ever recorded. She said she could no longer make "pretty music" while people were dying. Her music during the 1960s was among the most direct and unsparing of any artist of the era.

"The Godfather of Soul" whose 1968 recording of "Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud" became a defining statement of Black identity and pride in the turbulent year of MLK's assassination and urban unrest. Brown's music was so central to American cultural life that after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, mayors in several cities asked Brown to broadcast a concert on television to keep people off the streets. He agreed. His willingness to use his platform for community stability in a crisis showed music's unique power in democratic society.

New Jersey rock musician whose work has chronicled the lives of working-class Americans with empathy and specificity for five decades. "Born in the USA" (1984) — often misread as a patriotic anthem — is actually a searing portrait of a Vietnam veteran's broken promises. His 2012 "We Take Care of Our Own" asks whether America lives up to its stated values. Springsteen's career is a sustained argument that democracy must account for the lives of ordinary working people — not just its leaders and institutions.

Hip hop group whose landmark 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back brought the tradition of political Black music into the hip hop era with unprecedented sonic intensity. Chuck D's declaration that "rap is Black America's CNN" captured the idea that hip hop was functioning as a form of journalism and political speech for communities underrepresented in mainstream media. Their music was controversial, provocative, and politically serious in ways that forced mainstream America to pay attention.

Compton, California rapper and the first hip hop artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, awarded in 2018 for his album DAMN. The Pulitzer board called his work "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers an intensely vivid portrait of the complexities of modern African American life." His 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly engaged directly with police violence, Black identity, and America's racial contradictions. His 2023 Super Bowl halftime performance reached 115 million viewers. The tradition of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone runs directly through his work.