The Protest Song

Or: looking for a soundtrack for the present times

Jan 18, 2026

I really can’t. I couldn’t deal with the Venezuela situation. I couldn’t deal with the Greenland situation. I can’t really go and study Sascha Riley, while the Epstein files get entangled beyond reach. The hydra of legacy media, tweet apps and podcasting world have flooded effectively the zone, with an unprotected people and the aid of the A.I. stochastic parrot. By now, it is an all-ecompassing white noise. Yes, I feel surrounded by noise. Engulfed. Disoriented.

Amid the rise of political involvement, I despise the noise and miss the music. Because political involvement does have a soundtrack, and it actually needs it to keep us all on track. But where may we find its traces, in this ocean of neverending soundbites of revisionism?

To my surprise, some days ago I caught a crowd singing in unison in a Philadelphia protest. Here is how it went:

He-yo, we won’t be silent

while our friends are gunned down.

{Bit of a downer. The longer version with the two melodic singers in harmony can be found in instagram. But i digress.}

The verse eerily reminds me of something I have heard before. It took me a long time of sitting down and focusing along memory lane to discover the resonance. It is the chorus of a 1967 song by Buffalo Springfield:

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
A-telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop
Children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Are getting so much resistance from behind

Time we stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and a-carrying signs
Mostly say hooray for our side

It’s time we stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down
We better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down
We better stop now
What’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down
We better stop
Children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down

Can you spot it? It is the coincidence of the verse that starts with “Hey” and finishes with “down.” And they both refer to the moment people fall to the ground, gunned down, because of war. It is a call to our conscience, to understand what is lost. Life. Cultural expression.

Buffalo Springfield. The greenhouse where Neil Young and Stephen Stills were grown. A band integrated by canadians and americans alike. Crosby, Stills, Nash ~~& Young~~ will come later.

And so four students “went down” in Kent State in 1970, a military execution on the green slope of a university campus. The myth goes that upon receiving notice, Neil Young went into the woods and came back in half an hour with Ohio, one of the greatest protest songs of all time.

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drummin’
Four dead in Ohio

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Na-na-na-na, na-na-na
Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Na-na-na-na, na-na-na

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drummin’
Four dead in Ohio

Four dead in Ohio (four dead)
Four dead in Ohio (four)
Four dead in Ohio (how many?)
Four dead in Ohio (how many more?)

Four dead in Ohio (why?)
Four dead in Ohio (oh)
Four dead in Ohio (four)
Four dead in Ohio (why?)

Four dead in Ohio (why?)
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio

Gunned down again. And all three songs sprouting from Ohio! Gerald V. Casale, a founder of DEVO, actually knew two of the victims personally. Together with Bob Lewis and Mark Mothersbaugh, this Kent alumni came up with the concept of de-evolution, i.e., a sort of counterdarwinism which observes we are going back to the primitive ape, at a mutational level. And a new type of protest song saw the light:

They tell us that
We lost our tails
Evolving up
From little snails
I say it’s all
Just wind in sails

Are we not men?
We are Devo
Are we not men?
D-E-V-O

We’re pinheads now
We are not whole
We’re pinheads all
Jocko Homo

Are we not men?
We are Devo
Are we not men?
D-E-V-O

Are we not pins?
We are Devo

Monkey men all
In business suits
Teachers and critics
All dance the poot

Are we not men?
We are Devo!
Are we not men?
D-E-V-O

Are we not pins?
We are Devo
Are we not men?
D-E-V-O

All together now, God made man!
But he used the monkey to do it
Apes in the plan
We’re all here to prove it
I can walk like an ape, talk like an ape, I can do what monkey do
God made man
But a monkey supplied the glue

Are we not men?
We are Devo!

We must repeat!

D-E-V-O…

We are heading back to the ape. A shockingly punk song, which might surprise those acquainted with the band in its later stages and TV appearances on Fridays 1980 and Fridays 1981. DEVO seems to hold the record of being the sole music band with a punk, a postpunk and a new wave period. Kurt Cobain was a declared fan of the band, its concept and attitude, and probably found the inspiration for his me-against-all hymn, Very Ape, a very grunge song capturing the essence of the absolute individual protest. The lyrics are particularly creative, even creationist:

I am buried up to my neck in
Contradictionary (f)lies
I take pride as the king of illiterature
I’m very ape and very nice

If you ever need anything, please don’t
Hesitate to ask someone else first
I’m too busy acting like I’m not naive
I’ve seen it all, I was here first

Out of the ground
Into the sky
Out of the sky
Into the dirt

If you ever need anything, please don’t
Hesitate to ask someone else first
I’m too busy acting like I’m not naive
I’ve seen it all, I was here first

Out of the ground
Into the sky
Out of the sky
Into the ground
Out of the ground
Into the sky
Out of the sky
Into the dirt

It also found in DEVO the inspiration on the visuals, for both the third and final Nirvana LP In Utero, as well as the staging of the live tour. Cobain’s protest was even aimed to the media landscape which catapulted him into stardom, and thus, 1993 represents an absolute peak in terms of what we are or should be against. From there on, together with the death of its main singers, it was only logical the protest song would wane into more independent structures of production & touring. I particularly enjoyed The Evens, a two-human-show where he plays guitar, she does the drums, and both sing. A really minimal amount of gear, which allowed them to travel extensively, even at an international level. Here is their landmark protest song All These Governors as performed in 2005, just before Youtube was launched:

When things should work, but don't work
When things should work
When things should work, but don't work
When things should

When things should work, but don't work
That's the work of all these governors
Interference by decree
That's the work of all these governors

They block, they block, they block
That's the work of all these governors
When things should work, but don't work
That's the work of all these governors

You puzzled up the air with their information
Panels have been formed to sell the combination
Shut up, shut up, shut up
Shut up, shut up, shut up

Annual review and a cop on every corner
Handing out rewards for snitching on informers
Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up
When things should work, but don't work
That's the work of all these governors

It is interesting to note that the lyrics turn back the aim to the institutions, the system, the swamp, the deep state. And to the subject of guns, police and self-censorhip, the issue at stake when we talk about gunning people down (and recognising it as murder.) To be fair, punk was invented in Britain, and while american lyrics detoured into the mood of “shock” and “doom”, the british remained steadily critic to what Hegseth and Miller now call “hard power”, a less abstract enemy: the people with the guns. Coming from Brighton (like Portishead, Fatboy Slim and Nick Cave), the girls from Electrelane claim back the right to be president, attain all power and execute it. Here they are, live in 1998 with I Want To Be The President:

We've got arms
They're the fighting kind
Take you on
'Cause you're strong

We've got love
It's the hating kind
We're not interested in your difference
We like to be divided

My gun is bigger than yours
My tank goes faster than yours
My missile's turning me on
My weapon makes me feel strong

Bang bang bang
Do you wanna see my gun?
Well come on
We'll resist
We'll resist
We'll resist
I'll let you take control
But if they say that it's so
Is that the way you will go?
And if you thought it was wrong
Would you still follow along?

They’re building walls tonight
They’re building walls tonight
Ain’t it cold
Ain’t it cold
Ain’t it cold
Where you empty your soul?
Ain’t it cold
Ain’t it cold
Ain’t it cold
Where you empty your soul?
There’ll be a war tonight
There’ll be a war tonight

The girls rock! Back in America it took me a while to find a really political protest song among the overflowing hip-hop/rap/trap/pop mishmash in its media. Yet i was surprised to find yet another independent couple, who self-proclaim the beach-goth style, dreamy songs to play and sing in the beach while the rest of the country bans books and wreaks havoc:

Well, they’re banning all the books and the foreign apps
And the kids are walking round with bulletproof backpacks
Everyday feel like I’m fighting off a heart attack
And I wonder, I wonder, I wonder
Why they want us buying up all the shiny screens?
Know they hate when we complain about the doctor fees
Think they’re selling us a lie and calling it a dream
Oh, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder
Who’s gonna come and save us now?
Who’s gonna come and save us now?
Well, they’re banning all the books, outlawing drag queens
And the girls are being told they don’t own their bodies
Well, the air is getting blacker but we have to breathe
And I wonder, I wonder, I wonder
Why they’re raiding all the farms and the city schools?
Why the churches make more money than the teachers do?
Why they’re letting corporations poison all the food?
Oh, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder
Who’s gonna come and save us now?
Who’s gonna come and save us now?
Who’s gonna come and save us now? (No one’s coming, pick yourself off the ground)
Who’s gonna come and save us now? (No one’s coming, pick yourself off the ground)
No one’s coming, pick yourself off the ground
The systems broken, why don’t we burn it down?
They come for one, they come for all of us now
They come for all of us now
They come for all of us now

So far neither I nor the lyrics have used the word “fascism”, and it is really hard nowadays to write a piece without mentioning “it.” But antifascism is a movement as old as fascism, and since Bella, Ciao! it has been a defining characteristic of this movement to sing songs. Both the fascist and the antifascist movement were born in my italian region, Emilia Romagna. But I digress.

Yet another concrete example, now of blatant antifascist music, comes of course from Britain. Burnley in this case, and the band—rather an ensemble—is Chumbawamba, with their killshot hymn The Day the Nazi died:

We’re told that after the war
The Nazis vanished without a trace
But battalions of fascists
Still dream of a master race

The history books they tell
Of their defeat at ‘45
But they all came out of the woodwork
On the day the Nazi died

They say the prisoner at Spandau
Was a symbol of defeat
Whilst Hess remained imprisoned
And the fascists, they were beat

So the promise of an Aryan world
Would never materialize
So why did they all come out of the woodwork
On the day the Nazi died

The world is riddled with maggots
The maggots are getting fat
They’re making a tasty meal of all
The bosses and bureaucrats

They’re taking over the boardrooms
And they’re fat and full of pride
And they all came out of the woodwork
On the day the Nazi died

So if you meet with these historians
I’ll tell you what to say
Tell them that the Nazis
Never really went away

They’re out there burning houses down
And peddling racist lies

And we’ll never rest again
Until every Nazi dies

A hymn indeed, and it aligns quite well with one of the first antifascist principles, which is: since the fascist wants you gunned down, make sure you shoot first.

A very recent singer & guitar player, Jesse Welles, has experienced a fiery stardom (à la Cobain or Jeff Buckley) with his folk chords, raspy voice and severely ironic lyrics. Here is my favorite example, War isn’t Murder, as played on the last Farm Aid Festival a year ago:

War isn’t murder, good men don’t die
Children don’t starve and all the women survive
“War isn’t murder, “ that’s what they say
When you’re fighting the Devil, murder’s okay
War isn’t murder, they’re called casualties
There ain’t a veteran with a good night’s sleep

Let’s talk about dead people
I mean a-dead people
The dead don’t feel honor
They don’t feel that brave
They don’t feel avenged
They’re lucky if they got graves

Call your dead mother, ask her when she died
It’s a deathly silence on the other line
The dead don’t talk, but the children don’t forget
So in 20 short years, you could live to regret that

War isn’t murder, there’s money at stake
Girl, even Kushner agrees it’s good real estate
War isn’t murder, ask Netanyahu
He’s got a song for that and a bomb for you
War isn’t murder, it’s an old desert faith
It’s a nation-state sanctioned, righteous hate

Let’s talk about dead people
I mean a-dead people
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

War isn’t murder, we should all give thanks
I saw it all in a movie, give it up for Tom Hanks
War isn’t murder, they don’t ship out the poor
And the bullets they fire aren’t part of the cure
War isn’t murder, land is a right
But the banks called dibs, it’s something you can’t fight

Let’s talk about dead people
I mean a-dead people
The dead don’t feel honor
They don’t feel that brave
They don’t feel avenged
They’re lucky if they got graves

War isn’t murder, ain’t a river of blood
Stretching all-through time and raining down in a flood
It’s a dark sacrifice made on your behalf
So get down on your knees and thank the sweet Lord that
War isn’t murder

Welles is capable of producing a new song per each new aggression or gaffe from the current american administration, with a very active Youtube channel. His style is of course directly inspired by the most relevant of antifascist american musicians, Woody Guthrie. I decided to close this post with this brief Guthrie song about Fred Trump and landlords. Very zeitgeist. Hope we come up & discover & listen & sing the appropriate soundtrack for the times ahead.

Bruno Bettati

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