Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST,Redneckred
Date: 17 May 21 - 02:37 AM

There've been lots of great protest songs, but surely one of the finest is the Australian song "Freedom's on the Wallaby" written by Henry Lawson in 1891 about the sheep shearer's strike of that year. The lyrics are in the Mudcat database at:

https://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=2133,2133,2133,2133&SongID=2133,2133,2133,2133

At the time, there were calls for Lawson to be arrested for sedition - as fine a recommendation for a protest song as I can imagine.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 May 21 - 05:35 PM

Interesting and very extensive collection of protest songs at https://www.ildeposito.org/ - an Italian Website with songs in many languages.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Ged Fox
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 08:08 PM

1886 - England Arise - Edward Carpenter. Not very old, but one of the best.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Ged Fox
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 08:07 PM

"England Arise" Edward Carpenter 1886 - by no means old, but one of the best.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 07:25 PM

This site might yield you something

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: topical tom
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 03:00 PM

Another good protest song is "Die Gedanken Sint Frei" (Thoughts are Free)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 02:44 PM

Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: topical tom
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 01:17 PM

bhttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+peat+bog+soldiers

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 11:16 AM

Excuse the nitpicking, 'Moorsoldaten' was made in Börgermoor camp (and is known as Börgermoorlied sometimes for that reason). Not Dachau.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: ced2
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 11:04 AM

Peat Bog Soldiers was written in 1933-35 by the first inmates of Dachau Concentration Camp set up by Hitler and the Nazis. Most of the inmates were socialists, communists, trade unionists and those with religious beliefs that Hitler did not agree with. The first camps were not, as with later ones, set up as camps where death happened on arrival, they were forced labour camps, as can be seen from the slogan above the entrance gate . Many inmates died from malnutrition, beatings, summary executions etc. The song tells of the labour where inmates were driven to the moor to dig in the most brutal and harsh conditions. The last verse & chorus contains hope for the future.

Any IWW (Wobbly) song written by Joe Hill was written before 1915 when Joe was legally murdered.   

Woodie wrote may in the Thirties... If You Ain't got the Doh Ray Me etc and most famously "This Land is Your Land" written in reply to the Nationalistic slant in Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America'. But you have got to get hold of all 6 verses not just the three that are deemed politically correct by the right wing American Establishment.

Often soldiers who were placed in the most difficult situations by their political masters & generals wrote songs, usually to well known tunes of the day. There are many from WW1. My personal favourite is a full version of D Day Dodgers from WW2,

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: JMB
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 08:02 AM

A Man's A Man For A' That / or Parcel O' Rogues by Robert Burns are protest songs. He wrote a lot of protest songs and poetry. A poem of his that I also enjoy is Holy Willie's Prayer.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 07:04 AM

Two musicians with classical leanings;

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin - starting with Casadh

Shaun Davey - The Brendan Voyage - Soloist Liam O'Flynn

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 05:19 AM

The Song of the Day-Labourers is another poem by Ernest Jones - see the posts above.

Sharpen the sickle; how full the ears!
Our children are crying for bread!
And the field has been watered with orphans' tears
And enriched with their fathers dead

Set to a striking tune, it can be found on Falling Slowly, the second album by Coope Boyes and Simpson, but under the title The Forward March.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: BobL
Date: 12 Jun 17 - 03:49 AM

"Adeste Fideles" may be older than that - see its Wiki entry. Although of course the Jacobites could have read meanings into it that were not originally intended by the author.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 08:10 PM

It's been plausibly claimed that the Christmas carol "Adeste Fideles" ( known in English as "Come All Ye Faithful" ) is a coded Jacobite song, written at the time of the birth of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1720.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 06:39 PM

Ernest Jones's "Song of the Lower Classes" is also available at archive.org, along with other "Songs of Democracy," in an anthology of "The Poets and the Poetry of the Century," compiled by Alfred H. Miles in 1891:

https://archive.org/details/poetsandpoetryof04mileuoft

It's on page 557, but the section on Jones, with a fascinating biography, begins a few pages earlier.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 05:08 PM

Thanks very much for all the suggestions, lots to research here. The Cutty Wren was recorded recently by Chumbawamba, I will dig into some of the other links so thanks a lot.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 12:56 PM

The Song of the Lower Classes

From Mainly Norfolk;

The writer, Ernest Jones, stood unsuccessfully as a Chartist MP in 1847, was arrested in 1848 and sentenced to two years of solitary confinement.

From 1851 on, he started publishing a weekly magazine, Notes to the People, in which this song was published in March 1852.

Set to the three-part hymn Otford by Martin Carthy and released in 1982.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: topical tom
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 12:09 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat_Bog_Soldiers

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: topical tom
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 12:03 PM

"We are the peat bog soldiers"...WW!! vintage, I believe.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 04:38 AM

"The earliest form of 'protest' or political songs in England were put together in 'The Political Songs of England (From the reign of John to that of Edward II) by Thomas Wright (1839)'

They are in French, Provncál Latin, Anglo-Norman and early English and all come with a descriptive commentary and extensive notes - they date from the beginning of the 13th century."

Thanks, Jim, just what I was looking for when I saw the Winstanley reference. I knew there must be something like that.

Wright's songbook can be viewed and downloaded in various formats at archive.org:

Political Songs of England

Archive.org is a marvelous resource for public domain material of all kinds. Just two other examples: Both the Child ballad texts are available there; the Grateful Dead have made archive.org the organ for distributing ALL available unreleased and bootleg concert recordings.

I imagine they have a lot of pre-1924 songbooks, and I believe sheet music as well.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 03:55 AM

The traditional song, The Rigs of the Time seems to qualify as ' old '

Dave H

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 03:52 AM

The World Turned Upside Down was not a song until Leon Rosselson put Gerard Winstanley's fine speech to music.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 03:45 AM

Anybody interested in Irish protest songs should get hold of Terry Moylan's superb 'The Indignant Muse' poetry and song of the Irish Revolution 1887-1926; a huge 700 page block of a book of containing hundreds of songs, many with music and well-researched notes and rich with illustrations - a must-have for any collection.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Jun 17 - 03:34 AM

The earliest form of 'protest' or political songs in England were put together in 'The Political Songs of England (From the reign of John to that of Edward II) by Thomas Wright (1839)
They are in French, Provncál Latin, Anglo-Norman and early English and all come with a descriptive commentary and extensive notes - they date from the beginning of the 13th century.
They cover taxation, rationing and wars...... etc - all good solid subjects for protest - it has been described as "a collection of political verses, venality satires and songs of social protest from medieval England".
The songs are no longer singable, of course - if they ever where, but they make a fascinating study of how songs have always been used beyond being merely entertainment
I bought a remaindered copy of the reprint for £1.00 back in the 70s, but always kick myself for not buying the first two-volume edition and a ridiculously low price (we were economising at the time)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Jun 17 - 08:20 PM

The Cutty Wren has been claimed to date from the Peasants Revolt in the 14th century, but it's very questionable if that's actually true, both as regards its age or its protest aspect.

Still it's a good story to have in mind when singing it.

But the couplet "When Adam Delved and Eve Span,
                            Who was then the gentleman"
does appear to date from the Peasants Revolt, since it was first recorded as being used in a sermon to tge rebels by the priest John Ball, in a book written only a few years later, Thomas Walsingham's Historia Anglicana.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Jun 17 - 08:17 PM

This might clarify matters with The Diggers' Song and The World Turned Upside Down:

https://mainlynorfolk.info/leon.rosselson/songs/thediggerssong.html

The oldest one in English I know of is a protest against the murder of Thomas Becket. It's on my website. It's not likely to get revived any time soon.

This one, on the other hand, does still communicate with tremendous power:

http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/on-transience-ii-earth-upon-earth-and.html

There is some overlap of imagery, attitude and meaning with the Turkish Alevi/Bektashi song "Kara Toprak" ("Black Earth") attributed to the 20th century bard Asik Veysel, though he probably assembled it from ideas going back to the Middle Ages. I'd guess this is a very widespread topos. (Ian Pittaway, do you have anything on this?)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST,alex s
Date: 10 Jun 17 - 04:54 PM

Mrzzy - 1962

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST,alex s
Date: 10 Jun 17 - 04:53 PM

Mrrzy, I think it's pretty recent - 1970's??

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Jun 17 - 04:22 PM

How old is What Have They Done To The Rain?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Jun 17 - 03:04 PM

I may well watch this with interest. May we have two sets of submissions, one by age and one by quality?

Subject: Lyr Req: Best and oldest protest songs.
From: GUEST,Mike
Date: 10 Jun 17 - 02:57 PM

Does anyone know which are the best oldest protest songs? The Digger song or World Turned Upside Down from the 17th Century, but are there any older than that?