The definitive discography of police protest songs with videos and lyrics

[wavesofeuphoria]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/27/1339197/-The-definitive-discography-of-police-protest-songs-with-videos-and-lyrics#

by Shaun King

Below you will find a definitive list of police protest songs from 1965 until today. As unlisted songs are identified or produced, we will add to this list. Detailed annotations are forthcoming.

Many brilliant and painful songs, which documented injustices in society and even implied a certain level of police compliance (like Strange Fruit or The Death of Emmett Till and others), have become anthems for resistance to police (like Get Up, Stand Up by Bob Marley), but weren't originally intended as such, and so are not included on this list.

Every song that follows was written and performed to tell a story about police injustice in one form or another. Starting with a blues song of a police murder in Jim Crow Alabama and moving through rock and folk anthems of the '70s and '80s in the United States and the UK, early police protest songs tended to tell one story about one very particular incident of police brutality. But in 1988 when NWA released "Fuck the Police," everything changed. Perhaps the most controversial song of the 1980s, "Fuck the Police" gave hip hop artists full permission to boldly describe what life was like under the often brutal thumb of police in inner city America. With a confidence never before found in American music, rappers simultaneously told stories of injustice and let you know, in no uncertain terms, how they felt about it.

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Great list ... there are others of course, but this is a nice list.

I'm using the songs as part of a course on Social Justice ... worth checking out.

[malthaussen]

1. "From 1964 to the present."

And thus, as they say themselves, not definitive.

It would be interesting to find the very first police protest song, but I suspect they were making them up in Whitechapel the day Sir Robert first unleashed his Peelers.

-- Mal