When protest is brewing in the streets, music is bound to follow, a music dripping with anger and indignation, exhorting the fence-sitters to come out. From Billie Holiday’s 1939 song Strange Fruit, a searing anthem against racism to Rage Against the Machine’s 2000 song Testify against the American Government’s policies, protest songs have fuelled movements on the ground and vice versa.
Poet-comedian Varun Grover’s Kaagaz Nahi Dikhayenge (the NRC papers, we won’t show) and rapper Madara’s Tukde tukde gang went viral nationwide during the ongoing anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA)/ National Register of Citizens (NRC) protests.
Kerala too has witnessed a burst of creative anger in multiple genres this week.
Be a part
Metal band ‘The Down Troddence’ (TDT) from Kannur has released Fight. React. Be A Part., which the band says is an exhortation to fellow Indians, especially the youth, to unite and protect the spirit of our Constitution.
Lines like Know who I am, by what I wear point to how recent the process of making the song was.
“We have been going to all the anti-CAA protests in Bengaluru, where we are based now. Most of our discussions in recent days have been about this, as the whole idea of a law which makes religion a criterion for citizenship, was disturbing for us. Being part of the biggest protest movement witnessed in the country after Emergency, we had to write this song, with a wish that at least a few who have not realised the danger of this law will try to study it,” says Munz, TDT’s vocalist.
Kochi-based hip hop band ‘Street Academics’ is much more direct in their protest song Hara Hara, with the chorus chant of ‘Boycott CAA, Boycott NRC’. Like TDT’s music video, theirs also is filled with visuals of the current anti-CAA protests from Delhi and elsewhere. “We sat together and completed the entire song and the video in three days. We knew we had to get it out fast, since the intention is to make people aware. It is alarming that there are still many who call themselves neutral, thinking that this is harmless,” says Haris Saleem, who conceived the song. Going by the response to these songs, they seem to have succeeded to some extent in their endeavour. “A drop in the ocean does count,” as the TDT song goes.
