We have seen over the last few years how broken the American system is. With the brutalized beatings by cops on innocent people, the country has begun to cry out. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. As much as the government and structure of this country would like you to believe in the “American Dream,” (a concept they sell to young kids and immigrants, saying you can do anything you can conceive and be anyone you want to in America) this country was built on oppression. The first people to settle in this country (excluding the Native Americans) were people from Europe fleeing for religious persecutions and oppression. They took that anger and relayed it onto the natives of this country, breaking bread with the very people they later oppressed. Taking the land and the rights away from the people who rightfully belonged to this country, and taught the foreigners (the white European people setting in America) how to utilize the land, just to place them in specific impoverished places the “fathers of this country” didn’t want to live in. Then taking a page from their European ancestors playbook (the very people they were coming here to escape from) they began uprooting people from their native lands to work for them for free because they didn’t want to do the work themselves, forgetting for a second that the original slaves for the Europeans were their prisoners, who happened to be white, so why they chose to take the people from Africa is an answer that I don’t have (sound familiar right, that’s because big companies run by old fashion people still operate this way today, its called an unpaid internship). People who never asked to be here, were brought here just to work and be oppressed, again by the very people who once fled from oppression. Sadly, as much as the people running this country want you to believe any of this has changed, we can clearly see it hasn’t. Unfortunately, it has taken these incomprehensible actions and killings for the people of this country to stand together, instead of standing apart.
From the time of its conception, music has always been a universal language. One of happiness, suffering, hardship, sadness, love, hate and every other human emotion. As Eminem said in “Sing for the Moment,” “I guess words are a motherfucker they can be great, or they can degrade, or even worse they can teach hate.” Music has continuously been a way for not just the creator, but the listener to express soulful emotions. Music has been used as a way to speak to the gods, been a way to express joy during a celebration of life, been a way to express sorrow after a death, been way to speak out against people, been a way to uplift people, been a way teach people, been a way to talk to people, music has always been a way to communicate with people. At humanities lowest moments you can hear songs (9/11, the star spangled banner, we are the world) at its highest moments you can hear cheers and chantings (we are the champions). Any time people need to be united and come together, for bad or for good, music has been at the forefront bringing people together with the lyrics.
Speaking for this country, since its inception, music has played a role in every culture, in every decade, in every century, as a way of speaking out against hardships. The Star Spangled Banner which is now used as our national anthem (probably not the best example at this point in time) was created in the midst of a war, as a way to express what the country was going through, and the strength of the people to fight and make it through. The Native Americans have their spiritual music, that they use as prayer, in celebrations, to speak to the gods, and to speak to each other. However, maybe the strongest music in America in that era to speak about hardships, and uplift the spirts at the same time were the Spiritual Songs. These songs come from the King James Bible’s translation of Ephesians 5:19, “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to your heart to the Lord.” As the slaves were exposed to stories from the Bible, they began to see similarities between the stories of the Jewish people escaping their oppressors and their hardships. The African American spiritual (also called the Negro Spiritual) constitutes one of the largest and most significant forms of American folksong. James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson presented spirituals as the only type of folk music that America has. Spirituals were sung as lullabies and play songs. Some spirituals were adapted as work songs. “Wade in the Water,” “The Gospel Train,” “Song of the Free,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” are all spiritual songs that came from this time of great oppression. Sang for different reasons, these songs were derived from the Bible by slaves as a way to express their sorrows, speak on their hardships and in some cases, were used as directions for the Underground Railroad. These songs did and still do hold an incredibly powerful meaning. So much so that Spirituals remain a mainstay particularly in small black churches, often Baptist or Pentecostal, in the deep South.
One of the most influential historians of the blues is Amiri Baraka who, in his book Blues People, explores the African-American experience of the nation through music. The blues music is the response of African abductees to their American enslavement, a cultural outpouring developed from work songs and spirituals which represents in microcosm the entire range and nuance of a people’s adaptation to a foreign land they were given no choice but to make into a home. The blues thus functioned as a repository of cultural engagement, its lyrical content evolving over time to reflect whatever social challenges African-American communities were facing at the time. One notable instance of blues reflecting African-American struggles for respect and legitimacy in the public sphere was the 1941 collaboration between jazz great Count Basie and author Richard Wright (of Native Son fame) on a piece called “King Joe (The Joe Louis Blues)” that valorized the boxer as the pride of his community at the same moment that anti-lynching campaigns were finally starting to gain traction in the Jim Crow south. Free jazz later emerged in the early 1960s a kind of “proto-nationalism” which presaged the black nationalist messages of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and other “do for self” movements in African-American communities during the 1960s. These movements stressed the need for community self-sufficiency in the face of a systemically racist white majoritarian society. The self-sufficiency message found in jazz proto-nationalism is a celebration of a unique African-American aesthetic, one that contested the aesthetic imperialism of the white critics who promoted the value and determined the negotiating power of the mostly black musicians within the system of white-owned recording and performance institutions. At the height of the free jazz movement, self-sufficiency imperatives were the driving force behind the independent recording facilities and cooperatively owned performance venues with which Coltrane, Coleman, and Charles Mingus, among others, experimented. They were also a factor in the political stances taken by many of the free jazz musicians—anti-war, anti-colonialism, anti-enslavement, and broadly supportive of the Pan-Africanism that flourished in the wake of African decolonization movements. African-American musicians immersed in the jazz world were developing their own aesthetic—a conception of, the value of originality that rejects the Eurocentric ideal of the original (as something that has never before been seen in this world) in favor of an understanding that one makes an original contribution when one adds one’s own perspective to an existing cultural product. This revision of what originality means implicates the individual empowerment and attention to existing and nascent community networks that black nationalism’s later advocacy of self-sufficiency promoted. (iep.utm.edu)
Artist using music to speak out against social injustice can be seen in every era, in every generation, and by all races. By no means do I mean to use the next few examples of Rock music, Country music and Hip-Hop music to try and draw a parallel between Spiritual songs, the plight and struggles of African-Americans in American, to speaking out against the government for fighting wars. These songs and the hip-hop songs of the 1907s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s that accompanied them that I will speak on later all come from and were inspired by different situations in the history of this country. My point is to explain further how music across all genres, races, culture and eras has been used as a tool to speak out, bring light to subjects the country and government were trying to sweep under the rug, and bring people together.
This country has a dark history of being run by people who do things for their own benefit, and disregard the general mass population that is the heart and soul and makes the country work. This issue goes beyond race, but has deep roots in the racial divid that has plagued the country for centuries. Starting with the civil war, which at its roots was half the country not wanting to give up the free labor they had from using African people as slaves. Continuing in 1921 when Black Wall Street was terrorized, vandalized and literally burned down because there was a societal unrest at the fact a single street, in a single city, in a single state was thriving from non-white people. Fast forward to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which saw the entire country again fight against each other so an entire race of people (who could be argued built this country) could be treated equal. Until then, this country was geographically separated by an imaginary line that once crossed meant that having more melanin meant you couldn’t use certain things, couldn’t go certain places, couldn’t do certain things and couldn’t be with certain people. For someone who did back breaking work (literally) that built and sustained this country for decades, to not be considered a whole person is blasphemous. Not forgetting that in the 1970s and 1980s, woman had to go through a similar fight to gain their own rights, not just to vote but to be looked at as equal to men, a fight that most will argue (not that I can say or have a right to speak about because I don’t and will never have an idea of what it like to be in any of these situations) African-American woman are still fighting today (not just to be considered equal to men, but just to be considered equal to white women). Follow that with the protests (I won’t consider them riots as they have been labeled because they were simply oppressed people angry and speaking out against social injustice) in the 1990s after the horrific beating of Rodney King by police officers (who all got off by the way, which is a whole other issue) and continuing to today with the world wide protests (as they have now reach as far as England and Germany) to speak out against not only police brutality (which we have seen over and over in the last few years, killing numerous African-American for no reason) but social and racial injustice in this country.
In the United States, social injustice songs have been being made since the labor movement (by this I mean being released and heard by the mass public, as I know and have already stated that the slaves and Native Americans had songs they would sing regarding social injustice among themselves). Some of the most notable songs include “John Henry” and “Which Side Are You On?” With these songs (among others) folk music developed its reputation as the voice of social justice in America in no small part due to the music of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger (We Shall Over Come “Oh, deep in my heart/I do believe/We shall live in peace someday”), and Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan’s classic “Blowin’ In The Wind,” instantly became a civil rights anthem when it was released in 1963. The song had a major influence on American singer-songwriter Sam Cooke, who was so moved by the song he began to perform it as part of his live set. In 1963 Sam Cooke, along with his wife and band, were turned away from a “whites only” motel in Louisiana and arrested for disturbing the peace. “A Change is Gonna Come,” was his response to this horrific incident, singing, “There have been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long But now I think I’m able to carry on It’s been a long, a long time coming But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.” Perhaps the protest song that has had the most profound effect on American political life is the anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit.” This song’s lyrics were written by Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol (who adopted the orphaned sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the couple executed in 1953 by the US government on the charge that they passed atomic secrets to the Soviet Union) in the 1930s as a response to a grisly photograph of a lynching. Recorded by Billie Holiday and performed as one of her signature pieces, “Strange Fruit” became a widely heard protest against social injustice. A schooling to audiences about the realities of African-American lives (and deaths) in parts of the United States that practiced lynching. Leonard Feather once said, “Strange Fruit” was “the first significant protest in words and music, the first unmuted cry against racism.” There are recounts of fights breaking out in nightclubs after it was performed and Billie Holiday herself being attacked by distraught and traumatized patrons. Despite all of this, Holiday must have felt a duty to perform it as she once said, “I have to sing it, [it] goes a long way in telling how they mistreat Negroes down South.” The impact of the song did play a part in efforts at changing social policy. Some of the people who endorsed passage of federal anti-lynching laws sent recordings of “Strange Fruit” to members of Congress. “Strange Fruit” holds its power, even with the passage of time, and has been called “one of the 10 songs that actually changed the world.” (iep.utm.edu)
Though he’d changed the face of black music a few times by 1968, “Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud” was the first song where James Brown made an overt statement on civil rights in mould-breaking way of making his feelings known. Brown came out defiant and proud: he isn’t asking politely for acceptance; he’s totally comfortable in his own skin. Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ started life as an answer song. Guthrie had grown increasingly irritated with what he considered to be the smug complacency of Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’ (inescapable in the late 30s, thanks to radio playing Kate Smith’s version) and crafted a retort that celebrated the natural beauty of the United States while questioning the notion of private ownership of property and pointing out the problem America had with poverty and inequality. He based the tune on The Carter Family’s “When The World’s On Fire” (itself derived from the Baptist hymn ‘Oh, My Loving Brother’) and called it ‘God Blessed America’. Originally, rather than each verse ending with, “This land was made for you and me,” Guthrie had written, “God blessed America for me.” (Jamie Atkins Udiscover Music)
These artists and their songs were proof of a time in America where everyone was feeling pain in the social injustice and social unrest that plagued the country (not meaning that the protests were a plague, but rather referring to mass amount of them across the county that were needed and decades overdue). These were among the first artists to use their stature and platform to speak out against all the wrong doings going on through out the country. These songs and artists created the stepping stones for the political movement songs to come over the following decades.
Rock music emerged from mainstream white America’s assimilation of rhythm and blues. There is another paradigmatic intersection of music and social justice that can be understood as a rock parallel to “Strange Fruit.” More than forty years ago, Jimi Hendrix played a two hour set as the final musical act of the Woodstock Festival, a performance most remembered for their improvisation upon “The Star-Spangled Banner.” This moment has come to symbolize the essence of Woodstock as a masterful performance, and critique, of an anthem whose lyrics valorize the resilience of a people under attack. Shifting between faithful rendition and strategic distortion, Hendrix forcefully shows his audience the moral inconsistency of a nation that sang this song at the same time as it dropped bombs on the people of other nations. In his book Crosstown Traffic, British music journalist Charles Murray concludes that Hendrix’s performance “depicts, as graphically as a piece of music can possibly do, both what the Americans did to the Vietnamese and what they did to themselves.”(iep.utm.edu)
While the old saying claims that a picture is worth a thousand words, in the case of a photograph taken by student John Filo and later printed in Life magazine, a picture also inspired one of the best protest songs of its time. The photograph was taken in the immediate aftermath of the Ohio National guard opening fire on students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. On 4 May 1970, captured protester Mary Vecchio kneeling aghast and open-mouthed over the body of student Jeff Miller at the moment she realizes what has happened. When Neil Young saw the photo he was appalled enough to take a guitar handed to him by David Crosby and pour his anger into a song. ‘Ohio’ drew an us-and-them line in the sand, with lyrics such as “Soldiers are cutting us down/Should have been done long ago” reflecting the anti-student-protest sentiment among factions of the US public. The recording by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young made it even more powerful. A heady, simmering brew of a song that comes to a head towards the end with David Crosby’s appalled, passionate cries of “Why?” Only the very best protest songs transcend very specific subject matter to become universal and ‘Ohio’ does exactly that. While the Born In The USA album pushed Bruce Springsteen to a new level of superstardom in his homeland, many missed the not-so-subtle undertones in the triumphant-sounding title track. Springsteen’s original version of the song, a spooked, solo rockabilly rattle recorded during the sessions for 1982’s Nebraska, better reflects the tone of the lyrics. It’s the story of a Vietnam veteran having trouble adjusting to civilian life and feeling stranded by a lack of government support. Still, the version that became a fist-pumping anthem for those who didn’t properly listen might be more effective, in that the song became something subversive, reaching audiences it would never have been able to in its original guise. (Jamie Atkins Udiscover Music) These artists used their platform to speak out against a war (which can be argued was unnecessary) that was sending young Americans to a foreign country desperate to defend itself against people it didn’t want there. Mass amounts of soldiers were dying at war, while millions of citizens back home were speaking out against the government doing things for their own benefits at the detriment of its patrons. Artists of all races and genres came together during this time to fight for a singular purpose, and express their feelings of failure at the hands of a government that was supposed to be protecting them.
Hip-Hop, since it started in New York back in the 1970s has always been about empowering the people, and sending a message about the times. This genre has been used by artists as a platform to speak out against societal norms, social injustice, racial inequalities, and overall bad living situations that people are forced into. The genre in itself, when it started, was looked at as a rebellion, partly because they were using the parts of the records they weren’t supposed to, but also because they were using the records in a way they weren’t supposed to. Scratching the records was seen, at that time as blasphemous, especially if you did it wrong because you would literally scratch the record, making it no longer usable. Hip-Hop came from the streets of New York as a way for the young generation to express themselves in a way not done before. KRS-One has said that the beginning of Hip-Hop, which was centered on cyphers (people standing around rapping lyrics usually making fun of other people in the cypher, or once in the terms of KRS-One just walking by) was originated back in the 1800s by the African-Americans brought here to be slaves (people standing around cracking jokes on one another). Hip-Hop’s soul is one of struggle, one of pain and one of suffering. Being birthed from rock music, this genre was the ultimate “Fuck you,” to cooperate and major America. I love Hip-Hop and have listened to this genre since I can remember, but I also know that most of what is being spoken about in the lyrics from the artists I can’t and will never be able to relate too. I grew up in a white suburban upper-middle class house and neighborhood. I don’t know what it is like to have to look over my shoulder walking down the street. I have never had an unsafe feeling walking home at night. I didn’t grow up around drug dealers, gangs and drug addicts. I have had run-ins with the cops (most of which being white) in which they did treat me a certain way, but one time this was in part to being in Southern Alabama with four of my black friends, and the other times I won’t even attempt to try and say it was anything close to what the African-American communities go through. I am the typical kid that sings along with all the lyrics from the popular artists, who speak their minds and speak on racial and societal issues through their songs. I will admit that there are some cases that I am singing along and have no idea what the lyrics are in reference to. I listened to the entire Jay Electronica album and while I throughly enjoyed the entire project, 95% of what he was speaking about and references he was making went over my head. However, I will say that I do try and understand the lyrics these artists are using, but I won’t say that even when I research the topics they are speaking on and the references they use to depict these situations, that I understand or can relate to what they are saying. Artists for years in the Hip-Hop genre have been using their platform to speak on these issues.
In 1982 Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released, “The Message,” a song depicting New York, and the side of the city that was all glits and glamour that was shown in the media. “Broken glass everywhere/People pissin’ on the stairs, you know they just don’t care/I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise/Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice/Rats in the front room, roaches in the back/Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat/I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far/Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car…. can’t walk through the park cause it’s crazy after dark/Keep my hand on my gun cause they got me on the run/I feel like a outlaw, broke my last glass jaw/Hear them say “You want some more?”/Livin’ on a see-saw.” Speaking on what everyday life was like for black people living in run down areas in “The Greatest City in the World.”
In 1988, NWA released “Fuck tha Police.” “And not the other color so police think/They have the authority to kill a minority/Fuck that shit, ’cause I ain’t the one/For a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun/To be beatin’ on, and thrown in jail…Search a nigga down, and grabbin’ his nuts/And on the other hand, without a gun they can’t get none/But don’t let it be a black and a white one/‘Cause they’ll slam ya down to the street top/Black police showin’ out for the white cop.”
In 1989 Public Enemy released “Fight the Power.” “’Cause I’m Black and I’m proud/I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped/Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps/Sample a look back you look and find/Nothing but rednecks for four hundred years if you check/Don’t worry be happy/Was a number one jam/Damn if I say it you can slap me right here/(Get it) let’s get this party started right/Right on, c’mon/What we got to say (yeah)/Power to the people no delay/Make everybody see/In order to fight the powers that be.”
In 1993 KRS-One released, “Sound of da Police.” “I’d rather say “see ya”/Cause I would never be ya/Be a officer? You wicked overseer!/Ya hotshot, want to get props and be a savior/First show a little respect, change your behavior/Change your attitude, change your plan/There could never really be justice on stolen land/Are you really for peace and equality?/Or when my car is hooked up, you know you want to follow me/Your laws are minimal/Cause you won’t even think about lookin’ at the real criminal…You need a little clarity?/Check the similarity!/The overseer rode around the plantation/The officer is off patrolling all the nation/The overseer could stop you what you’re doing/The officer will pull you over just when he’s pursuing/The overseer had the right to get ill/And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill/The officer has the right to arrest/And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!/(Woop!) They both ride horses/After 400 years, I’ve got no choices!”
In 1998 2Pac released, “Changes.” “Cops give a damn about a negro/Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he’s a hero/Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares/One less hungry mouth on the welfare…I see no changes, all I see is racist faces/Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races/We under, I wonder what it takes to make this/One better place, let’s erase the wasted…And still I see no changes, can’t a brother get a little peace?/There’s war in the streets and war in the Middle East/Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs/So the police can bother me.”
In 2004 Kanye West released “All Falls Down.” “I say fuck the police, that’s how I treat em/We buy our way out of jail, but we can’t buy freedom/We’ll buy a lot of clothes when we don’t really need em/Things we buy to cover up what’s inside/Cause they make us hate ourself and love they wealth/That’s why shortys hollering “where the ballas’ at?”/Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack/And a white man get paid off of all of that.”
In 2014 Lupe Fiasco released “Deliver.” “The ghetto was a physical manifestation/Of hate in a place where ethnicity determines your placement/A place that defines your station/Remind you niggas your place is the basement/White people in the attic/Niggas selling dope, White people is the addicts/White folks act like they ain’t show us how to traffic.”
In 2014 Kendrick Lamar released To Pimp A Butterfly, and the song “Alright.” “Wouldn’t you know/We been hurt, been down before, nigga/When our pride was low/Lookin’ at the world like, “Where do we go, nigga?”/And we hate po-po/Wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, nigga/I’m at the preacher’s door/My knees gettin’ weak and my gun might blow/But we gon’ be alright.”
Kendrick released this project while the United States was suffering a period of serious civil unrest. In November 2014, the decision not to indict the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown ignited protests and riots across the country. That same month, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police after being spotted holding a toy gun. These songs, and so many others, serve as statements, as warnings, as lyrical protests, as insights, as lessons, and as a platform not only for these artists to speak out on what is happening to them, to their communities, to their people, but to what is going on in this country. 40 years worth of just Hip-Hop songs being released to the entire population of America, and in some cases the entire world. 40 years of saying how bad things are. 40 years of crying out for help. 40 years of trying to incite a change. This is only one genre of music. Think of some of the other artists and songs that were mentioned in this article. That is over a century of artists speaking out against racism, social injustice, and the suffering of an entire race of people. With all of these songs and artists on and in the public record, why has nothing been done? Why are we still hearing the same messages, the same pain, the same situations, the same suffering and the same injustices being sung about? If the inception of an entire genre of music came from trying to speak out against what was happening, and rebelling against the social norms (especially a genre that is now the most popular genre in the country) why is nobody hearing the messages? As Wesley Snipes says to Woody Harrelson in “White Man Can’t Jump,” “You can listen to Jimi, but you can’t hear Jimi.” The general population is listening to the lyrics, dancing to the beat, but by no means is listening to what the artists are saying.
Music has long been a way to bring people together, to fight against oppression, to incite change, to celebrate, to grieve, to love, and to hate. Unfortunately, even music may not be able to help us now (especially when Trump is using a T.I. song to discredit his competitor, then quickly gets told by the artist to not use his song or its likeness). It sits squarely on the shoulders of each and every person in the country to make the change. So many artists and entertainers have stood on the front lines with the people over the last few weeks, showing that they are hurting just like the rest of us. The rallies and protests in response to George Floyd has brought an entire country together. Black, White, Latino, Asian, all standing together across the entire world to speak out against this tragedy. The black community has tried to speak out for decades, and over the last two decades have seen so many people in their community murdered for no reason other than a white person felt threatened. What is threatening about a teenager walking down the street (in a hoodie, which I do on a regular basis, every where I go, everyday I can, and it is an all red hoodie at that)? What is threatening about a kid with a toy? What is threatening about a man standing on the sidewalk? What is threatening about a woman entering her own home? What is threatening about a man in handcuffs sitting in a police car surrounded by four cops? There has to come a point where this is no longer tolerated. There has to come a point where this is no longer the norm. There has to come a point where the people responsible for these terrible actions are brought to justice (cops can’t continue to get off with no ramifications to their actions, not guilty for Rodney King, not guilty for Amadou Diallo, not guilty for Trayvon Martin, not guilty for so many others). We can’t continue to only speak up when it effects us. Look at all the people speaking up now. How many of them would be speaking, or tweeting, or instagramming if this didn’t become a world wide issue. The NFL and Rodger Goodell just recently came out and said that the league has to be proactive in its efforts of social justice and standing behind what is right. These are the same people who blackballed Colin Kapernick from the league after playing in a Super Bowl and an NFC Championship in back to back years because he was taking a knee during the national anthem in a silent protest for this exact issue (not forgetting that he spoke with Green Beret that told him taking a knee was fine to do and wasn’t dishonoring the flag or the country, also remember Trump saying how disrespectful and despicable this action was, just to say now that something has to be done about George Floyd, only to say the people on the streets are “Thugs” and military action will be taken on them). The hypocrisy that the higher ups in this country show is despicable. Only speaking out when it is beneficial is not helping anyone, and is just causing a greater backlash.
This country is at a critical turning point in its history. At a time when everyone is looking for answers,(and expressing their every thought and feeling on social media) one medium is needed now more than ever. Music and the artists that make the music need to bring us back together as one, and help us fight together not against each other. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, artists started doing free live internet concerts to help the population bridge the gap of not being able to go outside, as well as raise funds in support of those effected. Swizz Beats and Timberland created the instagram platform “Versus,” as a way to showcase some of our favorite artists, writers and producers together playing their best and most popular music. Tory Lanez created an entire instagram radio station to entertain the people. Music has and always will be a coping mechanisms for hardships. When you’re in pain you listen to music. When you’re heartbroken you listen to music. When you’re lost physically, mentally or spiritually, you listen to music. Music is the healing point in everyone’s life. That is why music needs to now be the healing point for the country. “We are the World” brought every great musician of the time together to create one powerful song to help out the world. We need the great artists of this time to come together and stand as one to help this country through this time. The music industry as a whole has come together to observe June 2nd, 2020 as a day of blackout, to stand out and speak up against what has been happening in our communities. Popular artists are creating fundraisers to help give money to this cause, to the family and to the people in these communities. Artists in each city are walking and protesting with the people to show they are standing with them. Music is powerful. Music is moving. Music is binding. Music is love. We as a country need all of this right now. We need justice, we need change, we need understanding, we need togetherness, we need equality, we need love.
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