The history of the genre.

The genre of that our music video has to fit into is protest. This means that it has to be a song that has a message to do with protesting against something or someone.

The history of the genre protest – 

Protest music has been around for centuries when it became so popular due to people being able to express there feelings with a catchy song or in a way that would get people of higher authority attention. Protest songs are usually written as part of a movement for political or cultural reasons but this can vary. The broadness of the genre gives song writers political freedom which is a way to get there message or point into peoples heads. Songs can change from being quiet and haunting to someone screaming down a microphone about death but these are all accepted as protest songs. 

The first American protest songs were created due to war and slavery to create awareness for the huge issues that many people were not aware about at the time. The use of simple verses and repetitive lyrics protest songs became a new way to fight without using physical violence. The songs were focused less on beauty and more about purpose. One of the first big protest song was called ‘John Browns Body’ which was created during a civil war in America. 

Soul music stared creating protest songs as in 1950 black soul singers started sings lyrics about there ethic backgrounds and created music using there roots. This was also used different types of music such as gospel and jazz. Protest songs became so popular that community tried to control the messages that were being spread by calling protest songs – freedom songs. Then in the 1990s more songs about gender equality, black lives matter and feminism started to really matter to community around the world with huge amounts of protest songs being created. 

Some artists and bands that focussed on protest music are: The Beatles, Radiohead, American Idiot, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Sex Pistols, Frankie goes to Hollywood and many more. These artists and bands created some of the best protest songs in history and really made lots of people aware of the reasons behind the songs.