NEWS, REVIEWS AND ACTIVISM
Songs for the community: Hardscrabble Hope by Maria Dunn
Maria Dunn has built her career around the kind of storytelling that sits at the heart of protest folk: songs about workers, marginalized communities, and the quiet resilience of ordinary ...
DJ General Strike’s Top 40 Protest Songs of 2025
Happy New Year comrades. This is DJ General Strike, host of the weekly protest music radio show, Protest Tunes on 91.3 KBCS FM in Seattle, WA. I broadcast 2 hours ...
Belarus expands crackdown on musicians through “extremism” laws
The Belarusian government has doubled down on censorship of musicians and creative voices, using broad “extremism” laws to suppress dissidents since the mass protests of 2020. Music has become a ...
The sound of revolt
On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance. Scúru Fitchádu. Photo by Rita Carmo. What ...
Filipino-American rapper, Bambu, fires truth on all cylinders on new album
They're Burning the Boats album cover art by Maryanna Hollomon. "Dedicated to changing the narrative forever/so when you rhyme make sure you tell the truth on a record" is how ...
Singing these songs can land you in jail
Members of Stoptime: singer and pianist Diana Loginova, guitarist Alexander Orlov, and drummer Vladislav Leontiev. Photo obtained from the band's Telegram profile. A month ago, three young Russian musicians found ...
Who was Delcat Idinco, the Congolese musician killed while filming his music video?
Delcat Idinco's music was critical of both the DRC government as well as rebel groups. Image taken from the X profile of the DRC Minister of Culture. His full name ...
Tunisia’s rap revolution: 5 women who are redefining hip-hop
Snapshot from Medusa's music video for the song 'Harissa'. Jyhene Kebsi, Macquarie University Women rappers were not really a feature of Tunisia’s typically masculine and chauvinist hip-hop scene until the ...
The troubling relevance of Woody Guthrie’s new album, released 58 years after his death
Daniele Curci, Università di Siena Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo by Gorup de Besanez and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. A new album ...
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PROTEST MUSIC INTERVIEWS
Dismissed for singing in solidarity with the Palestinian people: an interview with Amy Blanding
On the unceded, ancestral territory of the Lheidli T’enneh lives a 41-year-old singer-songwriter. She is queer, she is disabled, she's a mother and she has a dog with a special ...
Art, activism and the de-centering of self: An interview with Kardinal Bloo
Hailing from Texas, US, Kardinal Bloo is a young, versatile artist who brings a lot of colour to the current world of hip-hop, especially the colour blue. The album shines ...
“Speaking out politically is not just the artist’s right; it is imperative” – interview with Lisa Marie Simmons
For some people, music is a healing power, for some it is entertainment, and for others it is a life saving shelter. For Lisa Marie Simmons, music plays a role ...
EDITOR’S PICKS
Our 10 favourite protest music albums of 2025
As we all watch horrors unfold around the world, musicians remind us that we can all do something. Every little ...
DJ General Strike’s Top 40 Protest Songs of 2025
DJ General Strike curated a playlist of over 1,100 protest songs and shared his top 40 tracks influenced by protests ...
Some favourite protest music albums of 2024
2024 is behind us. Like the years before it, horrible things happened in this world, and just like all the ...
I am little Iran, another name for displacement
My friend, the musician, is hiding from violent forces, when all he'd like to be doing is teach and perform ...
A Story Of A Young Afghan Musician
After NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, announced on April 14 2021 that the alliance had decided to withdraw its troops ...
Dread in the Air: A Conversation with Kyrylo Brener of Ukrainian post-hardcore band, KAT
In my attempts to connect with Ukrainian bands since the full-scale Russian invasion began on February 24th, several things have ...