August 24, 2009

Sing a Song

Music. It's something that is a part of daily life. So many people walk around with white buds in their ears supplied by a constant drone of music from their ipod. With the advent of inventions like the ipod, music has become an individual activity, but it was not originally so. Music has had many uses throughout the centuries. It has been used to bring people together, to calm, to excite, to worship, and to protest.

It is this idea of protesting with music and using music to bring about social change that I am very interested in. Throughout the civil rights movement, music played a huge role. Many of the songs of the movement were written and taught at the Highlander Folk school. Today I was reading a book that was talking about the civil rights movement and it said that meetings would often be preceded by more than 2 hours of singing. It was singing that brought people into the movement and helped teach them what the movement was about.

I really want to reclaim music in this manner. On Saturday night I hosted a sing along at our house. I feel like many of the songs from earlier decades are being lost and we need to recoup them. It was wonderful to sit around and sing and I even learned a new song from my friend Cat that was quite powerful. I hope to continue these get-togethers to that we can continue to learn and sing and grow the movement.

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