Social Justice Song List

A YouTube Playlist with an Introduction and Commentary

Here is the whole Social Justice Song List. It can always be reached directly at https://tinyurlDOTcom/socialjusticesong list and suggestions can be sent to socialjusticesonglist@gmail.com. I can’t post an actual URL here by itself or it prompts display. Below in my dated updates after and introduction I’m starting to do that. Updates here do not produce an email to subscribes unless I make a comment and click Notes. Feel free to discuss and suggest songs at the email or in comments. Thanks to Jim Williams for recommending this article about the best 100 protest songs of all times. I’ll have to peruse it for stuff I’m missing and which is available on the evil Google (sort of just kidding, but imagine if Elon were to buy-out Google!).

Introduction

Since Thanksgiving I’ve been trying to listen one by one to the songs on the list, and is the one I just moved up close to top, since there is no real order to the list other than by and large most recently added at the top. Tyrants Always Fall by the Nields.

Also, the two versions of Till Time Brings a Change were very influential on my circa 1990, and lead to my writing Notes from the Winter of Our Dreams and Roots of Discord on the Left (see Home Page, lower right, Other Work.) Only time can bring change, but we do have to keep singing along the way. And, I soon realized, praying. But only in the last few days have I found a religious message in Till Time Brings a Change, which was there all along! See the lyrics but the song was written by Graham Lowndes apparently, not John Farnham, who did perform it. The version by Jeannie Lewis at the end of the film is on the list near the top. Here is information aboaut Jeannie Lewis, who was a strong social activist as a youth. Here is a recent interview with Jeannie. On the More for Jeannie’s version, it says: “Another typically superb vocal by the astonishing Jeannie Lewis, "Till Time Brings Change" was yet another high quality track from her 1973 award winning debut album "Free Fall Through Featherless Flight" The song itself was also recorded by, among others, Johnny Farnham on perhaps the best of his early albums "JP Farnham, Sings" as well as by it's composer, Graham Lowndes, who's work Jeannie has long championed, having recorded several of his other songs including "The Rising Of The Tide", "Loser" & "Survival's A Song," from which the Lowndes recording of Till Time Brings Change is taken.

Updates/Commentary

1/4/25 After getting home from Torah study—about the question of dreams for Joseph and other matters—I took a nap and woke from a dream with this song playing:

This is an amazing song in the aftermath of the election 8 years ago and now again, if you do not mind the historical reference. The lyrics are on screen and here courtesy of Musixmatch’s network of volunteer transcribers, of which I have been one from time to time. Carrie Newcomer’s genre is Progressive Spiritual (who knew?). I put it in the social justice song list: Like many it is not explicitly about such matters but... Today, I’ve also added a 2nd version, with lyrics, of Tracy Chapman’s New Beginning:

On this theme of re-thinking things, see Burn the House Down by Jeannie Lewis, whose performance of Graham Lowndes’s Till Time Brings Change in the film Winter of Our Dreams I discuss above. That song literally changed me in ways I wrote about in 1991, published in Notes from the Winter of Our Dreams (linked to from Other Work at my home page).

For reading in this storm, see Jonathan Foiles' Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room and Wendy Brown's Nihilistic Times. I’m working on a book review essay about it which will either be in this Review Tab or published elsewhere and linked here.

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Reply

MORE from that list as of 11/10/2024:

Feel free to suggest songs by emailing socialjusticesonglist@gmail.com. The 2024-2025 theme for this list is No Peace, No Justice! The views which these songs reflect are my personal views and those of those who suggested them.

The best way to listen is Shuffle. Song suggestions welcome. To see if your song is already here: 1. On the right side, pull down the scroll bar once.2. If you see a revolving circle, it is processing.3. Repeat step 1 until it stays down. 4. Then, press Control/F to search for your song.

I’m sorry this is a lot of steps and can take time on a slow internet connection. So feel free just send me a couple and I’m sure one will be new! I’m working on a spredsheet I can link to but there are over 1500 songs. Suggest any song relevant to your social justice vision, for instance, for "trying to get up that great big hill of hope, for a destination" (What's Up, by 4 Non Blondes), or, in other words, "Won't you help to sing These songs of freedom?"- Bob Marley, Redemption Song.

Remember, as the late Harry Belafonte said, "When the movement is strong, the music is strong."This is not a place for songs that hurt anyone's feelings, or that are objectively or subjectively discriminatory.

The list is perhaps weighted in favor of "kinder, gentler" songs as opposed to angrier expressions of opposition to social injustice. Chris Kolb said "turn your anger into resolve," at an Ann Arbor rally and vigil following the murder of Matthew Shepard, repeating again, "Turn your anger into resolve."

That resolve led to hate crime legislation across the country. Along the way to such social change, music helps! This list does contain controversial and adult content, and even potentially inflammatory expressions. Such songs may be included if the song has artistic, political or educational value.

This list may reflect generationally-linked musical preferences, and is certainly not yet adequately multinational and multi-lingual. (For that, see Playing for Change | Song Around the World.)

What is social justice? Just some thoughts of mine on this, and I certainly encourage others to think criticallly about it. In fact, most recently, I favor using the term human liberartion instead of social justtice, as it is more theoretically defined in relation to human injustice and basic human needs and humanity righs.

But here gos: In a just and democratic global civilization, humanity has successfully addressed our basic human needs for physical health and autonomy, including our psychological needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy, which are necessary for optimal physiological and mental health, well-being and social participation. In such a globally just world, humankind has also devised fair and just ways of minimizing non-systematic individual acts that cause mental and physical harm, suffering, and death.

We have learned to respond justly when this happens, in order to prevent further such acts, and to provide restorative justice to those affected by such acts. Social justice requires the realization of a society in which human thriving and human liberation flourish and human rights are ensured. In such a society, "upstream" at the tributaries of the river of our human civilization, we have done primary prevention to minimize systemic human injustice, by dismantling its structural sources (oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and exploitation). Or we have at least prevented them from producing systematic inequality in opportunities to access satisfiers of our human needs.

When such inequalities do exist, we have done secondary prevention "midstream" to rectify those inequalities in access, thus seeking to prevent wrongfully or otherwise unmet human needs. Such unmet human need—without further "downstream" prevention—produces serious harm and unnecessary suffering. At each of these 3 opportunities for primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of human injustice, we must act to prevent "inaction in the face of need" (see Camara Phyllis Jones, 2000, https://tinyurl.com/Jones2000OnRacism).

‘What does social justice mean to you? Social justice as a concept is not "owned" by any one particular political point of view. In my profession, social work, we have an etical obligation do not discrminate against clients or studetns or colleagues based on political beliefs.

I am thankful for the Theory of Human Need and Self-Determination Theory, and the work of Gillian Brock on Global Social Justice, as discussed in my "A needs-based partial theory of human injustice: Oppression, Dehumanization, Exploitation, and Systematic Inequality in Opportunities to Address Human Needs," (Dover, 2019, available freely at Humanity & Society at https://www.tinyurl.com/humanliberation, and the full PDF is here. I discuss human needs more fully here 2023 Human Needs: Overview (Encyclopedia of Social Work).

Unfortunately, I can’t add songs to my playlist which are open to kids! Check out If it Were Up to Me by the Advocacy Collective at https://tinyurl.comSLASHTheAdvocacyCollectivePlayList, where the Slash mens /

and to Birkhead-Flight for her music & justice song list: https://www.youtube.com/@butdarlingssongs1218 & to a New York City social justice activist Jone Lewis for permission to draw on the Music for the Resistance Song List: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhjRRDCdAOY88iZTJLSs4ml3UY and to activist Paul Rowe of Houston Texas. Thank you to our son Mark Dover and Imani Winds, whose music is also selectively included in the list.

Thank you so much to those who over the years have suggested songs which, to them, speak of social justice.