Billy Branch/Photo: Claudia Harrison
While not as strident or visible to mainstream America as the protest music in other genres, Chicago and Midwest-based blues artists contributed to the rising tide of protest beginning in the late 1950s with songs like “Vietnam Blues” and “Eisenhower Blues” by J.B. Lenoir, and John Lee Hooker’s “Build Myself A Cave” about avoiding the draft. In 1983, Sunnyland Slim released “Be Careful How You Vote.” That was the year Harold Washington became Chicago’s first Black mayor, winning a racially divisive race against Bernard Epton.
And though they say that politics divides and music unites, recent events on the streets of Chicago and Minneapolis as well as throughout the nation have combined music and politics in ways not seen since the 1960s. The most recent local manifestation of this is the upcoming concert, “Songs of Protest, Sounds of Freedom,” where local artists including Billy Branch, Nicholas Tremulis, Phil Angotti, Marc Smith, Kwame Bediako and a dozen more will be lending their talents to support the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights on July 26 at Space in Evanston.
“The name of the show was inspired by being part of the exhibit at the Woody Guthrie Museum, when my song that I wrote and recorded with Billy Branch called ‘The Ballad of George Floyd’ was in their exhibit called ‘Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom,'” says Dave Specter, the organizer of the event and co-owner of Space. “But the main driver was seeing what ICE did this spring—they were in my neighborhood of Lakeview literally picking people off of the streets, violently, without due process, arresting friends of musicians that I knew, arresting people around the corner from where I live, near Belmont and Broadway—just the way ICE disrupted so many lives in horrible ways.” Specter worked in close coordination with Branch on both the “Ballad of George Floyd” and the show.
Dave Specter
Specter’s desire to speak out against injustice is shared by a medley of musicians from a vast array of genres and forms, such as blues artists like Branch, John Kattke and Marty Binder; soul and blues divas Melody Angel and Lynne Jordan; the Afro-reggae sounds of Kwame Bediako; alt-country performer Steve Dawson; the power pop of Phil Angotti, the poetry of Marc Smith; and the bass of Casey McDonough, whose band mate Joel Paterson was recently tapped to tour with Bob Dylan.
“We are going to have reggae; we are going to have poetry; Lynne Jordan is going to do some songs by Nina Simone, an artist who wrote and performed a lot of protest music having to do with the Civil Rights Movement,” Specter says. “We will also have Melody Angel, who is a blues rock artist who plays a lot of powerful and provocative music. Each artist will do one or two songs. Phil Angotti will be doing a couple of protest classics from back in the day. Nicholas Tremulis will be there. He is a great writer and performer and I am looking forward to him being a part of it. I think Steve Dawson and Nicholas will be playing solo, so it will be a combination of solo performers and band performers. I think seventeen total artists in all will be playing.”
Specter will also be performing at the show. Although he cut his teeth as a bluesman, backing up the likes of Hubert Sumlin, Son Seals and recording sixteen blues albums for Delmark Records, his musical influences also include protest music. Though Specter was too young to experience it firsthand, the stories Specter’s older brother told him about Chicago’s music venues like Alice’s Revisited and the clubs in Old Town always fascinated him.
“I myself was influenced by the protest music of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Staple Singers and even Phil Ochs, who was not as famous but very prominent in the anti-Vietnam War movement,” Specter says.
This influence can be heard on Specter’s latest single “The Times They Are Deranging (The Buck Stops Where?).” Performed with a soulful, gospel backdrop thanks to the organ of Brother John Kattke, Specter belts out lyrics like “took to Twitter like a cat on litter” and “don’t be quiet, we’ve go to fight it.”
Although not quite as large and wide in scope as the protest festivals and “be-ins” of the 1960s, this cadre of local musicians not only see one political vision, but are uniting to act as one.
“One thing music does is it brings us together in a peaceful way,” Specter says. “I think this event will feature artists who are both celebrating with music and speaking out against issues that are upsetting a lot of people in this country right now.”
“Songs of Protest, Sounds of Freedom” at Space, 1243 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, on July 26. Doors at 6pm. Tickets and more here.
