Radio Ambulante is an award-winning podcast and audio series co-founded by novelist Daniel Alarcón in 2012. Described by many commentators as a Spanish-language This American Life, Radio Ambulante publishes stories from “everywhere Spanish is spoken,” reaching as many as 60,000 listeners worldwide per episode.
Lil Baby, a popular American rapper, released a song titled "The Bigger Picture" in 2020 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests that took place following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.
The aim of the action is to create a fractal network of poets, where their poems will be recited, recorded, set to music, will be activistically acted as performance material in order to resist the censorship of art.
The field of action is the poets who will be born and the network that will be created by the restless artists.
"Send It On" is a song recorded by American recording artists Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez from charity project Disney's Friends for Change. The track's producers Adam Anders and Peer Åström co-wrote it with Nikki Hassman. The song was released on August 11, 2009 by Walt Disney and Hollywood Records as a charity single in order to benefit international environmental associations.
Founded by Frankie Hutchinson, Emma Burgess-Olson and Christine Tran, Discwoman is a New York-based platform, collective, and booking agency—representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent in electronic music. Started as a two-day festival in September 2014 at Bossa Nova Civic Club Discwoman has since produced and curated events in 15+ cities—working with over 150 DJs and producers to-date.
Parió Paula is an all women’s percussion group based in Lima, Peru. These women are truly artistic renegades defying the social norms of Lima’s predominantly male music scene. With a bold message on emphasizing female expression, these ladies have transformed their countless styles of drumming into something effective for their city.
(see full article and short documentary at link below)
In 2020 Noname, a Chicago rapper, activist, and poet, released the single titled "Song 33" to address racism in America and the Black Lives Matter movement. She specifically raps about the killings of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter activist Oluwatoyin Salau, singing, "A baby just 19/I know I dream all black/I seen her everything immortalized in tweets, all caps/They say they found her dead," she raps.
“I am the dishes, the ironing, I am everything, I am nothing. But remind me: Who are you?” So plays the hook of a new feminist anthem released by the Palestinian rappers, DAM. The video for “Who You Are” plays on sexist attitudes by having men and women switch domestic roles typical in the Middle East, but also familiar across most cultures.
In Hong Kong in 2014 the song Raise Your Umbrella by Denise Ho and Anthong Wong became an anthem for the pro-democracy movement known as the Umbrella Revolution. The song was written after police fired tear gas into the crowds when protestors filled the streets.
In March of 2022, JR, with the help of 100 volunteers, unfurled the portrait of five-year-old, Ukrainian refugee Valeriia in Lviv, Ukraine. Leaving Ukraine, JR saw firsthand how difficult it was for women and children to get to safety due to long queues at the border. In response, he released two NFTs of Valeriia as part of his solidarity project titled: Can Art Change the War?
In keeping with his activist turn on 2016’s 4 Your Eyez Only, J. Cole’s new album, KOD, is an exploration of addiction. The title has three different meanings that all speak to this aim: Kids On Drugs, King OverDosed, and Kill Our Demons. Each feeds into the next in this narcotic odyssey.
Ultra-Red is a collective founded by two AIDS activists in 1994 to explore the intersection of the political and aesthetic through "militant sound investigations".
Mass media using propaganda to brainwash citizens. Confusion and ignorance causing a divide. People rising up against an oppressive government. Humans being torn between rage and love. These are the themes of Green Day’s widely successful 2004 album, “American Idiot.” These themes still sound familiar. Nearly two decades later, the world, especially the United States, faces these same issues.
Born as a side project Las hijas de Violencia approaches the subject of street harassment and gender based violence through performance art, punk and video that is addressing socially legitimized male violence. "As actresses and as women we feel directly affected and consider it urgent to address the real cause of the problem: its ideological nature.
“Baraye,” the anthem of Iran’s “Woman, Life, Liberty” protest movement—a song woven together entirely from a Twitter hashtag trend in which Iranians express their investment in the current protests—continues to unite Iranians in their opposition to the Islamic Republic several weeks after it was first released online.
Thelma Golden, curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, talks through three recent shows that explore how art examines and redefines culture. The "post-black" artists she works with are using their art to provoke a new dialogue about race and culture -- and about the meaning of art itself.
To honor their battle, Lebanese women's rights organization ABAAD launched a powerful song and music video titled Not Your Honor. The clip was launched on the occasion of the "16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence" initiative which took off on Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Invincible: Detroit’s Homegrown, Hip-Hop Activism: Powerful, passionate, and politically charged rhymes that speak for marginalized people.
by Shannan Stoll
Ilana Weaver started listening to hip hop when she was seven, after her family moved from Israel to Ann Arbor, Mich. She was trying to learn English, but soon became fascinated by how hip hop gives a voice to marginalized people.
At ‘Arcadia Earth,’ Dazzle Illuminates Danger
Using augmented reality, virtual reality and installations of light and art, the creators of this pop-up exhibition hope to inspire action on climate change.
By Laurel Graeber
Oct. 23, 2019
The creators of “Arcadia Earth” want to awaken your conscience. But they also plan to make that guilt trip extraordinarily fun.
Counterspace is an independent curatorial platform functioning as the first decolonial thinktank mapping cultural activism worldwide. It shapes collectively decolonial toolkits with common tools and resources, and a global directory browsable by continent, praxis, and social construct, as a Beuys-inspired ‘social sculpture’ revisited, and an alternative map of the universe.
I have several theories about why song rewrites work well. Theory aside, people know the tunes and can learn the words. Scholars differ on whether you should make it as simple as possible or let the crowd be the artist by recognizing their ability to learn and perform something a bit tricky. Either way, it's great when songs are repurposed and people get to shout and sing instead of just chanting or listening to speeches.