Projects tagged "Music & Sound"

"Glory" Performance at the Academy Awards
Practitioner:
John Legend, Common
Date:
Feb 22 2015
See below for a link to the performance of the song at the Academy Awards. From Salon: How Common and John Legend’s performance of “Glory” fired up Oscar night’s idling empathy machine by Sonia Saraiya
Afropunk: Feeling Black Activism’s Joy, and Its Pain
Practitioner:
Afropunk
Date:
Feb 17 2017
As Black History Month commemorations start to wind down, one festival is just gearing up. Afropunk the Takeover — Harlem, running from Tuesday through Feb. 25, will celebrate black culture with music, art, film screenings, discussions and comedy.
Meet the Italians Making Music Together Under Coronavirus
Practitioner:
Gioachino Rossini
Date:
Mar 20 2020
The language of music is common to all generations and nations,” Gioachino Rossini, the virtuosic opera composer, once said. “It is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.” In recent weeks, Italians have embraced the language of music as a means to communicate with their neighbors and endure the ravages of covid-19 as a collective.
Corporations Ain't People
Practitioner:
Backbone Campaign
Date:
Sep 14 2010
Corporations Ain’t People: A Musical Protest 
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Release Two Live Albums For Australian Wildfire Benefit
Practitioner:
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard
Date:
Jan 10 2020
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have released a pair of live albums to benefit relief efforts in response to devastating wildfires in their native Australia.
Fem Queen: The Evolution, The Revolution, The Celebration!
Practitioner:
NYU Steinhardt, Dominique Jackson
Date:
Apr 23 2024
For the completion of her residency as the NYU Steinhardt 2023-24 Scholar-in-Residence, Dominique Jackson collaborated with NYU students to honor the fem queen (trans women) and their historical meaning to not only ballroom but popular culture at large.
The Scheherazade Project
Practitioner:
The Scheherazade Project
Date:
Jun 9 2020
The Scheherazade Project is a Performing Arts Non-profit based in Washington DC. Co-founders Lisa Leibow and Julia Alvarez were inspired by Scheherazade in the Arab classic 1001 Nights and created The Scheherazade Project. For more information, our website is https://thescheherazadeproject.org/The-Scheherazade-Project
FILIPINO HIP-HOP ACTIVISTS TAKE A STAND IN OAKLAND/TAKE BACK OUR EDUCATION
Practitioner:
various activists
Date:
Dec 23 2014
There is a large Filipino community in the Bay Area that organizes and fights for better workers’ rights and educating youth of color. There are groups within this community that address these issues through hip-hop. Kiwi Illafonte, 40, is a Bay Area political rapper who talks about social issues in his music. “Social change is at the center of my universe,” Illafonte said.
Who Are You?
Practitioner:
DAM
Date:
Mar 26 2015
“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.
Healing through sound and community art
Practitioner:
Guadalupe Maravilla
Date:
Feb 25 2025
Glowing softly in the West Texas desert night, artist Guadalupe Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago, was once an ordinary school bus but is now a richly decorated, mobile site for remembrance and healing. Like much of the artist’s work, this piece commemorates and confronts the artist’s journey to the United States as an unaccompanied, undocumented minor fleeing civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s.
When an orchestra director negotiated his cachet in trees
Practitioner:
Claudio Abbado
Date:
Sep 9 2009
Claudio Abbado was an Italian orchestra director (1933 - 2014) who served as chief director at La Scala Theater in Milan from 1968 - 1985. After 18 years of absence, in 2009, he was invited to conduct a concert there. He accepted upon condition that, instead of paying him a monetary honorarium, the city would commit to the planing of 90.000 trees in the city of Milan.
Pamparadio
Practitioner:
Pamparadio
Date:
May 13 2015
As part of USAID's "My Comunidad-Mi Agua" program in Peru, "Pamparadio" was a radio show run by two adolescents from the community of Iquitos, a jungle province. Armed with a gigantic speaker on the top of a community center and an AM radio frequency, Marco Jhastin Anchec and Cledy del Aguila Mozombite single-handedly ran "Pamparadio" as a celebration of potable water, how to make it, and how to take care of it.
Pete Seeger: Where Have All the Protest Songs Gone?
Practitioner:
Pete Seeger
Date:
Apr 1 2012
Now 92 years old, the legendary folk singer recalls his pioneering days touring college campuses and discusses his favorite songs.
Occupy This Album: 99 Songs for the 99 Percent
Practitioner:
Various Artists
Date:
May 14 2012
By Josh Harkinson, Mother Jones. Various Artists Occupy This Album Music for Occupy
Glory to Hong Kong - Protesters Create National Anthem
Practitioner:
Hong Kong Protesters
Date:
Aug 30 2019
“Glory to Hong Kong,” created less than three weeks ago, has rapidly been adopted as a symbol of the pro-democracy movement. via NYTimes:
Anti-Trump Aerobics
Practitioner:
Margaret McCarthy and Liat Berdugo
Date:
May 3 2017
Alley Cat Books, located in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District, is ordinarily a quiet space for book lovers to peruse multicolored shelves for their next literary adventure. But on Sunday, the small bookstore buzzed with energy as a group of leggings-clad Bay Area residents protested Donald Trump's presidency in the form of a sweaty cardio workout.
Christine Sun Kim
Practitioner:
Christine Sun Kim
Date:
Jan 1 2012
For artist Christine Sun Kim, sound is a "ghost." The multiple-MFA-holding Senior TED Fellow who has had a Whitney Museum residency and exhibited at MoMA, has been profoundly deaf since birth. The sonic hush in which she lives has pushed her towards exploring sound through her work in a varied oeuvre of performance, installation, drawing, and video.
Resonate, Reverberate, Roar,
Practitioner:
Elana Mann
Date:
Oct 17 2013
Resonate, Reverberate, Roar (Re-Re-Roar) is a growing archive of original sounds that express an experimental, independent, and socially progressive spirit. The sounds on Re-Re-Roar include field recordings, interviews, songs, speeches, experimental music, and more. Re-Re-Roar is a site for research and activ[ist] listening, with the purpose of distributing sounds of resistance to eager ears around the globe.
Lil Baby “The Bigger Picture”
Practitioner:
Lil Baby
Date:
Jun 12 2020
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.
Demonstealer Fights For a Better India Through Death Metal
Practitioner:
Demonstealer
Date:
Mar 23 2023
The Propaganda Machine is a battle cry delivered in the language of extreme metal. On Sahil Makhija’s fourth solo album as Demonstealer, he takes aim at the right-wing politicians, racist nationalists, disinformation artists, and religious extremists who manipulate and exploit the masses, in his native India and all over the world. He doesn’t mince his words; just about every lyric on the album could easily be printed on a protest sign.
Y'en A Marre
Practitioner:
Y'en A Marre
Date:
Jan 16 2011
"Y’en a Marre (“We're Fed Up") first emerged in 2011 as a grassroots campaign against injustice and inequality in Senegal. Spearheaded by the hip hop group Keur Gui Crew in response to local power outages, the nascent protest movement went on to mobilize against the controversial bid by Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade to remain in office for a third term.
Journal Rappé
Practitioner:
Xuman & Cheikh “Keyti” Sene
Date:
Jan 1 2015
A TYPICAL EPISODE of Journal Rappé begins with Senegalese rapper Makhtar “Xuman” Fall dressed in a suit and seated behind a news desk. At first glance, the show looks like an ordinary newscast. But then Xuman (pronounced human) launches into his intro, rapping in French instead of talking. “Welcome! Make yourself comfortable. These are the news for you. Some good ones and bad ones too. But they’re all news for you.”
Strange Fruit: The First Great Protest Song
Practitioner:
Billie Holiday
Date:
Apr 20 1939
It is a clear, fresh New York night in March 1939. You're on a date and you've decided to investigate a new club in a former speakeasy on West 4th Street: Cafe Society, which calls itself "The Wrong Place for the Right People".
The Color of Reality
Practitioner:
Alexa Meade Jon Boogz
Date:
Sep 6 2016
Transfixed by racial, political, and socioeconomic tensions saturating the news, movement artists Jon Boogz and Lil Buck, enveloped by the art of Alexa Meade, switch off the TV and release their emotion into a stirring dance that is both a lament and a spirited call to action.
Kids Helping Kids
Practitioner:
Hip Hop Saves Lives, Negusworld
Date:
May 13 2015
Kids Helping Kids is a youth hip-hop program run by two NGOs, Hip Hip Saves Lives and Negusworld. Together, these organizations work with middle school and high school students to make conscious hip hop influenced by activist work happening worldwide.

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