Browse Items (43 total)

Forced disappearances were a key tactic of various dictatorships of the Americas. The song follows the story of a man and woman, ordinary people who have disappeared, and the fight their family engages in to try and locate them. The final stanza…

This song can be used to introduce students to Civil Rights songs, many of which spoke to the movement's optimism. However, this song was unique in comparison to other songs such as "We Shall Overcome" for not being as optimistic. Like many other…

Minstrel songs were part of 19th-century pop music. "The Old Folks at Home" was originally sung from the perspective of an enslaved person longing for his life on the plantation. The song remains Florida's state song but its lyrics have undergone…

Written by Steven Van Zant, this anti-apartheid song was performed by a group of global artists (mostly from the English-speaking world). Though it was a global sucess, the song was banned in South Africa, a common practice for songs whose content…

Translated into English as "What Have We Done?," this song was very popular song at funerals and gained greater popularity due to its use by anti-apartheid activists. It is compared to the Civil Rights Movement song "We Shall Overcome."…

"Another Man Done Gone" centers around the American South's early 20th century penal farm system, whose conditions were notoriously terrible. Like many institutions of the post-reconstruction era, they were heavily racialized with a disproportionate…

This song can be used to teach about the Reconstruction-era South racism and the dangerous working conditions found in the building of U.S. railroads. John Henry is an African-American folk hero from Virginia who, according to legend, was victorious…

Spirituals are a Christian genre intimately tied to the southern's history with slavery. According to legend, Harriet Tubman used this song to instruct slaves on how to avoid detection when escaping slave owners and/or bounty hunters. Though the year…

Many of those living in the Appalachians can trace their heritage back to England and Scotland, where they have a longstanding folk song tradition. As the song has no definitive author/s, several versions of this song exist as it was common to alter…

This song could be used to introduce students to murder ballads, a subgenre of folk music. Like many other Appalachian murder ballads, "Knoxville Girl" is an adaptation of British broadside ballads. Once brought over to the States, these ballads were…