Browse Items (43 total)

This song may be used to introduce students to the image of the soldadera and Adelita during the Mexican Revolution.

Translated as "The Right to Live in Peace", this song was originally written as a tribute to Ho Chi Minh and talked about the destruction brought forth by the Vietnam War. It wasn't uncommon for the genre's artists to talk about injustice outside of…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

"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…

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."…

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…