I’m hoping some of you can help me out here. I’m teaching a unit on freedom and responsibility to my 9th graders for my internship. Being an English class, I try to incorporate music and poetry into as many things as I can.
What are some songs that deal with the concepts of freedom or responsibility? I have “Free Will” from Rush already, but I’d like to pull in some hip-hop lyrics, since I teach in an urban district, and that’s what the majority of my students listen to.
Poetry works, too. I have “Still I Rise” from Maya Angelou and “To America” from James Weldon Johnson so far.
As I was walkin’
I saw a sign there
And on that sign
It said “No trespassing.”
But on the other side,
It didn’t say nothing—
That side was made for you and me!
That’s a verse they don’t usually teach kids from
“This Land is Your Land” (Woody Guthrie)
You might also like to make them think about what is really happening
in “The Star Spangled Banner” (Francis Scott Key)
Oh, say, can you see
Through the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
through the perilous night,
O’er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets’ red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof theough the night
That OUR FLAG was still there
Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
Over the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Why was the song’s author watching over ramparts?
Why were bombs bursting in mid-air?
Why waws the night perilous?
Who were the brave and free people we sing about?
How about:
We will walk in freedon
We will walk in freedom
We will walk in freedom
Some day.
Deep in my heart
I do believe
That we will walk in freedom some day.
One of the later verses in “We Shall OVerome”
How about:
“Follow the Drinking Gourd!”
That’s about as literal a song about finding freedom as one you could find.
How about “Something Inside so Strong” - I can’t remember the original artist but here’s a version The music is a tad ‘last millenium’ but the lyrics are clear- IIRC it was about the apartheid struggle, or rather the anti-apartheid struggle, in SA.
The opening line says it for me everytime
The higher you build your barriers The taller I become
For a totally dope hip hop song that screams freedom, try “First in Flight” by Blackalicious, off of their record “Blazing Arrow.”
From the first verse:
“FREE! Like a bird out in the wind in the night
Like a 747 to LA that’s in flight
FREE! Like a garden flourishing in the wind
Like a student bout to do it when he’s graduatin’
FREE! From any of the energy perception
Can never be defined create the definition within
FREE! Just lovin life itself and never pretend to be
Anything other than the man I was meant to be
Travel through time and get a glimpse of the centuries
To come a better day is promised remember
FREE! Like my nephew in a few months about to be out the penitentiary”
Rage Against the Machine is probably the best band for these sort of lyrics…Almost all of their songs are about freedom…
Wake Up (This is their best song, IMHO)
Bulls on Parade
Sleep Now In The Fire
Guerilla Radio
Testify
Freedom
People Of The Sun
Renegades of Funk
No Shelter
lots more…
Some songs may have explicit lyrics, so please look up the lyrics somwhere. One plus point of their songs is the fact that RATM use a lot of historical facts in their lyrics, so your students might learn some history as well (“In fiteen hundred and sixteen, minds attacked and overseen…” - People of the Sun, RATM)
RATM’s style is basically rap delivered over some of the most thunderous guitaring ever played…so the young’uns would probably love the music as well as the lyrics.
This all but forgotten onr from he sixties which was revived for a coke commercial:
I wish I knew how it would feel to be free
I wish I could break all the chains holding me
I wish I could say all the things that I should say
say 'em loud, say 'em clear
for the whole round world to hear.
I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart
remove all the bars that keep us apart
I wish you could know what it means to be me
Then you’d see and agree
that every man should be free.
I wish I could give all I’m longing to give
I wish I could live like I’m longing to live
I wish that I could do all the things that I can do
though I’m way overdue I’d be starting anew.
Well I wish I could be like a bird in the sky
how sweet it would be if I found I could fly
Oh I’d soar to the sun and look down at the sea
and I’d sing cos I’d know that
and I’d sing cos I’d know that
and I’d sing cos I’d know that
I’d know how it feels to be free
I’d know how it feels to be free
I’d know how it feels to be free
Apparition #13 by Thea Gilmore; maybe not specifically about freedom so much as the struggle to achieve it. It’s much more dramatic to listen to that to just read; think Warren Zevon with a more lilting voice. The chorus:
You are missing the mark, you are sitting alone,
saying “it’s a long was to Berlin for some painted stone,
it’s a long a way to China where a boy once stood,
and it’s a long way to Calvary for some nails and wood.”
The line about painted stone applies equally well to the graffiti on the Berlin Wall and that left on the Reichstag by Soviet soldiers in 1945 and still preserved.
(You might have a little trouble with that last line in a public school, though.)
I realize the Spanish versions may have no relationship to the English originals… but Gospel started as slave music, there’s got to be a throve there.
“Sounds of Silence” is about opression - most of the people who like it have never realized what is it it talks about. The opposite, but still good for an analysis.
It’s not hip hop, but my favorite song about freedom is “Peatbog Soldiers.” The way I heard it is that it was written prior to WWII in German concentration camps and spread through the whole of the German concentration camp system. Even POWs heard and used the song, and were allowed to sing it, until, as Pete Seeger put it: “the guards realized what they were singing about.”
Der Moorsoldaten
Far and wide as the eye can wander
Heath and bog are everywhere
Not a bird sings out to cheer us
Oaks are standing gaunt and bare
We are the peatbog soldiers
Marching with our spades to the moor
Up and down the guards are pacing
No one, no one can get through
Flight would mean a sure death facing
Guns and barbed wire greet our view
We are the peatbog soldiers
Marching with our spades to the moor
But for us there is no complaining
Winter will in time be past
One day we will cry rejoicing
“Homeland dear, you’re mine at last”
Then will the peatbog soldiers
March no more with their spades to the moor
(I’m including the full lyrics for this, as the song seems to have jumped to the traditional category, with no one claiming ownership, or authorship for it. If you feel the need to chop off the quote, feel free, and I apologize - I just don’t see how I could quote one or two lines from the song to get the full effect of it, and why it’s actually a song about freedom, not imprisonment otherwise.)