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Radio 1 Stories: Is Protest Music Dead?

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26/01/2016

Is Protest Music Dead?

BBC Radio 1 - Radio 1 Stories, Is Protest Music Dead?

Jamie MacColl from Bombay Bicycle Club explores what has happened to protest music.

Jamie MacColl from Bombay Bicycle Club explores what has happened to protest music, asking if the genre has died or simply evolved.

Jamie MacColl is the guitarist from Bombay Bicycle Club. He also happens to come from an amazing heritage of protest singers - his grandfather was the British activist and protest singer Ewan MacColl, his grandmother is the US feminist and folk singer Peggy Seeger and his great uncle was Pete Seeger, who helped popularise the protest song "We Shall Overcome" in the 1960s.

However Jamie admits his own band's music is far from political.

Keen to explore the current state of "protest music", Jamie goes on a journey to find out who, if anyone, still makes protest music. And, if they don't, do musicians still find ways to speak out about issues, socially, politically or culturally?

From the #blacklivesmatter movement in the US, to artists saying what they really think on twitter, to the rise and rise of grime in the UK, Jamie finds out whether protest music is dead, or has just evolved.

Includes interviews with Billy Bragg, Olly from Years and Years, Hozier, Ghetts, Little Simz, Rou Reynolds from Enter Shikari, US artist Tink and a sit down chat between Jamie and his own grandmother Peggy Seeger.

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