Local Musicians Set To Showcase Protest Music At This Concert

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, Drew, Mam Holland Here in the WBZ newsroom
a night of protest songs? Which side a protest music
teach out. It's going down at the Lizard Lounge. I'm
joined by the host of this whole thing, very exciting,
James Sullivan in the house.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Why are you, James, I'm good, Drew, Thanks for having
me tell me.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
A little bit about this night.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I wrote a book a few years ago about protest
music called Which Side Are You? On? Twentieth Century Music
in twenty Century History in one hundred Protest Songs, and
a good friend of mine, Joyce Lenehan, who worked for
Marty Walsh as the chief of Policy but also has
been in the music industry for years and basically knows
everybody in Boston's music scene, came to me a few

(00:39):
months ago with an idea and she said, Hey, we
should get a bunch of Boston musicians to do songs
based on your book, so covering classic protest songs. And
I immediately jumped at the idea, and we started asking singers,
and the original idea was just to get them to
cover classic protest songs. You know, Bob Dylan, Marvi Gay,

(01:00):
you know whatever, and but it turned out that just
about every singer that I asked right off the bat said,
you know what, I just wrote a protest along on
my own too. So now what everybody's doing is we're
having a half a dozen singers at each show. We
were going monthly. We started last month. We had an
amazing show last month, and the next one, as you said,
is tonight, And there's six singers at each show with

(01:22):
an incredible backing house band, and each singer does chooses
a classic protest song and then sings one of their own.
So it's a dozen songs and with a little bit
of commentary from me about the history of protest music
and what it means to sort of, you know, various
social movements in the country.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Needless to say, it's a very timely moment for that,
with a lot of well, let's just say division in
the country.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
And you know, we often say that, you know, the
book and the series are named after a classic protest
song from the nineteen thirty from the era of the
coal miner strikes, which that are you on. But we
not mean by choosing that phrase that we are condoning
the polarization and the divisiveness that you're talking about. We're

(02:07):
saying that we would hope that everyone can agree on
a few simple things. You know, we all stand for
basic civil rights and freedom. We all stand for you know,
the rule of law and the constitution and checks and balances,
and these are things that we think that you know,
the vast majority of us can all agree upon. So

(02:30):
that's the idea, and it's just an opportunity for Boston's
amazing music scene to come together and express what they
want to say about the current social climate.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Well said, who you got on tap for tonight performing?

Speaker 2 (02:43):
We have an amazing lineup tonight. We have one of
my favorites from back in the day, David Hurleyhy who
led a great Boston band called Oh Positive. We have
David Santos, who is the leader of Edi Japan, which
is a band that one the Rock and Roll Rumble
about ten years ago. We have Judge Milton Wright, who
is was a municipal court judge but also comes from

(03:06):
an amazing family of Miami, a Miami soul music family
and Judge Milton recorded a couple of albums in the
seventies and he's doing one of those songs it's really incredible.
We have an amazing younger singer named Naomi Westwater who
will be doing a version of Strange Fruit, which I've
heard in rehearsal is fantastic. We have Lori Sargent, who

(03:30):
is you know, has been around the Boston music scene
for decades now, and so we're really looking forward to
having a great show tonight.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
And lastly, James, you do this at a pretty historic venue. Hear,
the Lizard Lounge is obviously as popular as ever, and
you know, protest music has stood the test of time
for obvious reasons. And I do wonder, though, are even you,
as the host of this thing, surprised at how much
the intensity behind this, how much you know, how people
were all in you say, all the musicians responded and
had ideas of their own. It must be pretty cool

(04:01):
to put together an event like this and then have
all this kind of enthusiasm behind it.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, you know what, Drew, I'm actually not surprised because
I think that the general argument has been, jeez, where
are all the protest songs? You know, in the sixties
we had Bob doll And and Tziger. But if you know
where to look, and this is kind of the point
of my book. The book is about, you know, much
more obscure protest songs than just sort of the usual suspects.
Not that there's anything wrong with the usual suspects, the

(04:28):
great songs for a reason, but there are disco protest songs,
there are punk protest songs. Obviously, the whole genre it
was predicated on protests. You know, there are protests songs
from the nineteen twenties, and there are anti war songs
from the First World War. So it is not surprising
to me at all that there are so many musicians
who want to express themselves by some form of social protests.

(04:51):
Lots of musicians are writing those songs today. It's just
that I think the problem is that in Dylan's era,
everybody had like sort of the same two radio stations
listen to and if if it became a top forty hit,
you heard it all the time. Now, we obviously all
live in our little silos and have our own playlists
and you know all of that, and everybody's tastes can

(05:12):
diversify to the extreme. So it's really hard for a
big name protest song to gain mainstream massive attraction. But
that's true for all pop music. I mean, there's there's
all kinds of stuff bubbling under, and a lot of
it is in the spirit of protests these days.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Sounds great, James Sullivan. He's hosting which Side a protest
music teach out tonight at the Lizard Lounge. Going to
be another great night over there, James, thanks for the
time today.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, thanks true, thanks for having me all right.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
From the WBZ newsroom here in Boston, Drew Mholland, WBZ,
Boston's news radio