Protest Anthems?

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BoF

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Dawnstorm

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Hm, Hawkwind have quite a few. Probably the most hymn-like: Night of the Hawks

One of the best cold-war nuclear threat protest songs: Ultravox - All Fall Down. Gotta love that celtic harmony played to a funeral march rhythm with those bitter lyrics and angry singing.

Another one: The Men They Couldn't Hang - The Lion and the Unicorn

Something a bit more fun: Mott - Broadside Outcasts

***

This my not quite fit, but I've always thought of this as a protest song against protest:

David Bowie - Cygnet Committee.
 
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Max Vaehling

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Intriguing... the samples I listened to were all instrumental. Are there any songs with lyrics?

Ah, BoF beat me to the jazz angle. I'm listening to Mingus as I read this thread, and there's a lot of uplifting stuff in Jazz ... mostly instrumental, though. (Better Get Hi in your Soul, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, Haitian Fight Song...) Although what I'd really recommend in that direction is Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra. A lot of those jazzified protest songs also exist as somgs, somewhere.

In more pop-like waters, Little Steven's mid-Eighties' stuff is always worth checking out. The Staples Singers' freedom songs (as they called them) are very chant-worthy, Aretha Franklin's Respect is less of an anthem, but uncontestedly uplifting. Just in general, you'll find a lot of stuff to work with in old Soul records. Late 60s, early 70's.

The Kinks' Get Up and Better Things, maybe. Annie Lennox' Sing may be a little programmatic, but it was written to be exactly that kind of uplifting. And yes, now I'm really just title-checking everything that comes to mind and wasn't written by Bruce Springsteen.
 

Xelebes

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From the Great Canadian Songbook:

The Bells - Fly Little White Dove
Michel Conte - Evangeline
La Revolution Francaise - Quebecois
Robert Charlebois - L'Independariste
Pere Falcon - Grenouilleres
A Tribe Called Red - The Road
Glass Tiger - Diamond Sun
Nomeansno - Rich Guns
Stan Rogers - Make and Break Harbour
Murray Mclachlan - The Farmer's Song
Corb Lund - This Is My Prairie
Skinny Puppy - Testure
Unknown - The Anti-Confederation Song
Joan Morrissey - The Teacher Song
 
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