ACTIVISM IN TODAY'S ROOTS MUSIC
NASHVILLE — Years ago, The Chicks decided not to shut up and sing. Even in her golden years, the great Dolly Parton expressed unequivocal support for the LGBTQ+ community. Hip-hop artist Macklemore was recently removed from a national tour after he expressed empathy for the people of Palestine whose country was firebombed after a terrorist attack on Israel.
In this era of political division, the rises in discrimination, and today’s culture wars in the U.S., how can musical artists continue to speak their minds?
(At top of page: Singer-songwriter Chris Pierce, photo by Mathieu Bitton)
It’s an especially important question for roots-music artists whose music already leans toward the subversive. They often play to smaller, more intimate audiences and interact directly with people far more than rock stars playing basketball arenas.
“It's so important to know as artists that you're making history,” singer-songwriter Mon Rovia said in a discussion at the AmericanaFest music festival and conference here in September.
His album Bloodline was released in January, which includes the protest song “Heavy Foot”:
Love me now
Hold me down
And the government
Staying on heavy foot
And they tried to keep us all down
No they never gonna keep us all down (woo)
Mon Rovia took his performing name from his place of birth — Monrovia, Liberia — where he was adopted by Christian missionaries and spared from a life as a child solider. He grew up in the U.S. and is now based in the mountain-valley city of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
He makes protest music that can make you smile and want to sing along.
“I’ve stirred something in them, you're nudging them, In a sense, it’s a beautiful thing,” Mon Rovia said. “Those responses aren't really about you at all,” but rather “how the music has messed up their sleep.”
Raye Zaragoza, a singer-songwriter from Los Angeles, said she stumbled into activism by writing “The River: A Protest Song” in 2016 about the Standing Rock movement and the protection of water in the American West.
It “opened up my whole world about the power of music,” she said.
You’ve gotta have a soul
Mother Earth protects us allI
f you treat her with disrespect
Then what message have you left
For your children and their home?
Raised in a family with indigenous and immigrant roots, Zaragoza grew up in a studio apartment above an old firehouse in Lower Manhattan. On Sept. 11, 2001, during the attacks on the nearby World Trade Center, her third-grade class was evacuated from the area. For her, music became “the balm for my anxiety, that helps other people with their anxiety,” she said.
“There was never a decision to make music of a protest nature,” Zaragoza said. “I've always just written what I know.”
Singer-songwriter Chris Pierce, who released the acoustic protest album Songs for the Heavy Hearted in August, featuring Allison Russell, Steve Earle, and other guests, is also based in Los Angeles and said that he often finds connection by speaking his mind in song.
“Discourse is what fuels me,” said Pierce, who first recorded R&B and classic soul music before increasingly writing protest songs and opening for the likes of Neil Young, just him and his acoustic guitar.
Pierce is heavily influenced by Woody Guthrie and Richie Havens, and he approaches protest music from a place of peace — as a response to violence against his family and himself. His parents were an interracial couple and had a cross burned in their yard in Pasadena, California.
Rather than respond with anger, Pierce said, they “invited the whole community over for a barbecue,” including people of different “colors,” sexual orientation, and religions. “They blasted Stevie Wonder and had a good time.”
Pierce has followed his family’s example when he’s suffered through racism and even a beating at the hands of police. “I feel like I'm one of the blessed ones who can talk about it,” he said.
He looks for opportunities to build connections and understanding at such moments. Pierce recalled a conversation with a man at a show in Upstate New York who said he should stick to love songs.
“I said, ‘Brother, they’re all love songs,’” he said. “We ended up in a bear hug.”
In his song “Madonna of the San Joaquin,” Pierce sings about being an immigrant in today’s America:
She’s the gal
Been scrubbin’ your floor
Picking your fruit
’Til her arms are sore
But now you kick her out
Your big front door
You sent the sheriff and the marshal
And the deputy
So, she’s runnin’ through the night
Just trying to stay free
She’s tryin’ to stay free
Nashville singer-songwriter Mary Bragg, whose outstanding new album, Secrets to Strangers, is available starting Oct. 16, acknowledged she comes from a privileged background in one way — but that there’s more to her story than meets the eye.
In her country-tinged, modern pop-rock, she incorporates autobiographical stories about growing up in south Georgia, coming out, and her relationship with her wife.
“My call to protest music probably comes as a surprise to some of my listeners,” Bragg said. “As a queer person, you know you come out to people every day.”
Bragg’s new song “The Game” is a powerful commentary on her wife’s family and their continued hostility toward her partner. Bragg sings:
Somehow she still has it in her to play the hardest game
Of how to talk about the future without speaking my name
“Fifteen or 20 years ago, I definitely did not have the courage” to write and sings about (what some people deem) controversial topics, Bragg said. Now, she speaks out simply by sharing her experiences.
“I've lost family members as a result of believing what I believe,” she said. “I used to have three siblings. Now I have two.”
“It's incredibly painful... (but) there’s no other option” but to present the situation as an artist. I still believe there's a possibility for change,” Bragg said.
She pointed out that Amy Grant, a gospel singer with an evangelical Christian background, had spoken during AmericanaFest about her evolving views and “allowing the seed to grow” in her music.
Journalist and author Marissa R. Moss, who moderated the panel discussion with these artists at AmericanaFest, asked how they respond to messages from critics to (as The Chicks have put it) to “shut up and sing” and follow the ludicrous advice to keep politics out of their music?
Zaragoza said she received a direct message on social media a few weeks ago saying one of her songs would alienate her audience.
The song, “Who Says That’s Not American,” a single from 2025, was simply about her grandparents’ experience immigrating to the U.S. “It was really just me talking about my family,” Zaragoza said.
Grandma worked in a cannery
And out in the fields with her family
Grandpa fought in the second war
He had one more brother before
All I know is fuck the man
[All I know’s I hate the man]
Who says that’s not American
So fight for the aunties
the brothers and the babies
Land of the free
You’re not fooling me
What is home without love
What is love without home
There’s no stranger in the land
Where the buffalo go
“What do you want us to talk about right now if it's not the things that affect us on a day-to-day basis?” Zaragoza said.
Pierce sees his own protest music as “something that will open up curiosity and conversation.” Protest songs can give voice to those who can’t speak for themselves and bring knowledge to potential allies, he said.
“I don’t let fear in. I have let fear in,” Pierce said. “That’s not where I am now.”
Bragg’s approach to handling critical audience members has evolved. “I have historically been quick to shut down an opportunity in a moment where there might be a chance to connect with somebody,” she said.
Many people simply want to be heard, and Bragg said she’s learned to acknowledge a comment without agreeing.
Demanding a statement
What about the pressure to comment on issues of the day? Moss asked the artists if they felt pressure to comment on everything under the sun. How do they decide when to share their thoughts — and when to refrain?
“It’s gotten to the point of, I need to get ahead of it” at times, Zaragoza said, adding the caveat that “social media is not a direct reflection of life.”
While she’s a perfectionist millennial in her words, Zaragoza also said her family’s background in show business does give her a little thicker skin. Her father is an actor, and she grew up across the street from the legendary Bottom Line and Bitter End nightclubs.
Moss said there are different ways to show your opinion: “Sometimes it’s a song. Sometimes it’s a statement. Sometimes it’s what you're writing about. Those are all activist choices, too.”
“I don't think everyone is supposed to say everything,” Mon Rovia chimed in.
“We do what we can, and there has to be a balance,” Pierce said. You must decide whether to “stay on your phone” and spent that time on writing a song instead, he added.
Pierce recalled when he sang on a commercial for Gordon’s frozen fish, which helped pay off his college loans. He then received hundreds of emails complaining about the ethics behind the product he’d endorsed — and learned a lot from the experience.
“I'm presented with choices all the time,” he said. "If you can’t stand by something with conviction you shouldn't be singing it.”
Bragg said there’s courage in simply “calling out the B.S. you see, if you’re in the room and have the ability to call out B.S.”
She recalled seeing a full-page ad for a songwriters’ festival where she was performing. A dozen white men wearing caps were the only artists pictured. “I tweeted, ‘Really?,’” she said.
In response, she was physically assaulted, threatened, and told to take down the post.
“That organization (now) has never had only white men in a performance. It is about doing it doing it when you feel the need to do it,” Bragg said.
Favorite protest songs
Moss asked the artists to recommend a protest song that moves them.
Zaragoza said Mon Rovia’s “Heavy Foot” is a favorite of hers that’s both poignant and joyous. She also cited “Quiet” by Milck for helping her fully understand the significance of the “Me, Too” movement and reminding her “that I could also be empowered to speak out.”
Bragg said her friend Kyshona’s “Listen” is a powerful call to white Americans and others with power or privilege to hear the truth in others’ experiences.
Pierce recommended his friend Garrison Starr’s “The Devil in Me,” about her experience growing up in Mississippi “being told she literally had the devil in her for how she felt and who she loved.”
Mon Rovia didn’t closely follow popular music growing up, devouring books instead, “growing up an insecure Black kid, adopted in a middle-class white household” and finding meaning and soul in writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, “people who stood in their skin” in predominantly white spaces.
Moss then asked the artists how they care for themselves as somewhat public personalities in an age of discord.
“Keep things for yourself. I have a private life,” said Mon Rovia, who retains close relationships with friends and family, “people who knew you before anything else.”
Zaragoza said she has an autoimmune condition that prevents her from drinking much or staying out late like some artists she knows. “I'm not an after-hours girl,” she said. “Burning yourself out doesn't help anyone.”
“That's a whole part of protest music, too, is taking care of yourself,” Zaragoza said.
Pierce recalled how he’d signed a contract to perform at the Kennedy Center and stuck to the performance rather than cancelling it. For that, he was mentioned in an article in Rolling Stone for not boycotting the center’s right-wing tilt. Another artist who’d refused to perform sent word that she was OK with his decision.
At his show, Pierce played 12 protest songs.
“You’re going to be misinterpreted and be misunderstood. You’re probably going to be if you're making good art,” Pierce said. “Your authenticity is worth singing about shouting about... a life nobody else in this world has lived.”
For Bragg’s part, she said not to forget the basics of “Morning Pages” or writing down what you feel — and getting a good night’s sleep.
“Write and rewrite and rewrite, until you get something that makes you scared,” Bragg said. “If you just keep going, rewrite that lyric, make it the thing that moves your heart... That might be the thing you're singing about for 50 years on stage.”
“You can make something beautiful,” Mon Rovia added. “Your life is super important, and you are here for a reason.”
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