Protest Songs

Protest songs were a union between the emerging Folk music of the late 50s and early 60s, and the Civil Rights movement. They needed songs, which could be sung on marches, at causes, and could be anthems for the Civil Rights cause. And when Civil Rights wasn't so much achieved, but when it merged into the anti-war protest movement, then those Protest songs were also the soundtrack of that. The Vietnam War was seen as something, which was highly questionable. The new generation was thinking about that. So it was very much defining themselves against what had come before, against what was seen as an oppressive, hierarchical, patriarchal system, which had worked essentially during the war years, but didn't work anymore in the post-war years.