Songs of Rebellion and Revolution Quiz

Answer: The Czech Republic

'You who are God's warriors and of his law,
Pray to God for help and have faith in Him;
That always with Him you will be victorious...'

The Hussite rebellion (1419-34) was a popular religious revolt inspired by the Czech religious reformer Jan Hus. Even though the Hussite army consisted of peasants and townspeople with no military training, due to some great generals and very innovative military techniques, they managed to fight off five Catholic crusades. Their battle song has remained a symbol of national pride and resistance throughout the history of the Czech Lands and is still heard in the 21st century on ceremonial occasions, or even roared out by the audience at a rock concert.

Answer: Lynching

"It's going to be fine...get those aristocrats to the street lamp! ah it will be fine when we hang them'

The 'Ça ira' is one of the most famous and most bloodthirsty of French revolutionary songs. Written by a street singer in 1790, it popularized the term 'à la lanterne' (string them up).

It is said that the term 'Ça ira' was inspired by Benjamin Franklin, first American ambassador to the French court. When people would ask how the revolution back home was doing, he'd say 'Ça ira!" (Bad French for, basically, 'it's going great').

The two other songs most closely associated with the French revolution are 'La Carmagnole' and 'La Marseillaise'. Both went mainstream; 'La Carmagnole' as a folk/children's song and of course 'La Marseillaise' is the French anthem.

Answer: The Internationale

'So comrades, come rally, And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale unites the human race!' (British version)

'The International' (Eugene Pottier lyrics, Pierre De Geyter, music), has been an anthem of Communist, Socialist and Labour movements since it was adopted by the Second International in 1889. The power of the song was immense in that everybody knew it. On the picket lines in, say, New York City, the workers were multi-ethnic and couldn't speak each other's languages, but everybody knew that song. Similarly, it bonded varied members of the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. It really did 'unite the human race'.

Although originally a French song, 'The Internationale' became particularly associated with The USSR and the Communist movement. It was the first anthem of the USSR and that created a problem. Movements in Western countries seeking to disassociate themselves from the USSR largely abandoned the song. Nevertheless, it remains one of the major anthems of the Left.

Answer: The Jacobite Rebellion

This is a bit of a trick question. Those titles look like Jacobite songs, but not one of them was actually written during the Scottish rebellion of 1745. Most of the wistful laments that we today associate with the Jacobites were actually written 50 or more years later. The lovely 'Skye Boat Song', for example, was written in 1888. Many of the texts were written by Carolina Oliphant, and she set them to folk melodies around the turn of the 19th century.

This musical silence has been attributed to the brutality of the British reprisals after Culloden, which pretty much succeeded in wiping out most of Highland culture. But by the turn of the 19th century, the novels of Sir Walter Scott were helping to romanticize a Scotland that wasn't there any more. Therefore, you could safely publish a song in the 1800s that would have landed your head on Tower Bridge half a century earlier.

Answer: The Bonny Blue Flag

'We are a band of brothers and native to the soil
Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!'

When Mississippi declared for the Confederacy in January they ran up a blue flag with a single star. Within a couple of months Harry McCarthy performed a new song he'd written to an old Irish tune at a concert in Jackson. 'The Bonny Blue Flag' became an instant hit and remained so throughout the war. Sheet music sold out and it rang out from bands and calliopes on steam boats up and down the Mississippi throughout the war.

The flag first appeared as the flag of West Florida in 1810 and became the official flag of Texas in 1836. It was the first unofficial flag of the Confederacy. It was replaced by the Stars and Bars later in 1861, but the song remained wildly popular all throughout the war.

Answer: Estonia

'My fatherland is my love, To whom I've given my heart.
To you I sing, my greatest happiness, My blossoming Estonia!
Your pain boils in my heart, Your pride and joy makes me happy,
My fatherland, my fatherland!'

Anybody not convinced that song can carry a revolution should check out the Singing Revolution (1987-1991), a series of non-violent protests that eventually liberated Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from Soviet occupation.

'My Fatherland' was written by the 19th century poet Lydia Koidula and set to music by Gustav Ernesaks in 1944. After the beginning of Soviet occupation in 1947 it became a song of resistance and although banned, was sung anyway every year at the massive Tallinn music festival. There would be between 20,000 and 30,000 people in the choir on stage and hundreds of thousands more in the audience singing along. Understandably, the Soviets didn't try to arrest anybody, but would get a band to play a rousing number in a futile attempt to drown out the song. It didn't work.

By the 80s the singing and other forms of nonviolent protest had spread to neighboring Latvia and Estonia. In Tallinn the festival now boasted five days of 24/7 song. In 1991 the Baltic states were given their independence without a shot being fired.

Answer: Québec

'A wandering Canadian, banished from his homeland
Travelled, weeping, through foreign lands.
One day, sad and thoughtful, Seated on the river's bank
To the fleeing current He spoke these words:
If you should see my home, My sad unhappy land
Go, say to all my friends That I remember them!'

In 1842 a college student, Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, wrote a lyric to a old tune about the recent rebellion in Lower Canada (southern Québec at the time). Called 'The War of the Patriots'(1837-38) it was an uprising where the French Catholic inhabitants of the region revolted against a stifling English economic monopoly. Although short lived, the revolt resulted in a lot of executions, deportations to Australia and exile, mainly to the United States.

This song that lamented the plight of the exiles went the 1840s equivalent of viral. It was sung in Upper Canada (southern Ontario) where there had been a similar revolt against economic inequality and as far away as Louisiana, where the exiled Acadians (Cajuns) adopted a version as their national song.

Answer: Dublin

'Right proudly high in Dublin town they hung out a flag of war.
'Twas better to die 'neath that Irish sky than at Sulva or Sud el Bar.
And from the plains of Royal Meath strong men came hurrying through,
While Brittania's huns with their long range guns sailed in through the foggy dew.'

It was the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the song is 'The Foggy Dew' (1919) The Easter Rebellion was a classic example of losing the battle to win the war. It was planned by intellectuals with no military experience and most Irish were ambivalent at best. But the loss of life and the martyrs created by brutal British reprisals galvanized public opinion in favor of the rebels and in 1922 Ireland gained independence.

The songs that emerged in the wake of the rebellion were not merely laments for a lost cause, they were calls for action. They were recorded and could reach a broader audience faster. 'The Foggy Dew', one of the loveliest and angriest of these, was written by Charles O'Neill to an old folk tune.

Answer: It was counter-revolutionary

'But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be all right...'

Calling your song 'Revolution' and then saying there was a better way of doing things didn't sit well with the Left during the turbulent year 1968. John Lennon, under the influence of Transcendental Meditation, thought there was. The Beatles recorded three versions of the song, the slower 'Revolution 1' that went on 'The White Album', the experimental 'Revolution 9' that was a series of tape loops and sound samples, and the faster 'Revolution'. This one was on the flip side of 'Hey Jude' and was the one most people heard on the radio.

Answer: The Egyptian Revolution (Tahir Square)

When Ramy Essam sang 'Irhal' (إرحل) (Leave) in Cairo's Tahir Square on January 25, 2011 somebody posted a clip to YouTube and within minutes it had gone viral. The acoustic community that it embraced numbered in the millions within days. The Egyptian Revolution was the second in a series of rebellions that made up the Arab Spring of 2011. The songs that came out of that revolution and the audience they reached was unprecedented thanks to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Many now think that music played a significant role in the uprisings.

If you're interested in the role of music in the Arab Spring and revolutions in general, try 'Songs of Change: How Music Helped Spark the Arab Spring Revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia' (Brendan Thabo Eprile, 2017)