October Surprise

No, it’s not another blog about the endless US election .  .  . the real surprise this October is that Bob Dylan is a Nobel prizewinner!  The crazy kids at the Swedish Academy found a way to cut through the mishigas and remind us that words, and music, matter and can raise us up.  That got us thinking about human rights and music and, no surprise here, there are many, many blogs devoted to this topic.  And most of them feature one or two Dylan songs.  Here are a few to check out:

Development Education offers a site that links World Music with human rights, featuring Blowin’ in the Wind, among others. 

Amnesty International-Australia posts Ten Songs for Social Change, including Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit and Joan Baez with We Shall Overcome.

The government of Manitoba posts Human Rights Songs to augment the K-12 curriculum — Dylan’s The Times They are a Changing is one of the listings.

There are even course curricula on music and human rights, like this syllabus from Florida State University, which starts with a Charter of Musical Human Rights.

What are your top 10 human rights songs?  Use our blog’s comment tab to share a Youtube link and spread the inspiration!

Whatever the election outcome, at least we can all look forward to the Nobel Prize ceremony in December.