Protest music is often treated as a genre. BVA treats it as a condition: the natural sound of people refusing to accept what they've been told to accept.

Transmission 02: High Wind Warning

November 9, 2023

"The revolution will not be televised."

Gil Scott-Heron's poem from 1970 anchors the second transmission: it has never stopped being relevant because the revolution has never stopped being necessary. Around it: Savages' feminist fury ("Shut Up"), DAM's direct resistance against occupation ("I Don't Have Freedom"), 47SOUL's borderless Palestinian identity ("Everyland").

Transmission 03: The Valley Finds Its Voice

November 23, 2023

The blade sharpens. Killer Mike's "Reagan" names the prison-industrial complex by name. The Coup's "The Guillotine" sharpens it further. Black Merda!, one of the first all-Black rock bands, renamed after the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, delivers "Reality," a direct statement on police violence and systemic racism recorded decades ago but landing like today's headlines.

Transmission 04: Break Open the Dark

December 7, 2023

"Backlash blues."

Nina Simone's "Backlash Blues": a Langston Hughes poem set to music, written for the civil rights era and still waiting for its answer. Charles Bradley testifies that the world is going up in flames, and it doesn't sound like a complaint. It sounds like someone stating what he has seen.

Transmission 05: The Longest Night

December 21, 2023: Winter Solstice

Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon": a poem from 1970 about Apollo, money, and who pays for space. Saint Levant's "Mandela." Aziza Brahim's Saharawi exile blues. Hurray For The Riff Raff's "Palante": forward, always forward.

Resistance on BVA is a practice. It sounds like a groove, a poem, a dance, a declaration.