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.
Transmission 06: The First Thaw
January 4, 2024
Victor Jara's "El Derecho de Vivir en Paz", the right to live in peace, sung by a man who was denied it. The Chilean poet-musician murdered by Pinochet's forces in 1973, carried into the new year from the valley floor.
Transmission 08: When the Revolution Comes
February 1, 2024
"When the revolution comes, it will bring its own drum."
The Last Poets ask what happens when the revolution comes. Nina Simone answers in two parts. Around them: Janelle Monáe's Afrofuturist uprising, Deltron 3030's dystopia, Black Star's Toni Morrison quote, Noname's quiet refusal, Little Simz's bars. It ends with a field-recorded freedom song from the Montgomery bus boycott, "We are Soldiers in the Army." Resistance as a practice.
Transmission 09: Cold Damp Valley
February 15, 2024
Quilapayún's Chilean nueva canción. Judith Reyes' corrido of the occupied university. Vicente Fernández's México. Resistance in Spanish, carried to the valley floor. Resistance on BVA isn't a posture. It's a practice, and it sounds like a groove, a poem, a dance, a declaration.