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Lesson Idea: Analysing A Protest Song

This task is about building students' capacity to write a sustained analysis of one protest
song (and later a sustained analysis comparing two protest songs).
1. This task needs to begin with some clear modeling to students on how a protest song
analysis needs to be set out. Start by giving students the example analysis of U2's
'Sunday Bloody Sunday.' Ask students to read through the analysis and identify what are
4-5 different types of information/aspects of the protest song that the analysis discusses.
Students should annotate these on their copy of the analysis. The point of this task is to
get students thinking for themselves about how an analysis is set out before the teacher
guides them through it. Discuss what students come up with as a class.
2. Follow this up by giving students a copy of the 'How To Set Out A Protest Song
Analysis' handout. Look through the different sections of a protest song analysis together
and then ask students to indicate where these sections are on the example 'Sunday
Bloody Sunday' analysis.
3. Students should now have a good idea of what they are expected to produce. At this
point they need to pick a protest song to analyse. Students should be encouraged to
analyse a protest song of a band/artist that they listen to themselves. Identifying such a
song may be a task that has previously been set as homework. During the protest song
unit students could be invited to briefly share the name of a song they believe to be a
protest song, the performing artist/band and a brief summary of why they believe it is a
protest song in order to build up a list of protest song resources. Alternatively, students
can find lists of protest songs at these websites:

http://www.greatprotestsongs.com/

http://eslbee.com/cobaq/ballads/protest_song_lyrics.htm

http://musictodiefor.wordpress.com/50-greatest-protest-songs/
4. In order to prepare themselves to write about a protest song students' need to go
through these steps:
a) Pick a protest song to write about.
b) Read through the lyrics for the song (students' will need to do their own internet search
to find these) and listen to the song (students should find a recording of the song on
Youtube).
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c) Identify what the issue the song is protesting against is (they should start from the basic
categories mentioned in the previous task).
d) Annotate a lyric sheet by circling key quotes and identifying techniques used.
e) Noting down descriptions of the sound and feel of the music in the song.
5. Once students have completed the above steps, they should draft an analysis following
the structure set out in the 'How To Set Out A Protest Song Analysis' handout and submit
if for peer review and teacher review.

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