Start Your Own Teach-Out
The response to Teach-Outs, from the house band and the singers to the audience members, has been overwhelmingly positive.”As a result, we’d like to encourage folks in other cities to organize their own Which Side? events. To that end, here are a few notes about how you can put together your own protest music show. Let’s start a movement!
The aim of the Which Side? music and discussion series we’ve been presenting monthly here in Boston is twofold: Music, of course, is entertainment, but it can also be a catalyst for action.
A “teach-in” is an informal educational forum on a subject of social significance, typically held on a college campus. In 1970, for instance, students and faculty participated in a series of teach-ins on the growing environmental crisis. These gatherings led directly to the creation of the annual Earth Day celebration.
By contrast, a “teach-out” is more public-facing. We’ve loosely based the Which Side? series on the precedent of the “Flying University,” an underground phenomenon that began in the late 1800s in Warsaw. At a time when the Polish people were attempting to resist German and Russian encroachment, educators began offering secret courses in private homes taught by dissident educators. Activists living under Communist rule revived the idea in the late 1970s.
Which Side?: A Protest Music Teach-Out is based on the book “Which Side Are You On? 20th Century American History in 100 Protest Songs” by Boston-based author, journalist, and educator James Sullivan. Initiated by Joyce Linehan, a longtime organizer in Boston’s arts community and former chief of policy for Mayor Marty Walsh, the series celebrates the importance of protest music to activism and offers a deeper opportunity for connection among participants and audience members.
The title of the book and series is not intended to condone the current, lamentable political polarization in America. Based on the timeless protest song “Which Side Are You On” by Florence Reece, the matriarch of a coal-mining family in Harlan County, Kentucky, the song challenged strike-breakers to listen to their conscience. We’re simply asking participants to think about whether they want to be on the side of progress, or regression.
We hope you’ll consider creating your own events in the spirit of the Which Side? series. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions at all.
Assemble a house band. In Boston, we’re lucky to have Ed Valauskas, who has been leading the band for Theo and Paul Epstein’s annual Hot Stove, Cool Music fundraising concert for 25 years. For Which Side?, Ed has put together a versatile band – the Paid Protesters – anchored by local musicians with decades of experience between them.
Identify an emcee who can speak to the significance of protest music and the songs the audience will hear on a given night.
Find an appropriate venue where the decision-makers are willing to work with the organizers to make this an affordable event, accessible to all. Our aim is not to make money, but to raise awareness about the various threats to our democracy we have been facing. We don’t charge a cover (because you don’t pay to attend a protest demonstration!). We do, however, encourage suggested donations, which defray costs so that we can pay the musicians and the nightclub staff. All profits thereafter (and so far we have found our audiences to be more than generous) can be donated to the non-profit of your choice (in our case, it’s the ACLU of Massachusetts.)
Ask the notable singers in your town if they’d be willing to participate. Most of them will say yes. Our initial idea was to have each singer choose a classic protest song or two to cover, but we quickly discovered that almost all of them have an original song of their own that they wanted to do, too. So we settled on a format: Each singer performs one cover of their choosing and one original protest song.
At the show, let the singers and the emcee engage in a bit of dialogue about the songs they chose, and why they matter.
We’ve restricted the shows to six singers, a dozen songs total. With banter, that ends up totaling around 90 minutes. This should leave time for socializing afterward. We’ve been asking audiences to fulfill one simple action item: introduce yourself to two people you’ve not met before. We have found that the sense of camaraderie and shared purpose, combined with the joys of the music, have made our events more rewarding than we could have hoped. And hope is something we could all use a little more of right now.
