GRAMMY U® - Civil Rights Radio (Excerpt 1) lyrics

What J. Period and I are calling Civil Rights Radio has always been on and broadcasting, from African slave songs and British indentured servant tunes up through "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" and "The House I Live In," Billie Holiday making us look at the strange fruit hanging from the southern trees, New Orleans second line bra** bands improvising community and safety out of slave pasts into the storms of the urban present, Woody Guthrie singing the names of nameless Mexican deportees after he already declared "Wherever little children are hungry and cry, wherever people ain't free, wherever men are fightin for their rights, that's where I'm a gonna be”, Sam Cooke putting the church on the pop charts and confirming that yes a change is gonna come, Sly and the Family Stone reminding us that there may be a riot goin on but it's always a family affair, Edwin Starr asking what good war is for and Marvin Gaye staring into the face of the Vietnam War and wondering what's going on, Curtis Mayfield telling us to keep on pushing, Daniel Valdez saluting the Chicano movement's brown-eyed children of the sun, Jon Jang asking "Are you Chinese or Charlie Chan?", Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five crying out from the belly of the Reaganomic beast, “Don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge/ I'm tryin not lose my head,” Public Enemy fighting the power and Rage Against the Machine taking the power back and Los Tigres del Norte shouting "Vivan Los Mojados" and Kendrick Lamar praying that when the lights go off and it's his turn to go, let just one thing happen: promise that you will sing about me, promise me that you will use music to tell my story, to keep my struggle, and my dream, alive. Because Civil Rights Radio is not just a station-- it's the entire dial, a network of frequencies, an entire subversive media ecosystem that spans eras and nations, movements and marches, colors and languages, and always bends toward justice. Civil Rights Radio refers not only to the black owned Southern radio stations that were so pivotal to shaping the movement, but to a broader impulse that is still alive today: to use music as a form of social action, to address ruptures in social justice and equality, to shape community and build strength in the face of violence.