The Resounding Revolution
Freedom Song After 1968

Stephen Stacks (Author)

9780252088704

Paperback / softback, published 13 May 2025

240 pages, 7 black & white photographs, 1 chart, 4 music examples
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.454 kg

“The Resounding Revolution posits the freedom song as an expressive form of political empowerment. Stacks expertly draws from African American studies, environmental studies, and other fields to pry open the deeper levels of political work that freedom song has accomplished in the past five decades.”--David F. Garcia, Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Far from being bounded by the timeframe of the 1960s, freedom song continues to evolve as a tool both of historical memory and of present activism. Stephen Stacks looks at how post-1968 freedom song helps us negotiate our present relationship to the era while at the same time sustaining the contemporary struggle inspired by it.

Stacks’s analysis shifts the focus of attention from genre--freedom song--to process and practice--freedom singing. As he shows, freedom singing after 1968 generates multilayered meanings. It can reinforce, or resist, consensus memories or dominant narratives. Stacks illuminates freedom singing’s diversity by examining it in three contexts: performance, protest, and within documentary sound recording/film.

Introduction: Freedom Song after 1968