Livestream | The Sound of Resistance — From Cathedrals to Street Marches

Price: FREE

When: Today at 12-2p PT | 3-5p ET

Where: YouTube | Facebook | Twitch 

The Sound of Resistance — From Cathedrals to Street Marches

Description:

Hi, I’m Dallas Vietty — accordion performer and educator based in Pennsylvania, USA. For me, music has always been about freedom — not just political freedom, but the freedom to feel, to express, and to exist fully as yourself. Long before the word “protest” entered our vocabulary, music was how people made their inner worlds known — a place where emotion, identity, and imagination could live without permission. Across history, when voices were silenced, music became the language of truth and defiance. To play, to sing, to compose — these have always been acts of self-expression, and sometimes, acts of resistance.

Today’s livestream traces that lineage — the long story of protest music — from the earliest centuries of Western music to the modern day.

We’ll begin with the medieval troubadours who wrote biting sirventes against kings and crusades, and the Renaissance “L’homme armé” masses that reflected a Europe obsessed with war. We’ll move through the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, where composers like Haydn (Missa in tempore belli), Beethoven (Eroica Symphony), and Verdi (“Va, pensiero”) gave voice to anxiety, revolution, and longing for liberation. Into the twentieth century, we’ll hear Britten’s War Requiem and Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima — soundscapes that cried out against destruction — and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, a coded act of defiance under Stalin’s regime.

From there, we’ll follow the current into the streets:

• Labor and working-class struggles through songs like “Which Side Are You On?” and “Talking Union”, Woody Gutherie

• The fight for racial justice with “We Shall Overcome,” Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” and Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam.”

• Gender equality and women’s liberation with Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” and Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.”

• The anti-war movement of the Vietnam era with Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

And we’ll connect it to accordion — highlighting accordionist-composer Gorka Hermosa’s haunting work “Gernika, 26/4/1937” (inspired by Picasso’s Guernica) and his Peace Dream project, bringing together Ukrainian and Russian musicians in a call for reconciliation through art.

What to Expect:

• Watch and discuss curated YouTube documentaries spanning centuries of protest and resistance in music

• Hear examples that bridge sacred chant, symphony, folk, jazz, rock, and contemporary classical traditions

• Reflect on how your own creative voice can speak truth, comfort, or courage through sound