Background

Whether it is by rummaging through the musical soul of the Abolitionist movement in works such as the “Anti-Slavery Melodies: For the Friends of Freedom” curated by Jarius Lingham for the Anti-Slavery Society in 1843 or by revisiting the enduring poetics of the likes of Rabindranath Tagore crafted for the Indian freedom struggle, creative expression is a vehicle for revolutionary shows of protest.

Emerging in the wake of the First World War, in the French literary movement of Surrealism, the body became a tool for radical performances through dance forms such as automatism. The hallucinatory states embodied by the performers attempted to challenge the very distinction between the conscious and the unconscious to critique the one-dimensionality of a society obsessed with scientific rationality and routine.

When we speak of social movements, therefore, we must peer deeply into the creative aspirations, counter-cultural assertions, and artistic sub-movements that shape these political and social histories. For centuries human populations have differentiated themselves based on in-groups and out-groups – many of whom have been oppressed by privileged identities. In the friction that is born, conflicts emerge to ruffle the strictures of stable hierarchies to promise liberation.

The collective powers of music, dance, and language coalesce in these moments to craft the anatomy of social movements, albeit in divergent ways across global boundaries. But the commonality that ties these displays of emotion, collaboration, and radical identity assertion is the fundamental hope to break free from the clutches of hegemonic social structures.