Anthem Making in the Era of BLM

This paper explores the influence of Black artists such as poets, the Last Poets, and rappers, Childish Gambino and Buddy, to interrogate the ways in which audiences have developed and deployed art as movement-anthems during the Black Power and Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). Scholars have employed intellectual, social, and political lenses to highlight movement-activism and organizing, but they have offered few insights into how contemporary Black culture—in particular, music and performance—has shaped the movement. Through a cultural analysis of poetry, lyrics, music videos, and performance, this paper considers how Black artists have intentionally and unintentionally acted as both cultural producers and movement activists through the creation of their art and its re-creation by political and social revolutionaries, revealing the ways in which movement participants have recycled supposedly apolitical art into political vehicles based on the political and social climate of the time. It argues cultural productions of music and performance in both eras transcended the initial intentions of artists to promote movement ideologies simultaneously. As artistic expression helps deepen political action, and the freedom struggle mobilizes, reinterprets, and repurposes Black art, this paper illuminates the role of Black Power and BLM cultural producers, shows how they expanded the boundaries of resistance through Black expressive culture, and reveals the reciprocal relationship between culture, politics, and social movements. By doing so, this social reconstruction situates BLM within a larger Black tradition of resistance, tracing its cultural roots to the Black Power era of the 1960s and 1970s and therefore sheds new light on the continuities and differences between mid-20^th century and 21^st century social movements.