“Do You Hear the People Sing?” (“French: À la volonté du peuple“, literally To the will of the people, in the original French version) is one of the principal and most recognisable songs from the 1980 musical Les Miserables. It is sung twice in the opening and closing section of the stage musical. The song, composed by Claude-Michel Schönberg (music), Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel (original French lyrics), and Herbert Kretzmer (English lyrics) is first sung in Act I by Enjolras and the other students at the ABC Cafe as they prepare themselves to launch a rebellion in the streets of Paris during the funeral procession of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque. The song is sung again in the finale as the concluding song of the musical. This second version, which immediately follows a number by Jean Valjean and others, is sung by the entire cast with revised lyrics, and becomes progressively louder and thunderous with each stanza.
The song is a revolutionary call for people to overcome adversity. The “barricades” referred to in the song are erected by the rebel students in the streets of Paris in the musical’s second act. They are to draw the National Guard into combat and ignite a civilian uprising to overthrow the government, but their rebellion eventually fails. But in the finale, this song transitions into a hymn when all anticipates a world full of peace, freedom, and liberation for all mankind.
There are unofficial adaptations of “Do You Hear the People Sing?” in Cantonese and Taiwanese, intended as actual protest songs; better known versions include “Asking Who That Hasn’t Spoken Out” written in Cantonese for Occupy Central with Love and Peace, and “Lí Kám Ū Thiann-tio̍h Lán Ê Kua” in Taiwanese Hokkien. The song can be heard in protest in Hong Kong as recently as September 2019, when students sang this song over the national anthem during a secondary school’s opening assembly. The song was initially removed on music platforms including QQ Music in mainland China because of its widespread usage in anti-extradition bill protests, while its English version was later removed from those platforms.
Aside from the aforementioned Cantonese and Taiwanese Hokkien adaptations, The Telegraph said that the song “has long chimed with people protesting around the world”, adding that it was heard at the 2011 Wisconsin protests, the 2013 protests in Turkey, and a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Australia in 2013. It has also been used by anti-TTIP protesters who have interrupted TTIP congresses as flashmobs singing the song.
Iraqis involved in the protests in 2019 also released a video with the song used. In September 2020, a number of MSLU students in Minsk, Belarus, were detained after performing the song in the lobby of their educational institution. The students were protesting after president Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed re-election. In April 2022, a clip of the 2012 film version of the song circulated on Twitter in protest of the lockdown during the 2022 Shanghai COVID-19 outbreak. The clip was ultimately blocked by the Chinese government to stop further protest.
