“The Partisan” is an anti-fascist anthem about the French Resistance in World War II. The song was composed in 1943 by Russian-born Anna Marly, with lyrics by French Resistance leader Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, and originally titled “La Complainte du partisan” (English: “The Lament of the Partisan”). Marly performed it and other songs on […]
Grace Petrie
Grace Petrie is an English folk singer-songwriter and guitarist from Leicester, England. She was hailed in The Guardian as “a powerful new songwriting voice” in 2011. She began performing in 2006 as a solo vocalist and acoustic guitarist, and self-released an eponymous album that year, followed in 2007 by second album Feeling Better. In 2010, […]
Union Maid
“Union Maid” is a union song, with lyrics written by Woody Guthrie in response to a request for a union song from a female point of view. The melody is the 1907 standard “Red Wing” by Kerry Mills, which was in turn adapted from Robert Schumann’s piano composition “The Happy Farmer, Returning From Work” in […]
Ethel Smyth
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was an English composer and a member of the women’s suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas. Smyth tended to be marginalised as a “woman composer” as though her work could not be accepted as mainstream. Yet when she produced more […]
Kombinat Choir
Kombinat, also called Kombinatke, is a female choir that sings revolutionary tunes from all over the world in original languages. It was founded on the day of the uprising, April 27, 2008, when a group of girls gathered at the founding assembly in Ljubljana’s Rog and decided that we would sing songs of the uprising […]
Baraye
“Baraye” (“For…”) is a 2022 power ballad by Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour. Widely referred to as “the anthem” of the protests, the song was inspired by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly and whose death in police custody was alleged to have been […]
Bella Ciao
“Bella ciao” (Goodbye beautiful) is an Italian protest folk song from the late 19th century. The origins of the song are unclear, although one hypothesis is that “Bella Ciao” was originally sung as “Alla mattina appena alzata” (“In the morning as soon as I woke up”) by seasonal workers of paddy fields of rice, especially […]
Debout Les Femmes
The MLF Anthem , sometimes called the Women’s Anthem , Standing Women or Debout les femmes , is a song created collectively in March 1971 by feminist activists in Paris. It has become an emblem of the Women’s Liberation Movement (MLF) and more generally of French-speaking feminist struggles. The words are performed to the tune […]
La Compagnie Jolie Mome
La Compagnie Jolie Mome is a troupe that has celebrated its 40th anniversary! Who perform plays, their own pieces or a repertoire inherited from Brecht, Prévert… Who often sing, on stage as well as in the street or at dinner shows. Who sometimes fight for their rights or in support of other workers. Who created […]
Do You Hear The People Sing?
“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, […]