The Power of Music During Protest

It was a warm, sunny day in West Bridgewater. How could my Woodward friends and I stay on campus when the weather was so beautiful? 

The 5 of us made our way into Downtown Boston with the convenience of the commuter rail being across campus. Not long after our departure from South Station, we saw a crowd of people holding signs from a distance. Once we got closer to the crowd, we heard a bunch of people chanting. It wasn’t until we were standing on the outskirts of the crowd that we could hear what was being said. “Shut it down! Shut it down!” I looked at the signs being held up in front of me and noticed what was posted on them: “On Strike @ Ritz-Carlton Boston”. I later learned that the Ritz-Carlton was a hotel and the building we all stood in front of. After doing a short amount of research, the hotel was being sued for a noise issue, “a racket” as the Boston Globe called it.  

Media cameras were everywhere. As the chants continued, I began to hear a new sound, like the banging of a drum. Multiple protesters had drumsticks in hand and were hitting the bottoms of orange barrels with them. Towards the center of the crowd, participants of the strike were dancing to the chants and bangs of the drums. One of my friends who was standing next to me, began chiming in on the “Shut it down” phrase as well as the dancing. A man who was also on the outskirts of the crowd and holding a sign high-fived my friend which I thought was super cool. My friends and I were enjoying the protest even though we hadn’t known anything about its happenings until we saw the crowd. Although I didn’t know exactly what was being protested, I felt connected to the energy of the crowd and music which made the experience fun. I wanted to share this particular day last year with the blog because I believed it reflected the idea that music can help to advocate or promote a specific issue well, considering that college students such as ourselves gravitated towards the sounds we heard.