Every Movement Needs a Soundtrack—Ours Is on Mute.

"This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair. No place for self-pity. No need for silence. No room for fear."  
– Toni Morrison

This year marks the 35th anniversary of Public Enemy’s "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back." 

It was a landmark album that didn’t just top charts; it taught lessons. Through pulsing beats and fluid lyricism, it amplified a powerful Black politics and spoke Black truth to power. 

Their music offered not just commentary, but also a curriculum, guiding young listeners to question systems, study history, and see themselves as part of a larger story. Lessons about Malcolm, Mandela, and the Mississippi Freedom Summer came alive in stereo.

It is a powerful example of how art is so much more than entertainment and has power that transcends aesthetics. It has a perspective, projects a narrative, and makes an impact on the world in material and enduring ways. In the case of Public Enemy’s art, tracks become textbooks, rhymes become resistance. 

Indeed, art has been a vital element of movements for social change throughout history and the world. Bold, beautiful artistic threads of all kinds weave together to create a powerful tapestry of cultural and political action. 

And yet, in our own work to remake public schools into the high-quality, just, and culturally affirming places that all students deserve, there has been a noticeable absence of art as advocacy. That wasn’t always the case. 

There was a time when students could walk into our classrooms and be greeted by more than books and blackboards; they were met with brushes, rhythms, rhymes, and revolution.

During my own upbringing in Philadelphia, my classmates and I read, wrote, drew, painted, sculpted, and studied alongside community artists and gifted arts teachers. 

Resistance Through the Arts

As the teacher leader for the Art and Music Small Learning Community, we had a rallying cry: Resistance Through the Arts. It was more than a theme, but a way of life, a philosophy, a pedagogy of liberation. It shaped how we taught, how students learned, and how our classrooms breathed. Students didn’t just absorb information; they produced meaning, claimed identity, and projected hope through art.

We explored how art has always been a tool for resistance: against racism, inequality, and silence. Some embraced the political aspects of artistic expression, while others leaned on the arts to express and navigate the maelstrom of emotional challenges that arise from growing up Black. In every case, they created something powerful, something lasting. 

This extended beyond my time as a teacher. As a principal, even after our then-Governor slashed $1 billion from education budgets, and my school alone lost $1 million, we fought to keep our arts programs intact.

We fought hard for arts programs because we knew deeply what policymakers often forget: that art and music “are the message” and, in the hands of our youth and school communities, are powerful means of resisting injustice, ignorance, and despair. 

Once again, we need a cultural movement to move hand-in-glove with our social and political projects, one that nourishes the soul of education. That cultural movement must be scored, painted, danced, and spoken into existence. Just as art without urgency, art without truth, is a missed opportunity, so too is a social movement without a soundtrack, a political project without poetry. It is ultimately like an unfinished symphony, stripped of its resonance, power, and soul. 

We need to reinvigorate that legacy—not just through music but through all the visual arts, performance, poetry, and dance.

Arts education must be reclaimed as community learning and critical pedagogy. It's not a luxury. It’s a lifeline.

The media our students consume can either numb them or inspire them, sharpen or dull them, inform and educate, or mislead and miseducate. The imagery, the lyrics, the headlines, these things give shape and substance to our lived realities. They mold how we see ourselves and our place in the world, our place in the movement.  

Every movement has had its soundtrack. The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement weren’t just historical eras; they were choruses of resistance scored by people who believed that freedom could be sung, spoken, and painted into being.

Today’s educational movement, its students, and the communities it aims to serve deserve nothing less. 

"The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice; I had no alternative."

–Paul Robeson