This site is devoted to re-energizing social change movements by offering them readily sing-able participatory songs. They may be simple songs like “Down by the Riverside,” or they may be songs with “message” verses and easy choruses like “This Land is Your Land,” or they may be call-and-response songs like “Ain’t Afraid of Your Jail ‘Cause I Want My Freedom,” or they may be “zipper” songs into which new verses can be readily “zipped” like “We Shall Not Be Moved.”
The object is to reclaim one of the great tools of past social change campaigns: songs that weld crowds of people into movements through shared participation in singing.
Peter Bergel is a lifelong social change activist and song leader. He wants to connect with other musicians who are interested in working to re-introduce participatory singing into today’s social change movements. Email him.
I am trying to compose a book of zipper songs for peace and social justice actions. Is there somewhere where there is a list of them?
I am looking for peace and social justice zipper zsongs.
Try Peace is Flowing Like a River
Any number of civil rights songs like Down By the Riverside or Turn Me Around
One Pair of Hands
God’s Counting on Me
Does this help? Sorry I didn’t get to this sooner.
The new songbook from Peter and Annie Blood-Patterson, authors of “Rise Up Singing,” is due out this fall (perhaps already available). Those two songbooks are the first places I’d look for the oldest and newest “zipper songs.”