ABSTRACT
Civil rights historians have traced the radical roots of civil rights to the 1930s and 1940s and have paid particular attention to the speeches on the actual day. Playing and listening to music can signify political action as scholars of the civil rights movement and the postwar popular left in the US have documented. The shared experience of listening to music and singing is often pushed to the margins in socio-political and historical accounts of central moments of change. Music underpins social movements and has the potential to strengthen an imaginary community of protesters. Musicians become truth bearers to the political causes and the agenda of the March on Washington. The analysis of the sound signatures at the event has revealed that the mediation of the event often determines what and how music is remembered, or even erased from memory.
