ABSTRACT
The employment of street music in the very specific context of political protest remains a curiously under-researched aspect of cultural politics in social movements. Even earlier manifestations of street music included 'rough music' or charivari, featuring domestic utensils taken outside and used to make improvised music in an aural public gesture of communal disapproval or rivalry - a variation on expulsion through drumming out. Within popular music more generally the urban street is one focal zone not simply for activity and energy—the setting of 'authentic', usually masculinist, lyrics and videos but also the street recurs within the landscape or mythography of pop's moments of political struggle for social change. In an extraordinary sign of the level of detail involved perhaps also a confirmation of the potential power of provocation of street music - the commission could even dictate the repertoire to be played by a band on the day of a parade.
