ABSTRACT
Regardless of the nature or distance of the relationship between songwriter and the deceased, many disaster songs are written as part of a grieving process. The four factors – news coverage, presence of a moral, narrative distinctiveness, and cultural relevance – may interact in various ways to encourage and inspire disaster songs. The presence of these factors in a disastrous event doesn’t guarantee that a song will emerge, but they do create the conditions that make songwriting more likely. Some scholars have noted how American consumerism appears to be at play in the popularity and proliferation of vernacular memorials. Erica Doss acknowledges that the materiality of vernacular memorials stems, in part, from how easy and inexpensive it is to participate in this memorial culture. When linked to labor, protest songs are almost invariably about the working classes and blue-collar occupations.
