Listening comprehension for VOA podcast:

American Sociological Association Names Top Protest Songs

By Lawan Davis May 14th, 2006
Source: http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2006-05/2006-05-14-voa2.cfm

1. Why have people written protest songs according to this programme?

2. “Protest songs have denounced slavery, war, poverty and inequality.”
What do you think denounced means?
3. What have protest songs been used to set focus on?
4. The American Sociological Association made a list of the most important protest
songs in America during the past century. Where was the list of the fourteen songs
published?
5. What two songs were sung the most during the civil rights movement in the fifties
and the sixties?
6. What are these two songs versions of?
7. The song “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” was written by brothers James Weldon
Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson in the early nineteen hundreds. But were did
the words come from?
8. What was the song later known as?
9. It was said that the song ”Strange Fruit” was one of the greatest protest songs
ever. It condemns the hanging of African American men in the American South?
What do you think the word condemn means?
10. What famous blues singer turned the poem “strange fruit” into a song?
11. It was said that Bob Dylan’s protest songs condemn war and support civil rights.
Can you explain what civil rights are?
12. What was the title of the hip-hop group Public Enemy’s protest song?
13. When did John Lennon write Imagine?
14. Why did he write it according to this program?
15. What was said to be the message of “Imagine”?

The English Classroom y © 2008 Kasper Kjeldgaard Stoltz