As we come to the top of 2024, we keep in mind the individuals who have shuffled off this mortal coil and now stay in our collective imaginations. This modest record of musicians, composers, and singers are only a fraction of the many individuals we misplaced this 12 months, however are being highlighted for his or her willingness to talk up in favor of human rights within the face of intolerance.
Quincy Jones
The long-lasting composer, producer, and musician, well-known for his involvement in fashionable music for many years with greats from Ray Charles to Michael Jackson to Celine Dion, handed away in 2024 on the age of 91. Jones’ tireless work on music was solely matched by the work he did with a purpose to spotlight Black artists’ contributions to American tradition, and create areas for Black artists that had been beforehand unavailable. He not solely produced and performed the humanist anthem “We Are the World,” however he additionally described Donald Trump as a “crazy motherfucker. Limited mentally—a megalomaniac, narcissistic. I can’t stand him.”
He might be missed.
Johnny Canales
Born in Mexico throughout World Struggle II, Canales’ household moved to Texas the place he was raised. The Tejano singer began a TV selection present creating an area for Mexican music and artists to flourish in entrance of a wider viewers. It launched tv audiences to music and tradition that has since permeated the favored musical panorama.
Liam Payne
The previous One Path popstar died tragically this 12 months after by chance falling from a lodge balcony. Whereas boybands and their members should not recognized for wading a lot into politics, Payne made it clear the place he stood on girls’s rights.
DJ Clark Kent
DJ Clark Kent was a legendary determine in hip-hop, with deep roots to New York Metropolis, and Brooklyn particularly. He fundraised for Democratic politicians, was an envoy for hip-hop, and was brazenly hostile to Donald Trump.
Wayne Kramer
He was the cofounder of the Detroit-based MC5, whose authentic lineup had a quick and influential run within the late Sixties into the early ’70s. The band influenced what would turn out to be legions of punk musicians and followers for many years. The MC5 was unabashedly left-wing of their political opinions, one thing that by no means left Kramer. “We have a wretched grifter in the Oval Office, who has utter contempt for the rule of law and tries to manipulate the political process to his own ends, very much like Richard Nixon,” Kramer informed Salon when describing Trump in 2018.
Ken Web page
Finest recognized for starring within the long-running musical “Cats,” and as Oogie Boogie within the animated film “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Web page was brazenly homosexual at a time when that was far much less widespread. Through the COVID-19 pandemic he was vocal in supporting the Black Lives Matter motion, and making ties to the LGBTQ+ battles of his youth, selling a message of hope for younger progressives in every single place.
Kris Kristofferson
Kristofferson did all of it. He was a army veteran and an anti-war activist. He fought for staff rights, all the time defending others within the face of small-mindedness.
“I’ve been a radical for a long time. I guess it’s too bad. I’d be more marketable as a right-wing redneck,” Kristofferson informed Esquire journal in 2006. “But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.”
Steve Albini
Albini produced albums for dozens of bands, together with legendary acts like Nirvana, the Pixies, The Breeders, Urge Overkill, and PJ Harvey. He was a walk-the-walk politically acutely aware punk from Chicago. He up to date his beliefs and apologized for his previous errors with an integrity price studying from.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Reagon cofounded the a cappella group the Freedom Singers who had been a part of the Sixties civil rights protest group the Scholar Nonviolent Coordination Committee. She was a cultural historian and a curator on the Smithsonian Establishment, chronicling the American expertise reactionaries on the best would really like us to neglect about.
