Research into relations between music and politics is fraught with contradictions, ranging from the highly optimistic to far more limited. For the most part, there is agreement that music communicates meanings, some of these being subversive politics, though studies rarely detail what that subversion means and how it is articulated. This presentation demonstrates how musical sounds, lyrics, and images articulate politics of protest, by closely analysing a protest video from the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey.

Istanbul’s Gezi Park protests started on 28 May 2013. A demonstration by a few city planners and environmentalists quickly grew into approximately 3.5 million people protesting in over 80 cities. Protests attracted diverse groups who were against aspects of the ruling Justice and Development Party such as perceived infringements on democracy, freedom, repressive police tactics, and government policies.

June 2013 also saw an explosion of music videos distributed on the internet which called for resistance. From a corpus of over 140 videos, a typical example is analysed employing Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies to examine the limits and potential of popular music's articulation of resistance to government policies. It is found that videos have the potential to contribute to public discussions of resistance. However, this is limited to a mix of expressions of anger, populism, and authenticity, rather than a direct critique of the government’s policies, including Neo-Liberal economics and environmental concerns, the original reasons for the protests.