Music with Ian Chapman: A selection of Kiwi protest music

One of the essential functions of art - whether it's visual art or the performing arts - is to comment on society and to highlight issues that require change. Pop music is ideal for this because of its widespread appeal. It's right there in the name; it's pop(ular). Never did pop music and protest synergise more effectively in Aotearoa than in the 1980s; an era when there was no internet and therefore nothing to dilute popular music's enormous power as a rallying point for public focus. Today music commentator Ian Chapman revisits four tracks from this golden era of protest. Ian Chapman is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Music at Otago University