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Do you think there's no good protest music these days? So did I, until I started looking for it. Every month, I listen to it all, then select the best that relates to that month’s political news. Here’s the round-up for September 2024.

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1. SOUTH WEST SYNDICATE - PROMISED LAND��

At the start of September, Indigenous custodians gathered hundreds of clapstick and yidaki (didgeridoo) players in Magan-djin/Brisbane to mark three years of occupying the notorious Adani coal mine. The event broke the world record for the number of clapstick players in one place. A week later, Aboriginal and multi-ethnic hip-hop collective South-West Syndicate released their new album, which celebrates such conservation efforts. "We start this story with the pre-occupation of the continent now known as Australia, where First Nations peoples lived with and nurtured the land for a hundred thousand years," say its liner notes. But as Australia's ruling Labor Party approved 1.5 billion tonnes of coal mine emissions and the opposition , the album, like so many Aboriginal people, took the moral high ground, welcoming immigrants and celebrating their stories. �� ��

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2. BARKAA - BIG TIDDA��

That is all the more generous when considering the devastating consequences of colonisation. Such suffering hit the headlines again on September 4, when Indigenous Senator Lidia Thorpe demanded a federal intervention after a second Aboriginal child died in a West Australian youth prison. Days later, it was revealed an after shoplifting goods worth just $23. Both stories came days after Indigenous emcee Barkaa, who has served jail time herself, released her acclaimed new EP. Asked about her ambitions for world domination after and music video of the year at the National Indigenous Music Awards, she replied, laughing: The awards were held in the Northern Territory where, days later, Aboriginal women's group album. ��

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3. MISS KANINNA - KANINNA��

Barkaa was by fast-rising Indigenous singer Miss Kaninna as she released her new EP on September 20. "What I'm saying isn’t new," she said. "I’m not coming up with new ideas, I'm not saying anything that's fucking new. Everything I'm saying has been said since, you know, colonisation: ‘We want our fucking land back.’" Yet her cutting-edge, bass-heavy pop is so innovative that she was already selling out her headline tour of the country before the EP was even released. She used her real name, Kaninna, as the title of the record because - like so many people in Australia with non-Anglo sounding names - she had faced pressure to change it. "As a child I was given a nickname because people either couldn't be bothered learning how to say my name - or were just racist," she said. "People would say , which made me ashamed of my name."

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4. GREATSOUTH - GREATSOUTH��

Across the Tasman Sea, the Indigenous Māori were also fighting against a huge attack as Aotearoa/New Zealand's new right-wing government stripped them of their rights. Leading the musical resistance was Māori musician Theia, who sings on her new single, "BALDH3AD!": "We’re prisoners on the very land we’re from. Plunder my motherland, pollute the sea, but still I survive, though you clip my wings, Baldhead, you tricked us with your treaty.” Discussing the record on September 16, she called it of the world”. Her single came days after the new EP from Māori musician Payton Taplin under the name Greatsouth. he said. "Māori have always had to fight for their rights... the land marches, the foreshore seabed - all that stuff is off the back of Māori protests... There's always an element of that within all Aotearoa Māori art."

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5. SNOTTY NOSE REZ KIDS - RED FUTURE��

Facing the same struggle in Canada were Indigenous rap duo Snotty Nose Rez Kids, who released their latest album of raucous resistance on September 13. Its title, Red Future, is about , they said. On its opening track, "Welcome To My World", they rap: "We're living in a system where nothing's ever given. Your people fill our lands, while our people fill your prisons." Five days before the album's release, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police shot dead Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation man Danny Knife. He was the sixth First Nations person to be killed by Canadian police in 11 days. On September 17, Toronto musician pHoenix Pagliacci said the climate emergency and genocide in Gaza meant , despite the success of her latest album. “I need to figure out my place in making this world a better place," she said. �� ��

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6. SERJ TANKIAN - FOUNDATIONS��

Well aware of the effects of the genocide in Gaza is System Of A Down singer of super-strong songs on September 27. On its lead single, "Justice Will Shine On", the Armenian vocalist articulates the lasting trauma from his people's own genocide. “We are the children of all the survivors,” he sings. “Justice will shine on. We are the demons of all the deniers. Justice will shine on.” Days earlier, Philadelphia punks The Dissidents released their latest . It was, they said, "the last of three international compilations we put together this year to support people trying to survive Israel's brutal assault on Gaza, which has been going on for almost a year". It came as police fired tear gas and ammunition at activists as they peacefully protested against a Melbourne arms fair selling weapons "battle-tested" in Gaza. �� ��

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7. DELILAH BON - EVIL, HATE FILLED FEMALE��

Middle East Monitor reported on September 9 that "an Israeli rabbi with strong links to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling party was filmed Palestinian prisoners from Gaza". That followed Israeli leaders , saying "everything is legitimate". Skewering such notions is the from British feminist "brat punk" Delilah Bon, who at her shows. "You get so offended when I say dead men don't rape," she sings. "But where is your anger when I say women are dying?" On the album, she displays all the vocal dexterity of misogynistic rapper Eminem, but then goes one better by hitting the kind of high notes only Christina Aguilera could reach, as she belts out punchlines like: "My feminist agenda, to put all your cocks in a blender.”

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8. SHEMEKIA COPELAND - BLAME IT ON EVE��

In her song "Epstein", Delilah Bon targets disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and powerful men like him, who use their position to prey on females in plain sight of everyone. The album came as the former owner of London luxury store Harrods, multiple employees. Both he and Epstein are long dead, leaving Epstein's female accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, to take the blame in his case. A on September 17, a fortnight after blues singer Shemekia Copeland released her latest aptly-titled album, . “Adam got his apple and some bad advice,” she sings. “Ever since then Eve’s been taking the heat... Hurricanes and tropical twisters, always get named after some sister. But the worst windstorm is from DC, stealing rights from you and me. While a man is tough, a woman’s a bitch. Who needs a trial? Burn that witch.” ����

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9. MARIA ISA - CAPITOLIO��

When a on September 15, the Republican Party's presidential hopeful tried to pin the blame on his female Democratic Party rival, Kamala Harris. She responded by saying: “Violence has no place in America.” But critics pointed out that at home and abroad. Harris then dispelled any doubts by assuring gun-loving Americans that "if ”. That Democratic double-think can also be heard on the new EP by Democratic Representative Maria Isa Pérez-Vega, who is known as "the rep who raps". In an interview on September 13, she . Yet on the EP's song "1st Class Flights" she boasts of her elite travel and dining arrangements. Harris, meanwhile, sought to reassure voters whose side she was on. she declared on September 25. ��

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10. THE THE - ENSOULMENT

Britain's new Labour Party Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was also leaving voters in no doubt as to whose side he was on, as he became on September 15. Days earlier, one of his British subjects, Matt Johnson, released his as The The, which takes aim at the likes of Starmer. On "Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake", he sings: "This greedy, unpleasant land wraps itself in a flag, pretending it's freedom – a dictatorship in drag. The forever wars, tyrannical laws, the coup d'états with probable cause, all revealed to little more than polite applause." As of Israel's exploding pager attacks on Hezbollah, Starmer was accused of indifference over Britain's forever wars in the Middle East. In a speech, he rather than hostages. ����

[Mat Ward has been writing for��91������̳��since 2009. He also wrote����and��makes��political music. This year,��Mat Ward released his new album,��Take The Rad Pill.]

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