Protest has many faces—and today, as in the past, we encounter it in the most varied ways, be it as traffic interventions intended to call attention to climate change or through those frequent news reports that tell of the courageous demonstrators in Iran and highlight the life-threatening consequences that their acts of protest entail.

Back in 1960, when Bob Dylan first read Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound for Glory (which not only portrayed the situation in the USA during the Great Depression of the 1930s but also revitalised the American national myth of self-determination and freedom), the singer-songwriter and folk music scene was still worlds away from Vienna and its environs.

In the music of Austrian composer Hanns Eisler (1898–1962), steadfast rejection of war plays a conspicuous and consistently present role.

Brutpflegerinnen members Eva Puchner and Susanne Preissl, mdw graduates Golnar Shahyar and Simon Scharinger, and Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology head Marko Kölbl discuss whether art has to be political and the contexts in which it can support protest movements.