Get Up Stand Up traces how music became important in the fight for human rights across the world.

Featuring Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Curtis Mayfield, Peter Gabriel and many more, this six-part series reveals how the power of music is used to convey social dissatisfaction and political protest.

The series examines cases from the Vietnam War in the 1960s to the 1985 Live Aid concert. The key musicians from each period reflect on their music and politics, with comments from music journalists and famous figures, such as actors Tim Robbins and Martin Sheen, who grew up amid social and political transformation. This series introduction gives an overview of the vital role popular music has played in the ongoing struggles for peace and equality, and examines specific issues such as the fights for Native American rights and Tibetan liberation.
 

EP 1: WE SHALL OVERCOME
An introductory overview of the story, tracing the birth of agitpop and looking at music’s role in the fight for human rights everywhere, from the American union movement and the civil rights movement to the struggles against apartheid and for Native American rights and Tibetan liberation.

EP 2: NEXT STOP IS VIETNAM
The Vietnam War in the States and the 1968 upheavals in Europe radicalise a generation. A look at the social factors that combined to make music-oriented youth culture the focus of the peace movement, and at the current anti-war movement.

EP 3: FIGHT THE POWER
The anarchistic 60s protest culture is replaced by strategic pop PR. Wider issues like war and human rights are replaced by targeted campaigns against nuclear power plants and Amazonian deforestation, US foreign policy in central America, the British Army in Ireland, the death penalty and the proliferation of landmines..
  EP 4: SAY IT LOUD
An overview of the rich history of politics in black music, from Paul Robeson to Ms Dynamite, from the civil rights movement and pacifism to black separatism, gangsta rap, the LA riots and the power of polemical poetry.

EP 5: WE ARE THE WORLD
Do good intentions always translate into great art? As musicians become more and more stellar, they find they can use their celebrity to raise hard cash to help others - be it the destitute in Bangladesh, Live Aid, the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS, Farm Aid, campaigns to oppose sexual discrimination and to end child slavery.

EP 6: WHAT’S GOING ON
Politicians understand pop’s power as a vehicle for communication, but the history of rock’s alliances with political parties is fraught with complications. We bring the story up-to-date, taking in the new muso-political landscape after September 11th, the shifting personal and political allegiances, and the new pragmatism of the Drop The Debt movement as the way forward, with Bono & Geldof moving beyond raising money and mass support for a cause to becoming expert political lobbyists, using their unique position to engender face-to-face political talks with senators, popes and presidents.