For me, it began with Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World. I first heard its enormous chorus as something almost celebratory. Then I listened properly.
By then, I had already travelled around the world and seen things I wasn’t prepared for: homelessness, addiction, poverty and inequalities far removed from the places shown on postcards. Suddenly, Young’s song sounded different. Beneath its energy was an uncomfortable question about freedom: who actually gets to experience it? That question began travelling with me.
Explain that before travelling, poverty and homelessness were abstract ideas. After visiting American cities, South African townships and Brazilian favelas, those lyrics carried a completely different meaning.
In South African townships, Brazilian favelas and poorer communities in the United States, I started looking beyond the sights. I noticed workers heading out before dawn, political graffiti, forgotten neighbourhoods and histories that changed depending on who was telling them.
I noticed:
- abandoned factories
- docklands
- mining towns
- workers commuting before dawn
- Indigenous memorials
- political murals
- former industrial districts
- neighbourhoods shaped by migration
I stopped travelling just to admire places and started asking why they looked the way they did.
Other songs became part of that journey. The Clash made me think about class, racism and power. Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning led me towards Indigenous history and the uncomfortable legacy of colonialism. Chumbawamba, Bad Religion, Manic Street Preachers and later Dead Pioneers pushed the questions further.
I began to realise that music could be a different kind of travel guide. A monument might celebrate a pioneer. A history book might describe a conquest. But stand in that same landscape with someone whose ancestors experienced the event from the other side, and suddenly the scenery changes.
Perhaps that is what travelling—and these songs—ultimately taught me. Adventure is not only about reaching remote mountains, ancient ruins or forgotten roads. Sometimes the greater adventure is questioning the story you arrived with.
Artists like High Vis, Meryl Streek and Dead Pioneers show that protest music didn't disappear after The Clash or Billy Bragg. The issues evolved, but the tradition of questioning power continues.
Looking back, I realise those records were never simply a soundtrack to my travels. They became another way of reading the world. Guidebooks helped me find places, but protest music taught me to notice the people history often leaves out. That's the lesson I still carry every time I travel.
The further I travelled, the more I realised the songs were not taking me away from the world. They were teaching me how to see it.
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