In Communist-ruled Krakow, playing the lute was a subversive activity. To assert the existence of an historical Polish music culture was tantamount to separatist sedition. Music has been closely associated with many revolts, violent and peaceful, grandiose and plebeian. Verdi's opera Nabucco incited Italian patriots to noisy demonstrations against the Austrian army of occupation and his name was chanted as an acronym of ‘Vittorio Emmanuele Re d'ltalia.’ A less exalted musical flowering, but still one of the most remarkable in the twentieth century, was that initially associated with Salvador Allende's government in Chile in the 1970s, and in other Latin American countries since: an upsurge of nueva canción expressing hopes for, and sometimes the triumphs of, social liberalisation and reform, and whose chief exponents are now to be found in Argentina (the glorious Mercedes Sosa) and in Nicaragua.

Saw Moo Troo speaks of propaganda abroad, but it is within the country of insurrection that music counts for most. ‘Populist’ uprisings make use of music to communicate with people who may have been downtrodden for years, even for generations, and who are often illiterate. Songs provide a ready means of spreading a message.