Shervin Hajipour was jailed by the Iranian regime for writing songs that “encouraged and provoked the public to riot and disrupt national security.” He received a three-year prison sentence. Eleven members of the Turkish folk-rock collective Grup Yorum remain in prison after more than a decade of persecution for writing protest songs. Twenty-two-year-old Yahaya Sharif-Aminu was sentenced to death in Nigeria for sharing a song on Whats App. It can happen here. It can happen now. 

Anthems of resistance, songs that galvanize movements, a poem that can make us all feel a part of something larger than ourselves, art is our secret weapon in their War Against Empathy.

Send me your Dissident Hymns, and together we will etch our resistance onto vinyl for posterity. It can be a protest song or an ambient instrumental. It can be didactic, profane, or poetic. When our freedom of speech is threatened out of our mouths will come flames of beauty.

Send me your Dissident Hymns and I'll cut two copies onto vinyl. I will send one to you free of charge and the other copy will join the Never Records archive. With your permission I'll share your performance on my radio show and a website that will house all of the Dissident Hymns. All performances must be 10 minutes or less and sent as a .wav or .aiff file. If you are in the New York Area I will do my best to record you for free. For questions and information: