Songs about Rich & Poor

This is a page showing some ways to help you find songs about issues of economic justice, wealth, and poverty in our songbooks. Most of these are in the chapter called "Rich & Poor", which can be found in both songbooks.

Here are some of our favorite songs in the Rich & Poor chapter in Rise Again:

Bells of Rhymney by Pete Seeger
I Cannot Sleep by Malvina Reynolds (who was married to a union organizer)
It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go by Nanci Griffith
Mean Things Happening in This Land by John Handcox
More Than Enough by Roy Bailey
No Banker Left Behind by Ry Cooder
The Rich Man's House by Anne Feeney & the Kensington Welfare Rights Union
Rolling Home by John Tams
When the Rain Comes Down by Bob Devlin
World in Their Pocket by Malvina Reynolds

See also the Rise Again chapters on Farm & Prairie, Work, and Struggle. Here are a few of our favorite songs on this subject in other chapters of Rise Again:

Ballad of the Carpenter by Ewan MacColl
Bracero by Phil Ochs
Dignity by Bonnie Lockhart
Hands by Phil Ochs

Here are some of our favorites in the Rich & Poor chapter of Rise Up Singing:

Banks of Marble by Les Rice
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime by Yip Harwell
I Ain't Got No Home by Woody Guthrie
The Man That Waters the Workers' Beer by Paddy Ryan
Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out by Jimmy Cox
Rigs of the Time (English trad.)
We Hate to See Them Go - by Malvina Reynolds
The World Turned Upside Down - by Leon Rosselson

Here are some great songs on this subject in the City chapter of Rise Up Singing:

Bourgeois Blues (Leadbelly)
Dirty Old Town (Ewan MacColl)
Faucets Are Dripping (Malvina Reynolds)
Heaven Help Us All (Ronald Miller)
My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen_
Streets of London (Ralph McTell)

See also the chapters on Farm & Prairie and the one on Work. Here are a few other of our favorites on this subject found in other chapters of Rise Up Singing: