An Emerging Tea Party Anthem?

By Michael Johns

Music has long had a foothold in many national protest movements. For the tea party movement, which is now arguably the largest such movement in American history, a growing number of music groups and songs have proven appealing, receiving play at the thousands of tea party events held nationally since the movement's 2009 launch. To date, however, no singular song or group has received the broad embrace that, say, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young did by the liberal protest movement of the 1970s, which embraced songs like "Woodstock" and "Ohio" as reflective of their movement's ethos.

For the tea party movement, however, all this may be beginning to change, The New York Times reports. Krista Branch's "I Am America" is now receiving growing play at various tea party rallies and has been adopted as a campaign theme song for tea party-supported Herman Cain's Presidential campaign. "The first time I heard that song, the message was so right-on I felt goose bumps just listening to it," Cain told The New York Times.

The song's lyrics, authored by Branch and her husband, were inspired by the tea party movement and depict the arrogance of a governing elite who ignore and demean the sentiments of the American people. "Pay no attention to the people in the street, crying out for accountability. Make a joke of what we believe, say we don't matter cause you disagree," Branch sings in the song.

Branch says the tea party movement's most unifying theme is that America is the greatest nation on Earth. The tea party movement, she says, is "not so much a rebellion as a love for this nation and a love for freedom."