Chris Oledude is a Puerto Rican-born, African American, white-Jewish New York artist who has been writing protest music since the 1980s, when he performed on the streets of the city and in dance bands alongside his brother Geoffrey Owens. His 1984 cassette, Anyone’s Revolution, caught the ear of Pete Seeger, who encouraged him to keep writing. After decades away, the death of his wife, Sandra Dixon, brought him back to music as Chris Oledude in 2020, with a mission to blend old-school R&B, funk, and pop with the urgency of the present moment. “Save the Children” is the seventh single from his album Preacher Man Vol. 1, and we’ve been with this project for a while now, having covered “Rainbow Soul,” “If a Woman Had Made the World,” and “The Choice” previously. Each of those tracks demonstrated the genre-blending approach that defines the album, and this one continues that thread.
Originally written in 1983 as a galloping 6/8 rocker, “Save the Children” has been reworked into something that sits at the intersection of reggae, rock, jazz, and folk. The reggae framework is the right call for the subject matter: there is a long tradition of the genre serving as a vessel for exactly this kind of moral clarity, and the groove here carries the message without softening it. The song is a direct condemnation of the indiscriminate violence of war and its primary victims, children, and Oledude makes no attempt to be subtle about it. He also makes no attempt to apply it selectively, which gives it a weight that purely partisan protest songs tend to lack. The press note is explicit: it applies equally to every party that has ever decided collateral damage is an acceptable concept.
For an artist who has been carrying this particular fight since Reagan was in office, there is nothing performative or pretentious about this song. It sounds like someone who means it, and that comes through in the execution itself, it’s actual, genuine preaching.