In one of the darker years of the Nicaraguan Revolution, with the US-backed Contras bearing down on the Sandinistas, people in Managua took to blasting, of all songs, the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” What was originally little more than a stereotypical disco song about going out on a Saturday night was transformed into a radical anthem of survival.

The anecdote may be little more than revolutionary lore, but it highlights something very real.

A more concrete example: in 1969, Nina Simone recorded her own version of the Beatles’s “Revolution.” The original screaming rock and roll was transmuted into a swaggering soul missive. While John Lennon and company’s song waffled on the question, Simone’s was resolute in its celebration of Black Power and the need for a fundamentally different order: