A recent episode of the Track Star podcast featured saxophonist Ravi Coltrane discussing how his father John Coltrane used instrumental jazz as protest music.
The 1963 masterpiece Alabama was recorded without vocals following a KKK church bombing in Birmingham that killed four Black girls, mirroring Martin Luther King Jr's tribute.
Jazz icons historically used instrumental arrangements and subverted vocal formats to challenge the status quo, from Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit to Max Roach's works.