PBS looks at pop that won’t give up the fight

Following the sumptuous meal that was Martin Scorsese’s “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan” like a big plate of store-bought cookies comes “Get Up, Stand Up: The Story of Pop and Protest,” tonight on PBS. Originally a French-German production but focused exclusively on English-language music -- no Brel, no Brecht and Weill -- it’s an often stirring if not particularly cohesive work that manages to hit only glancingly the deeper points of how music can help change the world, or the question of whether it ever really does.

In attempting to cover a century’s worth of music and movements within the space of two hours, it feels both long and rushed, a collection of clips and sound bites whose parts are greater than their sum. But they are tasty parts, and if you drop in you may find yourself staying awhile to sample them.

As a documentary, the first hour is the stronger, with its relatively narrow focus on the line that runs from Joe Hill to Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, and the intertwining one that runs from Leadbelly to Josh White to Odetta, and for its concentration on a time when music was the constant companion of social activism. Dylan, as the Scorsese film showed, wasted little time distancing himself from the “protest” movement, but there were plenty of topical singers before he arrived, and even more after he left.

The second half is more diffuse. Much of it is taken up with clips from large benefit concerts, from George Harrison’s Concert for Bangla Desh to the Beastie Boys’ Free Tibet concerts. The road here runs inexorably to punk and rap, which host Chuck D., of Public Enemy, calls “the black CNN” and which are the only current musics to consistently comment upon social conditions and the political world.

It’s been more than 40 years since Bob Dylan wrote “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” and more than 20 since Grandmaster Flash delivered “The Message,” but the times haven’t changed much -- not for the better, anyway -- and it’s still like a jungle sometimes. Yet as “Get Up, Stand Up” does show, music can make you believe that a change is going to come.

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‘Get Up, Stand Up: The Story of Pop and Protest’

Where: KCET

When: 8 tonight

Ratings: TV-PG-LV (may be unsuitable for young children, with advisories for coarse language and violence)

Chuck D...Host and narrator

Executive producer Barry Schulman. Producers and directors Hannes Rossacher and Rudi Dolezal.