Rise Up (Parachute Club song)

"Rise Up" is a pop song recorded by the Canadian group Parachute Club on their self-titled 1983 album. It was produced and engineered by Daniel Lanois, and written by Parachute Club members Billy Bryans, Lauri Conger, Lorraine Segato and Steve Webster with lyrics contributed by filmmaker Lynne Fernie.

An upbeat call for peace, celebration, and "freedom / to love who we please," the song was a national hit in Canada, and was hailed as a unique achievement in Canadian pop music:

According to Segato, the song was not written with any one individual group in mind, but as a universal anthem of freedom and equality; Fernie described the song's lyrics as having been inspired in part by West Coast First Nations rituals in which young girls would "rise up" at dawn to adopt their adult names as a rite of passage.

It remains the band's most famous song, and has been adopted as an activist anthem for causes as diverse as gay rights, feminism, anti-racism and the New Democratic Party. As well, the song's reggae and soca-influenced rhythms made it the first significant commercial breakthrough for Caribbean music in Canada.

The song's first ever live public performance took place at the 1983 Toronto Pride parade. In 2014, the surviving band members released a contemporary dance remix of the song in conjunction with Toronto's hosting of the 2014 edition of WorldPride.

It won the Juno Award for Single of the Year at the Juno Awards of 1984, over fellow nominees "Cuts Like a Knife" and "Straight from the Heart" by Bryan Adams, "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart, and "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats.

...
Wikipedia