In this article, I am going to focus on four of Kinkel’s political settings, namely two Rhineland songs to poems by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), Rheinstrom and Kölln, and two of Kinkel’s socio-political Lieder, Demokratenlied and Abendlied nach der Schlacht. Considering that the nineteenth-century art song was one of the most popular bourgeois art forms of the time (Grout, Burkholder & Palisca 605), I am going to apply theories of classical musicology, ethnomusicology and cultural studies. Building on the assumption that Kinkel’s art songs were considered popular music within their own socio-cultural context, and bearing in mind Kinkel’s public involvement in various strands of music (choral singing, salon performances, publication and sales of Kunstvolkslieder), this article will argue that Johanna Kinkel, through her public musical participation, helped shape the cultural identity of her own literary and politicaldemocratic association, the Maikäferbund, and perhaps more generally, the democratic revolutionary movement of the 1840s.