April 27, 2003
Rediscovering Revolutionary Music
As Mick Farren said in Rock's Back Pages, America needs to rediscover its rock and roll spirit of freedom, to liberate music from the corporate giants that now strangle anything that looks like creativity and recreate revolutionary art that proclaims freedom and defies the totalitarian limits now being pressed upon us by Bush & Co.Some promising efforts can be found at regolith.co.uk.
Music is a powerful force for cultural and political change. The effect of people like John Lennon, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and an endless list of others cannot be measured, but is undoubtedly enormous. But American music has fallen under effective control by the corporate monopolies that increasingly control all American media, and by doing so, control the flow of information in the culture.
What maintains the power of Bush & Co. is ideas, and it is through ideas and information that Americans can loosen the grip of corporate totalitarianism.
This is culture war. So go to it, revolutionary artists of the 21st Century!