Rock, Humanitarian Causes, Political Commitment and Islam
(Aug. 2008)
The present essay is a modest preliminary survey without theoretical assumptions and even fewer grand conclusions of Western rock groups that are politically and socially committed. We were particularly interested in bands or individuals that showed any awareness of the implications of 11 September, 2001. We found only one unequivocal song that dared to examine the consequences of 9/11. However, there are probably many more, and we confess our ignorance, and hope that readers will furnish more examples so that a fuller account can one day be written.
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2. ROCK AND POLITICS
ROCK AND POLITICAL COMMITMENT
The group MC5 was politically engaged, much influenced by Fred Hampton and the Black Panther party. However the group folded after 1972. Many punk bands were politically anarchist, and anti-authoritarian, for example, The Dead Kennedys criticized the religious right and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
“A couple of months ago, those fascist motherfuckers at the Fox News Network attempted to pin this band into a corner by suggesting that we said that the president should be assassinated. Nah, what we said was that he should be brought to trial as a war criminal and hung and shot. THAT’S what we said. And we don’t back away from the position because the real assassinator is Bush and Cheney and the whole administration for the lives they have destroyed here and in Iraq. They’re the ones. And what they refused to air which was far more provocative in my mind and in the minds of my bandmates is this: this system has become so brutal and vicious and cruel that it needs to start wars and profit from the destruction around the world in order to survive as a world power. THAT’s what we said. And we refuse not to stand up, we refuse to back down from that position…”
Rage Against the Machine, is, of course, not the only rock group to attack Bush, the Republicans, and even Born-Again Christians. Marilyn Manson is emblematic of provocative singers and groups flirting with Satanism and violence, and who are explicitly anti-Christian. Members of the band Slayer were accused of harbouring Nazi sympathies, and the cover to their album Christ Illusion was considered extremely offensive to Christians, and was, in fact, eventually banned in India following protests from Indian Christians. The cover showed Jesus with amputated arms in a sea of blood surrounded by severed heads. The same album featured the number “Jihad”, which deals with the 11 September attacks from the perspective of the Jihadists.
August 11The rest are too busy attacking Bush, Christianity, the United States, Capitalism, Globalization and the West generally, in other words, ironically, castigating the very culture that keeps them well-fed, well-clothed, and allows them the poetic license and freedom of expression to say whatever they want, true or false, with impunity. Are they even aware that they are in danger of losing the very freedoms they take for granted, and that they would be the first casualties in the cultural clampdown that would ensue were the Islamists ever to have their say?
STUCK MOJO
The band Stuck Mojo, a rap metal group from Atlanta Georgia, has a complicated history but Rich Ward, the guitarist, is the one stable element and continuing thread. It was formed in 1989 by Rich Ward and bassist Dwayne Fowler, and continues to this day though with different members from the early years.
The track I’m American shows a remarkable awareness of the strengths of American civilization, and an appreciation of all those who gave their lives for the freedoms they enjoy today-“This land of the free and the home of the brave, Populated by ancestors of immigrants and saves who met early graves So we could see brighter days…”. Sure there is racial discrimination but is it any better elsewhere? And, above all, we do have freedom of expression, and an embarrassment of choices and opportunities, “But we’ve got free speech so I won’t be quiet, We got a lot of problems here man I won’t deny it, But ain’t another place that I’d rather be, Than in this land of great opportunity, Where we can be anything that we wanna be, So until the day I D-I-E, I stand tall as an American.”
DREAM THEATER
Walls are closing
Anxiously
Channel surfing
Frantically
Burning City
Smoke and fire
Planes we’re certain
Faith inspired
FRANCE
France has had its share of rock concerts dedicated to humanitarian concerns, like those in support of Armenia and Ethiopia. Equally, there was a wave of French punk bands in 1980s and 1990s whose main concern was to combat the fascism of the National Front of Jean-Marie Lepen. Many of the groups were made up of children of parents of North African origins.
DASHIELL HEDAYAT
Dashiell Hedayat is an avant-garde musician, having worked with the psychedelic rock group Gong on the album Obsolete, which features an appearance by William Burroughs; novelist, essayist, and translator of the works of Bob Dylan, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Leonard Cohen into French. He has written two works under the pseudonym Jack-Alain Léger confronting Islam, Tartuffe fait ramadan [2003], and A contre Coran [2004], the latter title a pun on the French expression “contre-courant,” meaning “counter-current,” or “against the fashion.”
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