If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it.
Music in Iran is considered a safety valve for the state …. We don’t have music in Iran.
'Rapper's Delight' came from the TV entertainment show 'Good Times,' but when the times called for a shift in the narrative, artists answered, covering brutal truths in their rhymes that were uncomfortable for society to confront.
Musicians have been political literally since people were writing songs.
Today we are in a war against war - music is our power.
From chain gangs to folk songs to intelligent soul, America has created musicians dedicated to truth, justice, and a better American Way.
Maybe rock 'n' roll isn't music. Maybe people just need to be reminded that the world ain't the way they think it is.
The things we sing about are timeless. Political affairs and social situations come and go. But if you're singing about empowerment and not playing by the rules, you can sing about them until you can't sing anymore.
I claimed identity as Jewish musicians for political reasons, because most of us were touring in Germany and, at this time, twelve years ago, there was a strong resurgence of Nazism in the places we were touring and part of that was on the music scene.
Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.
I set out to create a means whereby music could be a way of vindicating the rights of the masses.
Entertainment is about telling everybody that everything is alright but music is on the side of the upsetters and that's where I'm at.
If you see something is going wrong within politics and the world today, then some Hip Hop artist is gonna come along and get straight with it. If they think that there's a lot of racism going on then there's another Hip Hop artist who's gonna come out and speak their mind.
I don't support terrorism and never have. As a Sri Lankan that fled war and bombings, my music is the voice of the civilian refugee.
Rather, I believe that it is very good, if, with the aid of his songs, we can be reminded, among other things, of the social conditions under which Schubert had to work.
I don't see it in terms of changing things, but rather using language and music as weapons for fighting a mainstream media which is predominately right wing, and loyal to the political framework and its corporate interests.
I think Pussy Riot is amazing. I'm honored that they were inspired by riot grrl, and obviously they're making history around the world.
If you look at a company like Uber, a company that so anti-establishment that cab companies are trying to find ways to shut it down, one could compare that to how Public Enemy and NWA went after then-modern society in hip hop.
Black people lived right by the railroad tracks, and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy, and I thought: I'm gonna make a song that sounds like that.
'Jelly,' more than any black musical before it, celebrated the majesty, the purity, the joy of so many artists who are unable to fully embody these same qualities in their own lives.
A lot of British people of my age would not have know of the terrible treatment of Nelson Mandela if not for Jerry Dammers and The Specials.
Music is the weapon. Music is the weapon of the future.
