I find early jazz to be the most revolutionary music of its time.
Hip-hop belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's one of the most radical, revolutionary and reactionary music there is.
N.W.A had something in common with the Rolling Stones and MC5 and groups like that: the voice of rebellion. It's rebellion against your parents. It's rebellion against the system. It's rebellion against society.
The Roots are well-respected and considered vanguards in the music.
There are a lot of people out there doing cool work. I went to South Africa with Talib Kweli and the Roots for a couple of weeks. And even a lot of the groups that aren't called 'political' or 'revolutionary' have a lot more to say than what you hear on the singles.
In our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write.
I think at some point there may be artists who will get fed up, and they deliberately want to use their art as a means to rock the waves a little bit. And instead of doing the status quo, they'll deliberately go out to really make a change. I think Kendrick Lamar is an example of that.
Communists love to make films about composers because composers compose music and don't talk subversive things.
The protest years were over, not just for me but for a whole generation, and in music, just like in politics, many of the greatest talents were dead or in exile, and their place was filled by third-rate imitators.
For those that don't know much about 'American Idiot' or Green Day, just know that it's my generation's The Who's 'Tommy' or Pink Floyd's 'The Wall.' It was an album that really spoke to a generation. The theatrical show encapsulates that feeling and brings it to an even wider audience.
Long live protest songs, in whatever form they take.
This music is about struggle. Reggae is a vehicle to carry a message of freedom and peace.
PnB is like a movement, a whole movement is going on.
I'm a sucker for any band named after a work of literature. Los de Abajo take their name from Mariano Azuela's famous novel 'The Underdogs,' and that says a lot about who they are and the music they make.
I think artists can influence only through making music that challenges people, excites them and flips them out. Music that repeats what you know in ever-decreasing derivation, that's unchallenging and unstimulating, deadens our minds, our imagination and our ability to see beyond the hell we find ourselves in.
Reggae music is not an easy music to like when it comes to the power in society. 'Cause it talks about changing society. You won't find it readily accepted.
The Mekons are the most revolutionary group in the history of rock 'n' roll.
There aren't that many things left that haven't already been done, especially with music. I'm interested in ideas that can shake us all up.
What Public Enemy and Underground Resistance had in common was a rejection of the idea of music as entertainment.
'Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.
Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.
Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That's what I want to do.
Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good point to make. With revolutionary music, any text can be set to work.
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.
I never heard anything so brilliant in my life as I did that first time I heard Ornette. He played like some revolutionary angel. Soon, we were rehearsing in his place, music scattered everywhere, and he was telling me to play outside the chord changes, which was exactly what I had been wanting to do. Now I had permission.
