Music and Politics - Rock Music

Rock Music

Rock the Vote is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan organization founded in Los Angeles in 1990 by Jeff Ayeroff for the purposes of political advocacy. Rock the Vote works to engage youth in the political process by incorporating the entertainment community and youth culture into its activities. Rock the Vote's stated mission is to "build the political clout and engagement of young people in order to achieve progressive change in our country."

Some rock groups, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Living Colour, Rage Against the Machine, Manic Street Preachers, Marilyn Manson, Megadeth, Scars on Broadway, Enter Shikari, and System of a Down have openly political messages in their music.

Detroit, Michigan's MC5 (Motor City 5) came out of the underground rock music scene of the late 1960s, and displayed an aggressive evolution of garage rock which was often fused with sociopolitical and countercultural lyrics of the era, such as in the songs "Motor City Is Burning" (a John Lee Hooker cover adapting the story of the Detroit Race Riot (1943) to the Detroit Insurrection of 1967), and "The American Ruse" (which discusses U.S. police brutality as well as pollution, prison, materialism and rebellion). They had ties to radical leftist organizations such as Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers and John Sinclair's White Panther Party (composed of white American socialists seeking to assist African Americans in the fight for racial equality - it was not, as the title may suggest, a white supremacist group). MC5 performed a set before the 1968 Democratic Convention held at International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois where an infamous riot subsequently broke out between police and students protesting the recent assassination of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Vietnam War. During the counterculture era, acts like John Lennon commonly protested in his music, with latter devoting an entire album to politics and the song Imagine, widely considered to be a peace anthem. Imagine's lyrics talk about "giving peace a chance" and Imagine also deals with imagining a world without countries or religion. 1965, Bob Dylan sang to his fans about the evils of war and the emptiness of consumerism when he released his trade mark album “The Times They are A-Changin’” which became one of his number one albums containing one of his number one songs. This song was articulating the movement of social change and that history will always repeat itself. When he sang the lyrics “Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen and keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again. And don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin.” He achieved the attention of the civil rights movement which helped in the transformation of the American political landscape. Like any other musical artist, Dylan was influenced by other radical groups such as the Wobblies- the popular group of the thirties and forties, the Beat Anarchists of the fifties, and above all, by the political beliefs of young people during the civil rights movement. In his songs, he included the terror of the nuclear arms race, poverty, racism, prison, jingoism, and war. With his songs, he helped with the political revolution of America in the 1960s.