Soldato
Ive been reliving my youth a little lately by listening to a lot of Rage Against the Machine. When I was younger I just liked their sound, I paid no attention to their political messages, Im quite conservative politically as ive got older. I wasnt as keen on their later albums.
It got me thinking though so I read up a little on them, and found out about their later incarnations such as Prophets of Rage (basically the original band minus de la Rocha).
Anyway, in my research Ive percieved what I think is an internal conflict in this type of music and so I thought it would be an interesting discussion.
Taking Rage as the example, they could be described as anti corporate America. So they oppose capitalism, yet they signed up to a huge record label and made their fortunes from that very thing. Rage themselves have addressed this criticism by saying that "When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels." - quote from Morello on wikipedia.
But beyond this there are other issues too. They appear to be anti middle eastern intervention, even Arab supporting. Yet the Arabs are one of the most conservative cultures in the world, oppressive to women, have quite barbaric capital punishment regimes, clear links to terrorism that has killed millions and are often strong dictatorships rather than democracy.
The Rage songs are associated with hatred against the police, images of rioting in their videos etc, yet those same types of people are also prone to heavy alcohol and drug use, use of violence etc. Quite the opposite from being 'anti system', these people are just signed up to an equally damaging and addictive one.
So are these types of bands simply internally hypocritical, or is there a bigger picture that Im missing? What other bands of this type have the same hypocritical issues and what are they?
It got me thinking though so I read up a little on them, and found out about their later incarnations such as Prophets of Rage (basically the original band minus de la Rocha).
Anyway, in my research Ive percieved what I think is an internal conflict in this type of music and so I thought it would be an interesting discussion.
Taking Rage as the example, they could be described as anti corporate America. So they oppose capitalism, yet they signed up to a huge record label and made their fortunes from that very thing. Rage themselves have addressed this criticism by saying that "When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels." - quote from Morello on wikipedia.
But beyond this there are other issues too. They appear to be anti middle eastern intervention, even Arab supporting. Yet the Arabs are one of the most conservative cultures in the world, oppressive to women, have quite barbaric capital punishment regimes, clear links to terrorism that has killed millions and are often strong dictatorships rather than democracy.
The Rage songs are associated with hatred against the police, images of rioting in their videos etc, yet those same types of people are also prone to heavy alcohol and drug use, use of violence etc. Quite the opposite from being 'anti system', these people are just signed up to an equally damaging and addictive one.
So are these types of bands simply internally hypocritical, or is there a bigger picture that Im missing? What other bands of this type have the same hypocritical issues and what are they?