Rage Against the Machine and the politics in the USA

Rage Against the Machine and the politics in the U.S.A.

You all should now know many things about the politics in the U.S.A. and I think the most of you have their own opinions.

I'm going to tell you some things about Rage Against The Machine. There are some interesting points and I hope after my short lecture you will see the coherences between the things we talk about trough the lessons and their music.

As you will se it isn't very hard to connect both in a few ways

Why?

Because RATM is a crossover band, which created a style of music and in this way they were a kind of the first Nu Metal Band ever. Their Music is a Mixture of Hardcore, Hip Hop and Heavy Metal.

Hardcore is the most important part, which influenced their style of writing lyrics and the way they live and show themselves to their audience.

It is a very political style of Music, the music of the new left movement, after punk expired to drinking alcohol and destroying things.

The still politically interested punk said I don't drink any alcohol I don't take any drugs and I don't smoke. Straight Edge was born. The idea of this movement was that drugs and stuff like that destroy the clean mind and the ability to change something. They think no one will take a high, nasty, dirty, person serious even if the person says right things. The Music of the straight Edge movement was Hardcore.

Zack de la Rocha the front man of RATM played in bass in hardcore band before he founded with some friends RATM.

That was the my short introduction, which wanted to show you, where RATM come from and where you can class them.

Let's have a look at the music video.

Music Video

So now you've seen Rage Against The Machine's Testify-Vide-Clip. My first impression without reading the lyrics was following:

It's about the elections and the two candidates Bush and Gore in the U.S.A. I Think they want to show their audience that both candidates only have different faces and are paid by different companies, but in fact they could be the same person, perhaps replaced by every other person. They show a lot of things, which are after their opinion wrong in the U.S.A. The lying Clinton and a few important persons raising their right hands to swear something.

The police attacking demonstrators or the U.S.A. trying to get every Oil around the world possible and poor children, who have to die, while the U.S.A. makes war.

That are the reasons, they think, for a majority of the U.S. people not to vote.

About the lyrics:

At first I've to say interpreting English lyrics is not as easy as interpreting German Lyrics because in poems and lyrics of Music you can find often one word Metaphors or Words, only chosen for letting the rhymes work and the translations you can find trough the internet aren't much better, because they often are translated word for word, and one another important point is that you have to know other lyrics from the band to set some things in the right context.

I think, Zack de la Rocha, the front man of Rage Against The Machine, who wrote the lyrics, wants to say,

He watches his live like a movie and the director of the movie is the U.S.A. Through all the things he is able to buy and to see he isn't able to recognize the important things and what is really happening. The U.S.A. wants to rule the world and get the Oil from everywhere. They also want to control the people through the media and nobody is able to escape this jail he's living in without understanding the situation. De la Rocha uses the party slogan for the Oceania government in the book '1984': 'Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.'

A song from Rage Against the Machine was chosen to finish the famous movie "The Matrix". I think it's a small sign that someone interpreted their statements in the same way I did.

There are some different points between the lyrics and the clip but I think it's right this way. Both stand with only some connections for it's own. RATM says the lyrics and the video are about the misrepresentation of the Gulf War by the U.S. media

So after you've heard a lot of facts and you've seen the video clip, let me say my opinion about RATM, their way of making music, and their credibility.

Rage Against The Machine is often called one of the most politically involved bands. But at the same time People say they are something like "consume-communist", because RATM releases their records at major label and produces video clips and stuff like that. I think both are right. Their aim was to reach many people and to show them thinks going wrong not only in the U.S.A. and the only way to do that is the way they did.

But at the same time, like many other left people, they act like everything they do is the only right way. The stand their and their only ability is to say what you are doing is wrong. They have no solutions for the problems they only rage against the machine.

And at all I think it's little bit funny to zing the way the media is used for propaganda, commercials and politics to control the people and at the same time to produce a music-clip like that.

Now after writing this lecture I sit hear in my room and think about what to get from this. I think you now know perhaps some thinks about radical left people you haven't known before. Perhaps RATM are not the perfect example but so what. From the music clip you can get some impressions some incitements to think, what's going wrong. But at all you see that there are persons in the U.S.A: who are not content with the politics of the government. I could talk ours about it but a least you have to build your own opinion and that's the real meaning of RATM, too