Where is this music today? Am I just missing it? cgod, sounds_sound do you guys know of a music scene that is acting as a vanguard for social change? I know that many bands/acts dabble in philanthropy or have the occasional song about social change, but that's not the same thing.What music scenes seem to be losing is their capacity to act as a kind of vanguard, to prefigure the future and drive us forward to meet it. Instead we seem to have a kind of continuous musical present, in which the boundaries between past and present have become increasingly blurred.
I would agree with this. Consider the OWS movement in the US, what music/bands were spearheading that, before, after or even during? You can't think of the counter-culture movements of the 1960's without immediately hearing any number of artists catchy tunes of dissonance in your head.
I used to edit a great mag, by the name of Punk Planet. Unlike a lot of music mags of its ilk, politics came first, and always informed our approach to the noise we covered. PP folded in 2007. I'd have a hard time imagining starting it today, as its entire raison d'être was predicated on music being a gateway to the left. That's why Keith's article rang especially true, for me.
And there were things like Straight Edge and this from ~20 years ago that still seem current to me because there aren't any new musical movements with a point to them. Course there's not as much opportunity for (musical) social change anymore -- difficult to envision any bands jumping on the anti-surveillance bandwagon and still sounding catchy.