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 The Boston Herald reports that the notion that music can inspire change isn’t new. But music-making activists are becoming savvier.
Rage Against the Machine-cum-Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello’s
current Justice Tour, (billed as his acoustic alter-ego, The
Nightwatchman), is an excellent example. Morello is impassioned about
so many issues - war, human rights, civil liberties, environmentalism,
capitalistic greed - he’s invited an ever-changing cast of characters
to help him express it all in short, digestible sets.
Additionally, each tour stop tackles a different topic, reflected in
the literature passed around, (yep, there’s reading material involved),
the circulating petitions and the information tables pitched in the
lobby. Sunday’s Berklee Performance Center gig focused on universal
health care.
The Nightwatchman opened Sunday’s show troubadour style, forcefully
strumming the Appalachian-tinted call to arms “House Gone Up In
Flames,” and delicately finger-picking the darkly romantic “Garden of
Gethsemane.”
Both the Coup’s Boots Riley and Boston’s Mr. Lif rapped clever rants
peppered with rage and humor. Mr. Lif brought the members of the
two-thirds capacity crowd to their feet and afterward, State Radio’s
punky reggae kept them there.
New York singer/songwriter Jesse Malin contributed the
thought-provoking ballad, “Aftermath,” inspired by a wordless run-in
with Yoko Ono on a Manhattan street. Former Extreme/Van Halen frontman
Gary Cherone and his brother Markus offered up some compelling new
tunes from their “hurtsmile” project.
Read the full story here.
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