Kickstarter

*Note: A more thorough video is forthcoming in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, please give what you can!

A great amount has changed in our culture over the past eighteen months. Terms like "revolution" and "class struggle" are no longer dusty old relics on the pages of history books, but living and breathing realities from the General Assemblies of the Occupy movement to the general strikes in Europe, from the workers rebellions on the African continent to the Arab Spring. It's changed the way we view everything in the world--be it politics and economics to music and culture.

Sounds of Liberation: Music In the Age of Crisis and Resistance, the debut book from music journalist and activist Alexander Billet, will be look at how the events of the past year-and-a-half have shaped the music we listen to. Pulling from published articles in a variety of outlets, Billet asks why the labor rebellion in Wisconsin and the Occupy movement have gained such support from artists and musicians. He interviews Sphinx of Cairo's Arabian Knightz on the role hip-hop has played in the Egyptian revolution and Ani DiFranco on what she's learned in twenty years as a tireless troubadour for justice. He examines the legacy of Bob Marley in the African diaspora's own struggles and makes the case for why recording artists need their own labor union. And much more.

Music has always played a role in social change, and our own time is no exception. Sounds of Liberation aims to be an urgent and needed contribution to a renewed discussion around art and politics, as well as provoke thoughts of what human creativity might look like if it's liberated from the grips of the global one percent.