Music: activism as therapy

I believe music – the ‘angry’ kind, and others – has saved my life, or at least my identity. I suppose everyone goes through the tough trials of adolescence and home life. If we survive that, we can survive just about anything, right? I had to endure the never ending rage of my ill-tempered father, who has been part of the Canadian Military for the better part of his life (not the whole factor in the equation, but certainly a factor nonetheless). Oddly enough, the band that saved me from going crazy, ending my life, or turning out like him, was Rage Against the Machine.

 

They taught me not to accept what I knew wasn’t right, to not just lay down and die. They fought a lot for political rights and changes (such as the freedom of Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Tibetan Freedom concert, etc.) but at their core I believe Rage to have been just a band fighting for personal freedom. At the age of 13 – when I was just getting a voice, an opinion, and my father started coming down on me – it was exactly what I needed. Every time I was home alone I would blast that epic first Rage record my sister had borrowed from her friend and scream along to it with everything I had. It might’ve looked strange if anyone had come by, but hey, for my entire life it was the only therapy that worked (and trust me, I’ve tried therapy, counselling, the whole works). I expelled all of my aggression and anger towards my home life, and just as importantly, I was thinking for myself. I didn’t take out my problems on people who had nothing to do with them, like so many people I knew then and know now. I set myself apart from what I knew was wrong, and have ever since been fighting on a personal level for what I knew was right. Even today I see so many lost people talking trash, spreading rumours, lashing out at others for no good reason, escaping their lives through drugs, but I just hear that Rage lyric in my head and I know that I’m not like them: