Stokley Carmichael once said, "Everything is political." Apparently, poet Linton Kwesi Johnson agrees. The sound of his voice stays low and docile, as the humming of dub beats in the background lends a trance-like mood. But his are not calm words. The wrath of a gentle tiger broils in his laments aga

Agitated, Angry, Gritty, In-your-face, Lyrical, Overflowing, Political, Reggae, Social revolution, Spiritual

To call Terre Thaemlitz experimental is a generalization of the worst kind. Thaemlitz is a musical experimenter, to be sure. But he's also a social experimenter, a technological experimenter, and a gender experimenter. Thaemlitz is a philosopher who uses his sonic thinkscapes as social treatises and

Anxiety, Dense, Layered, Political, Self-reflection, Sophisticated, Tense

"If you'll gather 'round me, children, a story I will tell." So began many a Woody Guthrie ballad, invoking the huddle around the campfire, the community of the road, the generation that rode the rails during the Depression. Guthrie's songs gave a voice to that uprooted generation and to the struggle

Gritty, Pioneering, Political, Spiritual

This Bay Area-based group embodies the "sampledelic" appropriationist ethos of experimental music at the close of the twentieth century: Negativland exists by purloining and retooling the work of others for use in their own songs. Their music comprises hundreds of samples derived from music made ubiq

Citational, Collage, Eclectic, Plunderphonic, Political