Protest rock in the context of globalisation

It could be said that the history of rock is the history of a particular form of sonic rebellion within the confines of capitalist economies and liberal democracies. In this sense, it might seem irrelevant to establish some of the characteristics of the protest rock that emerged in the nineties and continued throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, because, like all rock music, it’s inhabited by rebellion and protest against the status quo. Nevertheless, what I call contemporary protest rock refers to a specific articulation in the relationship between music and protest: this articulation can be located in time and space, and its political economy defined.

Protest rock of the late twentieth century appeared in the socioeconomic milieu that Castells named ‘informational capitalism’ (2010, p. 18). We inhabit a world that creates capital from ‘the application of such knowledge and information to knowledge generation and information processing/communication devices, in a cumulative feedback loop’ (Castells Reference Castells2010, p. 31). Production had shifted from consumer goods to cultural goods and products.

The infrastructure that made capital accumulation possible was the development and dissemination of information and communication technologies. These had a deep impact on social, cultural, and artistic realms. Three impacts in the field of culture were the multiplication of images that mediate cultural products (hyper-mediation), the reciprocal influence between different mass media, and the consolidation of non-specific media cultural products (transmediality).

The consolidation of informationalism was accompanied by the reorganisation of global power structures, the multiplication of power centres and peripheries, the dismantling of the socialist bloc, the emergence of global actors beyond nation-states, and capital accumulation based on the exploitation of local communities.

In the field of music, the new political economy led to the consolidation of an oligopoly of transnational corporations that recorded and distributed music in the USA and Europe. According to Negus, ‘approximately 70 percent of the recorded popular music sold in the world has been produced, manufactured, and distributed by five major companies’ (Reference Negus2011, p. 1).

The nineties protest rock was a continental phenomenon. While the sixties protest rock developed in the USA, influenced by pacifism and the anti-war movements, its manifestations in the nineties took place all over the Americas: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the USA, Uruguay, among other countries.

In each country, protest rock was a response to a complex social, political, and cultural milieu. In the eighties, South American countries were dealing with dictaduras that established military governments that abolished incipient democratic projects, censored political dissidents, and controlled cultural production. In 1976, a military coup overthrew Argentinian president María Martínez de Perón. In the context of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, headed by a military dictatorship, rock music became the target of censorship, but also a central force in the articulation of dissident political identities and youth cultures (Favoretto Reference Favoretto2014). Rock concerts became ‘a clear example of politicization in periods of closure of traditional spaces of political activity’ (Vila Reference Vila1987, pp. 87–88).

In Chile, Augusto Pinochet brought down the leftist president Salvador Allende. As a result of the coup, a military dictatorship was established, which lasted more than fifteen years. The regime reinforced the capitalist economy with the consequent dismantling of the welfare state (Mattern Reference Mattern1998; Vilches Reference Vilches2004); on the other hand, adherents of left-wing and Marxist ideology were persecuted and tortured. During the seventies, musicians of la nueva canción chilena were persecuted, and in some cases executed, as in the case of Víctor Jara. In the eighties, the rock and pop band Los Prisioneros criticised the hegemonic sectors that controlled the ideology, culture, and power structures (Vilches Reference Vilches2004).

In the eighties, Mexico was dealing with another kind of authoritarian regime. Its main feature was the uninterrupted rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional beginning in 1929. The most flagrant display of the regime’s repressive capacity was the assassination of dozens of college students in the Plaza de Las Tres Culturas in October 1968. They were fighting for the democratisation of politics and public life. Another example of the repression was the rock marginalisation that followed the first massive rock concert in Mexico, popularly known as Avándaro (Moreno-Elizondo Reference Moreno-Elizondo2020). During the eighties, a movement of protest rock militated against the brutal force of repressive apparatuses of the state, the imposition of state dismantling policies, the privatisation of public education (Guerra Reference Guerra2022), and censorship in the media. The movement also joined the urban-based democratic movements (Paredes and Blanc Reference Paredes and Blanc2010).

In the north of the continent, during the eighties, the USA’s President Ronald Reagan implemented the economic policy that would later be known as neoliberalism. He reduced the budget for welfare programmes, which benefited mainly the lower and middle classes. Although economic growth was achieved, it benefited the upper classes (Koechlin Reference Koechlin2013). The aftermath of neoliberalism was inequality in the distribution of wealth, visible in the lower incomes of African-American and Latino workers, and the erosion of the welfare system (Abramovitz Reference Abramovitz, Noble, Strauss and Littlechild2014). The dismantling of the welfare state was accompanied by a conservative agenda that allowed the survival of racism and other expressions of discrimination, for example, discrimination against migrants and imprisonment of minor offenders who belonged to racialised minorities.

The geographic dissemination of protest rock and the reorganisation of power relations due to informationalism had a direct impact on the sonic and social profile of this music. In the light of the social context described above, I will attempt to answer, even if only partially, the central question of this article: What are the main features of the nineties protest rock in the American continent? In this task, I will stress some performative aspects.

Protest rock includes the sounds of folk songs, metal, punk, salsa, rap, cumbia, blues, reggaetón, reggae, son, ska, and even merengue. It also incorporates popular and non-hegemonic American music, like the sounds of the lower classes and indigenous peoples. It distinguishes itself from the sixties and seventies protest music, based almost exclusively on folk traditions (Denisoff, Reference Denisoff1968), like trova or the nueva canción chilena.

Another aspect is the mediatisation and dramatisation of rockers’ activism. If the protest rock of the sixties was essentially a form of cognitive and political praxis (Eyerman and Jamison Reference Eyerman and Jamison1998) attached to collective actions and spaces of protest of social movements, nineties rock relies on a hyper-mediatised militancy that alters the nature of actions and spaces for protest. The predominant action of protest rockers is the public performance, mainly musical, of political stances and ideologies. But there is also a shift in the spaces of protest: from the rallies, marches, and teach-ins to huge stages, television screens, promotional videos, and the internet.

One of the most defining features of nineties protest rock is the slippage in cognitive frames and collective representations. The sixties and seventies USA rock was anti-war, pacifist, and stood in favour of the civil rights movement (Doggett Reference Doggett2008). In Latin America, rock musicians stood against military coups and authoritarian political regimes. With the arrival of new economic and political global actors and the consolidation of planetary dynamics of poverty and exclusion, new cognitive action frames arise that identify new victims, sources of injustices, propose solutions to problems, and make calls to action (Benford and Snow Reference Benford and Snow2000).

Common issues addressed by these bands are the effects of power structures like racism, classism, and colonialism, violence exerted by the state, police brutality against indigenous peoples and African-American communities, genocide, and the precariousness of the working classes due to the dismantling of the welfare state. Social processes, such as globalisation, are identified as sources of injustice, as are the actions of impersonal social groups like economic elites and global actors like the International Monetary Fund. Regarding the proposed solutions, this rock is more oriented towards outlining worlds of unrest (Knupp Reference Knupp1981) than formulating calls for concrete actions to reverse the negative effects of globalisation.

Protest rock groups align with left-wing political thought and the progressive agenda of collective actors and social movements. There are constant references to the civil rights movement, anti-racism, and the anti-war movement, as in SOAD’s songs. In Latin America, there is a different array of themes: leftist social movements that fought military dictatorships, indigenous movements like the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, the anti-capitalist movement, and democratisation movements, as in the case of Mexico. The relation between this politically oriented rock and social movements is loose: the support of musicians is limited to covering social problems in their audiovisual products.

It should not be overlooked that this is mainstream rock, despite its political content. Some representatives, like Rage Against the Machine (RATM) in the USA and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs in Argentina, have held contracts with major corporations since the early stages of their careers. It’s massive to the extent that the different rock protest products are intended for mass audiences (Gracyk Reference Gracyk2001). The fact that this music is, among other things, a commodity could explain the nature of the performance, oriented towards the presentation of a public identity rather than forming part of the protest repertoires of social movements.

Some of the main representatives of nineties protest rock on the American continent are RATM (USA), SOAD (USA-Armenia), Brujeria (USA), Molotov (Mexico), Panteón Rococó (Mexico), Los Prisioneros (Chile), Los Fabulosos Cadillacs (Argentina), Todos tus Muertos (Argentina), A.N.I.M.A.L. (Argentina), and Sepultura (Brazil).

Music as performance of political ideologies

It’s possible to identify various trends in analyses of the constellation that includes rock music, protest, social movements, and political ideologies. In this article, I will focus on two trends because each assigns different functions to music. According to the first, music is a fundamental dimension of collective action, social movements, and resistance. Music is part of the cognitive praxis or the active production of meanings by collective actors (Bianchi Reference Bianchi2018; Eyerman and Jamison Reference Eyerman and Jamison1998); incarnates social values (Eyerman and Jamison Reference Eyerman and Jamison1998; Monson Reference Monson, Fox and Starn1997); promotes conditions for the creation and maintenance of communities (Mattern Reference Mattern1998); and critiques the social conditions that oppress some groups (Alridge Reference Alridge2005), to name some functions. Although authors differ in their interpretation of music’s concrete functions in the context of protest, they agree concerning its importance in the social circulation of meanings and ideologies.

Regarding the second trend, its main feature is scepticism about the transformative powers of rock music (Grossberg Reference Grossberg1992; Wicke Reference Wicke1993). In a few lines, Grossberg summarises this perspective: ‘there is also little evidence (even in the songs themselves) that rock rejected the dominant liberal consensus or the major ideological assumptions (sexism, racism, and classism) of that consensus’ (1992, p. 144). That is, rock managed to present itself as a social revolutionary force, without questioning mainstream society’s racist and classist underpinnings. In the deepest layers of rock ideology lie the promises of success and material well-being (Grossberg Reference Grossberg1992).

Neither of these analytical trends is wrong. Though we may be far from achieving social change promoted exclusively from the cultural sphere, music is a positive force that frames and helps collective and individual actors understand the world they live in. On the other hand, in a mediatised culture, where music and rebellious thinking are commodities, as stated by Adorno (Reference Adorno2009), the transformative power of music is limited and perhaps confined to ephemeral communities that only emerge during a rock concert or a protest rally (Castells Reference Castells2012; Reed Reference Reed2005). Auslander’s performance theory puts us on the path to understanding the phenomenon of protest rock ideology, beyond the revolutionary/conservative dichotomy, in a context that includes social tensions, market forces, the demand for cultural assets like music and concerts, political ideologies, individual beliefs and political orientations, and information and communication technologies.

For Auslander, musical performance is inextricably linked to the presentation of a self: ‘Musical performance may be defined… as a person’s representation of self within a discursive domain of music… What musicians perform first and foremost is not music, but their own identities as musicians’ (Auslander Reference Auslander2006, p. 102). The goal of a rock concert or live footage is the performance of an identity. This means that when people attend the rock concerts of bands like Calle 13, or Body Count, they experience a multimodal performance that conveys social and individual musical identities. For example, through their concerts, Calle 13 perform a collective identity linked with the ideas of pueblo, Latin Americanism, and subaltern voices from the southern cone.

Central to Auslander’s conceptualisation is the idea that the self-presented in performance does not necessarily correspond with the ‘individual musician’s personality’ (2006, p. 103). Musical performances should not be understood as direct externalisations of trends, patterns, affective states, ideologies, values, or beliefs of the individual who embodies a musical persona. Although there may be some correspondence between the real persona and the musical persona, the latter should be understood as an emergent result of a mixture that includes music, audience, physical and social space, and sociopolitical context (Auslander Reference Auslander2021).

The performance of a musical persona occurs through the manipulation of spatial and bodily signifying elements, which Goffman (Reference Goffman1956) refers to as a front. The front is ‘that part of the individual’s performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe’ (Goffman Reference Goffman1956, p. 13). Following Goffman, Auslander (Reference Auslander2006) distinguishes between the relatively fixed elements of the front, like the stage and the performer’s ethnicity or gender, and mobile signs like gestures and body movements. Nevertheless, it should be considered that some elements that Goffman defines as fixed are the result of a performance itself, like ethnicity in the case of Freddie Mercury, or race in the case of Beyoncé, that is, the presentation of an ethnic identity, through music, it’s a negotiation between the performer and their audience.

In protest rock performances, the front comprises physical space, like small venues, stadiums, and arenas, and stage elements, like amplifier walls, or emblems related to social movements, like Che Guevara’s images. The front includes personal front or the expressions that emanate from the performers’ corporality, like genre, sex, race, gestures, movements, and associated elements like the attire. For example, Weinstein has described the importance of appearance in the experience and the meaning attached to heavy metal. In general terms, ‘metal is inhospitable, if not hostile, to performers that do not conform to its code of appearance’ (Reference Weinstein2021, p. 64), the latter defined by whiteness, heterosexuality, youth, and physical strength.

The personal front contains communicative elements that inform about the social status of the performer (appearance according to Goffman’s proposal) and the kind of interaction that one can reasonably expect from that performer (manner). In a glam rock framework, performers should assume an androgenic appearance, ranging from the sexual ambiguity embodied in Bowie to the hypermasculinity of the members of Mötley Crüe. Sixties’ musicians who took the role of folk entrepreneurs (Denisoff Reference Denisoff1968), such as Phil Ochs and Joan Baez, presented themselves at rallies and other kinds of protests in casual attire, surrounded by a microphone, some speakers, and acoustic guitars.

Some authors have identified the construction of specific meanings and identities in pop musical performances: Macrossan talks about the construction of an intimate world in Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ album, based upon the recognition of her political affiliation and the creation of a ‘black female space’ (2018, p. 143); for Stockdale (Reference Stockdale, Chapman and Johnson2016) Freddie Mercury’s glam persona contradictorily articulates the hyper-English national identity and the radical otherness of an immigrant; Weinstein (Reference Weinstein2021) points out that despite its black origins, heavy metal is a space for the performance of whiteness, physical strength, and youthfulness.

As these examples show, the public presentation of the self relates to music stardom, but also to spheres that lie outside that realm, like ethnic, racial, and national identities. The performance of a musical persona opens a space for identity, that is, for the contestation of, and struggle around collective identities, and in general for politics, understood as actions aimed at altering power relations. To Auslander’s (Reference Auslander2021) idea that the object of performance is always a public identity, I will add that musical persona is part of the political field to the extent that it problematises ethnic, racial, sexual, gender, and national identities.

I consider that the performance of a political position is central to protest rock groups. The identity performed by musicians belongs to political and musical realms. Musicians present themselves as professionals with highly developed skills, as autonomous and innovative artists (Regev Reference Regev1994), and as political activists committed to social causes. Musicians perform the identity of militants committed to the causes of a movement, like the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, the Arab Spring, and anti-globalisation movements. They present themselves as supporters of indigenous social movements, as in the case of Zack de la Rocha (Green Reference Green2015), as anti-war and anti-capitalist activists, like Tom Morello and Serj Tankian and as supporters of Latin American social movements, like Vicentico from Los Fabulosos Cadillacs.

In considering that musicians simultaneously perform a musical identity and a political one, I’m not stating that every protest rocker is a political activist in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, I recognise that ideological positions in music should be understood as musically performed politics, that is, politics built up with the harsh sounds of rock, the images of videos and the iconography of albums, the frantic bodies of the on-stage musicians and the concertgoers and even the compilated images created and shared by audiences (Ahonen Reference Ahonen2007).

By stating that political ideology can be the object of musical performance, I emphasise the need to think of political positions expressed by groups as emergent discourses – resulting from the interaction of elements which include conventions of the musical genre, the history of performances and personas presented by a band, the expectations and needs of audiences and the geopolitical environment – rather than externalisations of the political tendencies or convictions of individual musicians. This also means that political ideology unfolds in the time and space of concerts, videos, songs, and media appearances, through the expressive arsenal described by Goffman and Auslander and can be grasped interpretatively.

In the rest of this article, I will use some elements of Auslander’s theory of musical performance to shed light on the ways hypermediated and transnational protest rock music performs leftist political ideologies. As Auslander (Reference Auslander2021) suggests, in contemporary societies, people listen to and experience music through an assortment of media that should be considered musical performances. For the analysis of protest rock performances, I considered three main types of media: promotional videos, live concert footage, and interviews. Also, I selected groups that circulated worldwide and had a profound impact on the American Continent.

In what follows, I present an interpretation that does not attempt to quantify or formalise elements and properties of performances (Auslander Reference Auslander2009). Rather, following Small’s advice, I try to answer the question ‘What does it mean when this performance (or this work) takes place at this time, at this place, with these participants?’ (Reference Small1998, p. 10). I attempt a thick description of political performances on two levels: (1) the description of spaces, actions, bodies, sounds, and other relevant elements shown in different performances and which contribute to the intelligibility of a group’s performed ideology; (2) discussion around meanings that are conveyed through performances.

In describing protest rock performances, I turned to a model that articulates Goffman’s reflections on social micro-interactions and Auslander’s proposal on the musical persona. Below, I list and briefly explain the dimensions of the model: space, personal front, behaviour, music, and lyrics. Space refers to the physical and social location of a performance, like a concert scenario, a rehearsal place, or the street. Personal front refers to a relatively stable set of characteristics, like race and gender, gestures, and facial expressions (Goffman Reference Goffman1956). Behaviour alludes to individual and collective action segments, like a frontman jumping on the stage or a band performing and protesting in the street. Music is, like Auslander (Reference Auslander2006) says, a sonic representation of musical personas and, in the protest rock bands, political stances. Finally, I also sought traces of political ideology and links with social movements and protests in song lyrics.

In analysing a collective performance, I consider media, like a concert or video, not as isolated and self-referential products, but as part of a ‘larger universe actively created and inhabited’ (Macrossan Reference Macrossan, Loy, Rickwood and Bennett2018, p. 140), which Macrossan conceptualises as a music world. This world is made up of worlding practices. For the sake of simplicity, I won’t refer to the music world built up by rock groups, but only ask that the reader keep in mind that the performance of collective and individual musical personas and political ideologies cuts across the media produced by a group.

For the present article, I selected SOAD as a representative of the protest rock movement of the late twentieth century. The criteria established for the selection of this group were the following: group’s ubication on the American Continent; relationship with major corporations that guaranteed a global distribution of recordings; recordings with high sales or peak positions in popularity charts; multimedia circulation of the musical/artistic activity (videos, albums, audiovisual register of live concerts); at least one promo video of a song that displays the group’s political views and ideological compromises and had a great impact in popular culture, observable in awards, critical reception, and millions of viewers; declarations of individual members of the bands that openly contradict the public performance of leftist political thought by supporting right-wing thought, exclusion, racism, censorship, etc. This last point was essential to highlight the performative character of the group’s political ideology.

Rock performances of leftist political thought in System of a Down

System of a Down (SOAD) is an Armenian–North American metal band that has been performing since 1994. Its members are Serj Tankian on vocals and rhythm guitar, Daron Malakian on guitar and backing vocals, Shavo Odadjian on bass, and John Dolmayan on drums. The band maintains the typical instrumentation and sound of a nu-metal band: distorted guitars, power riffs, breakdowns, and constant changes between a clean and a distorted voice. The original collective persona of the band was close to the normative persona of rock and nu-metal bands: male musicians in rap attire who display highly developed skills in their respective instruments. However, there have always been elements in the performance of SOAD that destabilised this collective persona, such as the ethnic origin of its members and folkloric imagery expressed through its songs’ vocals and melodies.

The band released five albums between 1997 and 2005: ‘System of a Down’, ‘Toxicity’, ‘Steal This Album’, ‘Mezmerize’, and ‘Hypnotize’, which critics and press catalogued as nu metal, a genre that combines metal, rap, and lyrics that explore emotions (Kahn-Harris Reference Kahn-Harris2007). Since their self-titled debut album, SOAD have been supported by a contract with a major label, Columbia, and the multi-genre producer Rick Rubin. Their albums have sold worldwide, and sales have been certified by recording associations in different countries. The five recordings received recognition from the media, critics, and audiences. For example, Rolling Stone (2011) included ‘Toxicity’ in the list of the 100 best albums of the 2000s.

Since their inception, SOAD quickly became an icon of nineties protest rock. Throughout their discography, they addressed political themes in songs like ‘Prison Song’, ‘War!’, ‘Bomb!’, ‘Deer Dance’, and ‘Fuck the System’. To the extent that they have declared themselves against economic globalisation promoted by economic and political global actors, the genocide of various ethnic groups, police violence exercised against the dispossessed, and limitation of rights, among other things, they are located on the left end of the political spectrum.

Political concerns coexist alongside other themes that apparently distance themselves from their political views, but also have a political dimension, such as drug-related experiences (‘Needless’, ‘Drugs’, ‘Prison Song’, ‘She’s like heroin’), sexual intercourse (‘Bounce’, ‘Marmalade’), and even existential preoccupations, as in ‘Aerials’.

The recurrence of specific concerns and themes throughout the five albums led me to affirm that SOAD’s songs perform a kind of theory of power in a network society (Castells Reference Castells2010). This power, embodied in political and economic structures, is global due to its dimensions, and local because of the control it exercises over specific populations and their consequent marginalisation and impoverishment. It is colonial because of the logic with which it operates, destroying populations or local cultures (forced acculturation). It is biopower, in a quasi-Foucauldian sense, since it operates on bodies through repressive institutions such as the army and the police. It operates in societies where high and low-intensity war remains a fundamental tool in the distribution of power. It dismantles welfare structures, which benefit the working classes and creates territories of precariousness. In the rest of this article, I will explore some aspects of the performativity of political leftist ideology in SOAD’s set at the 2001 Reading Festival and in the promo video ‘Boom!’, released in 2002 and directed by Michael Moore. I describe these performances, considering the five-dimensional model for the analysis of social micro-interactions and musical persona described in the previous section.

In the case of the Reading Festival, I describe the space in which the concert takes place, the musical persona that Serj and Daron construct through the more stable elements of personal front and appearance, the type of behaviours they display, with an emphasis on stage movements, and the performance of political ideology through the combination of corporal, sonic, and lyrical elements. In the analysis of ‘Boom!’, I focus on the appearance of the musicians and the type of collective and individual behaviours displayed in the protest marches that were documented in the video. I also consider the statistical data and the animated images, which are fundamental in the performance of the left-wing political ideology.

The setting for the 2001 Reading Festival performance is a huge stage, typical of international festivals that bring together artists from rock-related genres. The listener can observe the instruments, some monitors in the front and the drums at centre stage. Relative to the aesthetic conventions of metal that can be called monumentalism, visible in walls made up of multiple amplifiers, screens, decorations, and iconographic elements related to the band, the stage decoration is minimalist: the musicians appear next to the instruments, with a play of lights and a black background.

Some visible signs connect SOAD musicians with the generic personal front of the nu-metal performer. Three of the four musicians wear baggy shorts and t-shirts that give them a skater appearance. There is an absence of attire elements like black spandex or blue jeans; long hair is also absent. Band members are male, apparently Caucasian, and exhibit plenty of youth. Their postures and gestures incarnate the very essence of rock culture: musical prowess, visible in complex motor sequences, such as the fast movements over the fretboard, and rebelliousness.

Despite the apparent closeness of SOAD members to the normative persona in nu-metal, there is a set of semiotic elements that destabilise that relation: the names of musicians led audiences to problematise their ethnic origins; an array of themes in their lyrics, like Armenian genocide, global injustice and discrimination, which distance themselves from the exploration of emotions typical of nu-metal (Kahn-Harris Reference Kahn-Harris2007); Serj’s incorporation of non-Western scales and melodies in his vocal style; guitar and drum sounds that echo Middle Eastern musical traditions.

On stage, SOAD’s performance is extremely physical: they run around, jump, gesticulate heavily, and headbang. Serj’s appearance and bodily repertoire distance him from the traditional metal persona. During heavy riffs or fast tempos, he walks around the scenario, stays still for moments, and dances. Headbanging and facial gestures used by metal musicians to display anger or rage are almost excluded from his body repertoire. When singing, it’s common for him to face the audience and hold the microphone up, very close to his face. Right-hand movement is a common display in Serj’s performance, as in some Indian traditions (Rahaim Reference Rahaim2012): he accompanies his singing with upward and circular, restricted hand motions as if he were illustrating the lyrics of the songs. These illustrator gestures enhance the meaning of the lyrics, as when Serj states in ‘Chop Suey!’ ‘when angels deserve to die’ and moves his hand in an upward motion, towards the sky.

An important element in Serj’s persona is the display of inner emotional states. Like his contemporaries (e.g., Zack de la Rocha), who articulate emotions and ideologies through their musical performances (Green Reference Green2015), Serj displays emotions like hope, surprise, and anger. These are visible in Serj’s facial gestures and body positions, as when he spreads and raises his arms, or closes his eyes and raises his head as if praying.

Daron’s appearance is closer to the traditional rocker persona, particularly the Dionysian traits related to the use of psychoactive drugs. The Reading set starts with Daron marching towards his microphone, playing a simple two-chord progression on his guitar, and singing ‘We are on drugs’ several times, as he looks hypnotically at the crowd. A moment later, Daron presents ‘Needless’ with the following words: ‘This song is about being on drugs’.

Daron’s manners contrast with those displayed by Serj. If at times Serj remains static, at the centre of the stage, with a low theatricality, Daron displays high amounts of energy and frantic movements. He accompanies heavy guitar riffs and fast tempos with hard headbanging, running around the stage with arm and hand movements that emphasise the difficulties and prowess inherent to complex and fast metal riffs. In songs’ breakdowns, he jumps rhythmically, faces the audience, and signals with his hands. Another distinctive feature is the free dance he executes in the breakdowns and drum and bass sections, where he breaks with the white and aggressive masculinity projected by metal bands (Fellezs Reference Fellezs, Brown, Spracklen, Kahn-Harris and Scott2016). Daron’s performance is highly theatrical, combining elements of metal tradition, his ethnic origins, and even late sixties countercultural use of substances.

At the Reading concert, SOAD perform a leftist political ideology through the selection of certain songs and the verbal interventions of Serj and Daron. Before interpreting ‘War?’, Serj gives a speech that frames their collective musical actions by revisiting issues and concerns present in the group’s albums, lyrics, iconography, and interviews:

These rationales establish a framework (Benford and Snow Reference Benford and Snow2000) for understanding collective protest and musical praxis. Considering the anti-globalisation movement that emerged in the USA against the World Trade Organization in November of 1999 (Reed Reference Reed2005), this declaration establishes clear ties with left-wing politics that criticised neoliberal globalisation. Serj identifies globalisation and capitalism as the antagonists of society. He also points to the destruction of ecosystems as the main result of capitalist development. Finally, there is a generational call to develop collective and individual reflexivity that changes the predatory and exclusionary structures of contemporary societies.

Two songs exemplify the performance of ideology in this concert. ‘Prison Song’, the opening of ‘Toxicity’ album, and ‘War?’, the last song in the show. ‘Prison Song’ is a commentary on the centrality of drugs and the growth of the prison system in the exercise of local power and population control; it also addresses the transnational flow of drug money to democratic nations and the Western sponsoring of dictatorships. ‘War?’ is an interplay between two characters: one voice questions the goals behind the exercise of global powers, while the other voice, that of the coloniser, states ‘We will fight the heathens’.

In the intro of ‘Prison Song’, the spectator can observe Serj walking towards the centre of the stage, where he suddenly stops and whispers ‘They’re trying to build a prison’. He whispers these words again, faces the audience, and opens his left hand as if to unleash a truth that has been kept hidden. After the powerful main riff, Serj sings, in an almost monotonal recitative and at a fast tempo, ‘Following the right movements, you clamped down your iron fists, drugs became conveniently available for all the kids’. The calmness in his face contrasts sharply with the crudeness of the diagnosis he’s presenting to the crowd. In the next scene, Daron incarnates a second character that unabashedly declares ‘I buy my crack… right here in Hollywood’ as he points to the veins in his forearm and imitates the gesture of an injection.

In the chorus section, Serj repeats urgently and with extremely tense vocals, ‘They’re trying to build a prison’. His rapid movements and facial expression of exasperation emphasise the urgency of the denouncement. The contrast between the performance of verse and chorus heightens the intensity of the messages conveyed. The plain recitative of verse, the relative stillness of Serj’s body, with the accompaniment of a lightly syncopated guitar riff, conveys a diagnosis, while the shouting of the chorus, the sonic bursts of guitar, drum, and bass, and the increase of body movements, denounce the exercise of local and global power via incarceration.

Later in the breakdown, as the bassist and guitarist jump rhythmically, Serj questions the drug policy, which is based on incarceration as a solution to drug consumption. Instead, he proposes treatment for users and the release of minor offenders. In a very fast emission of words, accompanied by left-hand movements that oscillate between affect displays of urgency and the illustration of fast rhythm, he sings ‘All research and successful drug policy shows that treatment should be increased’. The breakdown ends with Serj’s denouncement of the relation between global power and drugs. The performance ends with three high-pitched repetitions of ‘They’re trying to build a prison’ that connote urgency; the last repetitions lower the pitch to signify fatigue.

The Reading concert closes with the performance of ‘War?’, whose lyrics I described above. After the speech I analysed earlier, which frames the musical praxis of SOAD and proclaims their main political orientations, Daron starts a clean and fast riff that suddenly transforms into a sonic burst produced by the fast drum rhythm, and the guitar and bass riff. All band members jump, headbang, and run. They suddenly change to a half-time feel; Serj sings in his typical clean and denunciatory voice ‘Dark is the light, the man you fight, with all your prayers and incantations’. Here, he’s describing the typical exercise of the power of institutionalised religion, which from his standpoint implies war and persecution. He accompanies these first verses with rhythmic and static leaps. Next, he almost stands still and relaxes his face as he sings ‘with all your prayers and incantations’.

As with other SOAD songs, they double the speed with a bold riff to enter the chorus section. Frantic tempo sets a framework for postulating the political and cultural dynamics behind colonial practices. He repeats several times ‘We will fight the heathens’. Although it is ambiguous who the heathens are (non-Europeans, Muslims, Catholics, Orientals), the staccato articulation of the verse conveys a sense of determination. These verses are accompanied by bodily dispositions: he faces the audience and quickly looks around to the east and the west. In successive repetitions of the verse, he points forward at an imaginary other, then points downwards in a temporal and spatial reference that means here and now.

The promo video of ‘Boom!’, the second single from ‘Steal This Album’, represents one of the strongest links between SOAD and the alter-globalism movement that arose in the late twentieth century. Within the framework proposed in this article, this video can be understood as a performance of their political views, which adds up to a denunciation of war, global power, corporations, imperialism, and religious colonialism.

‘Boom!’ is a tune that starts with a simple kick drum that emphasises each quarter of a 4/4 measure. The bass accompanies the rhythm with a two-tone line. Later, the guitar and voice join the rhythm. Unlike his powerful and shouted vocal style, Serj sings a flat, almost hypnotic recitative that conveys the nature of what he’s describing in the lyrics. In the song, the narrator describes an unknown capitalist city, which resembles Grossberg’s (Reference Grossberg1992) description of the postwar USA with its wealth and boredom. There is a profusion of images of capitalist accumulation and the commodification of daily life. The city is wealthy, but the citizens are overwhelmed by advertising and consumption.

There are two important images in this depiction. One refers to social space, the other to the nature of subjectivity in capitalism. The predominant image of space is the distorted capitalist reality revealed in its falsehood, signalled by the fake lawn houses and crooked pictures. Confusion is the element that complements this panorama: workers have no idea what they’re doing, and citizens are deceived by the media and consumerism.

As the verse progresses, Serj’s vocals become tense and louder, ending with a complaint regarding capitalism’s underlying reason for constructing the delusions: to derive profit from the other. In the chorus, the song reaches its peak of intensity with an obbligato that emphasises the strong beats of the measure and opens to the anti-war declaration of the narrator. Framed by the repetition of the onomatopoeic sound of an explosion, he states ‘Every time you drop the bomb, you kill the god, your child has born’ (System of a Down 2009, 0:57). The second verse explores the features of global power, with clear references to the military industry and the use of media in creating the appearance of global consensus.

The video starts with a text that frames it within the 2003 Stop the War marches that developed around the world, in cities like New York, Buenos Aires, Rome, Madrid, and Mexico City, among many others, to protest the USA and UK’s invasion of Iraq. The text declares that ‘On February 15, 2003, 10 million people in over 600 cities around the world participated in the largest peace demonstration in the history of the world. Because we choose peace over war, we were there too…’ (System of a Down 2009, 0:10). This frame relocates the meaning of ‘Boom!’, revealing it to be not just an anti-war song, but a protest song connected with social movements of the early twenty-first century.

Unlike the conventions of rock and metal videos, where one can observe footage of bands’ live performances (Walser Reference Walser2014; Weinstein Reference Weinstein2021), the hedonist ethos inherent to rock and the performance of the metal god persona, this video presents a collection of images of people protesting in marches and rallies around the world. The images of protest in cities like Los Angeles, Paris, Cape Town, and Madrid are interspersed with declarations of the protesters, relaying facts about the marches around the world and the negative impact of war on the local and global scale. In this context of protest, the lyrics of the song are repeated by protesters, taking on the form of chants and slogans that voice their demands and concerns.

Although the members of SOAD are not absent, they perform roles that destabilise the traditional nu-metal persona. During the first minute of the video, the four members of the band appear marching, surrounded by tens of people, in casual attire and devoid of the rock appearance. Later, Shavo walks between protesters as he holds a camera and documents the massive march. John Dolmayan and Serj also appear, recording the marches. What these pictures reveal is an inversion in the gaze, in the relationship between musicians and audiences: if the band is generally the object of the audience’s gaze in live shows, videos, and media images, in the video, SOAD members are the ones who record and document protest, that is, they are the ones who see.

As the video progresses, the musicians display protest behaviours such as walking, shouting, and holding protest posters. The only musical behaviour is that of John Dolmayan playing a bass drum. The images presented allow the viewer to see the musicians as protesters with a clear political stance. As protesters, SOAD linked their musical praxis with the anti-globalisation movement that flourished in the last decade of the twentieth century (Robinson Reference Robinson and Friedman2017). But the video also establishes links with the protest tradition in North American musical cultures. Through the video, SOAD members perform a protester persona closely linked with other rock protest–oriented personas, such as folk revivalists (Eyerman and Jamison Reference Eyerman and Jamison1998) and jazz musicians who raised their voices during the Civil Rights Movement (Monson Reference Monson, Fox and Starn1997).

One of the main features of ‘Boom!’ is the construction of a collective frame that allows the viewer to understand some aspects of the anti-capitalism and anti-war movement of the early twenty-first century. The construction of collective frames occurs on four distinct levels: the song lyrics, the text and data shown during the video, the images of protesters and the cartoons, and the verbal declarations of protesters. The remainder of this section discusses some of these frames.

The video diagnoses the war of imperialist countries as the main issue, focusing on their invasion of Iraq in 2003. It does so by alluding to the 2003 worldwide marches and by showing images of the words ‘No war in Iraq’. The statements of protesters also work in this way. A middle-aged man declares ‘Around the world, millions of people don’t want this war’ and a young woman questions the politics behind the war in these words: ‘I don’t understand why dropping bombs on children is the best way to achieve peace’.

As part of a diagnostic, there is an attribution of responsibility for the war (Benford and Snow Reference Benford and Snow2000), achieved with a brief animation where four people wearing black capes ride rockets. These characters resemble the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Later, parodies of the faces of the culprits of the war are revealed: US ex-president George Bush, UK ex-prime minister Tony Blair, Iraq ex-president Saddam Hussein, and al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden. The horsemen steer their bombs to a city nestled in the desert; they drop the first bomb, which explodes in the sky and quickly transforms into a peace symbol; this is destroyed by the rest of the bombs.

Regarding prognostic framing, that is, ‘the articulation of a proposed solution to the problem’ (Benford and Snow Reference Benford and Snow2000, p. 616), the video proposes fragmentary solutions. First and foremost, there is the call for peace that frames the entire video and is expressed through declarations of protesters and banners containing peace and anti-war statements. However, it is important to consider the fact that those claims are voiced from a place of multiplicity and subalternity. Multiplicity is visible in the diversity of the ethnic, gender, and religious conditions of protesters. The video depicts people from different continents and religions. Subalternity is depicted by contrasting images of those who raise their voice in the streets and global hegemonic groups that are not directly shown but are characterised mostly through statistical data.

The second solution is collective action itself. As Castells (Reference Castells2012) observed with respect to anti-capitalist struggles, like Occupy Wall Street and Los indignados in Spain, which took place in 2011, the movement itself constitutes a space for direct democracy in daily life, outside of the economic and social structures that rule the globalised world. In this sense, the 2003 marches depicted in the video are presented as a space of direct democracy, where the voiceless get a voice, the unseen are seen, and the powerless acquire the ephemeral power of a collective actor that moves and fights by peaceful means in the streets.