Cultureshock

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Video transcript

Darlington in the year 2000 wasn't exactly what you'd call a hotbed of radical political change, but it was a time when things changed for me.

Shutty was the local digital pirate at the time, downloading songs and albums from Napster, Limewire and Bearshare and dishing out dodgy copies left right and centre. As it happened, it was a CD from the Left which landed on my desk during one year 10 maths lesson.

At that moment simultaneous equations went out of the window; in my hands sat a copy of Rage Against The Machine's eponymous debut album. Although it was 8 years old at that point this album and this band were as fresh as a daisy to me. Once Mr Rhodes had released us for the day at 3.15 this new, exciting and slightly illegal copy was put into the orange Sony Discman I had recently proliferated from my sister Hollie.

That short walk home will always stay with me.

Track 1, Bombtrack, erupted from the starting blocks with its slow, loping rhythm. Zack de la Rocha who was spewing lyrics about some political injustice that was so far removed from my 15 year old self that it was almost irrelevant. But that didn't matter.

This Los Angeles quartet were singing me a different song altogether. One of freedom of expression, of taking the rules and bending them so far that somebody had to notice and of activism.

The songs that followed told tales of land being stripped from impoverished Mexican farmers and of victims of apparent miscarriages of justice such as the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal. It inspired me to take a more active interest in world affairs and of issues closer to home such as equality, racism and education.

This is summed up brilliantly in a line at the end of Settle For Nothing; "if ignorance is bliss, then knock the smile off my face".

By the time I got home, I was left reeling. Why were four mid-twenties Californians so angry about issues that are so far removed from privileged western folk? Because if they don't speak up who is going to? Rage Against The Machine made me realise that people can, and should, try to affect a change. People should think about what is important to them and other people and do something, however small or large, to speak out for people who would otherwise have no voice.

They, and you, can be the voice of the voiceless.