People my age, who were college students in the 1960s, often think that all the best protest songs were written back then. A false idea; more recent musicians are writing in different modes, but with no less energy or power to move people. As witness the songs of the Beastie Boys or John Mellencamp, and as witness in particular the collaboration between Zacharias Manuel de la Rocha (b. 1970), lead singer of Rage Against the Machine, and DJ Shadow (Joshua Paul Davis, b. 1972) to produce the angry, virtuosically rhymed, hard-driving rap song “March of Death,” released on March 21, 2003, in protest—vain protest, as it turned out—against the imminent Iraq War. Anyone who wanted to hear the song could download it for free (“I’m releasing this song for anyone who is willing to listen,” said de la Rocha in a statement accompanying it, a gesture of protest in itself against the economic rules of the music industry). Like a good many other antiwar songs of the period—Eminem’s 2004 “Mosh” is another example—it is motivated both by opposition to the war and by a visceral dislike of then-President George W. Bush.
De la Rocha grew up in California, his father being a muralist and a member of the art collective Los Four. He was a performer even in elementary school, made his first reputation with Inside Out around 1988, turned to hip-hop in the early 1990s, and with Tom Morello formed Rage Against the Machine, one of the few politically engaged bands ever to get extensive airtime from both radio and MTV, just as de la Rocha himself is one of the few headline singers to have such fierce political commitments: against the Iraq War, on behalf of Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal (he made a speech about him at the UN), and above all on behalf of the Zapatistas of Mexico, whose flag has served as a backdrop for Rage concerts since their 2007 reunion.
DJ Shadow found his medium as quickly as de la Rocha found his, experimenting with a four-track recorder while still in high school; while a student at University of California–Davis he was working as a disc jockey, beginning to work out the innovative, “trip hop” sounds associated with the mixmaster he was to become.
I was born with the voice of a riot, a storm
lightening the function, the form, far from the norm
I won’t follow like cattle, I’m more like the catalyst
calm in the mix of battle
who let the cowboy on the saddle? He don’t know a
missile from a gavel!
para terror troopin flippin loops of death upon innocent flesh
but i’m back in the cipher my foes and friends, with a verse and a pen
against a line I won’t tow or defend, instead I curse at murderous men
in suits of professionals who act like animals
man child, ruthless and wild
who gonna chain this beast back on the leash?
this Texas fuhrer, for sure a, compassionless con who serve a
lethal needle to the poor, the cure for crime is murder?
on the left, left, right, left
but it’s just a march of death
I read the news today, oh boy, a snap shot of a midnight ploy
vexed and powerless, devoured my hours I’m motionless with no rest
’cause a scream now holds the sky, under another high-tech driveby
a lie is a lie this God is an eagle or a condor for war nothing more
Islam peace, Islam stare into my eye brother please off our knees
to beef now we feed their disease, interlocked our hands across seas
what is a flag but a shroud out loud, and outside my window is a faceless crowd
’cause a cowering child just took her last breath, one snare in the march of death
on the left, left, right, left
but it’s just a march of death
here it comes the sound of terror from above
he flex his Texas twisted tongue
the poor lined up to kill in desert slums
for oil that boil beneath the desert sun
now we spit flame to flip this game
we are his targets taking aim
we’re the targets are taking aim
all his targets are taking aim