Street Sweeper Discuss Revolution

No offenses to the hippies out there calling themselves political activists, but you're not really inspiring any change in this world sitting around in circles smoking weed all day and jamming on your guitar and bongos.

It's hard enough to convince people to take some time every couple of years to go out and vote for their elected officials, never mind trying to inspire them to get involved in social or political causes through preachy rock tunes or lame hip-hop rhymes.

But guitarist Tom Morello and rapper Boots Riley are no strangers to both spreading political messages, and creating killer tunes through their bands — Morello with Rage Against The Machine and Riley with Oakland hip-hop act The Coup.

The two have now joined forces along with drummer extraordinaire Stanton Moore to form Street Sweeper Social Club. Just like RATM and The Coup, SSSC spread politically-charged messages through tunes that are actually fun and you can jam to, which has always been the essence of Riley's music. He wants to educate people without coming across as some judgmental activist.

"There's a saying," says Riley just before a gig in Kansas City. "I don't know when it first came about, but I know it was popular when the Italian communists went to battle the fascists, which was, 'Tonight we drink, for tomorrow we die.'

"It's all a part of life. The celebration of life is engaging in the world around you, and what better way to engage in the world around you than to change it?

"I think that's where me and Tom see eye-to-eye when we met, is that the music comes first," he says. "Because you can stand around and talk about ideas with people and that would actually be better than making bad music.

"First and foremost, we're artists. I mean, you have to take it from that standpoint in order to make any music that's good. So we're artists first, and we want to make great art.

"Secondly, the way I talk about the world is not all gloom-and-doom. It's about hope. And sometimes I can be a funny guy. I think about the irony of things and that's where the humour comes and that goes into the music. I don't think everything is lost. I don't. I'm not depressed about everything. I'm hopeful and I think that the people can come together."

SSSC are getting a chance to spread that message on one of the biggest tours of the spring, opening for Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction. Riley is a passionate and engaging figure, but he knows not everyone leaving those shows is going to be inspired to change world the next day. He doesn't really blame them for their apathy, though. Instead, he points the finger at those in power for not doing anything to encourage people to get involved.

"Some of the people I was politicized by were old, white British organizers," he says. "Their view was, 'You're never going to get somebody to go on strike or walk off their job or anything if you can't drink a pint with them.' If you can't sit around with them, if you can't enjoy life together you'll never convince anybody to join your movement. And that's kind of my outlook on the music.

"I think we have the wrong idea of what it means to be revolutionary and I think that idea is created by romanticism and elitism that has kept the average, everyday person out of the movement in the first place."

Not only do people feel alienated from the political process, but they're under the impression that change needs to be made immediately and in one fell swoop which makes activism seem like a daunting task for a lot of people.

On "The Oath," one of the songs on Street Sweeper's self-titled debut album, Riley talks about the importance of making small changes — like simply changing yourself — which will in turn change the world around you.

"A lot of the time, people decide that they're revolutionary and they talk about these big issues and the system and how the system needs to fall, but all of those are grandiose plans for decades later and have nothing to do with people fixing there situation now, which would be called reformists.

"But I think the way to make a mass movement is to have revolutionaries engaging in reform campaigns, which change how people are able to put food on their table, change whether people are able to have a roof over their head.

"Those are the things we need to engage in, but not from the reformist sort of level that says we are about to make this system so much better, but from the idea that we're changing things a little bit, and that we're organizing to overthrow the whole thing. Those organizations don't exist out there for people, so we've got to create organizations that deal with those things."