“We want rebel music, street music. Music that breaks down people’s fear of one another. Crisis music. Now music. Music that knows who the real enemy is.” -Dave Widgery, Rock Against Racism
Music, so we are told, has no real role to play in changing the world. Musicians are better off when they “shut up and sing” and leave politics to the politicians. Rebel Frequencies is a site dedicated to exposing and fighting this myth -- to defending music as a product of human creativity and genuine community, and insisting that it can only be ultimately liberated if it joins in the wider struggles for freedom and equality.
His article “Is Russell Simmons Playing Politics with Hip-Hop?” appears in the academic collection At Issue: Should Music Lyrics Be Censored For Violence and Exploitation? released in 2008 by Greenhaven Press. His first full-length book, Sounds of Liberation: Music in the Age of Crisis and Resistance, will be released in the fall of 2013.
Billet has also been interviewed on WBEZ's "Eight Forty-Eight" in Chicago, Radio Free Adelaide in Australia and W.E.A.L.L.B.E. radio show. He is a member of the National Writers Union/UAW 1981, a founder of Punks Against Apartheid and is a longtime activist in various anti-racist, economic justice and international solidarity movements.
His All-Time Top Five artists are the Clash, Public Enemy, Nina Simone, Massive Attack and Rage Against the Machine (with a close sixth being a tie between Lauryn Hill and Radiohead).
Contact him at rebelfrequencies@gmail.com, or through his Facebook or Twitter. He also runs maintains a Tumblr blog dedicated to his own art.
