About

“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 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.

Blog Archive

Hearts Starve As Well As Bodies

Thursday, January 12, 2012



January 11th was the 100th anniversary of the famed "Bread and Roses" strike, a struggle whose influence resonates through radical labor history to this very day. And out of that strike came a song whose influence is possibly even greater. It's above.

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Bio

Alexander Billet, a music journalist, writer and activist living in Chicago, runs Rebel Frequencies. A regular contributor to SocialistWorker.org, the Electronic Intifada and Green Left Weekly, His articles have also appeared at TheNation.com, Z Magazine, New Politics, CounterPunch, PopMatters.com, Electronic Intifada, Dissident Voice, the International Socialist Review, the Washington Peace Letter, MR Zine and Razorcake.org among others.

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.

Billet has also been interviewed on Radio Free Adelaide in Australia and W.E.A.L.L.B.E. radio show. He is an active 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 and Twitter.

Upcoming Events


Fri, Feb. 24th - Chicago, IL:

Launch event for the Occupy Chicago Rebel Arts Collective

Doors at 6:30
Wicker Park Arts Center, 2215 W. North Ave.
$8 at the door
More details on the Facebook event page

Sat, Mar. 17th - Chicago, IL:

Occupy Chicago teach-in: "Occupy Music? Crisis, Resistance and the Sound of Revolt"

4:30pm
Occupy Chi HQ, 500 W Cermak
Room 701
More details on Facebook