Of course, since I'm interested in historical trends I've taken a good look at Strauss & Howe's theory of the generational cycles.  I first noticed the 80 year cycle while studying American revolutions - without fail, our system significantly changes every 80 years or so following a severe economic crisis.  Like they say, history doesn't repeat; it rhymes.  The Civil War wasn't the same as the U.S. Revolution or the New Deal, but it was an echo of the same general social pattern.

Anyway, this brings me to my topic for today:  My generation, the millennials.  Strauss and Howe call us a "hero" or "civic" generation, one that is disproportionately concerned with politics.   Specifically, this post is about millennial political music, and one band in particular:  The Flobots

From what I can gather, the members of this band were all born in a 1979-1984 period cited by adherents of the Strauss & Howe theory as a generational transition from X to millennial.  For this cohort, some of the X skepticism develops into outright discontent - but discontent with a vision of how things could or should be.  

Recently, the Flobots have signed with a major label (grats).  You can read about the decision on their website, particularly the fact that the decision to sign over to a corporate label involved a lot of demands about creative control over their content.  This is what seperates this band from their contemporaries:  A lot of other musicians in our generation are just performers working for the vision of more established creative artists.  These guys might sound different if you think we're the generation of Britney Spears & Miley Cyrus, but we're actually the generation who sees an obligation to fix the problems that have long been discussed, yet never fully addressed.

Of course, the original video is a little too disturbing.  There is something about the juxtoposition of children acting like adults and images of violent war that doesn't seem to MTV friendly.  How about some cartoon violence, instead?

Embedding disabled:  Watch it here. 

OK I give, the new video is great too.

This video really speaks to me on a personal level, it really captures the essence of growing up during an "unravelling."  I see the nation, the world, hurtling toward extremism.  China is expanding is global influence, America is expanding.  Guerillas are digging in and saying "enough!"

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.