We like music because, fundamentally, it entertains us. As an artistic concept, it allows us to educate sensations and emotions, shaping within each listener a critical, sensitive, and constructive spirit. Songs are forces that awaken joy and sadness, they can change our thoughts. Songs lead us down paths we never imagined walking, allowing us to see light where before we perceived only darkness. And music too, as the Basque poet Gabriel Celaya once wrote in reference to poetry, is “a weapon loaded with the future.” Music as a critical and reivindicative instrument, giving voice to people who demand justice from the margins. Bob Dylan gave us the first signs that popular music could fulfill this role on behalf of nonconformist generations. Blues and soul music, for example, were nourished by artists who wrote songs whose lyrics were committed to the civil rights of minorities. The pop music that emerged in the sixties captivated audiences with messages about peace, individual and collective freedom, women’s emancipation, and equality among communities constantly under threat. Incomprehensibly, in the first quarter of the 21st century, we are once again witnessing reason return to square one, and we must acknowledge that the cry of rebellion needs to ring out loudly once more, that the loudspeaker of protest must raise its volume to shatter collective conformity. Artists from all over the world, across every discipline, denounce the dystopia proposed by today’s holders of power. An excellent example is this album. The Right Reverend Crow is the project of guitarist, singer, and songwriter Nathan Bell. His message is reflected in the songs of the album Demokracy Blues, released by the label Need To Know Music of musician Frank Swart, who also plays bass on the album. Radicalized, acidic, extreme, and forceful guitars accompany voices of maximum expressiveness, voices that recite rather than sing relentless poetry, words that Nathan Bell transforms into rage and clarity. There are no filters softening the message, no indulgent permissiveness. The content of this album awakens the purity and honesty of protest, far removed from ideology: music as a beacon guiding a new awakening of collective consciousness in the face of the irrationality of a present and future in which we cannot remain naïve and ineffective accomplices. But there is always hope. That is the message.