More than a rhythm, more than a musical style, rock is an ideology, it is a community, a kind of brotherhood that is spread all over the orb and the natural and preternatural underworlds
Newsdesk (27/07/2022 2:15 PM, Gaudium Press) In September, the city of Rio de Janeiro will host the 9th edition of Rock in Rio, postponed in 2021 because of the pandemic. Ticket sales began on April 5, through the internet, and the first batch, of 200,000 tickets, sold out in the record time of one hour and 28 minutes. The most sought-after tickets were those for September 4, with the performance of Canadian singer Justin Bieber, and sold out in just 12 minutes.
Idealized by a Brazilian businessman, with its first edition in 1985, Rock in Rio is recognized as one of the biggest music festivals on the planet. The event started in the city of Rio de Janeiro, but has versions in Lisbon, Madrid and Las Vegas, USA. All of them reach a huge audience. The price is steep, around $ 625.00 per day, even so, in less than 24 hours, all 700,000 tickets for the seven days of the event had already been sold. What justifies this phenomenon?
Rock ‘n’ roll
Rock and roll is a musical style originated from the expression “rocking and rolling”, which means “rocking and rolling”. This expression can mean “to dance” or “to have sex” and designates a heterogeneous set of musical styles that emerged in the 1940s, among young people in the United States and England, which became a powerful and rich industry of transnational proportions.
The golden age of rock music was between the 1960s and 1970s, a period marked by protests and social revolutions, with artists like Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones bursting on the scene and winning over millions of fans and becoming known all over the world.
At the end of the 70s, a heavier rock style emerged, hard rock, also popularly known as “hard rock”, with a strong, forceful and aggressive sound.
Rock bands have always been closely linked to drug use, which was imitated by their fans. Many famous singers died of drug overdoses. At this time, bands emerged that became known for their relationship with Satanism, expressed in their lyrics, album covers, clothes and appearance of the singers, among them Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, ACDC. The latter recorded an album entitled Highway to Hell.
Even bands considered to be more “light” had their incursion into Satanism, such as the Rolling Stones, who recorded songs like Simpathy for the Devil and the album Their Satanics Majesties Request, with lyrics that openly approached the theme.
Punk and Funk
In 1977, punk appeared, even heavier, with lyrics marked by pessimism and fatalism and aggressive and violent melodies. The punk movement was short-lived, but deeply marked the music that would come after it, “evolving” into funk, whose rhythms are far removed from what tradition calls “music”, and whose lyrics openly promote unbridled sex, drugs and violence. In Brazil, funk has become the music of the favelas, where large funk dances usually take place on weekends (For the record, in December 2019, at one of these dances, in the Favela of Paraisópolis, São Paulo, after a police action, 9 young people were trampled to death while trying to escape through the community’s alleyways. )
Even in musical circles, funk is considered indecent. It’s a highly eroticised type of music, with sexual connotations and double meanings, and it carries an erroneous image of Brazil to other countries, where the main representatives of the style, like the controversial singer Anita, have an incomprehensible success.
And in this line of terrible things, there are also the rave parties (rock and electronic voices), which are private musical events of long duration, normally with more than 12 uninterrupted hours of electronic noise that some people also call “music”. These parties take place in farms, ranches or isolated sheds, far from urban centres – or not always… – and, as is known, everything happens there, from orgies to rampant drug consumption and, not infrequently, young people die from overdoses during these events.
“Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll”
The slogan “sex, drugs and rock and roll” reveals the style of an era and, in the 60s and 70s, was the banner of a significant layer of our youth. The extinct Brazilian rock group LS Jack has a song called S.D.R – Sexo, Drogas e Rock and roll – whose lyrics define very well the meaning of this degrading motto:
“I’m falling down, I get dizzy, I can hardly sleep. On the beat, temptations I want to run away. I hallucinate, so come hear me talk: Sex, drugs and rock and roll. The wind that passed […] And the earth spins and follows the turbulence. The sensation and that state of numbness. A will that overcomes consciousness. And God looks at you showing you the difference of a journey that steals your essence, of the human being’s condition of appearance. And one fine day the bill on the table and God looks at you showing you the difference.”
Many may disagree and say that there are good things in rock and roll, that it is not so bad… But for me, rock represents the degradation of music and a generation of lost people influenced by it, the preview of hell. There is nothing good in it, even if some melodies, for some moments sound pleasant and some lyrics seem innocent, they all have the same origin and the same root, which tends to end up impacting people in evil. And, consequently, the same goal: to lose souls and take them to hell, where the background music should be that of the distorted chords of strident guitars, thundering drums and horrifying metallic sounds that should make the father of rock smile.
And, that the devil is the father of rock is not my claim, it’s not a “conservative Catholic” thing. Who said that was the greatest exponent of Brazilian rock, Raul Seixas, whose biased music rocked – and still rocks – generations. In the song “Rock do diabo” (The Devil’s Rock) he states categorically that “the devil is the father of rock” and, if his own son is saying it, who am I to doubt?
We can say that more than a rhythm, more than a musical style, rock is an ideology, it is a community, a kind of brotherhood that is spread all over the world and the natural and preternatural underworlds. And there is a strong connection and similarity between the people who make up this community, although many are part of it just for doing it, because they find it beautiful, because others do it, without realising the danger they run when they allow themselves to be contaminated by this unknown.
David Tame, in his book “The Hidden Power of Music“, states that “music may play a much more important role in determining the character and direction of civilization than most people have hitherto been inclined to believe.”
There are many who appreciate the singer Rita Lee, considered the greatest rocker of all time in Brazil, but, few know that she used pages from the Bible to roll marijuana cigarettes. She herself declared this in her biography, affirming that when she was staying in a hotel and didn’t have anything to roll a “joint” with, she ripped a leaf out of the Bible for this purpose (up until some time ago, most hotels kept a copy of the Bible on the bedside table of each room) and, with this, she discovered that the thin paper used in most Bibles was ideal for making marijuana cigarettes, and she started doing this in many hotels where she stayed and even in her house. A person needs a lot of courage to do something like that and even more to reveal it…. Who is the father again?
Influence and Consequences
We cannot fail to consider that artists are opinion makers, followed by many – unfortunately, at their worst. To know the damage that drugs can do to youth and families, just take a walk around the centre of São Paulo, where the limits of crack district widen more and more, invading squares, streets and surroundings of churches like the Sé Cathedral, the Church of Santa Cecilia and the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, sacred places, where, in other times, the earth met heaven and today, given the moral degradation, rubbish, filth and violence, hell invades the earth.
This is the coffee grounds, the result of the revolutionary movements, of “liberté, egalité, fraternité”, the impulse of man, woman and all that came after in search of freedom, lulled by the slippery chords of rock and roll, which make up the notes of the destruction of society, harmony, health, future and hope.
And the same people who complain about the price of carrots, beans, milk, unemployment, are able to spend more than $ 600.00 a night to attend the presentation of the descendants of Asmodeus.
One of the characteristics of rock and roll are the simple lyrics, with messages not always clear, but that, because they are generally long songs with few words, they make, on purpose, many repetitions of the same verses and stanzas, so that people fix the content, memorize the lyrics and, mainly, assimilate the message and start to live according to that.
Before closing, I would like to remember the influence on many singers and rock bands of the greatest Satanist of which we know, Alistair Crowley, a man so bad that his own mother feared him and called him “the beast”, epithet that he ended up attributing to himself, proclaiming himself the number 666 of the Apocalypse of Saint John.
The aforementioned rocker Raul Seixas was one of the great supporters of this representative of darkness, and made a song in homage to him and his best-known book, “The Law”, which he himself admitted had been dictated by a demon who claimed that “there is no God beyond man, no reward and no eternal damnation, only the present life and the right to enjoy it to the fullest, doing whatever one wants.”
Although it did not become widely known, the song “The Law” derived into one of the singer’s biggest hits, “Alternative Society” which, according to statements made after his death, while he was singing, a choir, in the background, in virtually inaudible sound, pronounced spiritual mantras.
The Rock ‘n‘ roll Generation
But, after all, what is all this? Just the report of a degrading situation, disguised as something good, like the great show that will gather almost one million people in Rio de Janeiro in September? No, I write to demonstrate the accuracy of the thought of a great man, whom I greatly admire, Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in his book “Revolution and Counterrevolution”:
“The rock and roll generation: the revolutionary process in souls, thus described, has produced in the most recent generations, and especially in the current adolescents who are mesmerized by rock and roll, a temper of spirit which is characterized by the spontaneity of the primary reactions, without the control of the intelligence nor the effective participation of the will; by the predominance of fantasy and “experiences” over the methodical analysis of reality: fruit, all, in large measure, of a teaching which reduces to almost nothing the role of logic and the true formation of the will.”
When Dr. Plinio developed this reasoning, in 1959, rock music was still something relatively new, and no one would have said that the modern and profitable musical style would develop in the way it did, nor that it would be responsible for so much damage to lives, families and society. Today, we know. With his keen spirit, Dr. Plinio saw the seed and predicted the fruit that would come from it, and we live with the fetid residue of this fruit that rotted, but continues reproducing and involving so many young people who, certainly, would not be willing to spend an hour of a Sunday sitting on a church bench to attend Mass, but, in the Rock in Rio, they will stay hours in line to enter and many other hours standing, squeezed in the crowd, to watch a grotesque spectacle, whose tickets sold out as if by magic, leaving many young people (and many not so young) sad for not being able to participate.
And if anyone who has read this article up to this point still thinks that I exaggerate, I leave some words of the song Deicide, by the band of the same name, for each one to form his own opinion: “I killed Jesus just to see him bleed on his throne. I am evil. I am the Deicide and I killed the Lord. There is no more reason. I will kill the world in another way. I rule this world.”
By Afonso Pessoa
Compiled by Florence MacDonald
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