自Rage Against the Machine乐队让他成为偶像之前，汤姆·莫雷洛就已经开始举办慈善演出：门票10美元，所得全部捐给流浪者收容所，而吉他声则足够响亮，足以发动一场针对当权者的声波反抗。去年，在担任奥兹·奥斯本和黑色安息日乐队告别演唱会“Back to the Beginning”的音乐总监期间，他开始构想一个更宏大的计划：一场跨越多代、融合多种音乐类型的节日，其核心主张是音乐可以成为抵抗行为——直指唐纳德·特朗普及其释放的各种势力。
Tom Morello has been staging benefit shows since before Rage Against the Machine made him an icon: $10 at the door, proceeds to a homeless shelter, guitars loud enough to wage a sonic revolt against the establishment. Last year, while serving as musical director of Back to the Beginning, the Birmingham farewell concert for Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, he began imagining something bigger: a multigenerational, multigenre festival built on his foundational proposition that music can be an act of resistance—aimed squarely at Donald Trump and the forces he has unleashed.
“这场演唱会距离中期选举只有三周时间，绝非偶然。”10月3日，在马里兰州哥伦比亚市梅里韦瑟邮亭音乐厅举办的“Power to the People”演出结束后，莫雷洛对我说。该音乐厅距离首都不足30分钟车程，而中期选举将决定那里的权力平衡。“在仇恨与分裂盛行的时代，这是一个充满爱与团结的节日；在正义缺失、不公肆虐的时代，这是一个向那些挺身反抗不公者致敬的节日；而在艺术家们要么被封杀、要么自我审查的时代，这场演出则确保了他们能够演奏自己想演奏的音乐，表达自己想表达的观点。”
"It's no accident that the concert was about three weeks out from the midterms," Morello told me after the Oct. 3 Power to the People show at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., less than 30 minutes from the capital whose balance of power those elections will decide. "In a time where hatred and division are rife, this is a festival of love and solidarity. In a time where injustice is rampant, this is a festival celebrating those who are standing up against injustice. And in a time where artists are either being canceled or censoring themselves, it was a guarantee the artists were going to be able to play what they wanted to play and say what they wanted to say."
为此，莫雷洛召集了一众反叛者与摇滚传奇：琼·贝兹和Public Enemy；杰克·布莱克和Dropkick Murphys；Cypress Hill和Nathaniel Rateliff；Killer Mike和Serj Tankian；斯蒂芬·斯蒂尔斯、戴夫·马修斯以及Foo Fighters乐队。压轴登场的是布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀，他刚刚完成了一场20场演出巡演，这场巡演每晚都成为对特朗普、MAGA运动以及他认为正在威胁美国民主实验的威权倾向的公开谴责。
To that end, Morello assembled a sprawling roster of rebels and rock-n-roll royalty: Joan Baez and Public Enemy; Jack Black and the Dropkick Murphys; Cypress Hill and Nathaniel Rateliff; Killer Mike and Serj Tankian; Stephen Stills and Dave Matthews and the Foo Fighters. Headlining the event was Bruce Springsteen, fresh off a 20-show tour that had become a nightly rebuke of Trump, MAGA, and the authoritarian currents he saw threatening the American experiment.
“人民的力量”活动传递出一种反叛的能量，而当时许多艺术家已经对发声感到警惕，担心遭到反击、疏远部分观众，或惹怒那些屡次针对知名批评者的政府。“我感觉我们正试图扭转局势，却面临着一场海啸，”巴埃斯说道。她在20世纪60至70年代的社会运动中曾与鲍勃·迪伦和皮特·西格一同演唱。接着，她转向人群：“在这个充满残酷与霸凌的世界里，你们才是解药。”
Power to the People suggested a rebellious energy stirring at a moment when many artists had grown wary of speaking out, fearful of backlash, of alienating part of their audience, of the wrath of an administration that has repeatedly targeted prominent critics. "I feel as though we're trying to turn the tide and we're facing a tsunami," said Baez, who sang alongside Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger during the protest movements of the 1960s and '70s. Then she turned to the crowd. "You are the antidote in a world of cruelty and bullying."
在拉特利夫的陪伴下，她开始深情演绎伍迪·格思里的《驱逐者》。现场不可避免地呈现出一种进步派家庭聚会的氛围：年长的婴儿潮一代将反主流文化视为一种世俗的传承；年轻的活动家则因对企业权力、民主制度衰落以及加沙战争的愤怒而充满激情；场地各处散落着头巾、抗议T恤和自制标语牌。其中一条标语写着：“留住移民，驱逐种族主义者。”MS NOW对活动进行了直播。这场演出很容易被看作是对已有支持者的一次说教。
With Rateliff beside her, she launched into a haunting rendition of Woody Guthrie's "Deportee." Inevitably, the place felt like a progressive family reunion: aging boomers who carry the counterculture as a kind of secular inheritance; younger activists animated by rage against corporate power, democratic erosion, and the war in Gaza; keffiyehs, protest shirts, and homemade placards scattered across the grounds. One read, Keep the Immigrants. Deport the Racists. MS NOW livestreamed the proceedings. It would be easy to dismiss the show as an exercise in preaching to the converted.
但任何运动都必须从某个地方开始，而政治总是滞后于文化。如果这一信息能够超越这片草坪传播出去，“人民的力量”或许将成为这个时代最具影响力的文化事件之一：在美国社会处于转折点的时刻，艺术家们齐聚一堂，将他们的影响力转化为政治反抗，以捍卫国家的民主未来。
But movements have to begin somewhere, and politics is downstream of culture. If the message travels beyond the lawn, Power to the People may come to represent one of the seminal cultural events of the era: a gathering of artists, at a liminal moment in American life, turning their influence into a political insurgency to preserve the nation's democratic future.
莫雷洛策划这场音乐节已超过一年，但他表示，“转折点”出现在“大都会突袭行动”之后。当时，特朗普政府今年冬天向明尼阿波利斯部署了约3000名联邦官员，开展了美国最大规模的移民执法行动，最终导致两名美国人——雷妮·古德和亚历克斯·普雷蒂——被杀害。
Morello had been planning the festival for more than a year, but he says the "turning point" came after the Operation Metro Surge, when Trump administration deployed roughly 3,000 federal officers to Minneapolis this winter for the largest immigration-enforcement operation in the country, which culminated in the killings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“举办这样的演出时，经纪人和代理并不总是愿意参与，”莫雷洛告诉我。但明尼阿波利斯演出之后，情况发生了变化。“艺术家们开始给我打电话，主动表示：‘我理解你正在举办一场音乐节，我能参与吗？’”其中一位就是Dropkick Murphys乐队的主唱肯·凯西。他一口气演绎了12首歌曲，最后以乐队标志性的经典曲目《I'm Shipping Up to Boston》收尾，这首歌的歌词正是由格思里创作的。
"When you're putting on a show like this, managers and agents are not always eager to get involved," Morello told me. But after Minneapolis, something changed. "Artists started calling me up and raising their hand, saying, 'I understand you're putting on a festival. Can I be involved?'" One was Ken Casey, frontman of the Dropkick Murphys, who tore through a 12-song set that ended with the band's signature anthem, "I'm Shipping Up to Boston," built around lyrics by Guthrie.
“像今天这样的日子让我们意识到，外面有一个社群希望看到一个和平的、充满同理心的、团结的美国，希望看到我们的政府权力重新交回到人民手中，”凯西告诉我。
"Days like today let us know that there's a community out there that wants to see a peaceful America, an empathetic America, a unified America, that wants to see control of our government given back to the people," Casey told me.
这场音乐会从下午一点开始，持续了10个小时，将美国抗议音乐的历史浓缩在了一天之内。在莫雷洛傍晚早期的演出中，System of a Down乐队的坦基安与他一同演唱了Audioslave乐队的《Like a Stone》，以此致敬莫雷洛已故的乐队伙伴克里斯·科恩。而麦克勒莫尔原本受邀担任演出，却因新英格兰爱国者队老板罗伯特·克拉夫特对其支持巴勒斯坦立场的施压，最近被取消了在艾德·希兰巡演中的开场表演。
The concert began at one in the afternoon and ran for 10 hours, the history of American protest music compressed into a single day. During Morello's early-evening set, Tankian from System of a Down joined him for Audioslave's "Like a Stone," a tribute to Morello's late bandmate Chris Cornell. Macklemore, recently dropped as an opener on Ed Sheeran's tour because of pressure from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft over the artist’s pro-Palestinian advocacy, had been invited but was unavailable.
因此，他录制了一段视频信息，通过巨型屏幕播放。这场争议本身反而强化了音乐节所传递的反抗精神——反抗这样一个世界：在这个世界里，发声依然需要付出代价。
So he sent a video message that played on the giant screens. The controversy itself reinforced the festival's defiant argument—rebelling against a world where speaking out still carries a price.
随着夜幕渐深，现场的氛围愈发热烈。Baez、Rateliff和Matthews一同演唱了《Deportee》，随后又唱起了民权运动的经典歌曲《Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around》。当他们离开舞台时，Stephen Stills登场，以Buffalo乐队的《For What It's Worth》将现场带入另一个动荡的时代。接着是Cypress Hill，随后Public Enemy带来了他们的里程碑式作品《Fight the Power》，之后是Dave Matthews。
The lineage grew explicit as the night wore on. Baez, Rateliff, and Matthews joined for "Deportee," then moved into the civil-rights standard "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around." As they left the stage, Stephen Stills appeared and reached back to another era of upheaval with Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." Cypress Hill followed, then Public Enemy with their landmark "Fight the Power," then Dave Matthews.
Foo Fighters以《Times Like These》开启了他们的表演，这首歌诞生于乐队内部充满不确定性和濒临分裂的时期，最终却成为一首关于重生的颂歌。他们以《Everlong》作为压轴曲目，这首歌表达了对让完美瞬间永恒延续的渴望，尽管人们深知这不可能实现。
The Foo Fighters opened their set with "Times Like These," a song born of uncertainty and near-fracture for the band that transformed into an anthem of renewal. They closed with "Everlong." a track about the desire to make a perfect moment last forever, despite knowing that it can’t.
但这场音乐会的最高潮无疑是Springsteen的演出。76岁的他依然展现出定义其半个世纪职业生涯的力量与活力，而如今他还扮演着另一个角色：在一代又一代音乐人中，成为一位敢于冒险、表明立场的资深音乐人。“当你看到一位处于人生这个阶段的音乐人时，他已经成就了一切，生活安逸，本不必再踏上巡演之路，将自己置于聚光灯下，但他还是这么做了，”Casey说道。
But the concert’s climax was Springsteen's set. At 76, he summoned the power and energy that have defined him over a half century, as he occupies yet another role now, too: the elder statesman among a generation of musicians deciding how much to risk by taking a stand. "When you have a guy that's at that stage of his life, he's done all the stuff, he's comfortable, he didn't have to go on the road and do that and put the crosshairs on himself, but he did it anyway," Casey said.
“如果艺术家们都不能从他身上汲取勇气，那么天哪，就没人真正在关注了。”Springsteen以《Streets of Minneapolis》开场，这是他为抗议“Operation Metro Surge”而创作的抗议歌曲，写于ICE机构涌入明尼苏达州街头并杀害两名抗议者几天之后。随后，他邀请Baez登台，共同演绎了Dylan充满力量的原声版《Chimes of Freedom》。
"If artists can't take a lead from that, then my God, nobody's paying attention." Springsteen opened with "Streets of Minneapolis," his protest song against Operation Metro Surge, written days after ICE flooded Minnesota's streets and murdered two protestors. He then brought Baez onstage for a searing acoustic rendition of Dylan’s "Chimes of Freedom.”
从那一刻起，整场演出便迸发出充满正义愤怒的摇滚史诗。他与Morello一同激情演绎了The Clash的《Clampdown》，接着又演唱了《The Ghost of Tom Joad》，重现了两人近期在“Land of Hope and Dreams”巡演中表演过的版本。
From there the set erupted into anthemic rock fueled by righteous anger. He ripped through the Clash's "Clampdown" with Morello, then "The Ghost of Tom Joad," rekindling the version the two had performed on his recent Land of Hope and Dreams tour.
格罗尔和马修斯重返舞台，斯普林斯汀的演出则演变成一场跨世代的美国摇滚音乐家盛会，他们齐聚一堂，共同延续抗议歌曲的传统。他们联手演绎了两首摇滚经典：克里登斯·清水复兴乐队的《幸运之子》和尼尔·杨的《自由世界摇滚》。当最后一个和弦渐渐消散，他们仍留在舞台上，为演出画上最终的句点，而当天其他表演者也纷纷加入他们的行列。
Grohl and Matthews returned to the stage, and Springsteen's set became an ensemble of generations of American rock musicians gathered around the protest-song tradition. Together they tore into two classics of the canon, Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" and Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World." When the last chords faded, they stayed onstage for a final coda as the rest of the day’s performers joined them onstage.
这场音乐节重现了 Guthrie、Seeger 以及那些在二十世纪中叶为工人阶级尊严和民权而发声的音乐家们的精神。Morello 走上前来，解释了他们即将演唱的歌曲及其意义——Guthrie 的《这片土地是你的》，但演唱时采用了流行版本中常被省略的段落：歌词中，叙述者看到一块“私人财产”的告示牌，以及饥饿的美国人站在救济办公室外。这些被恢复的歌词让歌曲重获原有的锋芒——这是一首非官方的爱国颂歌，同时也向这个国家发出挑战，要求其兑现“美国属于每个人”的承诺。
The festival was a reincarnation of the spirit of Guthrie, Seeger, and the musicians who advocated for working-class dignity and civil rights in the mid-twentieth century. Morello stepped forward to explain what they were about to sing—and why: Guthrie’s "This Land Is Your Land," but with the verses often omitted from popular renditions, in which the narrator encounters a "Private Property" sign and Americans standing hungry outside a relief office. The lines restored the song's original edge—an unofficial patriotic anthem that also challenges the country to make good on its promise that America belongs to everyone.
这正是斯普林斯汀曾在 2009 年 1 月巴拉克·奥巴马的就职典礼音乐会上与 Seeger 一同演唱的版本。去年春天，在蒙茅斯大学举办的“塑造我们的音乐：美国音乐”音乐会上，他再次演绎了这首歌曲，以庆祝美国建国 250 周年。在那场音乐会上，他还邀请到了总统当时未能召集到华盛顿的顶级音乐巨星们。
It was the version Springsteen sang with Seeger at Barack Obama's inaugural concert in January 2009, and one he resurrected last spring at Music America: The Songs That Shape Us, his concert at Monmouth University celebrating the nation's 250th anniversary, where he recruited the kind of star-level talent the President had been unable to marshal to Washington for the occasion.
对莫雷洛来说，这首歌也让他想起了最近以102岁高龄去世的母亲玛丽·莫雷洛。他说，作为大萧条时期成长起来的一代人，母亲身上有着强烈的行动主义精神：她救济无家可归者，帮助戒毒者获得高中文凭，还支持儿子早期的朋克乐队。“她的印记无处不在，”莫雷洛告诉我，“她的精神融入了这首歌的每一个细节。这场音乐会之所以在名为‘玛丽之地’的地方举行，绝非偶然。”
For Morello, the song also evoked his mother, Mary Morello, who recently died at 102. A child of the Great Depression, she possessed an activist spirit, he said, feeding the homeless, helping recovering addicts earn their GEDs, and supporting her son's early punk bands. "Her fingerprints were all over this," Morello told me. "Her DNA was in every bit of this. I don't think it was any accident that this concert happened in a place called Mary Land."
当然，这里也靠近白宫，因此演出最后以约翰·列侬的《人民的力量》作结。莫雷洛、斯普林斯汀和他的团队希望特朗普能听到他们的声音——当时正值总统和“让美国再次伟大”运动面临动荡时刻，中期选举仅剩几周，而他的支持率也跌至第二任期以来的最低点。但最终，这场音乐节的真正信息是一种对自我行动力的呼吁，提醒人们：在民主制度中，选民才有权决定自己的命运。
It was also there, of course, because of its proximity to the White House, and so they closed with John Lennon's "Power to the People." Morello, Springsteen, and company wanted Trump to hear them, at a precarious moment for the President and the MAGA movement, with the midterms weeks away and his poll numbers at their lowest point of his second term. But the festival's message was ultimately a call to agency, a reminder that in a democracy it is the voters who get to determine their destiny.
“历史不是被动发生的事，”莫雷洛对观众说，“历史是我们自己创造的。”
"History is not something that happens," Morello told the crowd. "History is something we make."