Music You Can Vote To

Bedouin Soundclash's street reggae gospel punk soul sure isn't the diamond-encrusted hip-hop of P. Diddy. But they strike similar chords when it comes to urging youth to vote.

P. Diddy ran a hugely publicized Vote or Die campaign during the U.S. presidential election. The Bedouin Soundclash will be playing much more humble digs at a Get Your Vote On-sponsored show at Steamer's Pub in Victoria this Saturday.

Get Your Vote On is a youth-driven initiative that, as the name implies, encourages young people to go out and get their vote on. Similar campaigns include Rock the Vote BC, in partnership with the Canadian Federation of Students.

"It's a really huge privilege to vote in an election, but you should only do so if you take it seriously," says Jay Malinowski, lead singer of Bedouin Soundclash, whose latest album Sounding a Mosaic is currently available in Canada and will be released worldwide in May.

"With Get Your Vote On, it's really cool if kids come out to vote knowing why they're voting as opposed to voting because P. Diddy said so," says Malinowski. At Saturday's concert, and others leading up to the May 17 election, Get Your Vote On volunteers will provide educational materials and register voters.

Rock star politics?

Bedouin Soundclash, which includes bassist Eon Sinclair and drummer Pat Pengelly, play a mixture of reggae and rock that comes off a little like the Police.

"If you took Paul Simon's Graceland and put a three piece punk band behind that record and covered it, that's how I write," Malinowski says.

The 23-year old frontman says music and politics form a natural partnership.

"We are social beings and I think music is about communication and however you communicate is going to affect something politically."

The politics of music aren't always what you find on the evening news hour. Among Malinowski's musician friends, "The most publicized debate might be between conscious and unconscious hip hop, or between pop music and whatever 'real music' is supposed to be," Malinowski says.

That said, some musicians are far more vocal than others about issues-oriented political involvement, sometimes controversially so. When rock stars dabble in politics, Malinowski said, even though it can be construed as self-promotion, he believes the results can be positive overall.

"If in the end, Bono does raise a tonne of money for aids in Africa, the fact is that at the end of the day there's money for people who are suffering from HIV," he says.

"Maybe Bono and U2 sell a few hundred thousand more records as a result and maybe some people shouldn't think that should happen, but it's a give and take."

London calling

Bedouin Soundclash met at Queen's University. Their multi-genre music is partly the result of the diverse backgrounds of Sinclair and Malinowski.

"We had very different backgrounds, Eon being West Indian, me, growing up on the West Coast as a white kid. We really connected on music and our meeting point was reggae. He came from a dance hall, hip-hop background and I came from the punk side of things like the Clash, the Specials, English Beat - that two-tone eighties punk thing where reggae briefly touched with punk music and it created a lot of really cool things," says Malinowski.

Though Malinowski says it was never his intention to play in a band, a few months of playing casually at school made him realize he was in one - one that quickly developed a healthy campus fan base. Now Bedouin has graduated from driving to flying on their frequent cross-country tours.

They are also gearing up a summer of non-stop touring, including a gig with the Vans Warped Tour.

At the beginning of May, Malinowski will be in London, England, to play on BBC Radio One's punk show 'The Lock-up'.

"It amazes me each day that I can work with artists that I used to listen to on record," says Malinowski, adding Bedouin has worked with Daryl Jennifer of Bad Brains and played with Money Mark of the Beastie Boys.

In March, Bedouin was one of hundreds of international musical acts at Austin Texas' massive South by Southwest festival.

After Victoria, Vancouver

On April 21st, Bedouin will play in Vancouver, where Malinowski was raised. Traversing coast to coast, he has noticed Vancouverites are especially open to different types of music.

"The one thing I've noticed here is that it seems like you get a mix of a lot of people at all shows. It doesn't seem to be as big a deal to be into hip-hop and also go to a Metric show," he says. "But that said, our shows attract a mix of people. We have to, by nature, get an open music fan because we're not playing stuff that's just accessible to any one scene."

Nor does Get Your Vote On focus on any particular scene - rock, hip-hop, reggae, they sponsor a broad range of shows with one common focus: getting young people to vote.

Voting is something Malinowski believes should be done responsibly. "I don't think that people should just vote for the gratuitous sake of voting. I think that's even more dangerous because they're making a decision that they don't really care about," he says.

"I think it's really important that people value their vote."

To find election related concerts in BC go to Get Your Vote On and Rock the Vote BC.