From Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande the Americas
are in turmoil, and in the midst of the social and political movements rocking the region are some amazing rebel musicians. Four of them take centre stage in the film Rebel Music Americas.

Theirs is the music of the other America, the America of the South - popular, dynamic, rebellious and often… "anti-American". It's the rhythms and voices of displaced communities in Columbia, of "los piqueteros" blocking access to a refinery in Buenos Aires, of indigenous Mexicans hunted down at the US border, of peasants staging vast land occupations in Brazil.

Anibal and Charly, from the group Santa Revuelta, take us inside the social and monetary crisis in Argentina. They are sometimes exhausted, performing two or three times a day on picket lines, in front of huge demonstrations and at popular assemblies where thousands of people debate and vote with a show of hands as night falls. It's party music with content, and the crowds love it. Anibal, an economist by training, is never one to over simplify the crisis.

Lila Downs, born of a Native (Mixteca) mother from Mexico and an American father, lends her amazing voice to stories of the border, between North and South, between hope and despair. Her CD, Border/La Linea, is dedicated to those who lose their lives trying to cross into the United States. Blending pre-Colombian instrumentation, a touch of hip-hop, jazz and gospel, she sings of the dreams and disappointments of those who live only to cross into "paradise".

Chico Cesar, a colourful and talented Brazilian songwriter, has taken up the cause of the landless peasants of the Movimento SemTerra, one of the largest mass organizations in the world. Combining salsa rhythms and afro-reggae beats his music unites those who desire social justice and true freedom. Singing on a makeshift stage at a land occupation site, or keeping crowds hopping at a bandshell in Sao Paulo, Chico keeps his politics relevant and his beats boundless.

With the vallenato of Oyeme Chocó, we hear the sound of ordinary people singing about their own lives. Members of Afro-Colombian communities displaced for years from their homes , this group of home spun troubadours sing of the military operations that drove them off their land to make room for development projects pushed by the government and the elite.

These groups will take us, in their music and through their lives, inside the major people's movements and the political and social events shaping the Americas of today.