What the hell happened? In the 50’s, rock’n’roll emerged from r&b as the exuberant revolution that brought America’s segregated salt and pepper back together and shakin’ in style. It wasn’t long before the lyrics followed what the music had already done, and one didn’t have to sacrifice musicality for meaning. On the contrary, the progressive lyrics of the 60’s and 70’s only gave the music more power and appeal.

Sam Cooke prophesied that A Change Is Gonna Come, and Marvin Gaye seconded that emotion with What’s Goin’ On and Mercy Mercy Me. Stevie told it like it was with Living for the City, while Bob Marley asked you to Stand Up for Your Rights. Santana and WAR brought even more rebellious flavor into the mix, while Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Frank Zappa, Country Joe McDonald, Bob Dylan, Buffy Saint-Marie, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and dozens of other great artists all had something to say about the state of the world.

Then radio stations began defining rock as pale and male, effectively bleaching all the soul out of the music, and few new artists were making good music and good politics in the same breath.

But it’s not that the artists aren’t out there. Perhaps they’re just not getting heard, and maybe, somewhere you’d least expect it, there is some singer songwriter with lyrics to rival Dylan’s, the voice of an angel, music as cool as Steely Dan, and chops as solid as Bruce Hornsby’s. Maybe the voice of the next wave has stayed true to the tradition of revolutionary rock’n’roll with a heaping tablespoon of soul, maybe that artist is neither pale nor male, and, just maybe, her name is Sara Messenger.

Who else has a song about globalization as powerful as her "Made It In America," or has approached the tricky issues of labor rights and the environment with the depth and beauty of "Somewhere in the World"?

Her signature song, "They Do Not Play the Drums," is a World Beat history of colonialism framed in an even deeper spiritual context, and her "Freest Country in the World" is fast becoming the activist national anthem. Racism ("The Spirit of the Man"), women ("Working Girl"), AIDS ("Go Ask An Angel"), poverty ("Panhandler"), domestic abuse ("House Broken"), the agricultural crisis ("This Farm"), the prison-industrial complex and the drug war ("The Names of Things") — name an issue, and she’s got a song about it.

What’s more, she’s got a great song about it. Songs that bring it all back together — from country to jazz, from rock to rap, she’s an unabashed musical integrationist.

All you’ll know is that it sure sounds real, and that the sound of truth sure sounds good.