Lets face it, a lot of mainstream music today is over-sexed, banal, and lacking substance. This much has been said before. But whatever happened to the status-quo-shaking music of the Summer of Love? Well apparently I'm not the only one asking the question, and a cool group called the C-CAM Collective recently decided to do something about it. It's planning to launch a 2012 Millennial Generation Summer of Love, and they're calling it, The Summer of Heart.

The Summer of Heart is billed as "An Intergenerational Third Summer of Love". As I understand it, it's a reference not just to the great music of that era, but of the social change it helped inspire. As a member of Gen-Y myself (aka. the Millennials), I can say that we can come off as a pretty narcissistic bunch. Yet at the same time, many young people are also very politically active and hungry for real change. Many don't relate to the small-minded social paradigms expounded in politics and media because they just don't relate to our experience of an interconnected world. I think that C-CAM sums it up exactly when they say: "Millennials aren’t interested in a youth rebellion. We’re interested in a global intergenerational interconnected movement that encourages full self expression with values and responsibility."

The Summer of Heart will be a "12 month calendar of transformational events and collective projects that awaken us to our deepest creative impulses through the arts, technology and social media... to empower human beings across the globe to utilize our creativity to change ourselves, our communities and the systems we live in for the betterment of the world." It plans to kick off with The 8 Story Mountain, a "globally broadcast coming of age ceremony and concert for the Millennial Generation that celebrates the young and inspires youthfulness and creativity for all." The group is presently recriuting artists and musicians for this event and they've put the call out for more.

With all this in mind I thought I'd use this week's Jukebox to play a few Gen-Y artists that are breaking new ground with social critiuqes and messages of positivity and change.  There are many more available on the C-CAM site and I'd definitely recommned checking it out - here.

First the critiques...

Here's Lily Allen takin' the piss with her take on western cultural values.

And Kid Cudi doing the same.

While the first three songs offered a critiuqe of culture, MC Yogi now expresses a postive sentiment that reaches for the new and the possible. Although Obama may not be living up to what many of us had hoped (yet), I love this song becasue of what it expresses. It's a tune that represents the hopes of humanity and many Gen-Y today.

To keep the positive vibes comin' check out Br. Bax's Jukebox submissions from last week. Both actually happened to be on my list as I prepared for this week's songs, but brother Bax moves quickly. The artists he chose - Matisyahu and K'Naan - are both Gen-Y musicians with damn good music and a heck of a lot o' heart. They're examples of the spirit we can expect from the 2012 Summer of Heart. So sign me up, I hope to see you there.