Music and politics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There is a long history of the connection between music and politics, particularly political expression in music. This expression has most often used anti-establishment or protest themes, although pro-establishment ideas are also used, for example in national anthems.
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[edit] Politics in different musical genres
Folk music has a tradition of political discontent, with songs sung to commemorate popular uprisings and strikes, and to protest against injustice and social inequity.
Classical music has often been used to glorify political leaders, largely because the patronage of the rich or powerful was the main source of income for composers in previous centuries; see for example Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, French overture. In recent times this has become less prevalent; the Master of the Queen's Music in the U.K., for example, is no longer required to compose hagiographies to Elizabeth II. Even in the past classical composers registered dissent: Beethoven removed a dedication to Napoleon from his Third Symphony to protest against Napoleon's crowning himself Emperor.
Popular music since the middle of the 20th century has increasingly featured politically-inspired lyrics. It has often been used to express anti-war sentiments; Jimi Hendrix famously satirised the U.S national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," through the use of extreme distortion and feedback as a protest against the Vietnam War. The majority of political popular music has an anti-establishment or left wing perspective. Conservative and libertarian lyrics are mainly found in country music. In western popular culture, it is rare except in times of war for pro-establishment music to gain a foothold in the popular consciousness. The punk rock genre was overtly political: its genesis in the mid-1970s was as a reaction to the aloofness of the bands in the rock scene at that time, and its lyrics often espoused anarchy or revolution. This position was epitomised by artists such as Crass and the Dead Kennedys, who were inspired by anarcho-syndicalism (see Punk ideology). Today, working class and leftwing political themes, commentary and beliefs are still common with many popular and underground modern day street punk, hardcore punk and oi! bands; such as the Dropkick Murphys, Leftover Crack, Rancid, Oi Polloi, The Bruisers and The Business to name but a few. Music of black origin has a long tradition of protest, from the blues performers of the early 20th century, up to and including the rap and hip-hop more recently popular.
[edit] Censorship of music
Governments have often sought to place restrictions on the performance of certain types of music.
Totalitarian regimes in particular have censored music for the same reasons that they are prone to censoring literature, theatre, cinema, painting and other art forms.
Islamic fundamentalist governments, such as in Iran under the Ayatollahs and Afghanistan under the Taliban, have at times banned music completely, at least that of a secular nature. Similar laws were invoked in the 17th century in Britain under the Commonwealth of England.
In western democracies songs have been banned from receiving radio airplay due to their lyrical content by the radio stations or the government. This has often had a counter-productive effect, with the records concerned increasing sales due to the curiosity engendered by the ban: in 1977, year of Queen Elizabeth's silver jubilee, the Sex Pistols' single God Save the Queen reached number two in the UK Top 40 after being banned, largely for political reasons.
In the U.S.A., religiously-inspired outrage has also been known to lead to the public burning of music considered unholy: in 1966 recordings by The Beatles were destroyed by conservative Christians in the U.S.A. after John Lennon stated that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.
Though the Bolshevik revolution in what would become the Soviet Union briefly inspired a new cultural renaissance, through most of its existence the Soviet Union censored all art forms, including music, during its existence. Many of its prominent composers obviously felt restricted by this censorship, which often dictated that all pieces end in a major key and be uplifting. Several, such as Dmitri Shostakovich, often ran into trouble with the censors (such as after Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony) and became increasingly sarcastic and frustrated. Shostakovich himself is said to have slept by his door, ready to be deported to Siberia without waking his family.
[edit] Music in the political process
Candidates for public office often have campaign theme songs which they play at appearances. These songs are usually contemporary popular songs without explicit political content, though they may have easily politicized or sloganized lyrics. In both the United States and the United Kingdom since the 1990s, all the major political parties have appropriated popular songs at election time, not always with the consent or approval of the recording artist. It has also often been the case that, while the song's chorus may be "on message", the lyrics to the verses may espouse a different viewpoint that shows the party in a less than complimentary light. See coverage of this issue in the UK Guardian newspaper.
During the 1800s, particularly in the United States, political campaigners composed songs praising their favorite candidate, or criticizing their candidate's opponent. This practice gradually died out during the twentieth century.
Unions have a long tradition of rousing or mournful songs, usually consisting of popular and/or folk tunes with pro-union lyrics or lyrics commemorating union organizers or events. These were often sung at events or during marches and while on picket or strike lines. (see Seeger 1985).
[edit] Politics in contemporary classical music
A range of contemporary classical composers of socialist or Marxist sympathies have attempted in often quite radically different ways to relate their politics to their work. Primary amongst those from the earlier 20th century are Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, both of whom moved away from atonal idioms that had become prominent in their time, feeling these to alienate audiences, towards music and music-theatre that had roots in popular musics (for example cabaret songs), though with sophisticated harmonies that reflected their musical background. Of post-war composers, the most significant of the earlier generations were Luigi Nono and Hans Werner Henze, both of who wrote a wide range of works that combined music with texts, theatre, and electronics relating to political issues viewed from a Marxist perspective (for example to do with events in Cuba, Vietnam and Chile in Nono's work). Nono brought this subject matter into a dialogue with a relatively abstract music derived from his own earlier serial compositions, from his pioneering work Il Canto Sospeso (1956) onwards, whilst Henze relaxed his earlier formalism in favour of a more eclectic approach to musical style, as for example in his large scale cabaret-like work Voices (1973).
A range of slightly later composers in West Germany, including Helmut Lachenmann, Nicolaus A. Huber (both of whom were students of Nono), and Mathias Spahlinger responded to political concerns in a more abstract fashion, reflecting to some extent the ideas of Theodor Adorno and writing in opposition to the perceived demands made upon music (in terms of passive listening, audience pleasing, and so on) made by the culture industry. Lachenmann and Spahlinger explored a musical vocabulary derived in large measure from unusual techniques upon instruments, to offer expressive possibilities outside of the boundaries of what Lachenmann called the 'philharmonic tradition'. Huber for a while in the 1970s withdraw from the contemporary concert circuit, instead writing Politische Revuen. Other German composers whose works relate to this tradition, though with a more eclectic use of idiom, include Dieter Schnebel, Konrad Boehmer and Gerhard Stabler. Marxist ideas on aesthetic matters could be found in the writings on music by Hans G. Helms and Heinz-Klaus Metzger. The Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, on the other hand, arrived at an anti-romantic and anti-German aesthetic in part as a result of Marxist convictions; he looked to the dialectical possibilities bequeathed by the music of Stravinsky (who was no socialist, however) as an alternative. Andriessen's convictions in terms of the radical potential of anti-organic approaches to composition make for interesting comparisons with some of the work of Walter Benjamin.
A thoroughly different approach characterised the late work of the British composer Cornelius Cardew who, influenced by the writings of Christopher Caudwell (also alluded to by Lachenmann in his work for two guitars Salut für Caudwell (1977)) and Mao Tse-Tung, famously denounced the work of the post-war avant-garde with which he had previously been associated, in his book Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (in which he attacked not just Karlheinz Stockhausen but also the music of John Cage and others). Cardew argued that the atonal music of the avant-garde served to exacerbate the fragmentation of society rather than bringing the masses together; with this in mind he turned to the composition of didactic settings of revolutionary songs from Ireland, China, and elsewhere. Other composers influenced by Maoism include the Americans Christian Wolff and Frederic Rzewski and the Japanese composer-pianist Yuji Takahashi, all of whom also incorporated political song material into their compositions, though without wholly surrendering the other more abstract musical concerns of their earlier work, whilst the British composer Dave Smith continued to some extent in the tradition established by Cardew, as well as frequently making use of the medium of the nineteenth-century melodrama for speaker and piano, with a wide variety of texts relating to issues in Ireland, Palestine, and elsewhere.
The British composer Richard Barrett stands apart from other tendencies in that country, working within a radical atonal avant-garde idiom a little in the manner of the German composers mentioned earlier, but equally influenced by other figures including Stockhausen, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Xenakis, Kagel, Michael Finnissy and others. Barrett is concerned to marry together sophistication of musical content with a degree of surface immediacy, thus developing a musical language from fundamental parameters of register, density, dynamics, texture and timbre so as to facilitate the music's surface accessibility to the uninitiated listener. Finnissy himself has alluded to politicised topics in various works, especially in his English Country-Tunes, a ravaged musical landscape tinged with moments of nostalgia (not unlike the films of Derek Jarman), intended as a comment on the hypocrisy and falseness of English pastoralism. The British composer Gordon Downie writes in a highly abstract modernist idiom and in writings links this type of modernism with Marxist concerns. The British arts journal EONTA, under the editorship of Steven Holt, featured a range of writings on music and other arts from various Marxist perspectives.
Other composers identify with a non-Marxist left, which may embrace non- or anti-authoritarian, left-liberal, Green, or even Anarchist politics. John Cage, for example, was influenced by ideas of Henry David Thoreau and other anarchist writers. Cage's concept of an "anarchic harmony" has been taken up by younger composers, including Andrew Culver and Daniel James Wolf. Many composers are engaged with environmental issues and may be usefully identified with Green politics. A critique of Cage's politics from a Marxist perspective can be found in Ian Pace - “The Best Form of Government…”: Cage’s Laissez-Faire Anarchism and Capitalism, Open Space Magazine, issue 8/9 (Fall 2006/Spring 2007), pp. 91-115.
A connection between Marxism and modernism is often suggested by figures from the political right; however, many composers who in some sense inhabit the wide field of practices encompassed by the term modernism themselves held right-wing views. Arnold Schoenberg, in a late essay entitled 'My Attitude Toward Politics' (1950) (in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, edited Leonard Stein, translated Leo Black (London: Faber & Faber, 1975), pp. 505-506), whilst mentioning that when young he was introduced to Marxist theories and had some sympathies with the German Social Democrats, said 'I am at least as conservative as Edison and Ford have been'. Igor Stravinsky had sympathies with Mussolini (detailed in Stephen Walsh - Stravinsky: a Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882-1934 (London: Pimlico, 1999)), whilst Anton von Webern wrote of his admiration for Hitler and the Nazis in various letters in the 1940s (see Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer - Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978)). Whilst Pierre Boulez when young described himself as a '300% Marxist-Leninist' (see Dominique Jameux - Pierre Boulez, translated by Susan Bradshaw (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 142) he has rarely spoken since then on political matters; a similar situation applies to Karlheinz Stockhausen, other than some rather mystical (though misinterpreted) comments on the events of 9/11. György Ligeti, on the other hand, was a committed anti-communist, declaring (in conversation with Lachenmann) that the most tragic event of the late 20th century was America's losing the Vietnam War. Amongst American composers of a modernist variety, Milton Babbitt and Charles Wuorinen have made clear their sympathies with the political right.
[edit] New musicology
New musicology is the cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music. It is often based on the work of Theodor Adorno (and Walter Benjamin) and feminist, gender studies, or postcolonial hypotheses. As Susan McClary says, "musicology fastidiously declares issues of musical signification off-limits to those engaged in legitimate scholarship," including politics.
[edit] See also
- Political hip hop
- The Clash
- The Camp David
- Street Punk
- Oi!
- Public Enemy
- Wolfe Tones
- John Lennon
- List of anarchist musicians
- Anarcho-punk
- Bill Madden
- Irish rebel music
- Rock Against Communism
- Rage Against the Machine
- Freemuse - Freedom of Musical Expression
[edit] Further reading
- Pete Seeger (1985). Carry It On!: A History in Song and Picture of the Working Men and Women of America. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-60347-7.
[edit] External links
- Making Marx in the Music: A HyperHistory of New Music and Politics by Kyle Gann
- An exploration of the importance of rock music and its role in politics, written during the 2004 American Presidential election campaign.
- "Tony Blair: Punk icon" at BBC News, 28 September 2005
- Music and Politics Journal at UCSB
- An extensive discussion in particular about modernism and Marxism between composer Gordon Downie and pianist Ian Pace.
