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2002-04-03 (Wednesday) - 9:06 a.m.
I sent this message to Jeff Chang yesterday in response to his CounterPunch article "Is Protest Music Dead?" I've decided not add italics or links to the email and just leave it as it was sent. For the sake of links, besides "Is Protest Music Dead?," Chang's piece “9/11: The Fallout” from the February edition of Bad Subjects is mentioned as is my essay "The Limits of Politics in Avant-Garde Jazz" from last summer's edition of that journal. My intention isn't to create an "open letter" or force Chang into responding. I would of course appreciate a resonse but if he doesn't want to, that is fine with me. What I do want is to share the ideas with a wider audience. As always email me if you
care to,
Jeff, I've long been a fan of your work. As I read the finished version of this message, it is clear I really ramble but this is more or less my response to "Is Protest Music Dead?" For what its worth, I'm a freelance writer who does both music criticism and investigative reporting. I enjoyed the piece very much, largely because it raises a question above and beyond the matter of music; what exactly distinguishes the response of people in the United States to September 11 and the ensuing “war on terror” from the response to Gulf War. Both were extremely popular wars and the peak popularity of each president Bush was roughly the same. Yet there seems to be far less dissent of any kind to the “war on terror” than there was to the Gulf War. (And those impressions stem from living in a small rural town during the Gulf War and living in Chicago since 911.) A number of considerations are arguably responsible for this. 1) While there were repressive actions against anti-war activists during the Gulf War, there was not, to the best on my knowledge, any repressive legislation directed against activists or any sector of the population, i.e. immigrants. This difference gave a signal that “reliving the 1960s” through anti-war protests was not going to be acceptable or winked at. (On the other hand, peace signs as a marketing image may have decreased since 911 but have hardly vanished, at least in Chicago.) At the same time, the Bush Administration has wisely (from their point of view, at least) made a decision to use a Velvet Glove whenever possible. There have been and will continue to be manifestations of the Iron Fist. Arabs have been and will be detained and deported when there is a plausible reason to do. The police have received and will use more power to interrogate and spy on people. Trials have and will increasingly become stacked against defendants, particularly in cases involving charges of terrorism. Drug users have been and will continue to be redemonized to a public that wasn’t nearly as committed to “war on drugs” as in 1989 and the militrization on policing will continue with a new reason. Outside of the U.S., American made Apache helicopters will continue to keep the Palestinians in line and U.S. attacks will continue thousands of civilians. Democracy will regularly be stated as a goal but never considered important when stable pro-U.S. governments are in place. All of these things will happen but the calls of blood lust and claims of racial/ethnic/cultural superiority will be avoided. I don’t doubt that Bush, Rumsfeld and the gang would be willing to imprison all people of Arab descent in the U.S. or order the killings of entire village and towns if they thought doing so would help defeat their enemy, which they like to call “terrorism” or just plain “terror.” But they aren’t going do that to prove a point or out of blind racism. It will have to actually help defeat, from a technocratic standpoint, whatever country or group they have deemed as the enemy at the point. The public seems to be going along with this far better than might have been expected. There have of course been many hate crimes and this white boy has witnessed numerous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments or actions. I also reported on some anti-Arab and anti-Muslim political demonstrations that took place in Southwestern Chicago suburb of Bridgeview. On the whole, however, the frequency of these incidents has been less than I expected and there have been few calls by mainstream political leaders for explicitly anti-Arab anti-Muslim laws or pogroms. If anything, the aftermath of September 11 has created more positive awareness of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. than any other event. In large part this level of “passivity” by the public is attributable to how the often Sega like military battles the U.S. likes to engage in are less person intensive than say military operation were even 10 years ago and how patriotism has been defined since September 11. The lack of a new for more soldiers goes along with how the general public has been told that patriotism is buying an automobile or house. Instead of being asked to enlist, buy war bond or save materials for the war effort, as has happened before, supporting the war has been labeled as one in the same with living the good life that freedom provides. So long as credit keeps flowing, the sacrifice of driving a new Explorer to see a movie about the valor of American soldiers is likely to keep the public from either opposing the war or seeking to strike against “enemies.” By some measurements this set of intentions and events has and will result in less suffering but at the same time it has and will deny powerful symbols to the resistance to war plans. This might not make much difference, as Japanese internment was hardly an effective organizing tool for anti-war activists during World War II. But if outrages to the commonly accepted goal of equality before the law –the fact it is widely accepted is exclusively the result of the Civil Rights Movement- do not occur, the anti-war movement will have to dig much deeper and attack the military plans on a systematic level. That will involve some modified form of a leftist, libertarian or paleoconservative ideology and, if history is any indication, that won’t fly. 2) The fact the “war on terror” has been effectively positioned as an ongoing and long term war and the continued threat of additional acts of terrorism have also likely worked to lessen and quiet dissent, whereas the these two elements, especially the second one, were not present in the Gulf War. 3) There is also the issue of the United States actually being attacked this time and the debatable point that the general public is less informed about the unsavory side of recent U.S. foreign policy than they were in 90-91 so “moral relativism” doesn’t appear in the same way. (I’m unsure on this last point. Since I do not have a good handle on the significance of anti-imperialist and/or peace movements around Latin America during the 1980s.) In addition to these elements, I also wonder if what the pop music world -which I define to include the styles and sub-styles of country, pop, rap, rock and other styles that are economically based on the popularity of single songs to create consumer spending- is experiencing is the lower end of a general decline in politics in pop culture. Are celebrities and popular entertainers generally less willing to take political stands that go beyond the political mainstream than they were in early 1990s? And is this because of how certain sectors of the public respond? The two “exceptions” that I immediately think of -Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen- aren’t really exceptions as neither relies on singles any more to gain or keep fans. And even so, look at the criticism directed at Springsteen a little less than two years ago for "American Skin (41 Shots)," which was in my opinion far more musically interesting than politically astute or daring. What I am trying to say rather badly, is that it seems to me that popular musicians aren’t making political comments like they used to. There is still the regular endorsement of political candidates –although most such endorsements probably now inspire more snickers than votes- but gone are the days when at least moderately confrontational pop music events like “Sun City” and Farm Aid –although I guess that does continue in a scaled back form- seem absent now. Instead what is left is the “We are the World” type platitudes that draw little interest from more than a handful of pop musicians, most notably Bono’s interest in Africa, even as the activism is thoroughly pro-capitalist and draws support in the U.S. from such antiestablishment figures as Bill Gates and Jesse Helms. It is hard to even imagine another recording like the 1991 remake of “Give Peace a Chance,” which answered the once hotly debated question of what it would sound like to hear MC Hammer on the same song as Iggy Pop. The one issue that has spurred swaths of controversial comments from pop musicians recently has been Internet file trading. This is an interesting topic and certainly one worthy of thought but it is internal to the business of music production and distribution and certainly not one of the most important issues of the day. To turn it into a fundamental matter related to capitalism is to somehow reduce what the band Fugazi has done merely one way to make money in the music business as opposed to having the intent of suggesting a model for development of a wide array of goods and services for human need. In short, pop musicians do not seem to be in the habit of taking stands on issues. This doesn’t apply to non-pop styles like indie rock, new music rap and improvised music. Nor is it clear that this reluctance is anything but temporary and 5 years from now the public will be tired of hearing what Britney Spears has to say about zoning regulations in Wisconsin. But I do think it may explain in part the lack of anti-war songs out there. Then again, looking at the mainstream for explicit dissent probably isn’t the most productive of activities. As an aside, the events of September 11 did, as you mention in the article, lead to some concerts. These events featured a number of pop stars did either explicitly or implicitly took a stand on an issue I would contend is political. I only saw the one that happened on September 21 and did my best to try to enjoy Bruce Springsteen twisting “My City of Ruins” –a song I had enjoyed since hearing a boot of its premiere the previous December- from a song about urban decay into a lament for New York City and thus implicit call for retaliatory action by the U.S. Springsteen was himself effectively doing what he had, despite some intellectual critiques, allowed others to do to “Born in the USA” –turn a song about injustice in the U.S. into a patriotic rallying cry. More enjoyable to me was Neil Young performing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” As many others have said, Lennon’s version has an odd position in pop music of being the one song played in supermarkets and department stores that professes atheism and says religion is an obstacle to human progress and happiness. I was delighted to hear his version of it in part because it was song that allowed Young’s vocals to shine despite his odd and worn pipes. But more importantly the performance gave me false hope that Young, who I have been a fan of since I first heard “Rocking in the Free World” in the fall of 1989 while I was sixth grade, would be on the same general political side as me for the rocky period that is still unfolding. Optimism dies hard with heroes, be they sports stars or musicians, for me and it was probably too much to expect a guy who had supported nuclear proliferation during the 1980s and given no more than a weak and contradictory criticism of the Gulf War to be on the anti-war side of a situation that public largely believes began on September 11. When I heard “Let’s Roll” in December, I was struck by how bad not just the lyrics but also the music was. Still when Are You Passionate? comes out later next week I will buy it and hope the other ten tracks move me the way “Someday,” “Over and Over,” and “Sleeps with Angels” do. The suggestion that perhaps the most music can be expected to do right now is being a “healing force” found at the end of "Is Protest Music Dead?" is interesting. As someone who has both listened to a fair amount of John Lee Hooker and used music as a reason to not kill myself during a period when I was particularly depressed, I guess I assume that music when done right is a healing force, a tool used by people to help them make sense of the world or beneficial to people in some other way. In other words, I view those three things as the least any music worthy of existence can do. I’m very interested in the politics of music but I have never seen an effective model of music as primary means of protest. I take issue with the contention that “Music used to be the dominant voice against war” but if that is true, it speaks rather poorly of some past anti-war movements. Perhaps it is necessary to try to imagine what musicians of any stripe could do to create opposition to the war. Let’s say a bunch of punk rockers and underground rappers read your piece and decide to speak out against the war. Would that make a difference? Let’s say that the likes of Alan Jackson, Jay Z, Paul McCartney and System of a Down come out against the war and start playing anti-war concerts. They would probably drag in a few converts but my guess is they would see their popularity plummet and be laughed at out of touch “artists.” The first question would asked be of them would be what do they the U.S. should do to fight terrorism Since no anti-war intellectual has an answer to this question palatable to the public, I find it hard to imagine these performers would. Actually I have hard time imagining even one of the above musicians actively rallying against the war because, and perhaps this shows my “uncompromising realism,” I have hard time imagining opposition to the war growing in the U.S. any time soon. So perhaps the real matter is to look away from the music for opposition. On a somewhat related note, I wanted to say I also enjoyed “9/11: The Fallout” from February’s Bad Subjects. Have you read my piece, ”The Limits of Politics in Avant-Garde Jazz” that also appeared in Bad Subjects last year. I cut down a larger draft of it for publication because I didn’t have to room to look at all of the areas and figured it was best to do good job on one question. If I were doing it again, I would make some change but for the most part I like how it turned. I would appreciate any feedback from you. The URL is http://www.eserver.org/bs/56/holmquist.html I also find the idea behind “Can't Stop, Won't Stop” to be interesting, even though, to be honest, I’m not a big fan of hip-hop as a music. When does it look like publication will happen? best,
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