I've been very curious why music hasn't been getting so intensely banned over the last year like books have (mine among them). I think that book banning is a testament to the power of books—the still-mystical power that a tangible book still retains. But what about music? Has the ubiquity of streaming lessened music's political power in the USA?
Retired school librarian here. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian one of my all time favorites. Consistently recommended it to my 8th Graders and it kept them coming back to me for more recommendations. Seeing your name on this thread, I had to personally thank you.
"Has the ubiquity of streaming lessened music's political power in the USA? "
Name one streaming service that isn't blatantly "leftist"... or even one media company in general, or even just a company big enough to have an HR dept. When you control culture, why would you allow people who would be protesting you to have a voice at all?
Everything that was once "counter culture" is mainstream now... remember how back in the 80s and 90s Gen X was all about "screw corporations!"? Does no one wonder where that went? THEY NOW RUN THE CORPORATIONS... that's why it's now cool to like corpos.
...and the people who oppose the current mainstream? Oh, they're just right-wingers.. or nazis, or bigots... why would you give them a platform? Hate has no place here!
PS. "hate" is literally anything that doesn't make me feel good.
I recall that Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A" and Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" were massive mainstream hits but there hasn't been a conservative protest song that hit big in a long time. Rich of Big & Rich has rowdy political stuff that he's been releasing separately of Big & Rich but it seems to be staying niche—big on streaming and YouTube but not hitting in the overall culture. And there hasn't been a liberal protest song that hit big in a long while, either. I think both conservative and liberal protest music have lost power in the streaming era.
Yup... gotta love those algorithms. They predict your tastes, give you what you want, and steer you away from anything that might complicate that transaction. They keep us all in our own little stovepipes, and very little escapes that trap. It seems like music has suffered what would happen to books if they were sold a paragraph at a time... If you like this paragraph, the software will find a similar one, and sell you that, as context, complexity, and meaning evaporate. Which I don't think has happened... at least, not yet. Fortunately, books are still hard to write, and books as good as yours, really hard. Thanks.
Oh, wow, that thought of books being sold and algorithmed by the paragraph. Wow. Damn. That really sheds a new light for me on the algorithming of music. Thanks.
Hi Sherman! Amazing to see you here. I liken it to the music scene in the 1950’s, when Pat Boone was a #1 selling musical artist and Sinatra was considered daring. The new digital system appears to have a lot more power to regulate innovation and force compliance if any success is hoped for. Streaming isn’t political - it’s about nothing else aside from money. The big difference, as a musician myself, is that the tools to create, develop and release music are far more accessible; the barriers to entry are mostly gone. As Ted has noted in other posts, even the tremendous homogenization in the current digital scene may be ripe for disruption and the old powers may be about to die for good.
In the 50's I was listening to Little Richard, Big Jay McNeely, Charlie Parker, Fat's Domino, Johnny Otis, and whatever Jazz and R&B was on the radio. I heard a Pat Boone record and thought, he can sing, he isn't saying anything. I did listen to Sinatra but never thought him daring. Daring? Little Richard was daring. There's always a whole other scene going on that isn't on main street.
As Richard became more popular he codified his movements and performance. You seen one, you seen 'em all. Yes, I think his "rowdy androgyny" would make him poplar, but his music wouldn't have any shock value. "Long Tall Sally jumped back in the alley," would go over and around the current heads. They'd have no point of reference.
This has me thinking of Rick Beato's YouTube videos and his theories about the four chords that killed pop music. Has the simplification of pop/rock music led to its depoliticization? I went to a Toto/Journey concert last year and some friends teased me about my nostalgia. And I had to counter with the fact that TOTO CAN PLAY! I'd never seen them live so I hadn't experienced their chops in real time. Toto isn't a political band at all but it reminds me now that "Rosanna" is a fairly complex song compared to today's hits. I'm not a musician but I'm wondering if the aesthetic and financial constraints of making a pop hit these days also constrain the potential political power?
Funny you'd mention Rick - he definitely talks a lot about this issue, and you're absolutely correct about how so much pop music had such tremendous harmonic complexity. Even much of the homogeneous pop of the 50's did - It was the height of Tin Pan Alley and the Great American Songbook, and formed a large part of the core of jazz music today. One of my old mentors was Frank Sinatra's guitar player on all of those records. The 70's were also another brilliant peak for pop music, almost by accident. Toto is a group of first-echelon studio musicians, absolute badasses - the irony is for me their music is so anodyne and apolitical and lacking in edge that I pretty much never listened to them; however, their stuff has aged pretty well! Steely Dan is probably the absolute peak of complex 'pop' music - I can't imagine them succeeding now the way they did back then. Toto? Possibly.
Yeah, I think of me and my friends in high school in 1985, partying in wheatfields, and singing along with the rock and country hits of the day, and having zero idea that our pop music would end up being more complex that what our kids are dancing to. De-evolution?
I was fortunate to have been born in '57 and to have heard the music of the '60s. At that time, I understood very little, but I heard it. I did not know what it was, but I felt like there was more going on with some songs of that era. Now, I would have called them subversive. I was very aware of a counterculture movement, that, even at that age, I realized was a healthy response to mainstream society. And protest songs helped that. But, the protest songs of the '60s were in the rearview mirror of the '70s. There were some notable protest songs in the '70s, especially related to feminism. By the time we were passed the threshold of the millennium, music was changing. Protest songs may be moribund, but I hope and pray they are not dead.
Name one streaming service which isn't blatantly Leftist? How about the very nice JAZZRADIO.com
?
My only problem with it is that I don't listen to it enough. I'm in an unlikely area for a 24 hour a day jazz radio station, but we have one, a noncommercial one, almost certainly a tax write off. None of their programs is live, of course. ( Note to Ted: if you haven't written about the virtual eradication of live radio music programming in the United States, I wish you would. "Liveness" had always been half the magic of radio, the other half being the listener's happy awareness that he was in a sort of communion with other aesthetes. )
But I like the local station a lot. It's all volunteer. They run and of course rerun enthusiasts who do what they do because they love it.
@David - That’s ok, the far right quite literally owns all the significant AM Radio terrestrial networks in this country, so you definitely have a place to salve your injured feelings. Please don’t cry. 😭
I think you're right. Add to that the fact that unlike a vinyl record or CD - which I can buy and own and play whenever I want - we don't really own music on Spotify or other streaming services. If the higher-ups say "today we won't stream Toots & The Maytals because 54-46 Was My Number is about jail, and the Jamaicans don't like crime music," there's nothing we can do to stop that.
But, as Gioia's news stories indicate, protest music seems to still scare repressive governments worldwide. But here? All sorts of folks, left and right, believe we live in a repressive country. If that's true then why isn't our government afraid of protest music?
Tough question to answer in a few words. There's so much going on. But I'll give it a shot. Sorry in advance if I sound a bit "lecture-ey." Not intended!
In a country dominated by leftist thinking, leftist protest music is no more subversive than the Internationale was in the Soviet Union. The conservatives could create protest music that would scare the government: Sweet Home Alabama was a more effective counter-protest song than most people remember. Neil Young did not win that cultural clash. But the conservatives only now understand that opting out of the culture decades ago was a huge mistake. They get it now: but a demographic that hasn't traditionally attracted the lion's share of artsy shakers and movers doesn't suddenly unleash a musical revolution the next day. They need time.
Also I don't think the conditions and the protest music out nowadays is strong enough to make an impact, apart from getting on the charts. (which is basically using a glamorous institution that doesn't care about them to make a quantitative point, and not a qualitative one) There also isn't a brand new "protest genre," or something like that. Rock & Roll hadn't aged that much when protest music got big in the 60s; it was rebellious, it was fresh and everybody knew it. Bob Dylan fusing protest-oriented folk with rock also had a titanic effect. But today, the government isn't threatened by a handful of disparate individuals using un-fresh genres like rock or rap: it would be threatened, however, if there was a musical movement as artistically innovative as it was subversive. Just as it took the combined events of the Plastic People of the Universe trial and Charter 77 in Communist Czechoslovakia to force a brutal (and public) government crackdown on dissidents.
I do believe there are repressive things happening in the US right now. But to make a long hypothesis short: the current US government isn't afraid of music because at the moment, there's nothing musical to be afraid of.
Yesterday, the New York Times had an article about “harder they come” is becoming a Broadway show… a subset of the reggae canon is based on the old testament Psalm 137… today shabbat I am resurrecting, so to speak, a project I started with some jazz musicians about the destruction of the temple… my coffee is here I’ve got to make… Exodus…
I just read the review of the play in the NY Times. Quite the negative review. I was wondering how they'd turn that crazy ragged landmark strange film, The Harder They Come, into a mainstream musical. Based on that one review, it seems they sanded off the edges.
I'm not sure what you mean. It sounds like you're saying the left doesn't ban itself? An overwhelming percentage of the book bannings in the USA are led by conservatives (thought there are certainly plenty of people on the left trying to control what we read, see, and hear). In the past, these conservative banning efforts also included movies, TV, and music. I think of the conservative Christian censorship efforts in the 1970s. On my reservation, the conservative Christian Indians (including my mother!) were throwing books AND albums onto the fires—the literal bonfires! But music hasn't been getting protested by conservatives, even as pretty much every potentially-upsetting song ever written is sitting in that mobile phone jukebox in all of our pockets.
Just looked it up and...fuck me, they do want to revise Le Guin. Amusing how her son is tiptoeing on a labyrinth of abstract eggshells to justify his actions because of the Roald Dahl backlash. This shows that strong reactions like this work! When many prominent Brits, Salman Rushdie and even the Queen Consort pushed back, it was apparent they didn't see that coming and it embarrassed Penguin. As it should have.
But while Roald Dahl was an opinionated individual liked by everybody despite that, Le Guin was left-leaning. The big irony is that left-wing authors don't have the same protection from their own side, since those conservatives currently outspoken about book revising have little incentive to defend an author associated with gender fluidity in the epoch of drag queen story hour. Nor will left-wing groups like Antifa push back: they couldn't give a hoot about the artistic integrity of literature. It's a sad fate for somebody as amazing as Le Guin.
Too true. I hope self-publishing changes that. A balanced literary output is the best, like some European countries have. (particularly France and the V4 countries) Neither "side" needs to burn books because both have a healthy influence in the mainstream culture of their respective countries. Translators into English don't always respect that balance, however.
The Seattle story and the Austin story are similar in that the music is being used as noise not content…in Palo Alto the bureaucrats were piping in classic rock (eg. “taking care of business” by bachman turner overdrive) after renovating Lytton plaza to irritate alleged drug dealers who they believed preferred Motown or something (e.g. Stevie Wonder “for once in my life I found someone who needles me”) but weirdly now they play Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers…
OMG…that Kars for Kids song could absolutely be weaponized. It played often on a local station several years ago now, and I can’t think of anything else that had me reaching for the power button as quickly as I did when I heard that hi-hat opening. Brutal. I hesitate to say more out of fear that it will start looping endlessly in my empty noggin.
Sorry if this digression is too esoteric but I have spoken several times on the same issue here. Recent response from leadership:
Staff discontinued providing power through three outlets and discontinued providing power on Monday through Thursday several years ago due to ongoing issues with vandalism. The outlets receptacles were vandalized repeatedly, the electrical breakers were tripped regularly from people exceeding the power capacity of the outlets, and people used the outlets to power stoves and leaving grease all over the plaza. Staff wasn’t able to keep up with repairing the damage from vandalism. Since the electrical power has been limited to one live outlet on Fridays through Sundays, the amount of vandalism in the Plaza has been manageable.
(Actual excerpt from City staff — it conflates noise ordinance with homeless policy — Its a red flag when you ask someone about noise or music and their response includes the word “grease” but not the Olivia Newton John or Jerry Zaks variety
This is a great and welcome post and the list is something I will go through carefully. Many of our American Blues and Rock songs come from these same emotions.
Among the news items you cite is one about the ongoing, but largely ineffectual, efforts of the Canadian government to foster Canadian content in the media. This is not about censorship and certainly not a reaction to the words and music and images of foreign artistic creations. Mostly it is a project in response to the massive influence of American voices and to protect Canadian jobs. But, as I say, it has not been terribly effective.
Also, we should bear in mind that the powerful emotional effect of songs is not always benign. I’m sure the Nazis fervently sang the Horst Wessel Lied.
Interesting development: this post about the state of protest music produces protests in the comments. Perhaps the 'ubiquity' of channels to broadcast anger, demands, and complaints for everyone across the spectrum of political opinion lessens the need to consolidate those emotions into a song?
The term Protest Music reminds one of earlier times but as this issue of HB shows it is not merely nostalgia. My brothers Chris and Dan and I performed The Gates of Justice by our father, Dave, at UCLA (Feb. 26) and at Holman Methodist Church (Feb 28) also in LA. The 'Gates of Justice’ was composed in 1969 in response to a crisis in the alliance between American Jewish and Black congregations that had been natural allies in the Civil Rights movement. Most people would agree such a performance promoting reconciliation and diversity is sadly relevant now too, but we Brubecks were surprised that we were asked to do it. It is difficult music requiring large professional forces and soloists and confrontational as well, and not at all like a ‘pops’ concert with jazz musicians. Furthermore, it was part of a whole program of serious protest music by other noted composers. I wanted to add this to the survey with thanks to Ted. If you are curious about the piece, here is a link :
This is a great project. Can’t wait to read Ted’s piece on New Journalism! Esp. what you have to say about HST and “objective” journalism today. Writing about RS myself, after I heard Jann Wenner and Greil Marcus speak at Berkeley.
You didn’t mention the thriving conservative rap scene, including Tom McDonald and Bryson Gray. Both frequently top the iTunes Charts, but you’ll never hear them on commercial radio.
The song ‘Where is reality?’ questions some of the ‘news’ (read propaganda) that mainstream media deliver. The song is on major streaming services but stays under radar or has few streams. It confirms the thesis of Ted... for now. Would you consider this song a protest song? Or does a protest song always need a specific target (person, government or organisation)? https://youtu.be/IkruhjDkgLQ
One of the earliest protest songs was the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves ("Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate") from Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Nabucco. The chorus was adopted by Italian patriots in the mid-nineteenth century who were seeking to unify their country. Even today, opera houses around the world will stop their performance of Nabucco after the chorus is sung, and play it again with audience participation.
The woman in Crimea very much knew she was singing a song associated with ukronazis. You should include a more balanced representation of music of defiance, not only what fits NATO propaganda machine. And yes, in times of war, betrayal is punishable by death.
I've been very curious why music hasn't been getting so intensely banned over the last year like books have (mine among them). I think that book banning is a testament to the power of books—the still-mystical power that a tangible book still retains. But what about music? Has the ubiquity of streaming lessened music's political power in the USA?
Retired school librarian here. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian one of my all time favorites. Consistently recommended it to my 8th Graders and it kept them coming back to me for more recommendations. Seeing your name on this thread, I had to personally thank you.
Thank you, Tina!
"Has the ubiquity of streaming lessened music's political power in the USA? "
Name one streaming service that isn't blatantly "leftist"... or even one media company in general, or even just a company big enough to have an HR dept. When you control culture, why would you allow people who would be protesting you to have a voice at all?
Everything that was once "counter culture" is mainstream now... remember how back in the 80s and 90s Gen X was all about "screw corporations!"? Does no one wonder where that went? THEY NOW RUN THE CORPORATIONS... that's why it's now cool to like corpos.
...and the people who oppose the current mainstream? Oh, they're just right-wingers.. or nazis, or bigots... why would you give them a platform? Hate has no place here!
PS. "hate" is literally anything that doesn't make me feel good.
I recall that Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A" and Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" were massive mainstream hits but there hasn't been a conservative protest song that hit big in a long time. Rich of Big & Rich has rowdy political stuff that he's been releasing separately of Big & Rich but it seems to be staying niche—big on streaming and YouTube but not hitting in the overall culture. And there hasn't been a liberal protest song that hit big in a long while, either. I think both conservative and liberal protest music have lost power in the streaming era.
Yup... gotta love those algorithms. They predict your tastes, give you what you want, and steer you away from anything that might complicate that transaction. They keep us all in our own little stovepipes, and very little escapes that trap. It seems like music has suffered what would happen to books if they were sold a paragraph at a time... If you like this paragraph, the software will find a similar one, and sell you that, as context, complexity, and meaning evaporate. Which I don't think has happened... at least, not yet. Fortunately, books are still hard to write, and books as good as yours, really hard. Thanks.
Oh, wow, that thought of books being sold and algorithmed by the paragraph. Wow. Damn. That really sheds a new light for me on the algorithming of music. Thanks.
Could be a wickedly funny novel. But I'm just a songwriter... I'll leave it to real writers to tackle! Cheers.
I think I can certainly write a short story based on the thought! If I ever publish it, I'll acknowledge you in the credits.
Hi Sherman! Amazing to see you here. I liken it to the music scene in the 1950’s, when Pat Boone was a #1 selling musical artist and Sinatra was considered daring. The new digital system appears to have a lot more power to regulate innovation and force compliance if any success is hoped for. Streaming isn’t political - it’s about nothing else aside from money. The big difference, as a musician myself, is that the tools to create, develop and release music are far more accessible; the barriers to entry are mostly gone. As Ted has noted in other posts, even the tremendous homogenization in the current digital scene may be ripe for disruption and the old powers may be about to die for good.
In the 50's I was listening to Little Richard, Big Jay McNeely, Charlie Parker, Fat's Domino, Johnny Otis, and whatever Jazz and R&B was on the radio. I heard a Pat Boone record and thought, he can sing, he isn't saying anything. I did listen to Sinatra but never thought him daring. Daring? Little Richard was daring. There's always a whole other scene going on that isn't on main street.
Little Richard did become Main Street, I think, at least somewhat. I wonder if his rowdy androgyny would make him even a bigger hit now.
As Richard became more popular he codified his movements and performance. You seen one, you seen 'em all. Yes, I think his "rowdy androgyny" would make him poplar, but his music wouldn't have any shock value. "Long Tall Sally jumped back in the alley," would go over and around the current heads. They'd have no point of reference.
This has me thinking of Rick Beato's YouTube videos and his theories about the four chords that killed pop music. Has the simplification of pop/rock music led to its depoliticization? I went to a Toto/Journey concert last year and some friends teased me about my nostalgia. And I had to counter with the fact that TOTO CAN PLAY! I'd never seen them live so I hadn't experienced their chops in real time. Toto isn't a political band at all but it reminds me now that "Rosanna" is a fairly complex song compared to today's hits. I'm not a musician but I'm wondering if the aesthetic and financial constraints of making a pop hit these days also constrain the potential political power?
Funny you'd mention Rick - he definitely talks a lot about this issue, and you're absolutely correct about how so much pop music had such tremendous harmonic complexity. Even much of the homogeneous pop of the 50's did - It was the height of Tin Pan Alley and the Great American Songbook, and formed a large part of the core of jazz music today. One of my old mentors was Frank Sinatra's guitar player on all of those records. The 70's were also another brilliant peak for pop music, almost by accident. Toto is a group of first-echelon studio musicians, absolute badasses - the irony is for me their music is so anodyne and apolitical and lacking in edge that I pretty much never listened to them; however, their stuff has aged pretty well! Steely Dan is probably the absolute peak of complex 'pop' music - I can't imagine them succeeding now the way they did back then. Toto? Possibly.
Yeah, I think of me and my friends in high school in 1985, partying in wheatfields, and singing along with the rock and country hits of the day, and having zero idea that our pop music would end up being more complex that what our kids are dancing to. De-evolution?
I was fortunate to have been born in '57 and to have heard the music of the '60s. At that time, I understood very little, but I heard it. I did not know what it was, but I felt like there was more going on with some songs of that era. Now, I would have called them subversive. I was very aware of a counterculture movement, that, even at that age, I realized was a healthy response to mainstream society. And protest songs helped that. But, the protest songs of the '60s were in the rearview mirror of the '70s. There were some notable protest songs in the '70s, especially related to feminism. By the time we were passed the threshold of the millennium, music was changing. Protest songs may be moribund, but I hope and pray they are not dead.
Name one streaming service which isn't blatantly Leftist? How about the very nice JAZZRADIO.com
?
My only problem with it is that I don't listen to it enough. I'm in an unlikely area for a 24 hour a day jazz radio station, but we have one, a noncommercial one, almost certainly a tax write off. None of their programs is live, of course. ( Note to Ted: if you haven't written about the virtual eradication of live radio music programming in the United States, I wish you would. "Liveness" had always been half the magic of radio, the other half being the listener's happy awareness that he was in a sort of communion with other aesthetes. )
But I like the local station a lot. It's all volunteer. They run and of course rerun enthusiasts who do what they do because they love it.
@David - That’s ok, the far right quite literally owns all the significant AM Radio terrestrial networks in this country, so you definitely have a place to salve your injured feelings. Please don’t cry. 😭
What are you even talking about?
BTW: why do people like you feel the need to be petty assholes all the time? This isn't reddit. Grow up.
Also: thanks for literally proving my point. Way to go, Richard!
Isn't it bad enough that America is banning books?
You mean list all of the books being banned in American schools? I understand that's quite a list, and varies by state.
Governments banning books in educational facilities is not bans. Got it.
Not the way anyone else is covering the issue, but sure, nothing is banned, and governments are just doing their elected job.
I think you're right. Add to that the fact that unlike a vinyl record or CD - which I can buy and own and play whenever I want - we don't really own music on Spotify or other streaming services. If the higher-ups say "today we won't stream Toots & The Maytals because 54-46 Was My Number is about jail, and the Jamaicans don't like crime music," there's nothing we can do to stop that.
But, as Gioia's news stories indicate, protest music seems to still scare repressive governments worldwide. But here? All sorts of folks, left and right, believe we live in a repressive country. If that's true then why isn't our government afraid of protest music?
Tough question to answer in a few words. There's so much going on. But I'll give it a shot. Sorry in advance if I sound a bit "lecture-ey." Not intended!
In a country dominated by leftist thinking, leftist protest music is no more subversive than the Internationale was in the Soviet Union. The conservatives could create protest music that would scare the government: Sweet Home Alabama was a more effective counter-protest song than most people remember. Neil Young did not win that cultural clash. But the conservatives only now understand that opting out of the culture decades ago was a huge mistake. They get it now: but a demographic that hasn't traditionally attracted the lion's share of artsy shakers and movers doesn't suddenly unleash a musical revolution the next day. They need time.
Also I don't think the conditions and the protest music out nowadays is strong enough to make an impact, apart from getting on the charts. (which is basically using a glamorous institution that doesn't care about them to make a quantitative point, and not a qualitative one) There also isn't a brand new "protest genre," or something like that. Rock & Roll hadn't aged that much when protest music got big in the 60s; it was rebellious, it was fresh and everybody knew it. Bob Dylan fusing protest-oriented folk with rock also had a titanic effect. But today, the government isn't threatened by a handful of disparate individuals using un-fresh genres like rock or rap: it would be threatened, however, if there was a musical movement as artistically innovative as it was subversive. Just as it took the combined events of the Plastic People of the Universe trial and Charter 77 in Communist Czechoslovakia to force a brutal (and public) government crackdown on dissidents.
I do believe there are repressive things happening in the US right now. But to make a long hypothesis short: the current US government isn't afraid of music because at the moment, there's nothing musical to be afraid of.
"There's nothing musical to be afraid of..." Wow, that resonates as true.
Yesterday, the New York Times had an article about “harder they come” is becoming a Broadway show… a subset of the reggae canon is based on the old testament Psalm 137… today shabbat I am resurrecting, so to speak, a project I started with some jazz musicians about the destruction of the temple… my coffee is here I’ve got to make… Exodus…
I just read the review of the play in the NY Times. Quite the negative review. I was wondering how they'd turn that crazy ragged landmark strange film, The Harder They Come, into a mainstream musical. Based on that one review, it seems they sanded off the edges.
I won't be buying tickets to that show anytime soon.
It has a little bit, but many artists are post- editing and caving to mobs over lyrics...
I'm not sure what you mean. It sounds like you're saying the left doesn't ban itself? An overwhelming percentage of the book bannings in the USA are led by conservatives (thought there are certainly plenty of people on the left trying to control what we read, see, and hear). In the past, these conservative banning efforts also included movies, TV, and music. I think of the conservative Christian censorship efforts in the 1970s. On my reservation, the conservative Christian Indians (including my mother!) were throwing books AND albums onto the fires—the literal bonfires! But music hasn't been getting protested by conservatives, even as pretty much every potentially-upsetting song ever written is sitting in that mobile phone jukebox in all of our pockets.
What about the “revisions” to books by authors such as Ian Fleming, R. L. Stine, Roald Dahl, and now even Ursula K. LeGuin?
Much more insidious than book burning, IMO, and being perpetrated by purported representatives of the Left.
Just looked it up and...fuck me, they do want to revise Le Guin. Amusing how her son is tiptoeing on a labyrinth of abstract eggshells to justify his actions because of the Roald Dahl backlash. This shows that strong reactions like this work! When many prominent Brits, Salman Rushdie and even the Queen Consort pushed back, it was apparent they didn't see that coming and it embarrassed Penguin. As it should have.
But while Roald Dahl was an opinionated individual liked by everybody despite that, Le Guin was left-leaning. The big irony is that left-wing authors don't have the same protection from their own side, since those conservatives currently outspoken about book revising have little incentive to defend an author associated with gender fluidity in the epoch of drag queen story hour. Nor will left-wing groups like Antifa push back: they couldn't give a hoot about the artistic integrity of literature. It's a sad fate for somebody as amazing as Le Guin.
The right can get a book banned after it's published. The left can get a book banned before it's published.
Too true. I hope self-publishing changes that. A balanced literary output is the best, like some European countries have. (particularly France and the V4 countries) Neither "side" needs to burn books because both have a healthy influence in the mainstream culture of their respective countries. Translators into English don't always respect that balance, however.
Yup, that's where the left is being culturally totalitarian and subconsciously and consciously camouflaging it as moral(ism).
Classical music at a homeless encampment? Dude, why are people complaining? Turn that shit up! 🎹
The Seattle story and the Austin story are similar in that the music is being used as noise not content…in Palo Alto the bureaucrats were piping in classic rock (eg. “taking care of business” by bachman turner overdrive) after renovating Lytton plaza to irritate alleged drug dealers who they believed preferred Motown or something (e.g. Stevie Wonder “for once in my life I found someone who needles me”) but weirdly now they play Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers…
I mean, if they really wanted to get rid of people, they need to start playing the Kars for Kids song or Baby Shark.
I, on the other hand, will be headbanging to Rachmaninoff and Mendelssohn.
OMG…that Kars for Kids song could absolutely be weaponized. It played often on a local station several years ago now, and I can’t think of anything else that had me reaching for the power button as quickly as I did when I heard that hi-hat opening. Brutal. I hesitate to say more out of fear that it will start looping endlessly in my empty noggin.
…someone I needled so long…
Sorry if this digression is too esoteric but I have spoken several times on the same issue here. Recent response from leadership:
Staff discontinued providing power through three outlets and discontinued providing power on Monday through Thursday several years ago due to ongoing issues with vandalism. The outlets receptacles were vandalized repeatedly, the electrical breakers were tripped regularly from people exceeding the power capacity of the outlets, and people used the outlets to power stoves and leaving grease all over the plaza. Staff wasn’t able to keep up with repairing the damage from vandalism. Since the electrical power has been limited to one live outlet on Fridays through Sundays, the amount of vandalism in the Plaza has been manageable.
(Actual excerpt from City staff — it conflates noise ordinance with homeless policy — Its a red flag when you ask someone about noise or music and their response includes the word “grease” but not the Olivia Newton John or Jerry Zaks variety
Absolutely true! Music has the power to unite us and bring about meaningful change in our society. It is no wonder why it is feared by those in power.
This is a great and welcome post and the list is something I will go through carefully. Many of our American Blues and Rock songs come from these same emotions.
Two comments, if I may.
Among the news items you cite is one about the ongoing, but largely ineffectual, efforts of the Canadian government to foster Canadian content in the media. This is not about censorship and certainly not a reaction to the words and music and images of foreign artistic creations. Mostly it is a project in response to the massive influence of American voices and to protect Canadian jobs. But, as I say, it has not been terribly effective.
Also, we should bear in mind that the powerful emotional effect of songs is not always benign. I’m sure the Nazis fervently sang the Horst Wessel Lied.
Interesting development: this post about the state of protest music produces protests in the comments. Perhaps the 'ubiquity' of channels to broadcast anger, demands, and complaints for everyone across the spectrum of political opinion lessens the need to consolidate those emotions into a song?
The term Protest Music reminds one of earlier times but as this issue of HB shows it is not merely nostalgia. My brothers Chris and Dan and I performed The Gates of Justice by our father, Dave, at UCLA (Feb. 26) and at Holman Methodist Church (Feb 28) also in LA. The 'Gates of Justice’ was composed in 1969 in response to a crisis in the alliance between American Jewish and Black congregations that had been natural allies in the Civil Rights movement. Most people would agree such a performance promoting reconciliation and diversity is sadly relevant now too, but we Brubecks were surprised that we were asked to do it. It is difficult music requiring large professional forces and soloists and confrontational as well, and not at all like a ‘pops’ concert with jazz musicians. Furthermore, it was part of a whole program of serious protest music by other noted composers. I wanted to add this to the survey with thanks to Ted. If you are curious about the piece, here is a link :
https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/event/music-and-justice-concert-featuring-dave-brubecks-the-gates-of-justice/
What a great artist your father was! The album he made with Jimmy Rushing would make my Desert Island Discs list.
My clubbing nights are long gone, but the dance floor might be another place where music still makes people think and dance.
Here is a protest song that stayed under the radar: Song link; video link; rumble video link: https://rumble.com/vtia2j-i-will-not-comply-leave-us-alone.html
This is a great project. Can’t wait to read Ted’s piece on New Journalism! Esp. what you have to say about HST and “objective” journalism today. Writing about RS myself, after I heard Jann Wenner and Greil Marcus speak at Berkeley.
That's pretty convincing. Kudos to the people who have the guts to speak up for what they believe in.
You didn’t mention the thriving conservative rap scene, including Tom McDonald and Bryson Gray. Both frequently top the iTunes Charts, but you’ll never hear them on commercial radio.
the conductor being shot.. remember it is coming from "Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine
October 15, 2022" that sounds like propaganda to me.. there is a huge amount of it on this topic of russia-ukraine..
The song ‘Where is reality?’ questions some of the ‘news’ (read propaganda) that mainstream media deliver. The song is on major streaming services but stays under radar or has few streams. It confirms the thesis of Ted... for now. Would you consider this song a protest song? Or does a protest song always need a specific target (person, government or organisation)? https://youtu.be/IkruhjDkgLQ
One of the earliest protest songs was the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves ("Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate") from Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Nabucco. The chorus was adopted by Italian patriots in the mid-nineteenth century who were seeking to unify their country. Even today, opera houses around the world will stop their performance of Nabucco after the chorus is sung, and play it again with audience participation.
The woman in Crimea very much knew she was singing a song associated with ukronazis. You should include a more balanced representation of music of defiance, not only what fits NATO propaganda machine. And yes, in times of war, betrayal is punishable by death.