Category Archives: Politics

by | August 27, 2015 · 6:00 am

The Fugs in the 1960s

 

Few rock musicians have been as politically and stylistically radical as The Fugs were in their first incarnation, which ran from about 1964 to mid-1969.

They were the first group to shatter taboos against profane and obscene language and explicit lyrics about sex and illicit substances in rock music, predating even The Velvet Underground. They were also among the forerunners of the hybrid known as folk-rock.

They claim to have played more benefits for left-wing political causes than any other band of the era did. They suffered draining battles against censorship and harassment from politicians, law enforcement, and right-wingers.

They drew upon the poetry of William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, and others for some of their more literary lyrics. They were among the first rock artists to smash the barrier against songs running more than five minutes and, along with The Mothers of Invention and The Bonzo Dog Band, they were one of the funniest bands of the time, couching their political and social satire in wit that could be both ferocious and gentle.

This according to “The Fugs” by Ritchie Unterberger, an essay included in Urban spacemen and wayfaring strangers: Overlooked innovators and eccentric visionaries of ’60s rock (San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000, pp. 94–108).

Below, The Fugs at the Fillmore East in 1968 (audio only).

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by | August 24, 2015 · 6:00 am

Doggies and politics

 

In music as in politics, dogs can be useful props.

Richard Nixon’s famous “Checkers speech”, which saved his vice presidential bid and set a new standard for emotional appeals in political advertising, made news the same year (1952) that Patti Page had a number-one hit with (How much is) that doggie in the window?

The subsequent 1952 presidential race included an ad for Adlai Stevenson that featured a saucy Patti Page lookalike addressing the camera and singing, “I love the gov, the governor of Illinois…Adlai, I love you madly.” This was the first presidential race to feature widespread use of the new televisual medium, and Dwight D. Eisenhower won both the ad war and the presidency.

This according to “Political machinations: How much was that doggie in the window?” by Philip Gentry (IASPM-US 1 October 2012).

Below, Patti Page!

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by | May 15, 2015 · 6:00 am

Utah Phillips’s principles

 

In a 1997 interview, Bruce “Utah” Phillips (1935–2008) described himself as a “Catholic, anarchist, pacifist, draft dodger of two world wars, tax refuser, vegetarian, one-man revolution in America.”

“My body is my ballot,” he continued, “and I try to cast it on behalf of the people around me every day of my life.”

“I don’t assign responsibility to do things to other people; I accept the responsibility to make sure that things get done. I love to tell that to people who are frustrated with the ballot box. How many people do I know who have never voted for anyone who won, ever in their lives, and are really frustrated? It’s not the end of the road. There’s another way to go, and that’s with your own labor, your own sweat, your own body. I think there’s a lot of hope in that.”

Quoted in “Radical folk: A conversation with Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips, kindred spirits and collaborators on a daring new album” by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers (Acoustic guitar VIII/2:56 [August 1997] pp. 62–70).

Today would have been Phillips’s 80th birthday! Below, classic Phillips from 2005.

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by | July 9, 2014 · 1:00 am

Music on bones

music on bones

In 1946 Stanislav Filon, a young Soviet engineer, brought a record-cutting machine home from the front as a war trophy and used it to start a business in Leningrad.

By day, Filon recorded the voices of customers on industrial plastic discs; by night, he and his friends made pirate copies of records of foreign jazz and popular music.

Since the plastic discs were expensive and scarce, they experimented with alternatives, finally settling on abundantly available and virtually free used medical X-rays. These pirate copies were widely known as музыка на костях (muzyka na kostâh, music on bones).

This according to “Acoustic palimpsests and the politics of listening” by J.Martin Daughtry (Music and politics VII/1 [winter 2013] 35 p.). Above, St. Louis blues on a skull; below, a different kind of music on bones.

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by | November 22, 2013 · 1:00 am

The Beatles’ white album

white-album2

The Beatles, a.k.a. The white album, contests the arbitrary distinction between popular music and political engagement through its radical eclecticism and self-reflexivity. The album outlines a new way of being political—a postmodern politics—that was and still is to a large extent erroneously seen as escapism.

Critics from the New Left charge that the disparate styles and self-conscious references on the record signal the Beatles’ disregard of politics; but this perspective implies that there is only one way of being political, and fails to consider the historical circumstances that give any use of parody its particular significance.

By 1968 corporate attempts to manipulate rock artists and fans were reaching a peak, and early rock and roll had lost much of its initially subversive allure. Concurrently, the Beatles found themselves lauded for their masterpiece, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The Beatles’ turn to parody then serves not as an escape from but as a specific response to key cultural tensions: the self-reflexivity and ironic appropriation of various styles on the album allowed the Beatles to contest the commodification of rock music even as they challenged assumptions about what constitutes political relevance.

This according to “We all want to change the world: Postmodern politics and the Beatles’ White album” by Jeffrey Roessner, an essay included in Reading the Beatles: Cultural studies, literary criticism, and the Fab Four (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006, pp. 147–158).

Today is The white album’s 45th birthday! Below, documentary footage of the album’s creation.

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by | October 21, 2012 · 1:00 am

Solti and world peace

 

After a surprise 80th birthday party hosted by Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, Georg Solti thanked the multinational ensemble that had just performed and wondered aloud why musicians from many different countries can play together in harmony, while international diplomats cannot even agree on the crucial issue of world peace.

Inspired by this notion, his wife, Valerie Solti, hatched a plan with Leia Maria Boutros-Ghali, the wife of the then United Nations Secretary-General, to amass an orchestra comprising players from all over the world, and to have this orchestra perform for the U.N.’s 50th anniversary in 1995.

Dubbed the World Orchestra for Peace, the ensemble—79 musicians from 24 countries—debuted in Geneva in July of that year, with Solti at the podium, to great critical acclaim. The maestro did not live to preside over another of their performances, but the orchestra lives on, materializing whenever conditions permit.

This according to “The conductor with an ear for peace” by Harvey Sachs (The New York times 14 October 2012, p. AR11).

Today is Solti’s 100th birthday! Below, he conducts the World Orchestra for Peace in Rossini’s overture to Guillaume Tell.

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by | June 6, 2012 · 1:00 am

Music in political ads

Music plays a vital yet rarely noticed role in political ads, as explored by Jason Lee Oakes in “Obama’s One chance: Winning over hearts and ears” (IASPM-US 16 May 2012). Applying musicological analysis to several campaign advertisements—including President Obama’s controversial ad focused on the killing of Osama Bin Laden under his command—Oakes considers how musical techniques are used to provoke emotional responses to political issues, or to create issues where none formerly existed.

Below, the advertisement in question. Above, the first U.S. presidential campaign song, which circulated as a broadsheet during the successful 1824 campaign of Andrew Jackson (click to enlarge).

Related article: 9/11 music

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by | May 25, 2012 · 1:00 am

Woodrow Wilson, lyric tenor

In this centenary year of Wilson’s election, let’s eavesdrop on a rare musical moment during his presidency.

The harpist Melville A. Clark (inset), having performed at the White House with the Irish tenor John McCormack  a few months earlier, was invited back on 27 May 1914 to accompany the singing of Wilson’s eldest daughter, Margaret. The musicale was attended by 500 guests, including several visiting diplomats.

Clark now takes up the story, in an article published in the Christian Science monitor on 19 May 1945:

“When the last distinguished guest had depart­ed, the president asked me to take the harp and go with him to the rear portico of the White House. It afterward became plain that he was gravely worried over the possibilities of war between the United States and the coun­tries of the diplomats he had just entertained; and sought to relieve the tension by singing.

“I was counting it a great privilege, as well as a pleasure, to be able to give the president a lift at a time when he was burdened perhaps with the melancholy thought that his guests, that evening, might soon be his mortal enemies. But I assumed he wished merely to sit awhile in the soft Maytime air and listen to the harp.

“He asked me if I could play Drink to me only with thine eyes and I bent eagerly over the harp and began softly the familiar melody.

“Then I was surprised when the president began to sing the song in a clear lyric tenor voice.

“He suggested one song after another—Scottish and Irish songs and those of Stephen Foster. He sang easily and with faultless diction. It was nearly midnight when he stood up to go, amaz­ingly buoyant, relaxed, and unworried.”

This according to Pulling strings: The legacy of Melville A. Clark by Linda Pembroke Kaiser (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2010; the chapter is reprinted in The American harp journal XXII/4 [winter 2010] pp. 36–40).

Related article: George Washington, dancer

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by | February 22, 2012 · 1:00 am

George Washington, dancer

Although there is no record of Washington studying with a dance teacher, and rumors suggest that he was self-taught, the first U.S. President was widely known as a superb dancer.

One anecdote has Washington performing a minuet before French officers who admitted that his dancing could not be improved by any Parisian instructor. Washington’s dancing of a minuet in 1779 with Henry Knox’s wife Lucy inspired the following tribute from The Pennsylvania packet:

“The ball was opened by his Excellency the General. When this man unbends from his station, and its weighty functions, he is even then like a philosopher, who mixes with the amusements of the world, that he may teach it what is right, or turn trifles into instruction.”

This according to George Washington: A biography in social dance by Kate Van Winkle Keller (Sandy Hook: Hendrickson Group, 1998).

Today is Washington’s 280th birthday! Below, a minuet of the type that he would have danced.

Related article: Woodrow Wilson, lyric tenor

 

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by | February 4, 2012 · 1:00 am

Silvio Rodríguez and disappearance

 

 

On 31 March 31 1990, in the early days of the newly restored democracy in Chile, the Cuban cantautor Silvio Rodríguez staged a concert in Santiago de Chile’s Estadio Nacional for an audience of 80,000 people. Accompanying him were the fourteen-piece band Irakere, led by the Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdés, and the formerly exiled Chilean singer Isabel Parra and her group.

While it is entirely possible to see the concert as an event whose event-ness is created post facto, it is also useful to posit the concert as part of a construction of a larger process, that of opposition to the event of authoritarianism.

Two songs performed there, Víctor Jara’s Te recuerdo Amanda and Rodríguez’s Unicornio, involve evocations of death and disappearance. Death, as evoked in the Jara song, at least bears the comfort of a tangible end image; disappearance, as Unicornio bears witness, denies closure.

The afterlife of these recorded concert performances and the subjects of cover versions and tributes all contribute to the counter-event suggested by the Rodríguez concert.

This according to “Reconstructing the event: Spectres of terror in Chilean performance” by Richard Elliott (British postgraduate musicology VIII [June 2006]). Below, Rodríguez’s performance of Unicornio at the historic concert; click here for Jara’s performance of Te recuerdo Amanda.

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