The attempted Turkish coup d’état on 15 July 2016 brought some unfamiliar sounds to Istanbul–including low-flying F-16 jets and sonic booms–in addition to mosques broadcasting the sala, which serves to notify the community of an all-concerning event in an Islamic context; recordings and performances of Ottoman military music; and the sounds of chanting demonstrators.
Conversations, which incessantly continued in both public and private spheres, constituted another auditory aspect of the attempted coup and its aftermath.
Today is the two-month anniversary of this historic event! Above, an F-16 jet flying low over Istanbul; below, the sala that night, with the sounds of bombs.
The Afro-Cuban music and dance genre rumba has historically been considered una cosa de negros (a black thing) and reviled due to racialized stereotypes that link the practice with el bajo mundo (the low life), excessive alcohol use, and violence. Nevertheless, the socialist government has sought to elevate rumba’s status during the past half century as part of a larger goal of foregrounding and valorizing the African contributions to Cuban identity and culture.
Rumba is the most significant and popular black-identified tradition in Cuba; in addition to its association with blackness, it is often portrayed as a particularly potent symbol of the masses and working-class identity, another reason why the government has aimed to harness rumba to its cultural nationalist discourse.
Despite the discursive valorization of the practice found in much Cuban scholarship and political rhetoric, rumba continues to be identified with a particular and marginalized sector of the population. In many ways, the complex situation of rumba performance conforms to the more general trend of contemporary racial politics on the island.
This according to “National symbol or ‘a black thing’? Rumba and racial politics in Cuba in the era of cultural tourism” by Rebecca Bodenheimer (Black music research journal XXXIII/2 [fall 2013] pp. 177–205). This issue of Black music research journal, along with many others, is covered in our new RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Textcollection.
Although the 1997 release Backdoor man is attributed to Simon Hunt’s cabaret alter-ego Pauline Pantsdown (above), the vocals on the record (backed by looped disco grooves) are made up of snippets of speeches by the right-wing Australian politician Pauline Hanson that were cut up and re-edited.
In the song she declares, among many other things, “I’m homosexual” and “I’m a happy person because I’m a backdoor man”.
The song was a huge hit on the youth radio network Triple J, and was played almost hourly due to a massive number of requests, making it number 5 on the 1997 Hottest 100 list. However, less than a week after its release Hanson obtained a court injunction against the song, claiming that it was defamatory.
This according to “Two Paulines to choose from: An interview with Simon Hunt/Pauline Pantsdown” by Jon StrattonPerfect beat IV/4 [2000] pp. 34–44).
In an interview, Bobo Jenkins discussed the genesis of his first song and hit recording, Democrat blues.
He wrote the song on election day in 1952, while Eisenhower was being elected. He explained that it was really a song about the Great Depression and the especially hard economic times that plagued the poor during Republican administrations.
“I was workin’ out to Chrysler…and I sat down at the end of the line and wrote that song…The whirrin’ of the machines gives me the beat. It’s like listening to a band play all day. Every song I ever wrote that’s any good came to me on the assembly line.”
In 1954, with the help from John Lee Hooker, he went to Chess Records with his new song. “So I goes to Chicago with my guitar and a little amplifier, and the man says ‘What you got now? Usually everybody comes from Mississippi and brings a hit with them.’ I said, well, ‘I’m from Mississippi.’ See, I was lyin’ ‘cause I was livin’ in Detroit, but it sound good to hear it.”
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).
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.
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.”
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).
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.
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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