This may be so overly simplified as to be almost incorrect, but generally
political music can be grouped into four general categories:
Nationalism
Socialism
Social Activism
Utopianism
Generally, but not exclusively known as
Nationalism--to maintain the status quo
Socialism--the search of a new government for the people
Social Activism--the call for change in established government
Utopianism--the search of a society of equity (not necessarily equality)
There may be mixtures of any of these that can describe some music (though anarchism typically does not work with any of the others)
I. Introduction--Eyerman & Jamison
A. "Music and song have been important in the formation, and remembrance, of a wide range of social movements, but these musical components of collective identity have seldom been examined explicitly in the social movement, or broader sociological, literature."
B. "Music represents many traditions, as it expresses a range of social forces and processes, local cultures, andÉ inevitable tensions between commercial and political interests."
1. Music gives rise to images and symbols that are open-ended, not closed and determinant; suggests interpretation
2. Ideology--a ready-formed system of interpretation which explains why things are as they are; commands interpretation
II. Nationalism (Copland, Fanfare for the Common Man)
A. Definition: "The doctrine or theory according to which the primary determinant of human character and destiny, and the primary object of social and political allegiance, is the particular nation to which an individual belongs." (Grove)
1. Defined primarily by some negotiation of the relationship between the political status of communities and the basis of their self-description
2. From the standpoint of the status quo, separatists are minorities
a. General theories of nationalism have always foundered on this question
b. Zionism--a movement that originated among affluent assimilated Jews of central and eastern Europe
(1) Claimed modern nationhood for a self-defined community, aping the bourgeois nationalism of their host cultures
(2) Never had a contiguous territory or a common vernacular in modern times
B. Origins
1. "It has been said that the fine art of music as a literate tradition in Europe owes its inception to nationalism, since the earliest musical notations, preserving the so-called Gregorian chant, were the by-product of a political alliance between the Frankish kings and the Roman church, the primary o0bjective of which was the consolidation of the Carolingian Empire."
2. Were to be sought in the rise of "print culture" and especially newspapers
C. 20th Century Americanism: Aaron Copland--the first composer to achieve a style that plausibly represented a generic "America" to classical music audiences both at home and abroad
1. A left-leaning homosexual Jew thus triply marginalized from the majority culture of the land
2. Deeply influenced by the music he heard during his later student years in Paris as the pupil of Nadia Boulanger, in particular the "neo-classical" music of Stravinsky
3. Appalachian Spring--set the tone for a distinctively Americanist pastoral idiom (a personal composerly invention)
D. Export Nationalism--also known as "neo-nationalism:" Igor Stravinsky
1. Achieved fame as a composer and a became a force in European music through a Paris-based ballet enterprise, which obliged him to write--at first very much against his generation's principles--in a folkloristic vein
2. First Russian composer, and only important one, toÉ use folk music as a means of liberating his music from academic routine
3. "Export nationalism"--the more cosmopolitan Stravinsky's career became the more Russian his music had to seem
E. The Musical Cold War: Bela Bartok
1. The most telling early symptom was the ruthless partitioning of Bartok's works, like Europe itself, into Eastern And Western Zones
a. At home and in the rest of the Soviet bloc, the works in which folklorism seemed to predominate over modernism were touted by the cultural politicians as obligatory models
b. The rest was banned from public performance, made into virtual fetishes by the Western avant garde (particularly the Fourth Quartet)
2. This mandated antagonism towards his (or anyone's) folkloric side, loudly abetted by Stravinsky, had repercussions not only in criticism but in compositions
a. The composers who (it seemed) unexpectedly embraced serial techniques in the 1950s--Stravinsky and Copland prominent among them--now appear to have been seeking sanctuary in the abstract and universal (hence politically safe) truth of numbers rather than the particular (hence politically risky) reality of nation
3. Artistic nationalism, enforced on one side of the Cold War divide and anathematized on the other, could no longer be viewed in terms other than those of competition between hostile hegemonic world systems
4. The end of the Cold War in Europe had not, by the end of the century, led to the resurgence or rehabilitation of musical nationalism
III. Socialism--a specific utopianism (play Shostakovich, Symphony 1 in F Minor)
A. Social realism--"a doctrine with sources in 19th-century esthetics but now chiefly associated with Marxism or Communism
1. Applications have ranged from the largely descriptive to the downright prescriptive and dogmatic
2. Common factors
a. Realist (mimetic) theory of representation
b. Belief that art can promote human emancipation by offering a truthful yet affirmative vision
3. Espoused revolutionary aims in the socio-political sphere while adopting a conservative canon of esthetic values
B. Examples
1. Soviet Union
a. Dmitri Shostakovich (played earlier)
b. Nikolay Myaskovksy
2. Beyond the Soviet Union
a. Hanns Eisler
b. Erwin Schulhoff
c. Kurt Weill
d. Bush, Stevens, Stevenson, Henze, etc.
C. Dmitri Shostakovich
1. "First artistic star to arise from the education system of the fledgling Soviet Union"
2. Wrote Symphony No. 1 while still a teenager
a. Symphony No. 1 was first performed on May 12, 1926; conductor Nikoai Malko commented, "I have the feeling that I have turned over a new page in the history of symphonic music and of a new and great composer."
3. Increasingly isolated and embittered by the uncomprehending antipathy of bureaucrats and betrayals of former friends
a. Withdrew in his final years, often punctuating his silence by angry, lacerating statements to his few remaining confidants
4. His music also contains bitter lashings breaking through the icy, suppressive calm of the surface
IV. Social Activism
A. Politics
1. Song lyrics with overt political contents have not been uncommon in subsequent pop music, though in mainstream 20th-century popular music before the 1960s they are quite rare
2. Some pop musicians have tied their music to political campaigns
a. Rock Against Racism in the late 1970s
b. Band-Aid and Live Aid movement in aid of the relief of world poverty in the mid-1980s
c. Arguably the politics of most popular music have generally had more to do with its sounds, contexts and uses than with its words
3. The role of the state became increasingly important as well
a. Under fascist and Stalinist dictatorships it was overly oppressive and directive, but in liberal democracies the concerns of state agencies are mostly to do with encouraging orderly consumption and profitable production, along with social tranquility
B. Social Identities
1. There is good empirical evidence to link many popular music genres with particular social classes, bothÉ
a. Working-class
(1) Street music
(2) Industrial song
(3) Brass bands
(4) Music hall
(5) Blues and country up to the 1960s
(6) Hard rock style and heavy metal
b. Middle-class groups
(1) Parlour and salon music
(2) Operetta
(3) Progressive and art rock styles
2. Popular music styles themselves, and their consumption, seem to have been gendered in similar ways to production
a. "Softer" style are often thought of as being disproportionately intended for women
b. "Harder" ones for men
c. Subject matter (particularly in songs about love and romance) is generally organized, narratively and in its presentation, to appeal differentially to male and female listeners
3. Similarly, performance styles often seem designed to facilitate predictable patterns of identification and desire on the part of the fans
C. Esthetics
1. "Any attempt to raise even the possibility of an esthetics of popular music must somehow bypass the skepticism of"
a. Mass culture critics (e.g. Adorno: "The autonomy of music is replaced by a mere socio-psychological function")--the doctrine of music's autonomy
b. Liberal musicologists (e.g. Dahlhaus: "it is uncertain whetherÉthe surprisingly elusive qualities that determine a Ôhit' deserve to be called esthetic at all")
2. Frith (1996) argues for three distinct frames of esthetic valuation, each with its own values, institutions, and social practices, none of which has any intrinsic musical content
a. Art--organized around ideas of creative truth-to-self and educated knowledge
b. Folk--centered on ideas of authenticity and community
c. Popular--focused on ideas of commercial successs (i.e. popularity), entertainment and fun
V. Utopianism
A. Definition--the belief in an ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions. Hence "utopian" and "utopianism" are words used to denote visionary reform that tends to be impossibly idealistic.
B. History
1. First occurred in Sir Thomas More's Utopia, published in Latin as LibellusÉ de optimo reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia ("Concerning the highest state ofthe republic and the new island Utopia"; 1516)
2. The order and dignity of such a state was intended to provide a notable contrastwith the unreasonable polity of Christian Europe, divided by self-interest and greed for power and riches
3. The legend of Atlantis inspired many utopian myths
4. The creation of utopian religious communities continued into the 20th century, but they too were usually short-lived
5. In the 20th century, when the possibility of a planned society became too imminent, a number of bitterly anti-utopian, or dystopian, novels appeared
a. The Iron Heel (1907) by Jack London
b. My (1924; We, 1925) by Yevgeny Zamyatin
c. Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
d. 1984 (1949) by George Orwell
Eyerman, Ron and Andrew Jamison. Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1998.
Jones, Nick. "Liner notes." Shostakovich: Symphonies No. 1 & No. 15. Cleveland, Ohio : Telarc, 2001.
"Nationalism." The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980.
"Socialist realism." The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980.
"Popular Music." The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980.
"Utopia." Encyclop¾dia Britannica, from Encyclop¾dia Britannica 2003 Deluxe Edition CD-ROM. Copyright ©1994-2002 Encyclop¾dia Britannica, Inc. May 30, 2002.
Van Den Toorn, Pieter C. Music, Politics, and the Academy. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995.