Tuesday, December 28, 2021
Does Commercially-Motivated Pop Music Divert Working-Class Musicians and Music Fans from Class Struggle?
In their 2011 book, titled Playing For Change: Music and Musicians in the Service of Social Movements, Rob Rosenthal and Richard Flacks wrote the following:
"Music may work against the interests of a movement in the first place simply because most movements seek alternatives to prevailing values and arrangements, while much of culture--popular culture in particular--tends to reflect and perpetuate the values of the existing order, values that are typically indifferent at best and hostile at worst to the vision of the movement...The values expressed in much of the...music and scene of the 1960s and 1970s...encouraged a worldview that militated against collective movement activity. The charity megaevents of the 1980s were criticized...for embodying an ethnocentric worldview...that reinforced the First World dominance of other nations...
"...The idealization of the car, a central aspect of rock...through Bruce Springsteen and down to the present, reaffirms...love of auto culture, making environmentalists' challenge to that culture more difficult...Much of the popular culture...doesn't hold out the promise of resisting or overthrowing the dominant culture...Much of pop culture asserts that political and social questions are irrelevant...Music...can easily be a diversion from political and movement activity rather than an aid...
"Adorno feared that...popular art was diversionary `social cement' when created...as a commodity, including music that declared itself to be socially significant...Frank speaks specifically of the `commodification of dissent'...Politics as fashion replaces politics with content...The movement...will begin to reflect the values and direction of the `posers' (as they are often called)...rather than those most dedicated to the social and political changes sought by the movement...
"...Some activists fear that music...can become a replacement for necessary political activity...Music may substitute for actual experiences that might...lead to involvement with a movement..
"...To the degree that any individual--whether music hero, religious figure, or political leader--comes to represent...the movement, some democratic qualities of the movement are diminished, as collective power and responsibility are ceded to individual power and control...
"...Rolling Stone gleefully informed its advertisers that a majority of the subscribers to the magazine...had voted for Ronald Reagan for president in the 1984 election..."