Chapter 7: Politics

I think that many students might have trouble with this idea that politics has an influence on popular music (except in extreme situations, like Nazi Germany); additionally, struggles to maintain/support local or indigenous music might be difficult for them to understand since they are coming from the perspective of the dominant culture in the world. To go back to my last post about popular music in India, I’m sure that more than one student would say that the reason we don’t know Indian music is “because it sucks.” To many young people (especially those in K-8), (western) popular culture is the ONLY culture (or the only one that matters).


Bjork: Declare Independence.



Okay, so this is an odd song, I’ll admit, but she’s got some lines that definitely reflect some of the ideas that Negus discusses. She includes lines like, “Protect your language.” And I’m not positive about this next example (because of her accent) but at one point it sounds like she replaces the line, “Raise your flag” with, “Raise your blog.” I love Bjork. This performance could lead into a lesson on politics and culture in today’s world as Bjork upset the Chinese government with a recent performance in China that called for Tibetan freedom. It resulted in the Chinese government saying that they are going to tighten restrictions on foreign artists performing in China.

Another way to frame this for students would be to show how pop songs are used at political rallies for candidates. Sometimes these artists speak out against such use of their music if their political ideals differ from the candidates. In the classroom, we could look at some clips of political rallies, the songs used, the lyrics of the song, and the response (if any) of the artist involved. Negus discusses how songs can move “through time and space away from its moments of origins” (193) and “accumulate and connect with new meanings” (195). This is exactly what many candidates are trying to do with their use of pop music at rallies.

Another way to frame this idea would be to show how the Library of Congress has done work to preserve indigenous music in the American South by sending field reporters to capture the sounds of blues and folk musicians in the 30s and 40s. A man named Alan Lomax, in particular, did a lot of work capturing the music of such artists as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and countless others.

So I think that the challenge for an educator would be to show how these political influences and struggles continue in today’s world. Shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I heard multiple stories about an Iraqi boy band called Unknown to No One (and while that’s a terrible name for a band—at least from my limited American, rock and roll perspective—the abbreviation that they go by is even worse: UTN1). Forming a rock (i.e. western) band during Hussein's reign that sung in English was a dangerous thing to do, and they had to be careful about the secret police when they were rehearsing. In order to get played on the radio (which was run by Saddam’s son), they had to create a song about Saddam Hussein. This music represented rebellion through the heavy influence of western culture and values. Another interesting point is that this story seemed to be portrayed very positively by the US media. It is shown as a good thing that Western values and culture are being spread to oppressed parts of the word.