You may possibly have read about the latest pronunciamento from Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who informed his unhappy people the other day that the promoting and teaching of music is “not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.” Would that this was a sick joke, but it’s not, nor is it the first time that an Islamic leader has declared war on music in recent years.
Such craziness should always, of course, be drawn to the attention of innocents who ought to know better but usually don’t, so I’ve made it the subject of my “Sightings” column in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. Not wanting to settle for merely shooting fish in a barrel, though, I also discuss the equivocal relationship between Western Christianity and music. Read all about it in tomorrow’s Journal, but for now suffice it to say that the West has a fair amount of splainin’ of its own to do….
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
