Politics and music

Some art engages the politics of its day.   This happens when artists have both strong reactions to political environments and the freedom to express those reactions. It can also happen when artists feel discouraged by the limitations of art, the sense that art is inessential, a feeling they compensate for by tying their art to a larger political fabric.

Both of these engagements between art and politics are healthy and necessary.

Music presents a special case.   When words are sung, they can tap into a deeper resonance, expressing political urgency in a visceral way. A simple phrase, mundane when spoken or read from the page, can become unforgettable when tied to a beat, a rhythm, a melodic gesture.

But what about music without words? Can political views be conveyed through wordless sound?

The answer is yes and no. When it comes to making specific political statements about current events, pure music is pretty limited. Not impossible, just severely constrained.

And yet, music can and does make political statements in a broader sense, statements about culture and identity. In fact, those kinds of statements are inescapable. Even the composers who dabble in exoticism, attempting to hide their identities through borrowed culture, are saying something – though maybe not on the surface level – about who they are and what their political truths are.

And that, to me, is a powerful political aspect of music: it can make political statements that expose our core strengths and flaws, the aspects of our selves that can’t be denied, as opposed to our viewpoints, which can be more readily shaped in response to our environments.

In that sense, music alone can explore a deeper level of political being. It tells the world who we are, not just how we think.