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The Politics of Rock Music
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13616 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1988 |
7,858 Words |
| Author
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J.R. Dunn
J.R. Dunn is editor of The Contrarian and writes often on the
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In his recent bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, an otherwise closely reasoned critique of modern education and the mindset it embraces, Allan Bloom settled for cliché when it came to popular music. Writing of rock, Bloom condemned it as a mindless, Dionysian force of no worth whatsoever, harmful to morality, decency, and intellectual development.
There was little new in Bloom's critique; ever since the music appeared in the 1950s, the same has been heard from ministers, academics, and editorialists, all looking closely at the music, none much caring for what they saw. Some of the criticism verged on the ridiculous: A manufactured quote from Lenin in which he was said to have outlined a plan to subvert the youth of the West through "African jungle rhythms;" a "scientific" study showing that rock's 2/4 beat caused neurosis and suicide in rats; repeated comparisons or rock concerts to the Nuremberg rallies. More recently we have seen fundamentalists making bonfires of rock albums (something much more evocative of Nazism than any rock show) and congressional hearings on the content of rock lyrics, held at the instigation of Tipper Gore.
All this criticism is beside the point. Rock is and has always been dance music, and as such cannot be expected to have much in the way of intellectual content--although Professor Bloom might be quite surprised to hear how advanced some of it actually is. No one art form, popular or otherwise, has a monopoly on tastelessness, as a brief look around will show, and practicing Christians, whatever their opinion of the music, would find it wiser to supervise their children's moral upbringing than to worry about Bloom's aesthetic biases.
If there is legitimate criticism to be made, it is in the area of politics. Not that tales of communist schemes can be taken seriously; if Lenin himself were to walk from his tomb today he would no doubt be displeased at the inroads that these "jungle rhythms" have made in the Worker's Paradise. But over the last quarter century, left-wing ideology has become received wisdom among large numbers of Americans, particularly the young, and rock music, as much as any other aspect of popular culture must be held responsible.
The Fifties: The Music is Born
"If I could find a white boy with a Negro sound and feel, I could make a million dollars," said Sam Phillips of Sun Records, and so he did. Rock 'n' roll was quintessential American music, born of the merging of
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