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Religion and politics in music
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Poll Question: Should artists sing about religion and politics?
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
23 [60.53%]
2 [5.26%]
13 [34.21%]
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Guldbamsen View Drop Down
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I thought so too
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Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

Originally posted by Mascodagama Mascodagama wrote:

Of course, but don’t bore us with sermons, insult our intelligence with platitudes, or embarrass us with sententious proclamations about the state of the world. Your audience is readers and thinkers, we don’t need a concept album to tell us that Bad Things Are Bad.

If on the other hand you can express something with wit or elegance or a surprising insight, even a touch of poetry, then you’re golden whatever the subject matter

How facund and fervid.



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Originally posted by Argo2112 Argo2112 wrote:

I think music can be about any and all aspics of life including politics & religion. 

Hi,

Not always and not everywhere. In some places it was always a struggle, and ... many have died for it. AND, this is the case in various places around the world, where "freedom" simply gets you the slammer, or a lot worse. In some countries you "disappear", never to be found again ... 

It's the history of the arts, and it's not even about religion if you can count Ken Russell's satirical version of ... "... bye bye blackbird ...".

This is the reason why so much of the material in the history of literature has always looked to allusion and various other ways to say something without saying it directly, so no one could accuse them of this or that ... heck, even the Grimm's Fairy Tales were considered political ... now we can talk about Weill/Brecht, right?

The worst is out there ... be it what is happening here there or everywhere, or someone simply abusing the privilege with "you're fired!" ... we think it's great theater ... now we're back to the roman places with many folks getting thrown to the lions, and people applauding ... here we elect them!
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No problems here
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^ So says the man who listens to mostly instrumental music. Wink
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^ ( I appreciate you are in jest Wink) I'm not familiar with what sort of music the poster listens to but you don't necessarily require lyrics to have a discernible political agenda e.g.:

Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Penderecki (is self explanatory)
Finlandia by Sibelius (was a veiled protest against increasing censorship from the Soviet regime)
America by the Nice (was their 'aural protest' to the Vietnam war)
the People United will Never be Defeated by Charlie Haden (was in a similar vein, an instrumental adaptation of a Chilean socialist anthem)
Three For Festival / Volunteered Slavery by the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Quintet (is self explanatory)
Fables of Faubus by Charles Mingus (was written in protest at the governor of Arkansas calling in the  national guard to stop black teenagers enrolling in a white school)

There are also scores of examples of classical composers deliberately distorting the melodies and harmonies of traditional nationalistic music for seditious intent e.g Bartok's minor key parody of the Austrian imperial anthem in Kossuth, a piece that laments Hungary's failure to gain independence from Austria. Shostakovitch used to lace his chamber music with klezmer and Jewish traditional dance music motifs in protest at the plight of soviet Jews under the rabidly anti Semitic Stalin regime.

 


Edited by ExittheLemming - March 07 2020 at 10:43
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^ I agree but I think our friend focuses on jazz rock and RIO, which purpose is to get people worked up about nothing in particular. Wink
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votes don’t care, cos I don’t believe the listener should decide what the artist should or should not do.

That said will always be a risk of me not like what I hear, not too much “I was saved by the almighty”. But if the album is great (slow train coming) its ok.
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I think artists should be able to write about whatever they want... But at the same time, audiences should be free to criticize artists or stop listening if politics/religion are starting to get in the way of the music. Free speech goes both ways!

Ideally, I think political songs work better if they have some subtlety and universality to them. If you start singing about how [political party you didn't vote for] is terrible, it's going to lose appeal to their supporters, and risks being irrelevant in a few years. Same thing with political banter in between songs. Same sort of deal with religion... if you start singing about how great Jesus is, non-Christian listeners are more likely to tune it out. If you make a song about forgiveness or loving thy neighbour, it can appeal to listeners of different faiths while still passing on some of the values of a religion.
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religion is a dirty form of politics, and should be loathed even worse than the latter.
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The Aqualung album. Enough said.
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The more religion and politics the better.
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Points: 11592 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Grumpyprogfan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 08 2020 at 08:17
Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:

religion is a dirty form of politics, and should be loathed even worse than the latter.
Agree with this. But even if something is loathed, should it be censored? Is there a line of going too far, and what is that?
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Originally posted by Grumpyprogfan Grumpyprogfan wrote:

Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:

religion is a dirty form of politics, and should be loathed even worse than the latter.
Agree with this. But even if something is loathed, should it be censored? Is there a line of going too far, and what is that?

Hi,

It is censored in many countries with some really bad consequences ... and it is in the news each and every day! It almost does not mean if it is political or religious anymore ... all it takes is a paranoid leader or a megalomaniac ruler or a self proclaimed cleric!


Edited by moshkito - March 09 2020 at 09:15
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I voted yes because that's their choice. It's called freedom of speech. 

I have noticed though that typically only punk bands sing about politics(and usually from a left wing perspective). Prog bands tend to stay away from politics maybe out of fear of scaring off their conservative fans. I know some do but not most. Politics seems to be most common among punk bands(and in the old days folk).
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Points: 17510 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 19 2020 at 09:15
Originally posted by Mascodagama Mascodagama wrote:

Of course, but don’t bore us with sermons, insult our intelligence with platitudes, or embarrass us with sententious proclamations about the state of the world. Your audience is readers and thinkers, we don’t need a concept album to tell us that Bad Things Are Bad.

If on the other hand you can express something with wit or elegance or a surprising insight, even a touch of poetry, then you’re golden whatever the subject matter
Hi,

SFX: Glass breaking
SFX: Glass falling on the ground
SFX: Someone sweeping the glass

There goes the need for half the great poets and writers in our history.

So let the Spanish (New) Inquisition go about killing all writers, actors, artists in their version of the new this and that ... and allow the Church to control things and cut up movies left and right, including kisses (very real in Europe btw) simply because ... it did not suit their crowd control methods.

I guess Pablo Neruda is an idiot!

(just one example ... Garcia Lorca would cry at what you just said ... )


Edited by moshkito - March 19 2020 at 18:53
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

Originally posted by Mascodagama Mascodagama wrote:

Of course, but don’t bore us with sermons, insult our intelligence with platitudes, or embarrass us with sententious proclamations about the state of the world. Your audience is readers and thinkers, we don’t need a concept album to tell us that Bad Things Are Bad.
...
Hi,

SFX: Glass breaking
SFX: Glass falling on the ground
SFX: Someone sweeping the glass

There goes the need for half the great poets and writers in our history.

So let the Spanish (New) Inquisition go about killing all writers, actors, artists in their version of the new this and that ... and allow the Church to control things and cut up movies left and right, including kisses (very real in Europe btw) simply because ... it did not suit their crowd control methods.

I guess Pablo Neruda is an idiot!

(just one example ... Garcia Lorca would cry at what you just said ... )
You have quoted half my post and utterly misunderstood the entirety of it. 

I was tempted to say 'misrepresented', but by this point it's fairly clear that you're not actually interested enough in anyone else's point of view to pay that much attention. Why bother reading a post properly when instead it can just be used as a pretext for yet another patronising, irrelevant screed intended to demonstrate your cultural superiority? 
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Originally posted by Mascodagama Mascodagama wrote:

...
I was tempted to say 'misrepresented', but by this point it's fairly clear that you're not actually interested enough in anyone else's point of view to pay that much attention. Why bother reading a post properly when instead it can just be used as a pretext for yet another patronising, irrelevant screed intended to demonstrate your cultural superiority? 
Hi,

That was not the idea, and I updated the post so the rest of your comments were included which were fine with me.

Your comment, from the point of view of my house's literary sense, is an insult to a lot of people that meant well and tried the best they could ... and some lost their lives for it! 

There are, just as many "street" writers, painters and musicians that were greatly appreciated as there were "intelligent" folks doing the same thing, and I do not quite like to make that distinction, since in Portugal and Spain they all suffered the same! And having had family members succumb to it, is another story that wouldn't interest you, more than likely.

The whole point is, and you were right in the premise, is that sometimes, a sermon is not a sermon, sometimes a poem is not a poem, and pretty soon, you are going to tell T. S. Elliot to shut up, because you fell asleep after the words ... Michelangelo ... and/or Allen Ginsburg started a poem and went on for 25 minutes and then you saw (Check the movie about the FURTHER bus with Ken, and the troup!) a guy just rap forever while driving a bus ... and this is not about the sermon ... it is just who they are and how they were remembered, and add a chapter to American Literature.  ON THE ROAD ... here we come ... it's not about "your definition" of what the song had or didn't have, and your comment is a bit flippant and strange, considering that I knew better your tastes ... but something slipped!

There will always be, specially now that we can all specify our opinions which are always better than anyone else's (I never believed that, btw! I directed in film and theater ... that is a gross and misguided illusion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) ... and all we can say is ... that you were wrong and my idea was right.

Mine was not a comment about you ... it was more of a comment about a place where many things like you and I say and get posted and they get ignored to oblivion because in America they have never seen anything like it! ... and you just know it ... the next person will say ... it never sold or did anything in VARIETY anyway! Or the best one yet ... too long, and I don't want a sermon. Or a fudging lesson from the professor! Or my favorite ... it's along meandering, meaningless solo and instrumental passage ... 

Art is art ... and defining it in those terms is kinda bad ... there are a lot of religious stuff that is magnificent material ... I can't put down I Ching, The Bardo, and many of those books, and that stuff is at times a bit on the sermon side of things ... but I don't think it is meant to be that bad!


Edited by moshkito - March 19 2020 at 19:13
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^ for those of you who ever wondered what prompted working class adolescents circa '76 to start articulating their own aesthetic values a.k.a. Punk, it's probably hippy bollocks like this. Very little of the initial Punk music has endured (which kinda vindicates the 'no future' credo) but I just want to express sincere thanks to avowed theatre ponces like Pedro, who in their own infinitesimally minuscule way,  provoked the creation of music I grew up with and was inspired by (Post Punk)


Edited by ExittheLemming - March 20 2020 at 08:24
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Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

^ for those of you who ever wondered what prompted working class adolescents circa '76 to start articulating their own aesthetic values a.k.a. Punk, it's probably hippy bollocks like this. Very little of the initial Punk music has endured (which kinda vindicates the 'no future' credo) but I just want to express sincere thanks to avowed theatre ponces like Pedro, who in their own infinitesimally minuscule way,  provoked the creation of music I grew up with and was inspired by (Post Punk)

Hi,

NP: Strawbs ... The Nails From The Hands of Christ

From your posts I would say that you were not exactly inspired by "music" ... you were inspired by a scene! 

At least I discussed it from an artistic/slightly historic point of view, not from a fan of a scene point of view as you suggested. I could have, easily, made this historic with 500 years of materials ... 



Edited by moshkito - March 20 2020 at 08:53
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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