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Notes -
Does anyone else find it interesting that despite going through a momentous era of nation wide protests through BLM, Covid lockdown protests, etc. there’s been very little in the way of protest music produced by the culture? This may just be the function of my being mid 30s and being out of touch, but unlike the 1960s-70s which produced some amazing protest music (bob dylan, Nina Simone, Beatles, etc) there’s been…nothing of any note these days. Feels like a cultural wasteland tbh
Is this the youth being a much smaller generation now? Is music too corporate now? Or are the youth simply more conformist and love authority?
There are a few reasons why protest music fails to capture an audience that it used to in the 60s through the 80s. While corporatism/consumerism wants music that captures the widest audience to be marketed the most aggressively, the biggest part of it is that there is simply so much music being produced at any given time. The volume of music being produced at any given moment is staggering, so the largest and most promoted voices are focused on capturing the biggest share of music possible. Any protest songs will find a comparably niche audience. As @greyenlightenment also eluded, popular cultural leaders can simply post on social media rather than making specific music about current events. This allows consumers who like their music to not be ostracized by political statements in music while at the same time claim to support the latest cultural zeitgeist.
One of the other problems is that we have lost our understanding of harmonic and musical language. Take Shostakovich's 9th symphony for instance(https://youtube.com/watch?v=16MIEhqoHNI). If you listen to the piece, you may have some understanding of the harmonic and melodic choices that he chose when writing the piece. However, unless you know this piece was written as a celebration of Russia's success on the Eastern front and purposefully subverted the Soviets expectations of bombastic and nationalistic success, you might be hard pressed to understand the cultural impact and relevance of the piece. Most of us have forgotten that the music itself used to be a form of revolution, not just the lyrics. Most people do not understand it because they have become ignorant to how music can subvert and commentate on cultural relevance and still be timeless.
Speak of national commissions, the lack of national involvement in the arts, and the lack of promotion of this in western media beyond the Proms in England and maybe the Presidential Inauguration, there is a distinct lack of public artistic works being commissioned and promoted into mainstream culture. The NEA in the US is essentially a blind pool of money partially sent for National Orchestras and for other personal pet projects of the political elite which rarely if ever reach cultural relevancy. Likewise, the lack of national and public broadcasting beyond NPR makes new works incredibly difficult to spread, and NPR's audience is not that large beyond it being considered a propaganda arm. Likewise, NPR and PBS have separated their musical efforts from NPR proper (or have at some point) further removing music broadcasting from cultural relevance.
This leaves individual songs and artists with much less impact on cultural discussion than any previous generation and makes musical genre as the way to define political alignment rather than individual artists or songs. Too much music is a stronger entropic force than too little music.
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