Holistic project - core

Music has a significant impact on society and can be politically and socially involved. Throughout history, music has been used to promote political views and bring about change. For example, the Catholic Church used music to increase devotion, while totalitarian regimes used it to spread their ideals. In more recent times, songs have been created to promote civil rights and raise awareness of minority issues. Hip-hop and metal are genres known for politically charged messages. Examples include N.W.A.'s "F the Police" and Metallica's "Blackened" and "Justice for All." These songs tackle topics like police brutality, climate change, and injustice in the legal system. While not all music is politically involved, many songs address important social and political issues. Hello. In this presentation, I will be talking about the relevance that music has in people's lives and how it affects society at a macroscopic level by trying to answer the question, to what extent is music socially and politically involved? Intuitively, this topic is highly subjective, but I will try to explain my idea in the most objective way possible by bringing examples of politically charged songs. To begin, I believe that it is important to mention that music as a concept has existed for millennia, and for this reason it is deeply rooted in human society as a whole, and this relevance still persists today. Music as an art has a profound impact on everyone. For example, it can be a means of self-expression, while at a greater scale, music can influence and unify communities all around the world. Due to it having a great effect on people, music has always been used as a means to promote certain political views. For example, in ancient times, the institution of the Catholic Church used music as a means to increase people's devotion to the Catholic faith. In the 1900s, totalitarian regimes such as the Nazis and the Soviets used music to spread their ideals to the masses. More recently, music has been the catalyst for great change, not only in the 60s and 70s with singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan that made songs promoting the civil rights movement, but also in the 90s with the emergence of hip-hop music, which has always been a type of music focused on raising awareness on the situation that minorities such as Afro-Americans and Latino-Americans live in. One of the most prominent examples of this is the song F the Police by the hip-hop group N.W.A. This song was released in N.W.A.'s 1988 debut album, Straight Outta Compton. Upon release, this song caused a great degree of controversy due to its polarizing lyrics, as the song brought to light the discrepancies between the treatment of Blacks and other races by the police officers. This infuriated a great quantity of people, especially police officers and politicians. Organizations like the FBI have also taken action in order to censor the song by prohibiting it from being played on radio stations and by prohibiting N.W.A.'s from playing at live concerts. The FBI not wanting the song to become popular is a reason why the Parental Advisory Explicit Content label exists, as it was pasted onto the cover of the album in order to disclose the fact that it included not only swear words, but also inappropriate topics. Despite hip-hop being a very prominent genre when discussing politically charged music, it is not the only one. One genre which includes multiple songs with socially and politically charged messages, which also happens to be my favorite music genre, is metal. Metal is a music genre characterized by its persistent heavy beat, virtuosity, and technicalities, generally accompanied by a fast tempo and a distorted guitar tone, which is a very prominent instrument in this genre. There are many metal songs that tackle socially relevant and controversial topics. Some of my favorites are Blackened and Holy Wars, The Punishment Do. The first of the two, Blackened, is a Metallica song, released as the first track in their 1988 release, Injustice For All. This album focuses on the themes of injustice, and the first track is a prime example of this, as this song is about climate change and the effects it has on nature and humanity as a whole. This theme is expressed multiple times throughout the song. One such example is the lines, Death of Mother Earth, Never a Rebirth. These lines express a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness, and in fact, the message of the song is that if people don't unite and work together in order to stop climate change, the future might be disastrous. Another song in this album that is relevant to this subject is the title track of the album, which is an almost ten minute long song with multiple time signature changes about the unfairness of the juridical system in the United States of America. This is exemplified in the lines, Justice is Lost, Justice is Raped, Justice is Gone. The title of the album and the cover art are also very ironic, considering that the title says, End Justice For All, but the song is about the unfairness of the justice system, and the cover art is a statue of Lady Justice being taken down, with money falling from her scale that she is holding in her hand. This clearly shows that the system is being corrupt by money. One last song that I would like to mention is the song, Holy Wars, The Punishment Due, by the band Megadeth. This song is part of their 1999 album, Rust in Peace, arguably the greatest metal record ever recorded. The first track of the album is about the concept of wars carried out for religious purposes. This theme is very modern, and in fact, the Palestine-Israeli conflict is mentioned in the song. The author of the song, Dave Mustaine, expresses the futility of these conflicts, as he says, Brother will kill brother, killing for religion something I don't understand. In conclusion, to answer the question posed at the beginning, music is involved politically, as there are many songs, which are part of different genres, that tackle socially and politically involved topics, such as war, injustice, and climate change. While it is true that music is involved socially, it is not true to say that all music talks about these subjects, as the musical industry is so diverse that a huge variety of different topics are tackled in songs. Some are about love, some about sadness, and some are about nothing at all, just focusing on having captivating melodies. But some songs, like the ones I mentioned, focus on important social and political issues. Thank you for listening.