A most intriguing question: Where has all the protest music gone? Michael Fallon’s “This Art is Your Art” series is a more worthy read than I had anticipated.
“It’s possible that we live in a time when our values have turned so inward into personal introspection and self-regard that we find it impossible to gather together and sing about a common cause. Or else protest music may simply be too embarrassing a relic of the past, of a time when such well-meaning sentiment actually meant something. Today is a different age, we prefer to think, when problems are so complex, so difficult to solve that they’re not even worth bringing up in polite society.”
via The Revolution Will Not Be Spotified — Arts and Culture — Utne Reader.
Are we content to live with the classics of the past that still speak to today? I’m sure there are songs out there expressing the frustrations of the times, we’re just not being exposed to them on a grand social scale. Our options are dumbed down by mass media or the more obscure findings of our own explorations that aren’t widespread.
I’d love to see some good playlists addressing this. The author gives us a good start at the end of this piece. What songs would you add to the mix?
-ag
Gregarious Expressions 