Ron Radosh reviews Springsteen's Seeger Sessions for the right-wing American Interest. It's a pretty well-written piece that raises an intriguing question: But is it activism? My quick-and-dirty and a-bit-too-easy answer would be that the songs are a mode of activism if Springsteen intends them to be. Of course that assertion says nothing about the song's effectiveness as a form of activism. As the article notes, some in Springsteen's recent concert audiences are apparently finding it more difficult to 'connect' with Seeger's folk songs than with Springsteen's rock anthems. Go figure.
Is the audience's disconnect due to hearing an out-of-style musical genre or the unabashed socialist content of the songs? Probably both, particularly insofar as form and content inform and shape one another. I'd like to remind Radosh, and others on the right who often make similar arguments when they find artists mixing pop and politics (to quote the great Billy Bragg whom I heard live again a few months ago): The fact that the leftist artists are making money from their art and perhaps even getting rich doesn't count as an argument against their progressive conviction in the necessity of eliminating material inequality around the world.
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3 comments:
onkel eric,
glad to see you back in the blogosphere. i'm just one dog and i can't do it all myself.
i'm near springsteen country (though thank goodness i do not actually live IN new jersey. sheesh!) interesting that he's contrasting springsteen's political stuff with born in the u.s.a. which is not a raucous celebration of america.
there are valid questions about the political efficacy of his album though i'm not really sure why that's an important question. as you say, how exactly do you definitively answer that? intent? consequences? 'born in the usa' is a great example of that. it was a song with a political message that reached a broad audience BUT that audience rarely understood what it was about and it became a lame campaign long. so, was that activism? not activism? ineffective activism? though i am curious about conservatives who are so harshly critical of 'mere entertainers' who make political statements or do political work (and they're not coming out of the woodwork on the abc crap 9/11 fiction--and check out keith olbermann's show from last night. interesting info about how the filmmakers have ties to some conservative christian organization that they deny). i wonder--where was your criticism about the passion of the christ which seemd to me the most cynical linking of christianity, patriotism, politics, and money ever. sure, bruce is making money singing socialist anthems but mel gibson make hundreds of millions of dollars on a snuff film about jesus! that's not what wally would do.
As a mild libertarian I've always found conservatism more conducive than socialism. my enjoyment of springsteen is about as wholehearted as it could be - these songs move me. but a song cannot be didactic (even if its lyric can be) because a song is always a fiction. In much the same way i can enjoy the grapes of wrath, i enjoy these songs. The question is about rhetoric, not activism. it is either naive or dishonest to think otherwise.
I'm not sure how to respond to this post, which I take to be a critique of the Ron Radosh's interest in music as a mode of activism. If I understand Old Dan Tucker correctly, the "question" he insists should be primary when listening to music is what I would refer to as affect - i.e., the sensual and sensory effects one experiences while listening to music - which, he refers to as "rhetoric." I'm a bit confused by Old Dan's use of the term "rhetoric" in this context, which would seem to suggest a shift in emphasis from the musical composition to a study of the lyrics and the effectiveness or persuasiveness of the songwriter's use of language. I also am not sure what to make of his claim that a song is a fiction.
Putting aside the terminology issues for the moment, let me state where I disagree with Old Dan: on the issue of didacticism and art. First, it's not true that songs can't be didactic. Consider, for example, the "ABC" song. Parents sing to their kids as a way of teaching them the alphabet. And in oral, non-literate cultures, songs and poems provide those who cannot read or write a way of passing along the history of their community.
Secondly, who says fictions can't teach us anything? This claim has long legs. Plato, of course, wanted to banish the poets from his Republic because they represented falsehoods. But stories, even if their referents are entirely fantastic and don't refer to the world we live in, can still teach readers in a non-mimetic fashion. Stories can, for example, performatively train us to become more aware of the process of interpretation and meaning making.
As a teacher of literature, I can't resist closing with a possibly didactic question: What, in The Grapes of Wrath do you find enjoyable and why?
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