I remember hearing, "Not Ready to Make Nice," by the Dixie Chicks when I was younger and asking my Mom what they were singing about. She explained to me how the Dixie Chicks sang a few years before about how they disliked how President Bush was running the country and that their listeners should not elect him again. She then explained how when they sang about Bush, many people sent them hate mail and it started a lot of problems. "Not Ready to Make Nice" was their response to the people who did not agree with their song choices. At twelve years old this made no sense to me. I did not have any interests about politics, actually I can not positively say I even knew what the word meant. Now, four years later, It all makes more sense.
Earlier today I typed on Google, "Politics and Music," and a huge list of sites came up. I had never really thought about how much music affected us. Artists sing all the time about dancing on tables, crying about a boyfriend, about how hard or amazing life is, but now that Im writing this blog essay I am realizing they also often sing about more serious topics, such as Politics. This is a passage from one of the first sites I clicked on, "Springsteen, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, the Dave Matthews Band, the Dixie Chicks, and others have teamed up with anti-Bush group MoveOn.org for the "Vote for Change" tour. The profits from the tour will benefit Americans Coming Together (ACT), a voter-registration effort dedicated to defeating President Bush in November and helping to elect progressive candidates to federal, state, and local government positions." If you haven't noticed already, this is how I made the connection to "Not Ready to Make Nice.” These artist sang about how they felt to get the message across and I have to say there smart. Music is life. We listen to it while were getting ready in the mornings, while were sitting around the house, and every where we drive to we LISTEN TO MUSIC. It is a universal thing we all have in common.
Any adult voting around President Bush’s election would probably already know about the country stars singing about their political opinions. What many don’t know is the idea of “Politics and Music” has been around for thousands of years. Another site a looked at listed these examples, “Beethoven was deeply influenced by Napoleon's victories, Shostakovich voiced the courage and defiance of his fellow Russians starving in the besieged city of Leningrad...Rostropovich used his cello as a beacon of freedom, playing beside the Berlin Wall. And who can forget the emotional triumph of Bernstein conducting Beethoven's Ode to Joy amid the wreckage of the Wall?” Im going to be completely honest, I could search every one of these things listed and give you more depth on what and why they sang about there political positions, but I am sure anyone reading this will know who these artists are and know how important and OLD they are. These artists have gone down in history for their master pieces and many of their pieces have to do with there political stand point.
In conclusion I have to say music IS politics. Like I said earlier about how we hear songs about dancing on tables, boyfriends, and feelings, these songs are what is socially expectable. One of the definitions of politics is, “the complex or aggregate of relationships of people in society, esp those relationships involving authority or power” This may be a little far fetch but my point is that politics have to do with life and society and songs are written to talk about those same topics. Concluding with once again, music IS politics.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Music and Polotics." Times. (2008): n. page. Web. 18 Sep. 2011. <www.timesonline.com>.
de Sola, David. "The Politics of Music." CNN. (2004): n. page. Web. 18 Sep. 2011. <articles.com/2004-08-29/Politics/gop.music>.
