Music and Global Politics

The "Devil's Music"?: The Genius of the Blues at the Heart of Modern Music

Apr 1901:06:15Tap to summarize

Welcome back to Music and Global Politics. Like and subscribe, rate and review and support . Patreon/Gmail: musicandpoliticspod. Become an RSS member yourself using this link here:https://rss.com/?via=f3da93In this episode we ask, is blues the core of Jazz, is it even the mother of all modern music? Is as BB King once said that "Jazz is the Big Brother of the Blues" or that Blues is High School and Jazz is College? Well its social and economic roots cannot be denied, a rural music versus the city one of the agricultural Delta not the bustling Port City, based on poor cheap transportable instruments, e.g. guitar and harmonica. Surrounded by an aura of suspicion as the "devil's music," the subterranean reservoir of Voodoo that lay beneath was never entirely hidden. ` A highly profane music of work and the carnal life, it is the first person singular voice of existential challenge.Musically, based around the pentatonic scale and non-tempered “blue” notes. These are crafted out of regular microtonal bends on the notes, most often on the 3,5,7 notes Out of this fairly defined 12/16 Bar,3 line AAB form, literally thousands of hit songs emerged, an inexplicable alchemy. These semi-tones create a sense of ambiguity between major and minor.Not published nor orchestrated, even the identities of that very first generation of Missippii Delta players remain shrouded in mystery. For all the myth around Robert Johnson, he was last in a long line of forebears unknown to the after world. :For musical selections today, two masters of the electric blues showcasing each of the primary instruments, Muddy Waters on Guitar and Sonny Boy Williamson on Harmonica.Suggested reading:· Songs of Slavery and Emancipation, Callahan , Kelley, et al.· And the Roots of Rhythm Remain, Joe Boyd· http://www.shmoop.com/blues-history/· http://www.scaruffi.com/history/blues.htmlSuggested Listening:Cross Road Blues - Robert JohnsonBlind Lemon Jefferson - Match Box BluesW.C. Handy "St. Louis Blues" On The Ed Sullivan ShowBessie Smith - Nobody Knows You When You're Down & OutSon House – Preaching Blues

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Rock Religion: How Spirituality Displaced Politics at the end of the 60s

Apr 500:38:48Tap to summarize

Welcome back to Music and Global Politics. Like and subscribe, rate and review and support . Patreon/Gmail: musicandpoliticspodIn honour of Easter, Passover and Qingming tomb-sweeping festival today , we move to matters of the spirit: Did the political tragedies and disappointments of the late 60s convert energy for change into energy for the spirit? Did intimidation and fear of violence enforce this retreat into less earthly matters? Or did the transcendent awakenings of entheogens and the psychedelic experience cry out for metaphysical not political answers?The Grand Tour to the Ancient World instead became a trek to inner worlds, known as the "Hippie Trail," with overland passage through a safe and friendly Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan often by school bus culminating in India and Nepal.The Beatles stay with the Maharishi in Rishikesh studying Transcendental Meditation opened the global floodgates for a youth ready to rush their energies as spiritual seekers rather than revolutionaries.While the Beatles had an acrimonious split with the Maharishi, less well-known is that their American colleagues in art-pop, the Beach Boys actually went on tour with the Indian Guru, and titled a song promoting his consumer friendly technique of Transcendental Meditation.George Harrison made an even greater contribution to ISKCON - the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, known as "Hare Krishna." He bought the movement their first house in England, Pigget's Manor in Letchmore Heath, near Watford, in Hertfordshire, renamed Bhaktivedanta Manor, after the Hindu tradition of devotion the movement aligned itself with. Though inherently musical, already using chanting for transcendence, Harrison also produced and performed on the London branch's recording of the Hare Krishna mantra, an unexpected pop hit, peaking at #13 in England and remaining on the charts for 9 weeks.From the opposite side of the musical spectrum, the jazz world, Alice Coltrane the widow of the saintly saxophonist John, was not content to remain a spiritual apprentice, and instead founded her own ashram. For four years Doja Cat actually lived at Sai Anantam Ashram in Agoura Hills, California with her mother. Highlighting her remarkable gospel-jazz fusion, Alice recorded cover 20 albums of such spiritual jazz, an excerpt of "Om Shanti is coming right up, recorded under her new name Turiyasangitananda, which translates to "the Transcendental Lord's highest song of Bliss"Stay tuned until the end to hear an excerpt from "the Source Family of Father Yod" a spiritual counterculture commune that made a frenzied form of devotional psychedelic rock, recording over 60 albums worth of material. The track "Godmen," by "Children of the Sixth Root Race," a clear reference to the Theosophical movement, the foundation of all New Age philosophies.Here are a few more suggested resources to continue your journey!: KRSNA Hare Krishna! (Documentary Film) Raga (Film) Yoga for the City (Documentary Short) Spiritual Revolution, 2008 (Documentary Film)· BBC George Harrison Fact or Fantasy interview· George Harrison - Vatican BluesThe Beach Boys 'Transcendental Meditation' –The Beach Boys - All This is ThatGeorge Harrison - Awaiting on You All

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The Creole Origins of Jazz: Reconsidering the Emergence of America's Classical Music

Mar 2200:53:49Tap to summarize

Welcome back to Music and Global Politics. Please rate, review, like and subscribe and support us on Patreon at musicandpoliticspod.comToday we reconsider the very origins of jazz, delve into its historical context and address several questions such as Why New Orleans? What was the role of America's largest red light distinct,, how was Jazz related to the targest Union movement in the Southern United States and what was the relationship between Jazz and the failure of the politics of post-Civil War Reconstruction.We introduce to listeners the century long debate over the role and presence of African survivalisms in this music, a question that continues to vex sociologists, anthropologists and musicologists.Our opening musical example is a fascinating modern day experiment that pairs the West African instrument of the Kora with its long lost descendant the American banjo,, a link that forms one of the strongest musical arguments for survivals from the Mother Continent.What we can be more certain of is that Jazz is modernist and that Jazz is hybrid. Jazz galvanises the break with tradition, from the whole formal world of the 19th Century with its boundaries and hierarchies. Jazz is carried onward by the new tempos of the 20th Century, and the fragmented, cubistic art of that era of Picasso and Stravinsky.So contrary to the manichean fundamentalist racial dualism of the Anglo world, Jazz was catalysed by the remnants of another system entirely, that off the Creole gens de coleur the hybrid New World born people officially accepted by the New World Catholic Empires of France and Spain. These burning embers of of the Haitian Revolution came ashore in New Orlean forming a distinct Caribbean Diaspora, a colony of the dispossessed within a colony in the South. From Jelly Roll Morton, to Kid Cry, to Sydney Bechet all the way up to Winton Marsalis, it is the Creole dimension that has done so much to catalyse Jazz at its birth and to keep it alive today.We close today with Black Bottom Stomp by Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers from 1926, that fittingly features some rip roaring banjo amidst the joyous polyphony of collective improvisation that is jazz in its earliest and archetypical form.For reading I suggest:https://www.jstor.org/stable/853007· Why Jazz?: A Concise Guide, Kevin Whitehead, , p. 19-53· A New History of Jazz, Alyn Shipton, p. 13-53; 124 -146· Louis Armstrong & Paul Whiteman, Joshua Berett (entire book)· The Myth of the Negro Past, Herskovitz Melville· Black Bourgeoisie, E Franklin Frasier· When Genres Collide, Matt Brennan· And the Roots of Rhythm Remain, Joe Boyd

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Ravin' in Hong Kong: Electro's Politics and Performance with Pauline Mornet

Mar 100:47:50Tap to summarize

Welcome Back to Music and Global Politics. Please like, rate subscribe, share with a friend and support us on Patreon at musicandpoliticspod.comToday we explore with nuance ravin in Hong Kong. Amongst the 5th most densely populated cities in the world, along with falling 5 straight years on the World Happiness Index, high stress and some classic grump infuse the Special Administrative Region's image. Its no shock that the psychic abandonment of ravin' and euphoric release would hold special appeal. Home to no Pattaya Beach Trance party or Beatforest Festivals as in Thailand or World DJ in Seoul, ravin' in Hong Kong is about finding well enshrouded GPS coordinates, on small islands buried in the trees.Stanford researcher Pauline Mornet gathers a number of different cases of ravin' in Hong Kong deftly marshaling thought provoking theory to explain the politics of its performance. Pauline explains given the territory's recent traditions its all about hybrid/ambivalent performance and the complicated oritentation to the music and dance movements of the former British colonial overlord. Further complicating matters are state attempts to coopt dance music alongside grassroots collectives.We frame this discussion by listening to a news story about the "last saturday night out in British HK," the so-called handover rave that featured Grace Jones in 1997. Stay tuned until the end for an excerpt of Faye Wong's "Chanel," a Hong Kong pop icon heavily influenced by jungle, on this Drum and Bass track from the year 2000.And check out these links for a collective and festival we discuss in the episode:https://www.instagram.com/ba___oi___ba/ bà queer collective mentioned and https://www.shifumiz.com/ Shi Fu Miz festival with next event March 21 2026Merry Listening ahead.

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From Russia with Wagner: The Russian Alternate Perspective with Slava Vlasov

Feb 1501:07:17Tap to summarize

Welcome back to Music and Global Politics. Please like, rate and subscribe and support on Patreon at musicandpoliticspod.comAs a thank you and gift to listeners, please enjoy Slava'a "Wagner in Drinks": https://viacheslavv.substack.com/p/richard-wagners-favorite-drinks-announcementRussia is a font of alternative perspectives usually unavailable in the West. With its strong Byzantine past, Russia, arguably now still, and forever remains an exemplar of Caesaorpapism - the subordination of the church and matters sacred inside the state, a strong symphony or church and state lending the country's overall arc an air of the messianic. This background greatly shaped what is distinct about the Russian reception of the ever popular, if controversial German composer and father of the "total work of art," Richard Wagner.If in the West Wagner is seen as a problematic arch-reactionary, even a proto-Nazi, however looking out from Russia westward, if anything, Wagner has had a progressive role in musical aesthetics. His works challenged the old regime of the Tsars, and even the Soviet Union championed his work during and after the Nazi invasion. Our guest, Slava Vlasov, a passionate Wagnerian and author of much creative fiction based on Wagner, highlights how in his early career, at least in terms of his contacts and circles, Wagner can be seen as much a Russian composer as one German. This is a very personal journey, a special Russian journey into the world of Wagner.In this episode we discuss Wagner's Russian side:the controversy over his semi-sacred, mostly heretical ParisfalWagner's breaking open of the possibilities on the Russian stage.How Wagner was viewed by the Soviet Union and in Post-Soviet Russia.Our conversation is enclosed by two lovely piano renditions of Wagner :The Quintet from Mastersingers of NurembergAlbum Leaf for Dutchess Metternich

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Pop Therapy: Taylor, Swift, Lana Del Ray and Mental Health with Dr. Daniel Zimmerman

Feb 100:59:06Tap to summarize

Can Pop be a cure for the melancholy and pain of our age? Has it always been? Today we bring a practicing NYC-based psychiatrist to probe the music of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Ray for pain, therapy and mental health. Given the resounding dominance of their prolonged success, sustained depth-analysis is more than called for. The hopes, fears and travails of generations and millions is now projected onto the mental screen provided by these artists that have captured the age.For rights reasons, musical selections this time are limited to an innocuous cover.. We are featuring a brief excerpt of Sara Bareilles cover of "Clean," as well as a snippet of "Dark Paradise," by Lana Del Ray, which could well be taken as the actual Heartbroken National Anthem. Please don't forget to like, rate and subscribe, and buy us a coffee on patreon @ musicandpoliticspod.com In our world one coffee=one episode we gladly dedicate to you for your cherished support.In this episode we explore:Pop as a symptom of America's ailments.How we can and should think of pop intellectually/psychoanalytically:What is the role of eros, drive theory and repression in pop?How has pop inherited and activated the language of mental health, crises, narcissism etc?Is pop about converting depression erotically?How does pop surveil our emotions especially those that are potentially pre-political?How does Taylor Swift enact a balance of power of the two americas and two worlds of : red state/blue state; girl/woman, adult/child, sex/love, etc. Stay tuned for alot more coming up this season and thanks so kindly to Dr. Zimmerman for his participation!

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Paid Protestors and Politics "For Hire": A Conversation with the Founder of "Crowds on Demand," Adam Swart

Jan 1800:40:09Tap to summarize

Welcome to Season Four dear listeners. Thank you for your patience and today we are proud to present to you Adam Swart, founder of Crowds on Demand—the original paid protesting firm. Adam has unique insider knowledge of how modern protests are built, funded, and staged for media impact, he’s breaking his silence with us as requests for protest campaigns have surged 400% this year.Here are some of the major points we covered in our talk:400% Increase in Protest Requests – What’s behind the unprecedented spike, especially in Washington D.C.Why He’s Speaking Out Now – After years running campaigns on both sides of the aisle, Adam is pulling back the curtain on how protests are manipulated.The Optics Playbook – Protests today are less about policy and more about choreographed media moments.Paid to Protest – From Capitol Hill staffers to university fellows, many “volunteers” are actually compensated.Adam has long been inspired by both Hip-Hop - the innovative authentic hip-hop of Lil Jon, as well as classical, especially the extremely challenging duo piano concertos of Mozart as played by the dynamic Dutch brother duo of Lucas and Arthur Jussen. So please stay tuned for some musical clips before and after the conversation. Thanks for joining us and please stay tuned for our next episode on the politics of Wagner in Russia!

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Bob Dylan(s) Gone Global: Exploring World Folk Protest

Oct 2201:21:52Tap to summarize

Most everyone has heard of Bob Dylan, but what about the many other folk protest singers just as famous in their respective countries: Victor Jara in Chile, Vladimir Vysotsky in the Russian-speaking world, or Wolf Biermann for the German. Here we explore the global folk protest singer as rooted in the existentialist philosophy of Albert Camus. The authenticity of the voice as the agency of the artist is nowhere clearer than in this musical genre once globally dominant. The Folk Revival is the most iconic modern case of music and politics intertwined. It presents a vital master class in how music can advance and support political change. The dominant musical form of this era, the lone voice with a folk guitar, took on a global import and proved remarkably transferable, with leading figures in countries, from Chile to East Germany to Russia, far afield from the United States. Though tragically incapacitated at the time his form became dominant, Woody Guthrie did more to craft this musical form than any other. He set the template, and was imitated, some might say usurped by Bob Dylan and then those several others who became known as the “Bob Dylans” of their countries. This musical form itself is a signal of a protest against industrial-technical modernity. The unadorned, basic folk acoustic guitar with an earnest, direct form of vocal delivery is the musical equivalent of walking barefoot. (The most renowned female singer of this movement, Joan Baez, was well known for doing just this actually.) It is a return to the earth and turning away from the electrical, to something more age old. Politically, it became tied to a recognition of the fundamental shortcomings of bourgeois liberalism and the emptiness of its civic and political promises of fulfillment, which necessitated the civil rights movement. This singular affinity of music to political program, is not merely due to the harmonically basic formula of “three chords and the truth,” but rather to the structure of the folk song itself. The thesis I offer as to why the folk revival and civil rights, e.g. peaceful forms of civic disobedience became so inexorably tied, is that the folk song is the closest thing that exists musically to a thesis statement or political argument. Short, linear and single-minded, as E.L. Doctorow said, these elements of brevity makes it instantly accessible as no other form is. The structure of these songs exists to make a premise fundamentally more convincing. A specific position is presented and then reinforced in the chorus, often with the added connotation of an exhortation. The critical difference that distinguishes the folk song from the popular song is the absence of what is known as the “bridge” or “middle eight” (referring to 8 bars) a section of the popular song that departs from the standard verse-chorus transition. This bridge section is an interlude, a journey away or even a distraction from the pointedness of the verse and chorus. It has a theatrical function and effect, adds a degree of drama, harmonic unpredictability and surprise that is so characteristic of popular entertainment music. It provides a third space for meta-reflection, for a rethinking of the song text within itself. Folk, by contrast, is all about focus and concentration and generally eschews any concession to theatricality. Folk is word driven music, with a background that is calm and almost predictable, like a humming in instrumental form.

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Jesus on Stage: The Oldest Passionate Passion Play from Austria

Oct 1101:07:24Tap to summarize

The two musical selections you hear are both compositions of Christian Kolonovits:The Soundtrack to the Film "North Face"Musical Preview of the Erl Passion Play.If you are interested in learning more about the Passion Plays, please have a look at my book length review of Oberammergau: https://mellenpress.com/book/Adam-J-Sacks/9848/The Passion Play is the original living theater, a ritual of belief in and of community and of course the theatrical chronicle of the last week, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, The oldest in Europe is 422 years old and takes place every six years in Erl, Austria, just now completing its five month run. This story has been told for millenia, and its transition into theater goes back to the first living nativity scenes, some believe started by St. Francis himself in Greccio in 1223.The Passion Play’s is Europe’s first major theatrical endeavor since Greek Tragedy. Even with an interim of a millennium and a half, it bears many marks of ancient Greek theater. Earliest references to the Passion Plays of the Alps region of the early 1600s often refer to it as a "tragedy." Indeed, it emerged out of the conditions of wartime and plague of the Thirty Years War which absolutely ravaged Central Europe. The central dramatic crux of this Catholic Passion play is the death of a child at the hands of its parents, as found in Orestia and Medea and the drama of denial or recognition of divine incarnation as most clearly seen in the Bacchae of Euripides.The Passion Play is also one mammoth piece of folk art; though on a monumental scale, 30% of the host town is involved and not just as actors, as almost every role is cast for two. Most of the sets and costumes are also handcrafted by locals, The recurrence every half decade or so more resembles a religious pilgrimage, subverting any facile boundary between theatrical make believe and the “true myth” of religious ritual.The production in Erl is distinct from its slightly more renown neighbor in Oberammergau across the border in Bavaria. Erl is actually older, performed more frequently (every six instead of every ten years) and unlike Oberammergau it does not deliberately eschew advanced technology. Erl by contrast feels like a moving film set in full surround. The role of the music this year puts this contrast in ever sharper relief. The talents of composer Christian Kolonovits, author of the film score for the film Northface were retained by the production for the first time. An austro-pop master and leader in the field of pop-orchestral crossover, such as his work with the Scorpions, his soundtrack, played by 40 orchestra members all either born or now living in Erl, is embedded inside the staging and provides narrative arc as significant as the newly written text itself. The actors confirmed that the music provides the drama of living film, and provides a constant pulse to enliven their acting.The presence of microphones and electronic instruments are only the sonic tip of the ice berg when it comes to the marked ideological and theological clash between the two productions. Erl is adamantly modern in its techniques but also defiantly traditional in its postulates of plot and characterization, if at a much quicker pace, what was once six hours now takes around 2. This is the Passion Play as a modern, but unreformed tell all. Indeed, every Sunday on stage, the largest parterre in Austria, the production is preceeded by a Mass. The priest is quick to point out the similarity in content between his mass and the passion play.

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Nazi Germany and the Ghetto: Art under a Dictatorship with Dr. Tobias Reichhard

Sep 2101:21:07Tap to summarize

Welcome again and thank you for joining us for another episode of "Music and Politics." As ever our discussions precede and finish with musical selections. Today's two musical texts are pre-war historical and are presented in full. These are shellac recordings made in the 1930s by members inside the institution that is our discussion to day the Jewish Kulturbund of Nazi Germany They are:The Orchestra of the Jewish Kulturbund performs "Jewish Dance," part of the suite named "Uriel Acosta," recorded in 1935, a modern composition by Karol Rathaus, student of Franz Schreker. He escaped Nazi Germany in 1933 ultimately serving as a longstanding composition professor at Queens College.The Choir of the Kulturbund here performs "Moaus Zur," this is an ironic liturgical poem known in English as the "Rock of Ages." Choir director Berthold Sander, A trained Kapellmeister at the Conservatory in Frankfurt, he served in that function in Mainz and Hildesheim before the handover of power to the Nazis. A leading Kulturbund activist for seven years, in 1941 he was deported to Theresienstadt from where he never returned. By the Law of April 7, 1933, Jewish writers and artists were no longer allowed to be members of public orchestras or opera or theater companies, to have concert agents, or to join artists’ clubs or organizations. In the wake of this mass firing, the Kuturbund was formed. It is entirely probable that the Nazis would never have invoked such a solution if left to their own devices, if only for the fact that an operating set of procedures for Jewish exclusion had not been established. Although the Cultural League could easily insert itself into Nazi structures, it was the result of Jewish self-assertion, an initiative that achieved more through its independence of motivation that it would have at the behest of the Nazi cultural bureaucracy. It also should be noted that the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden or Cultural League of German Jews as it was originally called, fulfilled in a dual manner what could be referred to as a Nazi state of desired norms with reference to the Jewish minority in Germany. First, it solved the problem of Jewish mass unemployment and appeared to elide the costs of Jewish exclusion in an attractive framework which would not damage the international reputation of the new German government. If the Jews had a thriving cultural life supported by the government than the stories of persecution would appear implausible. Second, in addition to the “extraction” of politically undesirable or culturally modernist elements, Nazi cultural essentialism sought to remove Jewish cultural production, regardless of its national or aesthetic orientation from the larger German cultural sphere. Nazi essentialism refers to the fact that identity was determined through race of biology not choice or religion, and that one did not have to consciously express racially undesirable traits in order for them to appear.Political and social compromise and dependence coexisted with cultural autonomy. The “collaboration” of the Cultural League, if one were to call it such, could not be subsumed under the categories of the collusive, i.e. shared ideological suppositions, or the combatative, i.e. as a facade for an active resistance, because the aim of such “spiritual resistance” is not at all contiguous with the goals of material resistance and, by extension, actual physical survival. Cultural autonomy is characterized by the fact that even after ideological or material appropriation or instrumental use under a political regime, authoritarian or otherwise, there is still a space of artistic purposiveness

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All episodes

The "Devil's Music"?: The Genius of the Blues at the Heart of Modern Music

Rock Religion: How Spirituality Displaced Politics at the end of the 60s

The Creole Origins of Jazz: Reconsidering the Emergence of America's Classical Music

Ravin' in Hong Kong: Electro's Politics and Performance with Pauline Mornet

From Russia with Wagner: The Russian Alternate Perspective with Slava Vlasov

Pop Therapy: Taylor, Swift, Lana Del Ray and Mental Health with Dr. Daniel Zimmerman

Paid Protestors and Politics "For Hire": A Conversation with the Founder of "Crowds on Demand," Adam Swart

Bob Dylan(s) Gone Global: Exploring World Folk Protest

Jesus on Stage: The Oldest Passionate Passion Play from Austria

Nazi Germany and the Ghetto: Art under a Dictatorship with Dr. Tobias Reichhard