Music and Global Politics

Music and Global Politics

by Adam J Sacks
ArtsHistory
Season 5

The Future of Music?: CENO, Imblem, Reframing Royalties and Fandom

What happens when independent artists no longer have to wait for a record label to fund them? Los Angeles independent rapper CENO has an album coming November 6 called The Album. It hasn’t been released yet. But 6 figres has already been generated around the project. No major-label album release. No hit record driving the numbers. No millions of streams. How does an independent artist generate six figures before the public has even heard the album? The answer involves a new platform called Imblem and an entirely different way of thinking about the relationship between artists, their audiences, creative works and royalties. But the $ is only part of the conversation. The bigger question is what this could mean for the future of the music business. If an independent artist can build substantial financial support directly around an unreleased project, what happens to the traditional label negotiation? What happens to A&R? What happens when fans can do more than stream, like and comment? And what happens when an artist walks into the room already having demonstrated that people are willing to put real money behind the project? In this episode with Ceno, we discuss: • How an unreleased independent album generated $420k • Why he believes fan participation could change artist leverage • What Imblem is and how he used it • Why the traditional music financing model may be approaching a major disruption • Whether followers and streams are actually the best measurements of an artist’s value • The difference between having fans and having people financially committed to your success • His personal journey and the life experiences behind The Album • Why each song represents a different chapter and mental state in his life • What happens on November 6 when the experiment meets the marketplace There’s music here. There’s technology. There’s money. There’s controversy. And there’s a much larger debate about who gets to decide which artists and creative ideas deserve a chance. What if the next major disruption in music isn't how we listen to it — but who gets to participate in its success? Two great freestyles by Ceno come right before and after the interview and stay tuned until the end to learn more about the podcast.
S5 · E5
Oct 5, 2026
48:09

Symphonic and "Revue" form Jazz of the 1920s

Welcome back to Music and Global Politics, please like and subscribe, support and share! The follow is a lecture on how Jazz went global just as it went orchestral. In the 1920s just as Broadway composers sought to integrate Jazz, audiences across the world. Occurring just as the devastation of World War One gave way to the Roaring Twenties, it is an oft overlooked fact, that the first global audiences to have encountered Jazz would have done so via a stage revue. Jazz also enjoyed the timing of arriving just as traditional formal dance in Europe faced steeped decline. This multi-act sketch form would appear today more like a Broadway musical with dance and comedic elements, however without a fixed dramatic plot or book. From the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in the UK in 1919, to the Jazz Kings to Paris in 1919 or Leoni Leonidoff producer of the landmark 1925 European tour of the African American musical revue Chocolate Kiddies, which featured Sam Wooding and his Orchestra alongside early compositions by Duke Ellington. Crucially, Gershwin’s experiments positively inspired African American composers to think bigger musically. James P. Johnson’s ‘Yamekraw: a Negro Rhapsody,’ of 1927, was conceived in response to Gershwin. Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington’s ‘Black and Tan Fantasy’ of that same year goes one step further in homage and directly quotes Gershwin’s iconic upward clarinet trill in its brass section. The contours of critique of Gershwin have not evolved much in a century. What was denounced as ‘middle class meddling,’ in the 1920s, is now subjected to the taunts that it is ‘corny and Caucasian.’Can we even consider Bernstein's West Side Story, latter day attempt at this form, the great road not taken in American musical history. One of the legacies is that arguably Europe proved a more stable and supportive home for Jazz than almost all major cities in the USA. Please enjoy Eric Satie;'s "Transatlantic," an emblem for this time and Stravinsky's Ragime for 11 instruments. James Reese Europe castle house rag and Mitchell's jazz kings the Montmartre jazz... What is the Third Stream? Can Jazz even be successfully notated for classical players? Who was Paul Whiteman once called the :"King of Jazz"? Why has Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" been called America's "worst masterpiece"? Is it the "Sgt Pepper" of Jazz.? How did Europeans first understand Jazz? What is Gebrauchsmusik. How these earliest tours led to the founding of Blue Note Records label
S5 · E4
Sep 16, 2026
58:39

Denazifying Carmina Burana: Challenging A Pervasive Poisonous Cantata

AI
Welcome back to Music and Global Politics. Please don't forget to rate and review, like and subscribe, share and just listen. We are on gmail and Patreon both at musicandpoliticspod Today yet another chapter in musical denazification, perhaps the most popular place of classical music in the world Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. This is the second epsiode where we feature the new technology of an electronically generated dialogue. If you find it convincing and compelling please stay tuned for the entire essay after the dialogue. Happy listening ahead. Cultural denazification is left an ad hoc affair, the work of enterprising artists shoring up where the state has fallen short. “Carmina” is particularly unwieldy as a “classical” text now recognized primarily as part of commercial and entertainment media. But some new renditions and reappropriations unwittingly function like theory and guideline for how to handle such cultural plutonium. A recent performance by Opera Philadelphia, pairing the work with Margaret Bonds “Credo” (with a libretto by W. E. B. Du Bois), comes closest to a rethinking of programming practice that fuses trigger warning, inoculation, and counterpoint. The lack of probity and hesitancy with regard to “Carmina” is a signal that the topic of cultural denazification has largely been a non-starter. From the oeuvre of Leni Riefenstahl and its application in “Star Wars” to the fashion of Hugo Boss, the aesthetic of the Nazi years is pervasive. Given that the Nazi project was substantially a theatrical phenomenon, a phantasm perpetrated by failed artists, this oversight amounts to both a cruel irony and a severe misunderstanding of the nature of that once (and possibly future) enemy.
S5 · E3
Aug 20, 2026
37:51

Sexist Sacrifices and Musical Violence: Richard Wagner's Fantasies

AI
Violence is often a theme in Richard Wagner’s work, as is the sacrifice of women in the name of the “rebirth” of male protagonists. Stay tuned ahead for a new concept in content delivery and condensed learning: Part One: Summary Information Part Two: Discussion Dialogue Part Three: A Text, Article Reading. As ever with begin and end with some startling and legendary music, this time both excerpts from Birgit Nilsson, undertaking, if you will forgive the pun, the deaths of two of Wagner's most memorable female characters, Brunnhilde from the Ring of the Nibelungen, and Kundry from Parsifal. This is music smashing through vocal registers like cars through glass and opera as a calorie burning exercise on a par with any kundalini hot yoga studio. As ever stay tuned until the end for more info on the podcast and how to support. Violence as Central Theme:Wagner's works are not only permeated by violence but also programmatically affirm and enact it, both in narrative and aesthetic form. Wagner's use of violence is more explicit and pronounced than in the works of many of his contemporaries. Example: Wagner's repeated use of the word "annihilation" and his self-described "enormous desire to commit acts of violent artistic terrorism." Sacrifice of Women:A particularly striking aspect is the ritualized and stylized sacrifice of women in Wagner's operas. The "rebirth" of male protagonists is often achieved through the violent removal or sacrifice of female characters. Example: In "Parsifal" and "The Ring," the female characters Kundry and Brünnhilde are sacrificed, and their removal is depicted as necessary for restoring social order. Ironically, none of Wagner's works are named after women, despite their central role in these narratives. Violence and Nationalism:Wagner's themes of violence are linked to the broader context of 19th-century nation and empire building, especially in Germany. Wagner's works are both products and promoters of imperialist and nationalist ideologies. Example: Wagner's theater at Bayreuth resembled a "frontier fort" and a "musical settler colony," symbolizing the forging of an "audible empire." Critical Perspective on Cultural Legacy:Walter Benjamin's idea that every document of culture is also a document of barbarism, suggests that Wagner's artistic achievements are inseparable from their violent and exclusionary underpinnings. Intersection of Art, Violence, and Identity:Wagner's works naturalize violence (e.g., through the motif of the hunt) and use it as a tool for cultural and social transformation, often at the expense of marginalized figures, especially women and "foreign" labor forces.
S5 · E2
Sep 1, 2026
38:51

The Jews' Blues: Musical Symbiosis and Cultural Antiracism

AI
Welcome to a new season and new approach on Music and Global Politics. After lectures and interviews, we now present dialogues and essay readings. Today's episode on the Jews' Blues gives some answer to the question: have you ever wanted to mine deep the roots of today's globally dominant pop culture. Answer, it is found at least in part, in the Black Jewish musical symbiosis. Today's theme is especially appropriate in our pre-pogrom times, as we witness the pernicious persecutory pattern persisting. So stay tuned for a meditation on musical symbiosis and the politically antiracist Africanist school of mid 20th Century American Jewish cultural and intellectual thought and action,. If you enjoy the electronically generated dialogue, stay tuned for a full essay reading, before which you will hear John Coltrane's transcendent sheets of sounds, turning the Broadway schmalz of "My Favourite Things," into avant garde jazz and improbably into his biggest radio hit. Stay tuned for the end to hear George Gershwin on an historic 1931 recording by the composer himself of his pivotal "I Got Rhythm, " just a few years before his untimely demise in 1937. In the following, you will hear the argument that nostalgia for a ‘Black- Jewish’ alliance in the United States is misplaced. Instead, Jewish immigrants to the United States from the Tsarist Empire and African Americans in the U.S. South were briefly bonded by recognisably similar experiences of marginalisation and migration. Their encounter formed an alternative America and led to an explosive outpouring of cultural and intellectual creativity wherein Jews modelled and pioneered modern antiracism. If you would like to read an article version of this episode please check out: https://fathomjournal.org/the-jews-blues/ Please, pretty please do support us on PATREON at musicandpoliticspod and/or shoot an email to musicandpoliticspod@gmail.com
S5 · E1
Aug 4, 2026
55:31
Season 4

America the Criminal?!: Black Music and An Exploitation Neverending with Maestro Angelo Earl.

" O Criminal rapacious skies with bloody waves of pain. Dirty mountain travesty above the corpse strewn plain." Erasing heinous history with a brilliant plan to keep people stupid, join us as we listen and learn from Angelo Earl who enlightens about a deep history of Black music and exploitation. A veteran of the recording industry, Producer of Soulstreet Records, you will shortly hear some of his work as performer of electric guitar on Al Green's "He Is The Light", Bobby Rush's "Southern Soul", the Bar-kays' "The Real Thing", He also contributed vocal work on Isaac Hayes' "Branded", and toured with both with the Jackson family and with the Funk Brothers. Today he devotes some of his time to the Blues Hall of Fame Museum in Memphis opened in 2015 and run by the Blues Foundation. Well aware of how the Blues and even the history of Civil Rights have been commodified and mined for tourist dollars in the southern states, he conveys, "there is more to life than memorabilia," Together, we tackle the disturbing paradox, of reverence and museumification of Black music across the South, just at the same time Human Rights Watch denounces the state takeover and repeal of voting rights that has left Mississippi, the state with the highest black population in the US without any statewide political representation in 2026 as America celebrates 250 years of a revolution again the lack of representation in the British parliament. (See: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/18/black-voting-rights-in-mississippi) Stay tuned to learn about: the hard core of the Blues, the "gladiator syndrome" that runs America first hand memory of learning about the assassination of Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Junior live on television. Check out the great community and educational work of the Blues Foundation here: https://www.facebook.com/TheBluesFoundation/
S4 · E10
Jul 21, 2026
50:13

Kabbalah Girls: Mystics Madonna, Britney and Ariana Grande

"I wish they all could be Kabbalah Girls!" Miracle waters and mysterious red strings, scanning ancient texts instead of actually reading. One of the more curious tales of democratising mysticism is surely the move into Kabbalah by the reigning Girl queens of provocative glam and uninhibited sexuality: Madonna, Britney Spears and now at least somewhat Arianna Grande,. From the start they mixed in a dose of the naughty Catholic schoolgirl with classic 3rd wave feminism of girl power and deliberately pseudo adolescent girlie culture. Madonna took on the name Esther, donated reportedly up to $30 million dollars to the Kabbalah Center, specifically the K school and the program "spirituality for kids." She would introduce Brittney Spears who studied for a few years and had a Kabbalah themed wedding in 2004. Arianna Grande turned away from strict Catholic teaching on Homosexuality and embraced formulas for manifesting offered by the Kabbalah Center even crediting it for her success. Come learn about Kabbalah basics, what are the Sefirot? What is this Jewish version of divine incarnation, and the controversy over how old it actually is and when it started. It would come as a surprise if not a shock to middle aged rabbis who kept the secrets carefully guarded for centuries, so much ash that Kabbalah became the very prototype for hidden mystical traditions inside major world religions.The attraction of female pop stars makes perfect sense for the mystical map of the Sefirot or spheres reveal the emanations of the divine into the earthly sphere beginning with the earthly female, moving into and onto even the sexual members themselves both female then male. This is quite the alternative model of the made human of the divine than that offered by Catholicism's notion of of original sin, in other words . unavoidable condition of inherited guilt transmitted specifically by sex became a foundational doctrine of the Catholic Church. So here we have another compelling case of mysticism making musical innovation combined with the cultural politics of 3rd wave feminism. Please stay tuned at the end for an intro and more background on this podcast, "Music and Global Politics". In addition to Madonna's "Isaac" from her "Confessions on a Dance Floor," album, check out her video for "Die Another Day." For Kabbalah Center reading check out Yehuda Berg's "72 Names of God," for a more scholarly approach look up Gershom Scholem's "On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism."
S4 · E9
Jul 7, 2026
55:28

Americana Music, MAGA and the Southern Jewish Experience with Mark Rubin

"I recommend you find you a gun, it's too late it's already begun....your neighbours hate you and always did, all this time chomping at the bit." Chilling and arresting lyrics from the Americana raconteur, punk-bluegrass veteran and self-described "Jew from Oklahoma, Mark Rubin. Loudly sounding the warning bells of fascist return, Rubin mines deep into the Americana underbelly of prejudice and mayhem but also the fount of musical wisdom found in folk. A former roadie for the Flaming Lips, he was a co-founder of the classic Americana band "Bad Livers" who pioneered alternative bluegrass in the late 1980s. A master of tuba and the string bass, he hosted radio in Austin, and produced music for Richard Linklater. HIs most recent work out of New Orleans, finds him mining radical Yiddish traditions of resistance poetry and partisan activity on his two most recent releases: 2021's "Triumph of Assimilation," and 2025's "Dispatches from a World Gone Mad." Strangely enough, he mines the Southern Jewish experience to make sense of MAGA today. He is drawing upon the work of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience opened in 2021 in New Orleans where he contributes in a supervisory role. Perhaps this unique minority perspective of this group gave them something of a head start in facing that not so subtle climate of intimidation, southern gothic horror of terror wrapped in the homespun. It is in the South where we find a next chapter of the Anglo tradition of the iron first inside the soft velvet glove, whose ways could not prevent the greatest flowering of musical genres in the modern world. We discuss it all directly from New Orleans Congo Square, a musically sacred patch of ground where drumming from the Kongo met stringed melodies from Senegambia which over time led to jazz, blues and rock and roll. Happy listening ahead. Please check out Mark's website and band camp below, where you can find a string of his latest single releases: https://www.jewofoklahoma.com https://jewofoklahoma.bandcamp.com/
S4 · E8
Jun 21, 2026
1:10:38

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

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=f3da93 In 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.html Suggested Listening: Cross Road Blues - Robert Johnson Blind Lemon Jefferson - Match Box Blues W.C. Handy "St. Louis Blues" On The Ed Sullivan Show Bessie Smith - Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out Son House – Preaching Blues
S4 · E7
Apr 19, 2026
1:06:15

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

Welcome back to Music and Global Politics. Like and subscribe, rate and review and support . Patreon/Gmail: musicandpoliticspod In 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 Blues The Beach Boys 'Transcendental Meditation' – The Beach Boys - All This is That George Harrison - Awaiting on You All
S4 · E6
Apr 5, 2026
38:48
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