Discs of Dissent! Sounds of Subversion! "Music and Politics" is a theme based podcast that combines an exploration of political philosophy with analysis of musical composition. Ranging across all genres and countries, fusing fascinating ideas with exciting and iconic musical sounds. Each episode has a set theme with a couple central challenging concepts and then examines at least 3 to 4 musical texts.
This episode spans the history of popular music (e.g. Little Richard, Beatles, Lou Reed, Queen) with a focus on gender non-conformity, androgyny, and theories of camp. With a special focus on the 80s and the AIDS crisis, we delve into the gradual coming out amongst pop stars and apply theories of Adler,, Sontag and Foucault, to uncover how pop became a central nexus for the gender revolution of the last few decades.
Its a musico-political faceoff of two opera titans of the 19th Century: Wagner and Meyerbeer. The former lives on in Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings while the latter is largely forgotten and not by accident. Wagner, a young revolutionary ultimately embraced racism and carried out career assassination against his one-time mentor and competitor in the opera world. We will probe into Marx and the Communist Manifesto and how Wagner ultimately distorted its message of struggle against the tyranny of capitol into antisemitism and racism. The Jewish Meyerbeer by contrast carried on high the liberal ideals of the French Revolution. inveighed against political fanaticism and ended his career placing an African woman front and centre bravely standing up against avaricious invaders from Europe.
This episode focuses on the seminal year 1968, year of the Prague Spring and the French General Strike. Examining the philosophies of new intentional living communities or communes, we examine how pop music of the time attempted to intervene in the revolution spirit of the day. We pose the question whether the audacious psychedelic sounds may ultimately prove more revolutionary than any rhetoric of radical chic.
This episode of Music & Politics explores the sectarian strife in Ireland through the lens of pop music. The long-lasting oppression and occupation have left its mark on the countless pop stars of Irish ancestry, amounting to what we call "hidden Hibernia." Music from the 60s-90s is explored along with lesser known tracks by Lennon and McCartney and groups from the Emerald Isle like U2 and the Cranberries.
This episode grapples with the perennial potent power of nationalism in politics. How do nations get created, even invented, we ask. Multiple theories on the construction of nations are explored such as that of "the invention of tradition" and the "imagination of community." Musically we listen to hymns, tone poems and folk based anthems, by composers like Verdi, Sibelius and Smetana. We explore the musical imagination of nationalism as it is drawn to landscape, nature and history buried deep in the past.