Music and Global Politics

Music and Global Politics

by Adam J Sacks

Season 2

Spotlight on "Degenerate" Music: A Conversation on "Middle Class Panic" and the Arts

Please tune in for this conversation with cultural historian Dr Jon Gentry on "degenerate music," what it is - what it means and why it matters! Perhaps more familiar as "middle class panic" against "dangerous" popular music like the backlash against Hip Hop in the 90s, this is a history that reaches back to Darwin and the 19th Century. Taking a term from biology, inserting it into politics and then using it to police the arts has had fateful consequences for the evolution of music and popular culture. Don't forget to like and subscribe and please leave any and all comments and feedback!

Lecture on Wagner, Marx and Meyerbeer: Part Two

In this continuation of our deep dive into Wagner, Marx and Meyerbeer which explore maybe first and most total instance of "cancel culture" in music: Wagner's "professional assassination" of Meyerbeer. Wagner shifted a whole climate of public opinion and rendered what had been beloved into something superficial, antiquated, and ultimately forgotten. Yet in a manner way ahead of his time, Meyerbeer dramatised the dangers of fanaticism, fundamentalism and gave pride of place to the outsider, the subaltern and the abused minority. Join us as we listen in and try in some small measure to rectify this historic injustice.

Lecture on Wagner, Marx and Meyerbeer

The roots of all modern fantasy series from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings can mostly be found in Wagner and his 16 hour music-dramatic tetralogy "the Ring of the Nibelungen." Join us as we investigate some of this vast work and see the influence of Marxism, nationalism and ultimately the pseudo-science of race on this vast canvas of giants, "dwarfs," magic helmets, swords and gold rings. In this two part lecture, we also explore Wagner's vexed relationship with his musical mentor, the most successful opera composer of his day, Giacomo Meyerbeer. In almost every sense the antithesis of Wagner, Meyerbeer composed in history not myth, education not fantasy, and empathy with the downtrodden rather than heroic triumphalism. Little known today, Meyerbeer was the target of career assassination driven by Wagner, a campaign largely successful until this day. Stay tuned for the second half to the lecture next week and happy listening.

Lecture 2: Beethoven and Napoleon

And here continues and concludes the full length lecture on Beethoven and Napoleon. A full transcript should also be available as the discussion continues in the complex performance history and the legacy of Beethoven's Fidelio. From its premiere to an audience of French occupation troops to its use by the Nazis, the shadow side of Beethoven's legacy mirrors that of Napoleon. Bombast and even terror are not seldom heard in the sound world of Beethoven and despite Napoleon's stabilisation of the Republican system his obsessive drive to conquest and battle proved his undoing and marked him as an occupier. Thank you for listening and a follow up full length lecture on Wagner and Meyerbeer will be posted within a week., also in two parts.

Lecture on Beethoven and Napoleon I

This episode is a longer format full length lecture on Beethoven and Napoleon. This episode is part one of two parts. This covers in greater depth Beethoven's only opera Fidelio and his 3rd Symphony or the "Eroica," as well as parallels between his life and the work of Napoleon. Political and philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment and the transition into Romanticism are also discussed. Even today, it is scarcely possible to discuss music or politics without some reference to Beethoven or Napoleon who expanded the possibilities of the conceivable in both realms.

Season 1

Modernity and the Color Line: From Symphonic Jazz to European Jazz

In this episode, we pick up the conversation on theories of modernity with a focus on the "color line" as music from the global African Diaspora makes its way into the European art concert hall. We will confront early European perceptions of jazz and consider the theories of Dubois and Stoddard, and listen to the first "jazz-like" compositions of established European art-composers like Debussy, Stravinsky and Shostakovich. We also meditate on the original aims of Ragtime pioneer Scott Joplin and the legacies of George Gershwin revisiting the debate about cultural appropriation and kitsch.

The Postmodern and Music for the Hyperreal: Prog and Punk

Join us and we listen to prog and punk as a window onto theories of the postmodern, during the decade of decay and decline, the 1970s. This episode features theorists such as Baudrilliard and Lyotard, and concepts of the hyperreal and simulacrum and music from Yes, Caravan, the Clash and the Sex Pistols. These wildly different music responses, one escapist and virtuosic and the other confrontational and self-consciously primitive, share the same home environment: an era of spectacle and decline, deindustrialization and urban decay, the 1970s.

Beethoven and Napoleon: Enlightened Heroics and the Unheard of Act

Embodying the Enlightenment ideal of emancipation of the self, Beethoven reworked the modern orchestra at the same time that Napoleon restructured the modern army and both became dominant in their fields. Beethoven famously dedicated his 3rd Eroica Symphony to the Corsican General, then striking it away when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor. The two would clash again when French troops occupied Beethoven's Vienna, with much of the audience at the premiere of his only opera, Fidelio, made up of French army officers. A prison break opera, with a transgender twist, Fidelio would become a political hot potato, from the Nazis to apartheid to Latin American juntas, join us as we take a deep dive in.

Queens: AIDS, Gender and Camp in Pop

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.

Racism versus Liberalism: Wagner contra Meyerbeer

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.

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