Because music is a language that puts structures and written forms into play within a homologous relationship with other forms of expression, the relationship between music and politics cannot be understood solely based on the esthetic criteria of musicology, or the historic or cultural criteria found in the way sociology studies how music is received.
Music, as a cultural product and symbolic form, is part of social life. “As organized sound, it expresses aspects of the experience of individuals in society.” As shared experience, music mobilizes and unifies groups, contributes to their movements and accompanies celebrations and rites. It excites to violence and combat, as it does to fervor and effusion. In short, it reveals social and political processes that are, as Rousseau observed, “capable of acting physically on the body.” Yet these very characteristics also present the enigma of music, which seems neither to want nor to be able to say anything. While all social and cultural activities are made up of meanings wherein language is the code and norm, music, though manifestly social and expressive, seems devoid of any actual semantic capacity to feed the active and informational dimensions of a statement. This is the paradox within music’s very expression: without referring to any visible image of the world, music nonetheless reveals something about the world, and, free of any referential ties, its language depends on something other than itself.
Music, as a cultural product and symbolic form, is part of social life. “As organized sound, it expresses aspects of the experience of individuals in society.” As shared experience, music mobilizes and unifies groups, contributes to their movements and accompanies celebrations and rites. It excites to violence and combat, as it does to fervor and effusion. In short, it reveals social and political processes that are, as Rousseau observed, “capable of acting physically on the body.” Yet these very characteristics also present the enigma of music, which seems neither to want nor to be able to say anything. While all social and cultural activities are made up of meanings wherein language is the code and norm, music, though manifestly social and expressive, seems devoid of any actual semantic capacity to feed the active and informational dimensions of a statement. This is the paradox within music’s very expression: without referring to any visible image of the world, music nonetheless reveals something about the world, and, free of any referential ties, its language depends on something other than itself.
Source: Music and Politics: The Language of Music – between Objective Expression and Subjective Reality by Jean-Marie Donegani
Queen - All Dead, All Dead
Queen - All Dead, All Dead
- On Queen's sixth studio album News Of The World
- Released 28 October 1977
- Written by Brian May
"Brian May stated in an interview that "We'd already made a decision that...[after] A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, we wanted to go back to basics for News of the World. But it was very timely because the world was looking at punk and things being very stripped down."
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