Simply put, I'd be interested in asking various bands to contribute songs to a CD series devoted to currently resonant political subjects, such as globalization, the presidential campaign, the corporate media, sweatshops, etc. The bands, which would deal with the subjects any way they chose, could include overtly political folks such as Asian Dub Foundation, Chumbawumba, Rage Against the Machine, Nitin Sawhney, but also other, less clearly political bands that might be interested. (A bit more on the latter approach: I could see normally nonpolitical bands doing pisstakes on tv talking heads for a CD devoted to trashing tv pundits; Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, for exampel, doing a number on Fred Barnes.) The project could be tied to a website that enables rock bands to offer screeds of the day/week on subjects in the news. That's the essence of it. The idea was born of unhealthy levels of frustration at seeing anything near adequate dissent/troublemaking in the popular culture/media, and the feeling that the time may be ripe for something like this, given what's going on on campuses and in the streets.
Any comments/suggestions about whether/how to do this?
Uday
snitgrrRl.exe wrote:
>
> Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote:
> >Though I really like many of the bands already mentioned (particularly
> >Crass and The Ex) I'm surprised nobody has talked about the Riot Grrrl
> >legacy. Bikini Kill definitely saw themselves as political, though perhaps
> >more in the "fight the patriarchy" than in the "fight the power sense".
> >Kathleen Hanna built the entire Julie Ruin album around French feminist
> >theories, and her new band, Le Tigre, is also all about cultural
> >politics--sloganeering
> >yes, and really fun. Furthermore, queer politics are essential to bands like
> >The Haggard and The Need.
>
> well, i hung out in a "political" music scene for awhile, on the
> peripheries and definitely in a cultural tundra. i really can't see how
> 'political' music is altogether that interesting especially when they break
> their balls to be uber-kewl. bores me, frankly but maybe that's from
> sitting around listening to a bunch of artists agonizing over the horror,
> tragedy and angst of it all.
>
> it's not clear to me that overtly political music is what it's all about
> anyway. nor was it much what is was all above *ever*. a repost from a
> thread where i had my first tango with eric --twitbuoy--beck! hah. that
> was when i came on as snitgrrRl and pissed lnp3.exe and mike yates off.
>
> anyway, my argument, following some in the birmingham school of cultural
> studies, is that this isn't always about a literal message but can be, as
> is the case with rap/hip hop, about the politics of reclaiming "space". it
> seems to me that we need to look at something other than the lyrics for a
> "message" or "massage" as it were:
>
> from: "snitgrrRl" <d-m-c at worldnet.att.net>
> Subject: Re: GrrRl & Politically Purchasing Power
> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:32:26 -0400
>
> Eric insists:
>
> > (truly dissenting)
> >voices as Stereolab, Fugazi, Bikini Kill, Fifth
> Column etc. Many of you
> >might be saying, I don't know who these people
> are. And that is exactly my
> >point: The stuff is out there, you just have to
> look a little harder.
>
> Hmmmm. Such an elitist conception of authentic
> music-as-dissent.
>
> >The point about girls and boys listening to this
> crap and its effect on
> >their radicalism is, well, crap....
>
> Yeah. Probably. But then I think that the
> problem is that you're searching for
> rebellion/resistance in the *content* of the
> lyrics or something. The really interesting stuff
> on the ways in which pop culture is resistant is
> done by folks who actually ask how people
> understand, interpret, use, make sense of and
> recreate the meanings of the mass media crap.
> Tricia Rose has argued that, while rap music
> certainly reproduces rather hetero/sexist
> ideologies, it is part of a larger struggle over
> access to and control over the meaning of public
> space. Drawing on urban political economy, Rose
> shows how rap music is embedded in a wider hip hop
> culture that takes back public spaces through
> block parties, concerts, the use of white music in
> scratching and now sampling, and graffiti on
> public spaces like subways. The practices of
> those who produce and listen/dance to rap music
> contest the dominant understandings of what
> constitutes the appropriate use of public space by
> posing a threat to the social order in an
> in-yer-face kinda way.
>
> I see your point about focusing on music that
> isn't mainstream. And, yeah, I do know that there
> are a lot of political bands that never get heard,
> that are into the DIY ethos. Used to be involved
> in the fringes of that world. And funny, too but
> I always thought they weren't political enough,
> but compared to later convos in this thread about
> apolitical bands, they look good comparatively.
> The reason why people look at pop culture is
> because they are suspicious of that wonderful
> politics of authenticity that seems to inscribe
> the very elitism regarding music that rock was
> supposed to have undermined. So, when you say
> that people don't know the bands above and its
> probably because they haven't looked hard enough
> (and others would say its b/c they don't know crap
> about music) it doesn't sound a whole lot
> different from someone lecturing me about the
> aesthetics of Baroque as true music.
>
> >And valuable questions they are. I think you
> admit to a level of unknowing
> >and open-mindeness a lot of people would not
> reveal. That's brave.
>
> I think you underestimate the meaning of
> "SnitgrrRl" ;-)
>
> kelley