Surprised Chuck hasn't heard of Ian Buruma. Frequent writer for the NYRB. This one esp. looks intriguing.
This one, co-written, on the cover has a classic piece of Bolshevik art of Mr. Moneybags Banker on the cover, "Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of It's Enemies, " http://a1204.g.akamai.net/7/1204/1401/05020112011/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/9010000/9015365.jpg
"Behind the Mask: On the Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes, " by Ian Buruma.
There is alot of political content in rock and folk and hip-hop these days, though often more subtle than say Rage Against The Machine, Green Day or Woody Guthrie, as seen by the John Birch Society, below, heh.Birchers have long been aware of Gramsci, but, Jacques Ellul and Hakim Bey too, hmm ;-)
Someone new I like is Dalek, an avant-garde rapper who has an album with Krautrockers Faust.If you like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Glenn Branca, you'll like Dalek.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/04-08-2002/vo18no07_rocknroll.htm Is It "Only Rock 'n' Roll"? by Steve Bonta
Far from being just a youthful fad, rock and roll music is a powerful
force for subversive cultural, social, and political change.
>...Some of the more severe styles of rock music, such as the darkest
and most nihilistic forms of heavy metal (so-called "black metal" and
"death metal"), are sometimes referred to in countercultural circles
as "aesthetic" or "poetic terrorism," artistic styles designed to
achieve through appeals to artistic taste what conventional terrorism
hopes to achieve through political violence. Simply put, aesthetic
terrorism seeks revolutionary change by shocking and benumbing the
senses. Hakim Bey, an intellectual leader of the countercultural
underground, explained that "the audience reaction or aesthetic-shock
produced by PT [poetic terrorism] ought to be at least as strong as
the emotion of terror -- powerful disgust, sexual arousal,
superstitious awe ... no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person
or many ... if it does not change someone's life (aside from the
artist) it fails."
