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Re: [microsound] being 'political' in non-verbal music



Bill Ashline;

> Some of the most overtly political
> music outside of the work of Cardew is the free jazz of the sixties,
> and that was all part of a process of social transformation and the
> political dimensions of the music came out in the culture that
> surrounded it--with tributes to Malcolm X, for example, and some of
> the clothes and styling of the musicians, like the Art Ensemble's
> tribal paint, etc.  Without the cultural politics, the music isn't
> inherently political at all unless the forms are radical, which by now
> is pretty unlikely.

I´d like to add to this the popularity of freeform music amongst rebelious
groups amongst comunistic eastern europe. I hear that especially Zappa was
favoured. It could be argued that in such situations perhaps a DJ is in a
better position to deliver social comentrary through music then a musician
is. In that situation, playing anything western was probably greater
statement then playing a western style.

Alec Empire of Atari Teenage Riot *ducks* claimed they used breakbeats
because you couldn´t march to broken beats. Now, I don´t think actual
marching was a great problem in berlin in the 90´s but it´s interesting that
he expressed this idea.

It would be interesting from this perspective to look into odd timesignature
use amongst the jazz played by U.S. armymen during the Vietnam war. I would
say that if they would play music while off duty that tried to get away from
forms reminicant of the march then that could be argued to be political but
with jazz it´s hard to tell since jazz from that period (to my knowledge)
generally has little to do with the march anyway.

Difficult topic.

Kas.



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