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P O L I T I CS + M U S I C STORY BY JON FORTENBURY PHOTO BY SEBASTIAN DIAZ
‘Music not but it’s a w challenging
- Dr. David Ake, as
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pressed play. I would never be the same again. Eighteen years of conservative ideology were tossed out the window. Maybe the Bible isn’t true. Maybe we shouldn’t be in Iraq. Maybe the media lies. All of these were thoughts that overcame my newly skeptical mind. I consider the day I discovered Bright Eyes as a second birth. When I opened my mind, I emptied out the contents and put them up for a second investigation. Bright Eyes songwriter Conor Oberst introduced me to the other side for the first time in my life. Whether it was him questioning the Iraq war in “Landlocked Blues” or the death of Jesus Christ in “Don’t Know When But a Day Is Gonna Come,” the main things I took away from his lyrics were the right questions to be asking. Yet I’ve felt completely alone over the past four years of telling my story. I came across not one person who has had a similar experience with music. Am I really an alien or do people switch from conservative to liberal all the time?
T H E I M PA C T
Several University of Nevada, Reno students were asked if a band or musician’s political lyrics or activism influenced them. Out of 100, 29 said they have been influenced, whereas 71 claimed they have not. Brittany Haggerty, a 19-year-old marketing major, falls into the majority. She says nothing a musician says will ever change her mind on political issues. “Music is for our enjoyment,” says Haggerty. “It’s like an escape for me. I don’t need to think or worry about politics when I’m just listening to music.” Mark Sexton, a 20-year-old business major, thinks otherwise. Sexton found himself most politically influenced by the band Michael Franti and Spearhead. This band introduced compelling political points that played a role in his transition from a passive moderate to a ssociate professor of music at UNR liberal. Sexton, a musician in The Mark Sexton Band, thinks people are afraid to admit being influenced because “they don’t know if they’re being influenced the right way.” But Chris Swinger, a 22-year-old cultural anthropology major, didn’t experience a change in political views from music. Instead
POLITICAL NOTES
t only confirms identity way of trying on and also g identity.’
he found music as a way to express the unpopular political ideas he already had. Coming from a conservative area in South Lake Tahoe, Swinger felt less alone when he heard the band Rage Against the Machine. Swinger says he’s always been pretty liberal but never had a band he could identify with politically until he heard Rage Against the Machine.
THE E X PERTS Some of the determinants that shape a person’s views, according to Dr. Markus Kemmelmeier, an assistant professor of sociology at UNR, are where they grew up, life experiences, personal desires, individual values, upbringing, religion and sometimes genetics. He hasn’t seen evidence that music is a part of this list. Music doesn’t change someone from conservative to liberal. Instead, it can remind them of their true identity, Kemmelmeier says. “Music, just like other symbols, is often a reminder of things,” says Kemmelmeier. “All these ideas you may have, they carry around you on a latent basis but they only come out when they are situationally appropriate and sometimes this can be very subtle.” Dr. David Ake, an associate professor of music at UNR, however, has no doubt in his mind that music can and has changed people on a political level. “Music not only confirms identity but it’s a way of trying on and also challenging identity,” says Ake. “You may think you saw the world in one way and suddenly you hear something or see a concert and you realize, ‘Wow, I didn’t know,’ and suddenly you change and your vision of the world changes. I think it happens everyday in ways both large and small.” Having played music for many years, Ake felt like his studies in musicology helped shape his view on the influence music had on people. Whether it’s an emotional response to being sung “Happy Birthday” or the reaction Ake has felt when listening to a political Bob Dylan song, he thinks music can change lives.
THE ANSWER Can the question of whether music affects our political decisions be found in sociology, psychology or musicology? Or is finding out what influences us not as important as finding out if we’re being influenced the right way? We can sit around and wait for the professionals to give us answers to these questions or we can look deep in our souls and try to figure out what drives our political decisions and even life decisions. They may have the answers to these questions but only you can control
Billie Holiday: “Strange Fruit” Written by Abel Meeropol in 1936, inspired by a photograph of the lynching of two black men but caked in poetic description suggesting the scene’s routine quality, “Strange Fruit” crafted an exact portrayal of atrocities committed in the name of ignorance. The Clash: “London Calling” The phrase “world-weary” in song form, “London Calling” spends its three minutes paranoid and mad over a “nuclear error” and the ice age coming. In a world where the weapons
were owned by itchy-fingered liars, The Clash longed to take the power back, if only to be able to sleep at night. Public Enemy: “Fight the Power” Bring down the idols, Chuck D: “Elvis was a hero to most / but he never meant shit to me you see. / Straight up racist, that sucker was / simple and plain. / Motherfuck him and John Wayne.” “Fight the Power” is the sound of revolution, whether due to its ties to Spike Lee’s masterwork of racial tension, Do the Right Thing, or the avant-noise Bomb Squad production building D’s soapbox. - BRAD NELSON
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