Music and Global Politics

In this continuation of our deep dive into Wagner, Marx and Meyerbeer which explore maybe first and most total instance of "cancel culture" in music: Wagner's "professional assassination" of Meyerbeer. Wagner shifted a whole climate of public opinion and rendered what had been beloved into something superficial, antiquated, and ultimately forgotten. Yet in a manner way ahead of his time, Meyerbeer...

The roots of all modern fantasy series from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings can mostly be found in Wagner and his 16 hour music-dramatic tetralogy "the Ring of the Nibelungen." Join us as we investigate some of this vast work and see the influence of Marxism, nationalism and ultimately the pseudo-science of race on this vast canvas of giants, "dwarfs," magic helmets, swords and gold rings. In this...

And here continues and concludes the full length lecture on Beethoven and Napoleon. A full transcript should also be available as the discussion continues in the complex performance history and the legacy of Beethoven's Fidelio. From its premiere to an audience of French occupation troops to its use by the Nazis, the shadow side of Beethoven's legacy mirrors that of Napoleon. Bombast and even terr...

This episode is a longer format full length lecture on Beethoven and Napoleon. This episode is part one of two parts. This covers in greater depth Beethoven's only opera Fidelio and his 3rd Symphony or the "Eroica," as well as parallels between his life and the work of Napoleon. Political and philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment and the transition into Romanticism are also discussed. Even toda...

In this episode, we pick up the conversation on theories of modernity with a focus on the "color line" as music from the global African Diaspora makes its way into the European art concert hall. We will confront early European perceptions of jazz and consider the theories of Dubois and Stoddard, and listen to the first "jazz-like" compositions of established European art-composers like Debussy, St...

Join us and we listen to prog and punk as a window onto theories of the postmodern, during the decade of decay and decline, the 1970s. This episode features theorists such as Baudrilliard and Lyotard, and concepts of the hyperreal and simulacrum and music from Yes, Caravan, the Clash and the Sex Pistols. These wildly different music responses, one escapist and virtuosic and the other confrontation...

Embodying the Enlightenment ideal of emancipation of the self, Beethoven reworked the modern orchestra at the same time that Napoleon restructured the modern army and both became dominant in their fields. Beethoven famously dedicated his 3rd Eroica Symphony to the Corsican General, then striking it away when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor. The two would clash again when French troops occupied Be...

This episode spans the history of popular music (e.g. Little Richard, Beatles, Lou Reed, Queen) with a focus on gender non-conformity, androgyny, and theories of camp. With a special focus on the 80s and the AIDS crisis, we delve into the gradual coming out amongst pop stars and apply theories of Adler,, Sontag and Foucault, to uncover how pop became a central nexus for the gender revolution of th...

Its a musico-political faceoff of two opera titans of the 19th Century: Wagner and Meyerbeer. The former lives on in Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings while the latter is largely forgotten and not by accident. Wagner, a young revolutionary ultimately embraced racism and carried out career assassination against his one-time mentor and competitor in the opera world. We will probe into Marx and the...

This episode focuses on the seminal year 1968, year of the Prague Spring and the French General Strike. Examining the philosophies of new intentional living communities or communes, we examine how pop music of the time attempted to intervene in the revolution spirit of the day. We pose the question whether the audacious psychedelic sounds may ultimately prove more revolutionary than any rhetoric o...

This episode of Music & Politics explores the sectarian strife in Ireland through the lens of pop music. The long-lasting oppression and occupation have left its mark on the countless pop stars of Irish ancestry, amounting to what we call "hidden Hibernia." Music from the 60s-90s is explored along with lesser known tracks by Lennon and McCartney and groups from the Emerald Isle like U2 and the...

This episode grapples with the perennial potent power of nationalism in politics. How do nations get created, even invented, we ask. Multiple theories on the construction of nations are explored such as that of "the invention of tradition" and the "imagination of community." Musically we listen to hymns, tone poems and folk based anthems, by composers like Verdi, Sibelius and Smetana. We explore t...

Modernity is universally acknowledged as a time of disruptive change and energies hard to tame. At times overlooked is the central role obsession over women played in the anxieties of the European fin-de-siecle. Almost every breakthrough work of "modern" music, whether Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," or Strauss' "Salome" had at its center a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Out of these an...

In this episode we explore the knowledge/power construct of "Orientalism" as elaborated by Palestinian Scholar Edward Said and how it may be discerned via music of the age of Imperialism. A construct of the Other that fuses the exotic, the erotic and the eternal, from the Sahara to the Steppes, composers like Borodin and Verdi dramatised this encounter between the "West" and "East" in ways that we...