Today in the International Herald Tribune I read a report, by Michael Schwirtz, on the Russian rock musician Yuri Shevchuk. It describes Shevchuk’s frustration with the waning influence of Russian rock, and its incitements to freedom, on Russian politics.  (I have not yet been able to find an online link to it.)

Until he recently confronted Vladimir Putin on television, I did not know of Shevchuk’s music or role on the Russian scene in musically preparing the way for the end of the Soviet Union.

This story touches on some elements relevant to the rock and theology conversation, the question of rock’s decline as a social-political force (interpreted often here at R&T as also a force of ’spiritual’ significance) chief among them. The regret in Shevchuk’s remarks is evident: “The battle for freedom was very important for many but, as it turns out, not for all.” It sounds like he really means “not for many.”

(more…)

The political theology of German Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz has highlighted the centrality of memory for human experience, identity, and religiosity. In Metz’ description, memory is central to the formation of our consciousness and collective imagination, but it often “define[s] history as the history of what has prevailed, as the history of the successful and the established. There is hardly any reference in history as we know it to the conquered and defeated or to the forgotten or suppressed hopes of our historical existence” (Faith in History and Society, 110). When the status quo is assumed to be basically good and just, historical memory becomes a selective memory that remembers only the triumph of the powerful, “screening out” the victims, thus creating a “false consciousness of our past and an opiate for our present” (109). When memory functions in this way, history — “reality” — goes on as it always has.

But Metz says there is another kind of memory, a memory that shocks us out of the familiar by radically acknowledging the reality of human suffering. (more…)

Burning Fight: The Nineties Hardcore Revolution in Ethics, Politics, Spirit and Sound
by Brian Peterson
Revelation Records Publishing / $18.00 US (list)
[Amazon] [Revelation Records]

The terms “punk rock” and “hardcore punk” bring to mind a variety of images and stereotypes for “insiders” and “outsiders” alike. Cliches abound when the question of “what punk rock is” or “was” is raised, even in accounts written by those who have been key actors in punk rock. This is problematic because the movement has included countless offshoots and submovements, many of which were and continue to be contradictory and in conflict with one another.

An especially troubling viewpoint parroted in histories of punk and hardcore is the pinpointing of an early, and often arbitrary, “demise” for the genre, usually the early- or mid-1980s. The documentary American Hardcore, is a good example of this tendency. Most of the hardcore “heroes” interviewed in the film place the supposed “death” of punk in the mid-1980s, only to be followed by “pop” punk bands like Green Day and flavor-of-the-month emo bands.

These features of the dominant “punk narrative” obscure the fact that hardcore punk never stopped and in fact became arguably much more interesting, diverse, and contested, especially throughout the 1990s. Brian Peterson’s mammoth book Burning Fight: The Nineties Hardcore Revolution in Ethics, Politics, Spirit, and Sound is the first account of this decade in hardcore punk, a decade overlooked or deliberately ignored in most previous accounts.

(more…)

The theme of the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America this weekend in Cleveland is “Theology’s Prophetic Commitments,” and it speaks to what contemporary theology frequently understands to be one of the most important motivations for and outcomes of theological work: freedom. In what freedom consists, whence it comes, and how theological life becomes a free life — these are all contested matters. Even freedom itself is not accepted by many theologians as holding such a central place in theology. Those who defend freedom’s centrality, as I would, often argue that freedom is an “integral” phenomenon, and this is the language often used in Catholic thought. Freedom as “integral” means that spiritual freedom is bound up with material freedom, and social with individual. The human being uniquely (so far as we know, anyway), and “all creation” as well (with many conversations about differentiating and defining what counts as created, sentient, dignified), has a “right” to live in a world wherein we can both be ourselves and invent ourselves, where we can live sane lives, subjects in and subject to the world in non-exploitative ways.

This comes to mind as I was reading two articles about rock culture recently, both in the New York Times. One, reported by Ben Sisario, describes how rock concert ticket pricing has changed dramatically over the last decade, with expensive “packages” increasingly the norm, wherein fans can pay high prices for great seats, “meet-and-greets,” swag (band-related paraphernalia), and general VIP treatment.  A good number of North American rock fans can pay these high prices, and they don’t want anything less than a “premium” concert experience, turning a rock show into a mini-vacation or kind of spa event. I have rued and lamented this development ever since I saw it first introduced about fifteen years ago, with “golden circle” seating, backstage access packages, and dollar signs attached to proximity to the band. The decline in album sales in an age of illicit downloading, and the monopolization of the concert scene by Ticketmaster/Live Nation, has only encouraged more bands to go this route. It is slightly uncouth to say this, but rock shows are different now that so many wealthy middle-aged men can buy up the good seats.

(more…)

Today’s New York Times carries a report by Larry Rohter on a movement called Sound Strike, to encourage musicians to boycott Arizona in protest of the new law, set to take effect this summer, stipulating that when law enforcement, after “any lawful contact” made with a person, considers that a “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when praticable, to determine the immigration status of the person.” And there is much more. (Read the text here.)

Zack de la Rocha, who is the lead singer of Rage Against the Machine, is apparently spearheading the effort. See here for the Sound Strike website, which includes a list of artists boycotting Arizona, and a petition for repeal of the law. This is an excellent example of the ethical courage that rock culture can still confect.

Here they are tearing it up with “Killing in the Name Of,” in stripped down mode, to fight homelessness:

And here is what that tune looks like in its fuller glory:

Zack de la Rocha and Rage Against the Machine seem to have understood something that theology has at times found its own courage to confront: that power is a spiritual phenomenon seen most clearly in resistance to injustice.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

Almost a decade ago, I was inspired by Naomi Klein’s book No Logo to pull the clothes out of my closet and dresser drawers and find out who made them, where, under what conditions, and for how much. All in pursuit of one bigger question: why?

I ended up writing a book in 2003 inspired by this experience, called Consuming Faith. My basic argument was that the contemporary culture of corporate branding had positioned itself to fight for the identity and performance of youth and young adult life in the West (and in Westernizing societies) in ways that traded on the mirroring of spiritual disciplines (in other words, that give in varying degrees what Christianity and other religions had wanted to provide for their adherents), and that depended on dominant and politically recalcitrant Christian theologies for their violent progress; and moreover, that theologically speaking, faith in God can be understood as generosity in and courage for relationship, including the economic relationships that put us in debt for our well-being, and our own “spirituality,” to those global “others” whom we may never meet but who make our “stuff.”

The only thing new about that argument was to try to say it well in a short book, and in a way that would bear praxis-force (in theologically-interested circles) for both academic and educated lay readers in the seeking of truth and furthering of justice, in the small ways a book can, in these matters.

(In the preface to the paperback edition of the book, a few years later, I recanted some of the substructure of the argument, insofar as it relied on essentialized and finally ahistorical understandings of Christ and of scripture; this rethinking led me to write a followup book, Witness to Dispossession, to make more clear what can be said of Christianity and its capacity for prophetic speech and action today.)

This leads me to my most recent reading: an essay by Ken Silverstein in the January 2010 issue of Harper’s Magazine, titled “Shopping for Sweat: The Human Cost of a Two-Dollar T-Shirt.” Silverstein faked his way into Cambodian apparel factories under the ruse of working for a high-end T-shirt company. What he found will surprise no one, but still needs to be said, and illustrated: that after more than a decade of high-profile reports and increased public consciousness about sweat labor’s contribution to the products that sustain life in the United States, we are not yet in a new age of ethics. Toward the end of his report, he notes that “[L]abor costs in the developing world are so low that the industry could still provide Americans with very cheap clothing while paying its workers significantly more, raising millions of people out of poverty.”

It made me think: Why not pay $31 or $32 instead of $30 for that concert T-shirt? And I began to wonder all over again where the rock-related shirts I wear are produced. How are these elements of rock culture in my life stringing me up in relation to the young women around the world who make these goods, they who are the true material girls, the real young women whose labor helps make possible the material on which so much of rock culture depends?

So I pulled out the first five T-shirts having to do with rock culture, and here is what I found:

(more…)

The global political shifts associated with the year 1989 are not separate from the history of rock and roll. I am in mind of this when thinking about United States President Obama’s declaration yesterday of a massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan, of the compounded suffering of innocents it will bring, and on a related note, of the Iraqi rock band Acrassicauda (featured recently on this blog), whose music took shape in the Baghdadi cauldron of U.S. (make that “coalition”) bombs and domestic repression. Their example shows that rock need not be overtly or intentionally political in order to have politically productive and even transformative effects. On this score, witness Plastic People of the Universe. As journalist Dan Bilefsky recently reported, and as anyone who has seen Tom Stoppard’s play “Rock and Roll” was reminded, this band was integral to the grounds for the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia of two decades ago.

Five years ago, I wrote an essay on the imperial psychology that helped allow the U.S. war in Iraq to begin and continue as it did. The Jesuit magazine America featured it on the cover of their 17 January 2005 issue, with a picture of a grief-stricken Iraqi woman. (Some of the negative letters in response are here.) Since that time, U.S. public opinion has joined much of the rest of the world in turning decisively against that war.

I hope that in some remote way we can support the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and the region who are caught up in this insane violence, through the continued featuring of their rock musics on this site, and through encouraging creative and critical thought about how religion and secular music work for or against peaceable resolution to conflict.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

I recently watched the engaging documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad, originally released in 2007. It follows the metal band Acrassicauda from its origins in Baghdad, through the destruction (by airstrike) of their rehearsal space (and instruments) to their escape to Damascus. The latest DVD of the documentary includes a lengthy second documentary update from 2008 about the band’s subsequent flight to, and tribulations in, Turkey. (As of 2009, Acrassicauda now live here in the New York City area. Here is an article by Ben Sisario on the band’s arrival in the USA, from earlier this year.)

This story takes the familiar “rock band struggling to make it” narrative and tells it from the context of mind-blowing fear, intimidation, violence, and relentless suffering and displacement that made of these bandmates (and one spouse and child) a dangerous - and paradoxically creatively freeing - political marginality, and a coterie of refugees who apparently try to hold their lives, families and friendships together through their dedication to their music. And to rock culture, which, as the documentary shows, gives many examples of how rock culture offers, even in a politically repressive atmosphere, a constellation of practices that teach about identity, relationships, goods worth living and suffering for. The ritualizing that goes along with rock, across cultures, including discipline and training in musicianship, self-presentation, gesture, interpretation of emotion, and (male, in this case) friendship, and much more, is evident in almost every frame. The dominance of United States rock for stabilizing and nurturing these rituals, one indisputable effect of the colonial power of the US recording industry, is also clear throughout. Yet it is also clear that for these musicians, music is a way of life, and of surviving/managing their political lives as well - precisely because they select music for, and effect stances of, apoliticality. This is something to notice and appreciate about how rock culture’s frequent (and frequently criticized) political “naivete” can be put to use politically in such a scenario as occupied Baghdad.

Acrassicauda seems to be also working creatively, if not overtly (at least not in the documentary), with Islam. There are only a few references to the mates’ identities as Muslims, and most of those have to do with the chafing and abusive dimensions of the Islamic governance and culture that they find in Baghdad. I would like to know much more about how their musical experience has inflected their Muslim sensibilities, and vice versa. It seems a very important point to be so muted in the film, but given the complicated political situation of the band, perhaps the omission was deliberate - and certainly understandable. Still, I would like to know what they take Islam to be now, what they take rock to be, and how those takes relate to each other. Perhaps they would willing to be interviewed on this topic for Rock and Theology?

One need not agree with every manifestation of rock culture to be amazed, while watching “Heavy Metal in Baghdad,” at how rock succeeds, in a far different culture from the one in which it was born, in helping people find a way through their pain and the smallness of their circumstances. Is this because it grafts and graphs desire so well?

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

This morning I heard a program on the local radio station WNYC about bloggers who are (overtly or covertly) sponsored by corporate entities that provide gifts or money in (explicit or implicit) exchange for reviews of their products.

Of course, I immediately thought of our practices here at R&T. And just wanted to let you know that we are still “brought to you by” none other than the publisher Liturgical Press, as we have been since our debut in January.

Despite our frequent reviews of shows, artists or scholars, or commendations of songs, books or other publications, there are no other sponsors, and we receive no benefit from any purchase made on click-throughs from this site.

Tom Beaudoin

New York City, New York, United States

Almost exactly ten years ago, I had just moved to Georgia, and I was sitting in Javamonkey cafe in Decatur, writing my PhD dissertation, and noticed that Amy Ray of the famous indie-folk group Indigo Girls had just walked in. She was obviously recognized by many of the locals, but was left alone. A few days earlier, I had been working at home and saw out the window a woman across the street hauling guitars to a small storage trailer hitched to a van. I soon found out that neighbor was none other than Michelle Malone, a rising star in the indie-rock-folk circuit.

Last night those neighborhood memories came back to me, when my wife and I saw Michelle Malone and the Indigo Girls live in a sold-out show at the elegant Music Hall in Tarrytown. Both bands write inordinately singable, memorizable, emotionally involving songs with a depth of heart, feminist punch, political savvy, and importantly, guitarish prowess. Not to mention vocal gifts that are among the most exquisite of their generation of women rock artists, or any rock-folk musicians whatsoever today. The result is beautiful, moving, rousing song after beautiful, moving, rousing song, whether the more earnest and socially conscious folk style of the Indigo Girls or the more gritty lost-and-foundness, and sometimes sexually provocative jammy blues rock of Michelle Malone. And both bands share out some exposed entrails of Christianity regularly in their music. Their songs seem to reflect and speak to those who find that they must deal with Christianity in their lives, for better and worse, and who cannot find institutional church life making sense in their lives. (As is well known, one of the Indigo Girls, Emily Saliers, is the daughter of Emory University theologian Don Saliers. The two wrote a book together a few years ago, A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice (Jossey-Bass, 2006).)

I have seen Michelle Malone in concert at least a dozen times, and am going to see her again this coming Wednesday in New York City. I had never seen the Indigo Girls live before. One of the remarkable things about seeing both of them is just how many verses, choruses, or entire songs the audience will enthusiastically sing along with them — and how distinctively female those gladsome and strong voices are. I had the feeling last night, as many hundreds of women, who were easily the majority in the audience, belted out song after song with the Indigo Girls, especially from their first several albums, that this is music that is genuinely a part of many women’s salvation — in the various ways that salvation might be defined.

While in Atlanta, and in the years since, I have met many women for whom the music of Michelle Malone, Amy Ray, and Emily Saliers has been an essential traveling companion. The advocacy of all three women for lesbian and gay political (and spiritual) equality is also an essential part of their musical and theological importance, and of their meaning for many fans. The Christianity one often finds “in” their music, is of the “secular Christian” sort that I have tried to discuss at various points on this blog. I have embedded one video from each that give some sense of the kinds of Christian themes that circulate through their music. I have also put in one of them performing together the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses.” It is not too much to posit that between them and their fans, new secular theologies get fostered.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

Newer Posts »