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

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