World Music and Activism Since the End of History [sic]

Abstract

A thousand militant voices will sing a freedom song The people united will never be defeated…" So proclaimed these verses of "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido," which, together with a host of nueva canción anthems, sustained the spirits of millions of Latin American progressives through the dark days of Cold War US-supported military dictatorships.But what happens when freedom is finally obtained?When the socialist ideal is discredited?When the economic hegemon is no longer an easily identified antagonist-the imperialist USA-but the intangible workings of an amorphous global financial network?Does the socially conscious music then stop?Is there anything for the thousand voices to sing of, besides love, dancing, and sex?Or, for that matter, nihilistic rage?However one might answer these questions, the third quarter of the twentieth century stands out as a historical moment in which progressive, activist songs occupied lively niches in popular music cultures throughout much of the world, serving as soundscapes for set of socio-political movements that, although diverse, shared a commitment to universalist values ultimately deriving from the Enlightenment.But whether in Jamaica, Pakistan, Spain, or Latin America, these musical movements have largely evaporated.What happened?In recent decades, historians have written extensively about what appears to be a dramatic and tangible change in global socio-political culture since the 1980s.This transformation has been interpreted from diverse perspectives, and with varying degrees of optimism or pessimism.In Francis Fukuyama's paradigmatic, seminal, and much-debated formulation 1 , it is the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy, the exhaustion of structural political and economic alternatives, and, hence, the effective "end of history."For some cultural theorists, it is a postmodern condition marked by new aesthetic and epistemological sensibilities.For social activists, it is an era of progressive new social movements (NSMs) that have extended rights and dignity to women, gays, minorities, and other subalterns, and have raised public awareness and influenced policies on issues ranging from environmental concerns to animal rights.Meanwhile, for observers of less sunny dispositions, the "new world order" is an anarchic and unprecedentedly dangerous era of savage tribal, religious, and ethnic movements armed with modern weaponry.The decline of protest songs in the mainstream West since the 1970s has been oft noted, and has been traditionally related to specific developments such as the end of the Vietnam War.In this essay, I suggest that the decline was part of a much broader change in global culture, and that a cross-cultural exploration of the parallel trajectories of diverse political song movements can enrich our understanding of the global socio-political climate as a whole.I suggest that activist musical movements, in diverse parts of 1 Fukuyama, Francis, "The End of History?"The National Interest 16 (1989): 3-18; and The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). Music and Progressive Activism in the Post-War, Post-Colonial Decades: A Global ProjectAs someone whose sensibilities were formed in the 1960s, and as a member of the great American baby-boomer generation that invented youth counterculture, and that would never get old, it is of course hard for me to imagine that any music could rival '60s rock in quality or socio-political significance.Much of that music has not, of course, withstood the test of time, nor did my generation succeed in its goal of bringing down the military-industrial complex.There was no shortage of puerile narcissism, myopia, shallow hedonism, and political naiveté, and in the realm of commercial popular music, explicitly activist songs would constitute only a small percentage.And yet, that percentage was significant, and even in the most surreal flower-power fantasies of a song such as Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" (popularized by Crosby, Stills, and Nash), there was a vision that linked celebration, rock music, and progressive protest against the Vietnam War: …and I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes flying shotgun in the sky turning into butterflies above the nation This highly politicized decade was also the period of the massive 1968 student protests in Paris, Mexico City, and elsewhere, which, while displaying their own share of incoherence and naiveté, were animated by a shared opposition to imperialism, shallow materialism, social conformism, and reactionary attitudes toward sexual and recreational practices.In Europe, the US, and several Latin American countries, rock music was similarly interpreted, both by its fans and its critics, as inherently, if indirectly, linked to the spirit of progressive protest and countercultural sensibilities.Some commentators 2 have characterized the '60s countercultural protests as opposed to modernity and to Enlightenment ideals, especially insofar as the latter, in its early formulations, espoused an unquestioning faith in reason and science, which were then so discredited by the rationalized savagery of two World Wars, the ongoing rape of the environment, and the ethnocentric equation of reason with Euro-American ideologies.An arguably more productive and tenable perspective would be that of

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