Anger is a rare feeling in music today, or so it seems. Not angst, not fear; anger. There are a couple of possible reasons for this. One, our own system of listening and canonizing has given birth to acceptable musical forms for anger to take, which then nullifies the possibility of real anger occurring in those forms ever again. Old forms become symbolic rather than vital, a token for something, not the thing itself. Rebellion in an old form will always lack the spark of true anger. Two, the things we might be angry about are now so complex and ingrained in our daily lives that we don’t notice them particularly and we couldn’t pinpoint them, dissect them, even if we did.
Anger is an energy. Keep calm and carry on.
When was the last time you listened to an angry song? I don’t mean a loud song or one with distorted guitars and pounding drums. When was the last time you heard a song that was seriously dissatisfied with something, anything? A song that couldn’t deal with something, so it got very angry about it. It didn’t try to escape its problems, it engaged with them in the most full-on way imaginable. You certainly didn’t hear it on the radio. Or on television. You probably didn’t read about it on a popular blog. Anger, and all the energy that can come along with that, has gone underground. Or been forced underground perhaps.
We don’t often expose ourselves to music (or indeed any art, though films do it more than most) which contains characters or characteristics of anger, hate, violence, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, failure or aloneness. Our culture doesn’t want to hear these things because they are difficult. They aren’t interested in success or saleable goods; there is no product that will make a difference to these emotions, no healthy bank balance to make all the problems go away. And our music culture, now more than ever, values success.
While the internet was busy breaking down all barriers to entry, a neat philosophical trick was played. It’s not just that anyone can do it, anyone can make it. MySpace can make you famous. And so the damage was done. The whole idea of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame was that if anyone can be famous, no one is. It seems like the second part of that phrase has been largely forgotten in some hedonistic rush to appreciate the first. You slice up the pie enough times, no one gets any pie.
The lie is that we can all be famous. The lie is that this is something to be, the only thing to be. If we’re not that, we’re nothing. The lie is that there is some sort of content life at the end, provided you play all your cards just right and you read the self help books and shake all the right hands. We know it’s a lie, but we buy into it with the art and entertainment we consume every day. We know it’s a lie but we swallow it because it’s easier than getting angry. Anger takes energy; who has the time?
“Never again. Never again. Never again. Never again.”
Sometimes we find it, when we know where to direct it.
So where’s the anger in our art? Where are the questions? If everyone is trying (subconsciously or otherwise) to be famous, then everyone will make pop music, in some form or another. And pop music these days has no room for questions. It’s too busy delivering that aural serotonin, the escapism that makes you think of Saturday night when you’re trapped in an office or a factory or a shop at 11am on a Wednesday morning, earning just enough money so you can go out on Saturday night and buy a fry on Sunday morning.
And when we do go out, when we go support music in bars and clubs and all that, we’re still in bars and clubs. We’re still making the music a part of this greater escapism, so no really dangerous or difficult music will survive in that environment. How can you be quiet in a bar? How can you dominate someone’s attention when you’re playing in the corner of a club? We need spaces outside of pubs and clubs so that we can make music central to the experience, make it an experience in itself. We’ve all gotten so used to this system that we take it for granted but it doesn’t need to be this way at all. Music doesn’t have to soothe and gloss over, it doesn’t have to be some distant soundtrack; it can dig deep, it can question, it can take a magnifying glass to reality and show you exactly what the problems are. Why everything is not in its right place. Most importantly, it can make you believe that you’re not alone in knowing these problems exist, that you’re not alone in thinking about them.
We need to start thinking of music as art again. All music. We don’t need to delineate it with “art-rock”, “art-punk”, or whatever; there is and can be no positive creation without art. That means taking responsibility for what you put out there, thinking about it beyond “will people like this?”. We need to stop creating this false divide between art and people, between art and its own audience; there is no high-art and low-art and popular music doesn’t have to be devoid of ingenuity, grace, talent, inspiration and honesty. There is a huge audience out there, desperate for music that will make a difference to their lives and not just in the form of a new phone or shiny headphones.
There’s more to life than this.
