Financial Times – Letter: When folk morphed into country, music lost its bite

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney’s recent article argued that music’s “claim to be a harbinger of change has grown thinner” (“The thin line between pop and politics”, Fourth Estate, Life & Arts, July 5).

His column cites a number of historical revolutionary moments fomented by song, and the lack of such moments today.

The role of music has indeed changed. Music — and folk music in particular — was once part of a collective consciousness, with the folk singer simultaneously acting as reporter and interpreter of events. This gave music a directly political role in society — an oral tradition with a lineage going back at least to Homer. In the US and elsewhere, as part of increasing industrialisation and progressive economic policies, farming communities increasingly moved to the cities, and with them went their tradition of song, which morphed from a political, folk music to commercial country music. With this change, the singer transformed from a political actor to an economic one.

This is not to say that music has diminished in its influence, however. In the mid-20th century, the French social theorist Herbert Marcuse argued that the revolutionary target was not the collective class, as Marx had it, but rather the individual: if we can stir the hearts of individuals, wider change will follow. This is not a directly causal process: it is not, as in Hunter-Tilney’s example, a crowd, roused by protest chants, then storming the city barricades.

It is a more gradual, but no less effective, process. In the words of Marcuse: “Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world.”

Author: Jack Campbell PhD Researcher, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland