Policy of Youth: New Wave of Rockers Defying Mainstream Political Norms in Cuba!
Frances Martel
In the free Western world, and especially in post-1960s America and the UK, those the masses elect to rock star status are expected to fit a certain mold and adhere to a certain message. No one is surprised when rock stars become famous through their music and then inject a political message into their work, or at the very least deliver some “shocking allegations” to whatever music magazine is willing to pay the most. While there are many Westerners who are civilized enough to understand that Bruce Springsteen’s opinions are rendered null and void by his lack of education and following the drug-swollen anarchist rants of Sid Vicious adheres to no known fundamentals of logic, they are grossly outnumbered by young folk so desperate for an identity that they’ll latch on to the first person that offers them a vaguely political statement. This great majority is also the music industry’s most valuable cash cow, giving it the loudest say in this great capitalist art experiment.
For the most part in the West, it has been the agents of the political left who have ensconced themselves in positions of power in the entertainment industry and sculpting a popular image of their beliefs. After all, it is the Left that introduces politics into mediums like the once-relevant MTV. There, openly liberal artists like Green Day, Sean Combs (aka many variations of “Diddy”), Beyoncé, and older artists like Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and others were free to make politics cool, the liberal way. Predictably, they never really sold much policy, just imagery. They don’t need to. Most youth search for labels—emo, gangsta, punk—to make the process of acquiring a personality easier, and once they are caught in the dirty paws of any prefabricated subculture, they are vulnerable to brainwashing by the leaders of the movement. Doodle a hammer and sickle on a red shirt with the right amount of anarchist “edge” and the aesthetic will sell the ideology without the buyer having a clue what they are promoting. Make Che Guevara’s beard a little more approachably flea-ridden and the avant-guard wannabe hipsters will gobble it all up.
Go in the reverse direction, however, and there is a price to pay. Take the honesty gaffe The Killers’ lead singer Brandon Flowers made last year in music magazine NME; Flowers was cornered on his political beliefs and expressed visible tension. He admits to being “in the middle,” and slips out of the contrived shell his record label forces him to live in long enough to say, “I think a lot of people in bands [are on the left] because they’re artists and they’re supposed to be on the left… I know as a singer in a band I should veer towards the left, but I don’t.” His handlers chastised him immediately for “talking politics” or, more accurately, talking the wrong kind of politics. The wrong kind of politics is bad for sales, and the dollar is the most powerful commentator in the music business.
Read full story at WOR The Nation.
