2.3: Music and Media in the Service of the State
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Earlier chapters of this book demonstrated that politics on a vast, even worldwide scale—sometimes called geopolitics—can cause people and music to move to new places through migration or technological mediation. This chapter examines situations in which other kinds of geopolitical relationships caused music to move across international borders in the service of states.
When we think of a globe with the countries outlined on it, the boundaries represent states. A state is an administrative unit that claims territorial boundaries, enumerates its citizens—the persons who are affiliated with the state—and grants rights to those citizens. (The state can also withhold rights.)1 Historians sometimes describe states as if they were human actors; that is, they might say that “Colombia appealed to the International Court of Justice.” Though the people doing the appealing are individuals, they are acting on behalf of the entire administrative apparatus—with its power and authority behind them—and on behalf of all the governed people. People have given states the right to use certain kinds of violence to keep order within their boundaries or to defend their boundaries.
Some of the countries on today’s globe are governed as nation-states, which organize territory and people according to overlapping considerations of state and nation (the human sense of belonging to a coherent group in a particular territory). According to the political scientist Benedict Anderson, a nation is an “imagined community.” That is, people who do not know each other personally can perceive a sense of solidarity and commitment to each other and recognize each other as fellow citizens. The sense of a nation’s coherence may be based on ethnicity, heritage, or other factors held in common. The link between the people exists in their perceptions—hence “imagined,” in Anderson’s terminology—but they act on nationality as a real fact about themselves and others. Words or actions that are based on that sense of solidarity and advocate for the empowerment of the nation are called nationalism.2
Page 121 →The identification of nation and state as a single entity does not describe real life in most places, because mixed or overlapping populations are a norm. In some states citizenship is defined at least in part by a person’s genealogy. Other states, though, encompass multiple distinct groups who think of themselves as nations, and some states give rights to citizens irrespective of national belonging. Under colonialism European states managed faraway territories, and they defined different rights for different groups of citizens. Since colonial administrators often drew state boundaries that did not correspond to national groups, some of these newer nation-states have been troubled by intergroup conflicts.3 India, for example, is a state containing many nations, and the borders of many African states are drawn in ways that divide rather than unite people who share a language. For diasporic peoples, or for colonized peoples whose borders were drawn by others, questions about who counts as a full citizen of the state have remained important. Citizenship in a state does not offer perfect protection: states have often done violence to their own citizens, as well as to those people perceived as not belonging.
Anderson believed that media helped create nations: once a group of people shared printed books and newspapers, they could all relate to the same information and thereby relate to each other. Sharing media reinforces and helps to standardize a common language and common expectations.4 At the same time, this unity is almost always incomplete or temporary: different citizens or groups argue about how their nation should be defined, and that definition changes over time. Music can be an important part of how people make themselves feel like a national group or even how they define their nation.5
Individuals make musical choices, but states can also use music to advance the interests of their power or their people, both within and outside their borders. Spreading information, music, or ideas that promote a particular agenda is called propaganda—for it propagates ideas. Propaganda need not always be negative. States use propaganda to achieve a wide variety of outcomes, and a state can direct propaganda to people within or outside its borders. The case studies described in this chapter demonstrate that states have pushed music into places outside their borders and pulled music in from outside. The music that moved has sometimes served as propaganda, conveying ideas that support a particular point of view. Often, this point of view has had to do with defining a nation or a state or establishing a relationship among groups of people. The examples in this chapter also demonstrate that propaganda is not only a function of the printed or electronic news media. As we Page 122 →will see, states have used live performance, as well as music transmitted by other means, to create relationships.
“Pulling” European Classical Music into Japan and Turkey
The decision to pull music from elsewhere into a state has often been motivated by political concerns. For centuries European empires held a great deal of economic and military power and reigned over large territories, putting pressure on other states to “keep up” for fear of losing their independence. Some states sought to ally with or even emulate Europeans. Alliances could take the form of trade or diplomatic relations. States could also affirm a relationship by instituting musical or literary connections.6
In the late 1800s and early 1900s Japan and Turkey undertook large-scale projects of adopting European practices. The process of rapidly changing administration, education, and citizen behavior to emulate Europeans was known as modernization. The equation of “European” with “modern” is noteworthy. The American sociologist Edward Shils observed in the 1950s that for peoples outside Europe and the United States, modern means “the model of the West detached in some way from its geographical origins.”7 Thinkers in many parts of the world had come to believe European missionaries’ accounts of European superiority, and some even referred to their own civilizations as “backward” or “sick.”8 In the Japanese and Turkish cases the adoption of European music was not a forced result of colonialism: the decision to import ideas was made by the importers based on their own assessments of where power lay in the world. Furthermore, there was no one standard for modernization: individuals, nations, and states developed their own definitions of what it meant to be modern, and these ideas changed over time.9
From 1633 until 1853 the military government of Japan maintained a policy of isolation from other peoples. This policy did not entirely eliminate knowledge of music from outside the country, but it did minimize foreign influence.10 In 1868 Emperor Meiji took power and initiated radical changes in policy, lifting the ban on Christianity and encouraging rapid modernization through adoption of Western practices. Observing developments elsewhere in the world, the emperor had concluded that as a matter of security Japan should emulate Europe’s technological and military developments.
European church music arrived with missionaries, and military band Page 123 →music came to Japan as part of a broader adoption of military culture.11 Soon thereafter, the government of Japan decided to implement Dutch and French methods of education. As the music critic Kōichi Nomura described it, “Music and singing were included in the school curricula of advanced foreign countries”—and adopting European methods was taken as a sign of progressive thought.12
In 1879 a music educator, Shūji Izawa, presented a plan to the minister of education. Izawa said he did not know of any cases where foreign music was successfully imported and that it would be impossible to entirely replace Japanese traditional music with Western music. “By blending Eastern and Western music,” he wrote, Japan could “establish a kind of music which is suitable for the Japan of today”—that is, modern Japan.13 At great expense the Japanese government created a second music education system to teach European music, running in parallel with already existing Japanese music institutions and practices. The Yamaha corporation, today the world’s largest maker of musical instruments, began manufacturing keyboard instruments in Japan in 1887. The Japanese state sponsored composers of European-style music, some of whom studied in Europe or the United States.
The Inno Meiji Symphony (1921), written by Japanese composer Kōsaku Yamada (1886–1965), is a symphonic poem: a piece of music for European-style orchestra that conveys a story or idea. In this music Yamada presented the story of Japan’s modernization under Emperor Meiji. In example 5.1, an excerpt from the beginning of the piece, the music is slow and ethereal, as if referring to a timeless past. We hear brief interjections of jingling rattles and a hollow-sounding woodblock.
Europeans typically used these sounds as stereotypes that represented “the East” (i.e., orientalism). As Yamada was European- and US-trained, it is not surprising that he borrowed this strategy of representation.14
About five minutes into Yamada’s Inno Meiji (example 5.2) we hear a march, trumpets blazing and drums pounding: this music conveys the image of military power.
After some turbulence, including a direct conflict between the military sounds and the woodblock (perhaps between the West and Japan), the music slows. In the European tradition, the oboe and flute heard at this point traditionally represent the countryside (“pastoral” music). The strings follow with a peaceful tune. A few minutes later the military instruments come into conflict with a gong—another stereotypical orientalist sound—which interrupts as if someone had raised an objection.
The middle of the piece evokes a sense of uncertainty: the vague trilling strings and wandering harmony sound like “waiting” music that lacks direction. Emerging from this uncertainty, we hear the wail of a hichiriki (hee-chee-ree-kee), a reed instrument from the Japanese classical tradition of gagaku that imitates the sound of a mournful human voice. The hichiriki is accompanied by plodding low strings and drums, creating an effect recalling funeral marches from the European orchestral tradition (example 5.3).
Yet at the end of the piece the strings swell energetically and return to a lighthearted tone, mixing the pastoral and military elements we heard before and ending cheerfully.
The particular mix of celebratory and mournful elements in this music suggests a possible interpretation: leaving Japanese traditions behind was difficult, but the nation would overcome this difficulty. That Yamada told the story using a European orchestra, with a Japanese instrument prominent only in the funeral march portion of the piece, reinforces this perspective. Composed in 1921, this music looked back on the struggles of the 1880s from a time in which modernization had already been accomplished. Fittingly, the piece uses the tools its author defined as modern to convey its story about modernization.
Turkey underwent a similar process of modernization in the aftermath of World War I. The Republic of Turkey was established as a nation-state in 1923, following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and a subsequent revolution Page 125 →against Western occupation. The new republic’s first president, Mustafa Kemal, was called Atatürk—“father of the Turks.” As Turkey had lost the portion of its territory that lay in Europe, Atatürk decided to assert Turkey’s continuing European identity by remaking the nation-state on European principles.15 Atatürk minimized the role of Islam in government, gave women significant legal rights, and ordered the nation-state’s historians to emphasize the shared roots of Islam and Christianity. By Atatürk’s command the Turkish language would now be spelled with Latin letters; time would be measured by the Gregorian calendar, dating from the birth of Jesus; and Turkish personal names would correspond to the European form (a given name and a family name). Turkish people would dress like Europeans, giving up the traditional fez. Countless new books urged Turkish people to be more like Europeans in their day-to-day lives. These efforts did not convince Europe to embrace Turkey, but they did alter Turkish intellectual life, convincing educated Turkish people of their joint heritage with the West.16 For Atatürk, being modern was the same as being European, and he could force people to modernize.
With these reforms came dramatic alterations in music education. European concert music had already been available in Turkey for more than a hundred years, existing alongside Arabic-Persian monophonic music—that is, music consisting of a single melodic line.17 Melodies in the Turkish art music tradition were complex and highly ornamented, built on musical scales (called makam) that were incompatible with European scales. Atatürk called Turkish monophonic music “primitive” compared to European harmony, and he named European music as the “universal” to which Turkey should aspire. Atatürk prohibited radio performances of Turkish art music and closed the schools that taught it, and he institutionalized European music across the Turkish educational system.18 In contrast, peasant (folk) music became a populist symbol of the Turkish nation: the government encouraged its performance and sponsored folk-song collecting trips.19
Ahmed Adnan Saygun was one of the first generation of Turkish composers to receive this Westernized education. He also studied at the Paris Conservatory and spent parts of his career as a folk-song collector. Saygun’s Yunus Emre, completed in 1943, is an example of oratorio—a European genre of music that blended religious content with the storytelling and singing style of opera.20 (Handel’s Messiah is a well-known example.) Yunus Emre was a Turkish Sufi mystic whose poems conveyed messages of divine love and the transitoriness of life. Emre’s verses were well known in Turkey, acceptable to Islamic clerics and secularists alike. People sang them in Islamic religious practice as Page 126 →hymns (called ilahi) but also taught them to children as nursery rhymes.21 Saygun ordered the chosen poems so that the trajectory of the whole oratorio moves from pessimism to optimism.
The Turkish government demanded that music should be both Turkish and European at the same time. Saygun walked this tightrope in a variety of ways. Sometimes he borrowed or modified recognizable Turkish melodies that other people had associated with Emre’s verses, but he did so in an altered form. Sometimes he wrote new music that imitated the characteristics of Turkish folk songs. Sometimes he composed music with no relation to Turkish materials at all.22
As the musicologist Emre Aracı has pointed out, at the end of the first section of Yunus Emre we hear the words and melody of a well-known ilahi tune, which would have been recognizable to Turkish listeners. Example 5.4 is one version of this tune, called “I am the lamenting waterwheel.”
The basic melody is simple, moving by steps up and down a scale. It includes expressive turns that would fall “between the notes” of a European scale. All voices sing the melody in unison; a stringed instrument plays along with them, and a drummer keeps time.
Saygun’s version (example 5.5) slows the ilahi tune down, keeping much of its basic contour but altering its tuning so that it fits into a European scale.
The tune is first presented by a chorus singing in two parts, in harmony, but the parts are so close together that they approximate the expressive turns of the ilahi version. In the second phrase the voices get further apart and more distinct. In subsequent phrases the harmony becomes richer, with more separate voice parts. The ilahi melody remains audible, but the harmony parts move Page 127 →more and more independently so that the different voice parts change notes at different times.
It is particularly noteworthy that Saygun chose a musical form (oratorio) associated with Christianity. Even more striking is that in several sections of Yunus Emre he imitated the style of the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote music for Christian churches. Bach composed many chorales, pieces that took Christian hymn melodies and added harmony to them so they could be sung by a choir or congregation in church. Example 5.6 is a Bach chorale, “Who Has Struck You Thus?” In this example, and in chorales generally, the different voice parts sometimes move from syllable to syllable in sync but sometimes move independently of one another; they come together and pause at the end of each phrase. The tune moves mostly in steps up and down the scale: it is audible in the highest voice part. The voices in Saygun’s chorale move in a similar way, evoking the music of Bach.
Saygun’s setting of the ilahi tune took advantage of the fact that a simple hymn melody could be harmonized regardless of its source: a skilled composer could as easily write harmony for an Islamic tune as a Christian one. The particular harmonies Saygun chose were not like Bach’s; he tried to retain some of the sound of makam, not recreating the Turkish scale faithfully but rendering some of what he called its “color.”23 In blending Islamic and Christian religious elements, using European music that was acknowledged as “universal” along with known Turkish music, Saygun managed to create a work that met the government’s criteria for Turkishness and Europeanness.
On the scale of geopolitics Japanese and Turkish efforts toward modernization are excellent examples of pulling music: these states chose to import music that fulfilled their purposes. In both cases European colonialism inspired the pulling. As rulers envisioned themselves making closer connections to the centers of power, they imagined that importing music could strengthen international relationships. Turkish leaders, for example, hoped that adopting European music would help Europeans see Turkey in a better light. The imported music could also change how states related to their own citizens, for Western music was part of a comprehensive propaganda effort to persuade Page 128 →citizens to make the effort of modernization. If citizens refused to conform, states compelled them to change by controlling the availability and content of their education. Certainly, not all citizens in Japan and Turkey embraced the sudden imposition of unfamiliar musics. In both states later generations would moderate their admiration for Europe and further develop their own criteria for what counted as “modern.”
Music in the Cold War: Polarization and Integration
The movement of music through propaganda intensified during the Second World War and the Cold War. In the 1930s, concerned that German propaganda might win Latin Americans to the Nazi cause, the US government sent ballet companies and other artists on tour throughout the region.24 In wartime, governments on all sides made radio broadcasts and short films, sending out information or misinformation that served their interests and adding music to make the broadcasts more attractive. The experience of worldwide warfare inspired individuals and governments to think about faraway people and imagine how order could be reestablished.25
With the founding of the United Nations (UN) in 1945, nation-states became increasingly important in people’s thinking about both geopolitics and personal belonging. Under the nation-state model individuals and regional groups in many places saw themselves as citizens belonging to nation-states, and they empowered nation-states to act on their behalf to maintain order within their borders and defend their borders against outsiders. In turn they conceived “the new world order”—one order, not many—as a system of nation-states.26
Within this system conflicts between “superpower” states played an outsized role. After the end of the Second World War the formerly allied Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR) and United States held irreconcilably conflicting goals. The USSR was an empire ruling over many nations across Eurasia. Its leaders believed they had a historic mission to establish communism as an economic and political system in as many world societies as possible. Seeking to modernize, in the 1920s and 1930s the USSR had built a state-controlled economy to transform an agrarian empire into an industrialized one. The Soviets proposed to export this vision of what it meant to be modern to developing and decolonizing nations.27
The United States was also an empire: at the end of the war it occupied Page 129 →Japan, southern Korea, and part of Germany, as well as islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific. US leaders aimed to maintain and expand the large network of allies cultivated during the war, with the purpose of discouraging communism and encouraging economic development based on capitalism. The United States offered the rest of the world its own means of being modern: “democratic and equalitarian, scientific, economically advanced and sovereign,” with a high standard of living and an emphasis on personal and corporate freedoms.28 The conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was not only political and military but also ideological—based on systems of thought and values.
This conflict was called a “cold” war because the United States and the Soviet Union did not engage in direct military conflict, though they maintained hostility toward each other and built vast stores of armaments. The US-China relationship was similar. Yet the Cold War did include many armed conflicts, uprisings, and protests—most notably in Korea and Vietnam but also in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. Although these conflicts, shown in figure 5.1, appeared to be local matters, the opposing sides in each conflict were supported by the United States or its European allies on one side, the Soviet Union or China on the other. Through proxies the superpowers fought each other for dominance all over the world. If any one country tipped toward communism, the United States would fear it was losing its power, and if any one country tipped toward capitalism, the Soviet Union would feel threatened. Many states, including Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Egypt, and India, declared themselves “nonaligned”: the superpowers were trying to win them over, but they had not chosen one side or the other.
During this era individuals began to imagine their nation-states differently: they started to see their own nations in relation to this global system of world alliances and conflicts. The desire to cultivate alliances meant communicating more, and rapid developments in technology supported this aim. The use of communications media did not replace travel; on the contrary, nation-states used all the means at their disposal to push their political and musical ideas into distant places or to pull in politically or musically desirable ideas from afar.
The technologies of recording and broadcasting contributed to this pushing and pulling of music. The German and US governments had refined audio recording using magnetic tape during World War II, and long-playing (LP) records were first introduced in 1948. These allowed more than three minutes Page 130 →per side, so a much wider range of music could be recorded than ever before. The US government shipped LPs of American music (classical, jazz, folk, and popular) to US libraries in other countries for use in live public programs and radio shows. By 1968, consumers could buy magnetic cassette tapes and portable tape recorders: these tools allowed music to circulate unofficially in the Soviet Union and China, among other places. Some of the Cold War musical interactions discussed in this chapter would have happened without recording media, but some of them depended on the availability of those media.
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Just as world politics became polarized during the early Cold War, so did the politics of musical style. In 1948 the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party sharply criticized several famous Soviet composers, saying that they had “lost contact with the people” and done “immeasurable harm to the development of Soviet music.”29 This was not the first Soviet censure of musicians, but its threatening tone drew international attention. In the party’s view music should be understandable by everyone, praise the nation, support the Communist Party, and represent the aspirations and character of the working class.30 Taken as a whole, these loose criteria were known as socialist realism. They applied to all the arts in the Soviet Union and in the Soviet-occupied states in Eastern Europe. Given that the Soviet state had exiled, imprisoned, or killed dissident writers in the 1930s, composers took these admonitions seriously.31
Shortly after this criticism, in 1949, the Soviet musician Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75) composed a work for chorus and orchestra called “Song of the Forests.” The words convey approval of the government’s postwar reforestation program and optimism about the future of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of example 5.7, which comes from the fourth movement, we hear a children’s chorus.
The style of this music is sweet and cheerful, with an atmosphere of happy participation. A few minutes later, a full chorus of adult voices comes in, and the orchestra plays a buoyant march. The trumpets and drums add a militaristic sound, projecting the nation’s strength. In every way this music overtly praised the state and its actions: it is propaganda aimed at Soviet citizens.
Page 132 →Shostakovich’s colleague Galina Ustvolskaya (1919–2006) completed the first movement of her Piano Sonata no. 2 in 1949, after the Soviet censure of musicians, but this piece does not reflect the Soviet criteria for public music. Ustvolskaya knew when she composed this music that she could not publish it: it was composed “for the drawer”—that is, for her private purposes. The first movement of this two-movement piano work (example 5.8) is introspective and dissonant.
At the start of the movement we hear a gentle, dissonant chiming. But soon this gentleness gives way to an intense, clangorous marking of time, like the tolling of a large bell. This music bears no resemblance to the optimistic political music demanded by the government. The Soviet government’s restrictions did not stop the composition of the sonata, but they did keep it from being heard in public spaces until 1967. The sonata was first published in 1989.32 Meanwhile, Ustvolskaya continued to teach at the Leningrad Conservatory and maintained a public persona that conformed to the state’s wishes, writing film music and brief, cheerful pieces.
In the classical music world of postwar Western Europe, the Soviet censure of composers was greeted with alarm, partly because it diminished the expressive freedom of artists and partly because the overtly propagandistic musical style seemed repellent. In some regards the musical and the political judgments seemed to be two sides of the same coin. The National Socialist state had used music as propaganda to build pride in German heritage. Coming just after World War II, the Soviet regulation of artists’ output seemed to resemble the Nazi use of art as propaganda.
Some Western thinkers and some composers of concert music responded by seeking to make music that could not be used as propaganda. Perhaps the most extreme example is Structures Ia, composed in 1952 by the French musician Pierre Boulez (boo-LEZ, 1925–2016). Boulez said he wanted to remove “absolutely every trace of heritage”—that is, any conventional elements that would convey meaning, ideas, or expression.33 Using a process of composing called serialism, Boulez used preplanned sequences (series) of notes, durations, accents, and loudness to keep himself from creating music that relied on conventional techniques. Serialism had existed before the war, but the postwar Page 133 →revival of interest in this technique can be taken as a direct response to the Soviet insistence that music have political purpose.34 This piece of music (example 5.9) deliberately does not convey any kind of political or social agenda.
If Soviet or Nazi propaganda promised listeners a sense of moral superiority or political engagement, Structures Ia resisted making such promises.
Certainly, music composed by serial methods was not the only kind of music being produced in Western Europe during this time. In fact, because of its elite nature, it had only a small following. Even among his peers, Boulez was in the minority: quite a few other European composers of his generation were attracted both to socialism and to socialist realist musical principles.35 But for a while this music gained a disproportional amount of institutional power in Europe and the United States. University music departments hired composers who used serial methods; the composers won Pulitzer Prizes and Guggenheim Fellowships; and some critics and musicians claimed that this music demonstrated the superior technology and logic of “the West” (Western Europe and the United States).36
Thus, as the political division between the Soviet Union and the West intensified around 1950, some people on each side worked hard to define their side as the polar opposite of the other. The more the Soviet Union urged its composers to produce understandable, melodious music, the more some composers in the West produced difficult, unmelodious music. The more the Soviets required that composers produce music that served political purposes, the more composers in the West wanted to make nonpolitical music. In turn, the Soviets routinely denounced the “New Music” of Western Europe as inhuman, distorted, and unacceptable.
The divide between Eastern and Western Europe, and more broadly between the US-influenced and the Soviet-influenced world, was often called the Iron Curtain, implying that no connection or transit was possible between the two sides. Yet this mirror-image activity, doing the opposite of what the enemy does, built a kind of connection. Both parties looked closely at what the other was doing and responded directly to it by doing the opposite or by Page 134 →criticizing it in print and broadcast media. Musical or political dissenters on each side felt the attraction of the other side’s music and used it as a model for their own music-making. Even though many people thought about the Cold War conflict as division, the constant critique of musical values created a kind of global integration: a sharing of musical ideas at a distance.37
“Pushing” Music to Represent the Nation-State
Another kind of global integration came from states’ use of musical performance in propaganda. US officials noticed a sudden expansion of Soviet-sponsored music programs throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and East Asia in the early 1950s. Concerned that the Soviets had gained an advantage, the United States began sponsoring foreign tours, aiming to outshine Soviet and Chinese musicians. The US musicians were supposed to perform well, build warm personal connections with citizens of other lands, and create a positive impression of the United States. Thus, throughout the early Cold War years the superpowers and many other nation-states pursued their propaganda aims by sending musicians to perform all over the world—an action known as musical diplomacy.
Soviet musical exports focused on virtuoso concert soloists such as David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Richter, the distinguished tradition of Russian ballet, and choral and dance performances with a folk flavor reflecting socialist realist values.38 Each national group within the empire was supposed to contribute a distinctive and carefully curated artistic style, with the Soviet socialist realist style serving as an overarching concept for them all. Example 5.10 is an example of that folk-flavored style.
It is a carefully choreographed professional performance that imitates some aspects of folk dance practiced by a tiny minority group in the Caucasus, the Kalmyk people. The state-sponsored group performing in this example, the Igor Moiseyev Ensemble, toured extensively abroad to represent the Soviet Union. They developed a generic socialist realist “folk ballet” style, to which they added some gestures characteristic of the different national groups they claimed to represent.39
Page 135 →Though the Moiseyev ensemble’s performances were unfailingly upbeat, the performance concealed the tragic situation of the Kalmyk people. The Soviet government had deported this entire ethnic group to Siberia in 1943, where officials separated them and suppressed the use of the Kalmyk language. They were allowed to return in 1956, after which their dance could join the national repertoire—even as their language fell into disuse. Persuasive onstage, the Soviet portrayal of many nations within one peaceful empire rang hollow.
Recognizing musical diversity as its biggest asset, the United States sent many kinds of music abroad: symphony orchestras and soloists for concert music, jazz, folk music of Native American and Appalachian peoples, blues, religious choral music, gospel, and rock ’n’ roll. Famous soloists and even large orchestras went on tour; these spectacular performances highlighted both the quality of music-making in the United States and the wealth of a country that could ship so many people and instruments. Professional and collegiate jazz bands demonstrated that the United States recognized the importance of African American music. US officials sent serial or avant-garde music to people who might be impressed by it; they also sent popular music where they thought it would make the best connection with the public.40
These musical presentations not only disseminated music to new places; they also created meaningful personal contacts across vast distances. People living far from urban centers were often surprised and grateful that the superpowers sent them musical performers. This flattery reinforced an emotional connection among citizens of different countries. In their ambassadorial role performers frequently met with other musicians in the countries they visited, sharing tips or equipment (such as new reeds for saxophones, a rare commodity in some parts of the world). American choirs sang in East Asian Protestant churches and met university students there. Sometimes US jazz musicians were greeted by expert fans who had already learned about their music from radio broadcasts or records: the musicians remembered these conversations warmly.
After the United States and the Soviet Union signed an exchange treaty in 1958, they also exchanged musicians with each other. These visits offered one of few ways in which US and Soviet citizens could talk to the “enemy.”41 The use of music in diplomacy encouraged both the musicians and their audiences to regard themselves as an active part of Cold War cultural competition and cooperation. Even citizens who watched the tours from home felt pride in their music’s success abroad and enjoyed seeing themselves and their countries in a positive light.
Page 136 →Pushing and Pulling Culture: Paul Robeson
The life of Paul Robeson (1898–1976), an American singer and public intellectual, demonstrates the power of geopolitics in moving music through travel and media during the Cold War. A member of the Harlem Renaissance generation, Robeson began his career onstage and in film, with major roles in Porgy and Bess, Show Boat, and Othello. From 1922 on, he also performed concert spirituals with the pianist Lawrence Brown (example 3.9). His rich baritone voice won praise from the press and appealed to interracial audiences.
Like many Americans of his era, Robeson supported international socialism following the Soviet model. He believed that socialism was a way of allying the US struggle for African American civil rights with struggles against racism and colonialism all over the world (fig. 5.2). To express these sympathies, Robeson began to include in his concert programs labor songs—songs with working-class and socialist content. For example, Robeson’s album Songs of Free Men (recorded 1940–44) includes a performance of “Joe Hill,” a song about a Swedish American labor activist who was executed for a murder he likely did not commit. The song, a dreamed conversation with Hill, concludes that Hill’s work to organize workers would live on in others’ efforts to secure workers’ rights.
Although Robeson’s voice had a trained sound, he did not cultivate an operatic vocal style but often chose a simple, even folksy tone. In 1934 he traveled to the Soviet Union, where he observed “a complete absence of racial prejudice,” and he sent his son to high school there.42 In the 1940s he protested against anti-Semitism and racial segregation; he also kept Soviet songs on his programs.43
Once the Cold War started, though, the American public and the US government feared socialists. During the “Red Scare,” support for free speech deteriorated, and people believed to be communists were watched closely by government agents or fired from their jobs. Despite these threats and several attempts on his life, Robeson would not be intimidated. After 1947 he made more political speeches, and police patrolled his concerts. In 1949 an Associated Press reporter misrepresented the text of one of Robeson’s European speeches. In the ensuing media frenzy the US public turned against him, and the matter was taken up by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).44 Veterans’ groups and politically conservative organizations held protests against him, and music critics and audiences shunned his performances.
Page 137 →Robeson’s August 1949 concert in Peekskill, New York, drew thousands of protesters. White supremacists burned a cross and hanged an effigy of Robeson, threatening to murder him. The demonstrators blocked the road and instigated fistfights and beatings, but the police refused to respond to the violence. A week later, 25,000 listeners and some 3,500 protesters attended the rescheduled concert; after the performance the protesters injured concertgoers by throwing rocks at their cars.45 The threat of violence only further discouraged audiences from attending Robeson’s concerts. Yet Robeson remained openly critical of US policy, often using words that echoed Soviet policy statements. For example, he attacked American military interventions in Asia as a form of colonialism, saying that US troops should fight the Ku Klux Klan instead of North Koreans.
Throughout this period Robeson lived under constant FBI surveillance. Stores refused to sell his recordings. Concert promoters declined to book dates for him. His name was removed from American Sports Annual, where his status as an All-American football player was recorded.46 Even African American leaders turned against Robeson because he was “adding the burden of being Page 138 →red to that of being black”; that is, his actions made black people seem like communists, further discrediting them in the eyes of whites and making it harder for them to advance the cause of civil rights.
In 1950, citing a “state of emergency” due to international tension with the Soviet Union, the US Department of State revoked Robeson’s passport. The inability to perform abroad reduced Robeson to penury. In 1947 he was earning $100,000 a year, but by 1952 he was making only $6,000 a year. Yet the effort to contain Robeson backfired. He was already well known abroad, but his de facto imprisonment in the United States drew further publicity to his cause. One State Department official called Robeson “one of the most dangerous men in the world” in 1955. The state could not control Robeson’s influence.47
The US government’s attempt to control Robeson’s movements was thwarted by mediation. Although he could not travel abroad, he spoke and gave concerts by telephone to large audiences in England, Germany, and Wales. A recording of Robeson’s singing was played to symbolize his presence at a peace conference in Warsaw, Poland. Robeson sent recorded greetings to groups of people all over the world; one of them was for the Bandung Conference of nonaligned states, where Asian and African leaders convened to strategize against colonialism. He gave a symbolic concert at the border of Canada, his singing amplified through loudspeakers so that his voice could be heard by 40,000 people outside the United States.48
As one Soviet commentator explained, “you can arrest the singer but you cannot arrest his song.”49 Recorded media and technologies of transmitting sound bridged the gap between Robeson and the people he wanted to reach. During this period Robeson became one of the most famous individuals in the world. In particular, people who wanted to end the practice of colonialism in Africa and South Asia found his message attractive and continued to popularize his ideas in the press. They also advocated for the return of Robeson’s passport.50
As part of its Cold War strategy, the Soviet government publicized Robeson’s situation, using it to demonstrate the unfairness of the United States government and its oppression of both communists and African Americans. Soviet officials sought direct contact with Robeson and promoted his music through frequent radio broadcasts.51 In 1952 they awarded him a state honor, the International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples. In January of 1957 the Soviet newspaper Pravda printed a message of greeting ostensibly from Robeson to Soviet citizens, which emphasized that he would like to visit them but couldn’t because of the US government. Robeson was both “pushed” and “pulled.” He initially sought out the connection with the Soviet Page 139 →Union in the 1930s, but in the 1950s the Soviet Union also chose to import his music for political reasons.
In June of 1958 the US Supreme Court ruled that the State Department had no right to deny Robeson’s passport because of his “beliefs and associations.” Robeson was welcomed as a hero in the Soviet Union. When he arrived, the public already knew him as a friend. The documentary film Speak of Me as I Am offers evidence that the Soviet use of Robeson’s music was highly effective. In the film a Russian interviewee reported, “At school we discussed his concerts. It was unusual—we’d never heard foreign singers on the radio before.” A pair of Russian factory workers described Robeson warmly: “He was like us. He came from a working-class family. We understood each other. He stood for peace.”52 Thus, it seems likely that the Soviet media campaigns to promote Robeson within the USSR helped make him a star outside his home country. This warm relationship ended abruptly in 1961, however, when Robeson angered Soviet officials by challenging their prejudice against Jewish people.53 He gave further performances internationally, but his health was declining, and he would never regain the public acclaim he had once enjoyed. He died a recluse in 1976.
Robeson’s case illustrates an important aspect of Cold War psychology. The travel restrictions imposed by Iron Curtain countries, the United States, and others made people much more curious about what they were missing. This curiosity created markets for music from distant places and encouraged individuals and states to “pull” music into their own environments. The political criticism of musical performances only fueled the curiosity and thereby the movement of music.
Pulling Music: Rock in the Cold War
Politically cultivated curiosity had an important effect on the spread of other kinds of music from the West into the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China. The extent of censorship waxed and waned over the years, but starting in the late 1940s, a good deal of American music became inaccessible in communist countries. Some citizens living under repressive governments imported rock and popular music from the United States because this music carried connotations of political freedom and personal liberation. (The US government had carefully nurtured these connotations through radio propaganda, and it also facilitated the transportation of musical recordings.)54
Page 140 →China offers a compelling case of “pulling” music across borders on political grounds. The People’s Republic of China was established as a communist state in 1949 under Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). After disastrous economic and social reforms, the Communist Party launched the Cultural Revolution. Ostensibly a campaign for “stamping out old ideas” to transform the arts and education, the Cultural Revolution became a reign of terror. The state and angry mobs executed hundreds of thousands of people and persecuted millions, seizing property, forcing people from their homes, and destroying libraries and religious sites.55 Between 1966 and 1976 the government enforced artistic norms along the lines of Soviet socialist realism. As in the Soviet Union, officials promoted some kinds of music and forbade others, controlling public spaces, media, and imports of recorded music.56
The state’s chosen music therefore dominated public life. During the Cultural Revolution the Chinese state encouraged the composition of popular songs and operas on communist themes and imported the ebullient choral music style of socialist realism from the Soviet Union. Example 5.11, “No Communist Party, No New China,” is typical of this style of choral music. Large, well-disciplined choirs, all singing the state’s message together, served as a metaphor for the united support of communism.
The music is a march with triumphant trumpets and drums, suggesting military strength. The voices sing a tune based on a pentatonic (five-note) scale, signaling the particularly Chinese character of this strength. The words reinforce popular belief in the power of the state and the party.
The Cultural Revolution created massive social unrest. Members of the communist youth movement (the Red Guards) were rewarded for reporting disloyalty. These accusations tore apart communities and families. Schools and universities were closed, creating an ill-educated “lost generation” of people who were used to settling problems by violence or bribery.57 After 1976, under Deng Xiaoping, the government still controlled public spaces and the media, but Chinese citizens had a little more exposure to Western popular music through the presence of foreign-exchange students, the illegal import and circulation of copied cassette tapes, and concerts in bars of foreign-owned hotels in major cities.58
Page 141 →In the early 1980s state officials continued to promote tong-su songs, gentle popular songs with words supporting the government.59 The Chinese state had also begun to allow the import of Cantopop (short for Cantonese pop) love songs, most of which came from Hong Kong. Faye Wong’s “Love without Regrets” (example 5.12, from 1993) is a good example of Cantopop. The lyrics contain no political content, seeming to comment only on an interpersonal relationship:
I’ll face the future with my own blind obsession
Can’t you feel that I have to respect myself?
How can people go on so long and still not understand?
Even if I must leave you, I refuse to regret.60
The music of “Love without Regrets” is equally inoffensive: Wong sings a predictable melody with a light, sweet vocal tone. Despite its geographical proximity to China, Hong Kong was at that time still a British colony, with separate political and economic systems. Many mainland Chinese regarded Hong Kong’s Cantopop as modern, in part because of its association with Western pop music, and they found its nonpolitical qualities safe and appealing.61
At the same time, though, some Chinese musicians embraced rock music—not one of the state’s chosen styles. The song “Nothing to My Name” (1985), written and performed by Cui Jian (tsway jon, 1961–) is a famous example. In live performance the song begins with a slow introduction, played on a Chinese bamboo flute (dizi) accompanied by chimes and cymbals. When the heavily amplified voice comes in, accompanied by electric guitar, the contrast is palpable (example 5.13).
In this music, as in Yamada’s Inno Meiji Symphony decades before, particular sounds bring to mind their imagined places of origin. The audible contrast Page 142 →between the dizi flute and electric guitar establishes that the premise of the song involves a contrast or combination of Chinese and Western ways of thinking. Cui Jian purposefully uses a rough style of singing, which differs markedly from tong-su songs and Cantopop.
The words of “Nothing to My Name” do not make an explicit political point. Rather, they allude to escape and suggest a conversation with a reluctant partner (“When will you come with me?” and “I want to make you free”). These ambiguous words about longing and conflicting feelings could refer to a personal relationship or to a political circumstance:
How long have I been asking you,
When will you come with me?
But you always laugh at me,
For I have nothing to my name.
I want to give you my hope.
I want to help make you free.
But you always laugh at me,
For I have nothing to my name.
Oh, oh . . . when will you come with me?62
Despite the song’s indirectness, listeners have most often interpreted it in political terms. The lyrics of this and other rock songs of the time point to disillusionment and a desire for better alternatives.
Until the 1980s most rock music in communist countries was either underground (played in private without the government’s knowledge) or unofficial (the government knew but wouldn’t or couldn’t stop it). Not everyone who made unofficial music was a political dissenter: but it is difficult to completely separate the attractions of the music from its association with the West.63 During the early 1980s rock music in China circulated on cassette tapes; it could also be played in small private clubs, supported by foreigners.64 Police knew about these clubs and quietly monitored their activities; for this reason we might call Chinese rock an unofficial music during this period.
In 1989 activists—many of them students—occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for seven weeks, demonstrating against China’s corruption and economic stagnation. During the students’ protest in Beijing, they sang Cui Jian’s “Nothing to My Name” as an anthem that reflected their desire for something new. The Chinese Army put down the rebellion in Beijing, forcing soldiers to kill several thousand of their fellow citizens. In another city, Chengdu, police Page 143 →beat hundreds of protesters to death. Some reports suggest that the state executed hundreds of dissenters and imprisoned tens of thousands. Even today, Chinese people cannot discuss the events of 1989 openly for fear of imprisonment. People who are too young to remember may not know of the uprising at all, as the state maintains tight control over education and public speech.65
Because of the brutal suppression of the students, after Tiananmen Square many Chinese stayed away from songs with implicit political messages. Even so, after 1989 rock music continued to appeal to some students. They connected it to nonconformist attitudes and behavior, including long hair for men, blue jeans, and critical opinions of the government. That the student protesters in Tiananmen Square had sung Cui Jian’s music endowed rock with political meaning. As a result the Chinese government could no longer ignore rock music.
The government quickly neutralized the dissenting power of rock. The state started allowing rock music concerts—not all the time and not everywhere, but the standards were loosened. By permitting rock music, officials took away some of its power as an unofficial or countercultural phenomenon. The government blunted Cui Jian’s revolutionary reputation by allowing him access to media and inviting him to official state events. In July of 2005 Cui Jian appeared at the “Great Concert on the 60th Anniversary of the Victory of World Anti-fascist War,” a state-sponsored event, in Beijing. With the government’s stamp of approval it was harder for Cui Jian to come across as rebellious. At the same time, government control of the media meant that censors could limit his airtime, making him seem less important to audiences. Because the state exerts so much control over citizen behavior, state policy directs what can and cannot be heard.
This strategy successfully limited the political effectiveness of rock as protest music. With the economic reforms of the 1990s and 2000s Chinese musicians have found economic opportunity, so they are less likely to rebel. The majority of Chinese popular musicians know it is in their financial interests to maintain cordial relations with government officials. In 2000, for instance, a band manager called Cui Jian “an irresponsible shouter,” implying that musicians can get further by not engaging in protest.66 Mainland Chinese broadcasters still avoid rock music, and it has only a small public presence, even though illegally imported compact discs continue to supply listeners with rock from abroad.67
The diasporic Chinese who watched the events of Tiananmen Square on television, and those who were exiled as a result of the protests, value the politicalPage 144 → symbolism of Chinese rock music. When Cui Jian performed on college campuses in California—a US state that includes a large population of Chinese and Chinese American people—“Nothing to My Name” evoked an overwhelming response. At Stanford University (example 5.13) audiences cheered when they recognized the flute introduction of “Nothing to My Name” and sang along with every word. Rock had been “pulled” into China to express rebellious feelings, but then diasporic Chinese people “pulled” Chinese rock music into their own environments as they participated from afar in China’s evolving political situation.
A World Showcase
Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, nation-states and individual citizens have pushed and pulled music across international borders—often for purposes of political expression. Soon after the United States and the Soviet Union began routinely sending their musicians abroad, other states began similar programs. Given that many kinds of music existed within the borders of any one country, representing one’s nation to others meant making choices about what music was most “representative”—or simply “best.” Government officials made these judgments, sometimes according to their own preferences and sometimes under pressure from a ruling majority who wished the nation-state to be perceived in a certain way.68 Whether the performances were live or mediated, the presentation of music abroad was an opportunity for the nation to produce an image of itself as part of the world.
Thus, the formal act of representing one’s country abroad through music served as a state propaganda strategy. But during the Cold War a wide variety of people, including musicians and publics all over the world, embraced the idea that music stands in for the nation-state.69 These performances were not just representations of nationhood; they helped citizens and others imagine the nation as a real, coherent entity.70 By defining what the state is, these performances also give that definition power in people’s lives and open that definition up to arguments from those who do not think it fits.71
The idea that nations should contribute to a world showcase of “cultures” reflects the kind of thinking that led to the founding of the United Nations at the end of the Second World War. At that time not all peoples—not even the majority of peoples—lived in nation-states. Nonetheless, the UN model was Page 145 →based on the idea of a democratic community of states—“the world order”—and that idea became a norm for thinking about how countries could live together peaceably.72 As decolonization accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s, each of the newly decolonized nations sought to define an identity for itself that could be understood by other people in the world. By having a defined “culture,” each nation-state could support its claim that it was real, unique, and worthy of statehood.73 The idea of a UN-style showcase of “cultures” presents an orderly picture of the world, in which each group of people is known and valued. As we saw in the case of the Kalmyk people, the showcase may also disguise the world’s more complicated, heterogeneous, and conflicted realities.
By the 1960s, many nations had established state-sponsored music or dance ensembles along these lines. The Ballet Folklórico de México, a troupe developed by Amalia Hernández in 1952, became an official state dance company in 1959. (Since 1964 it has operated as a private nonprofit with extensive corporate support.) The dancers frequently convey widely recognizable stereotypes—mariachi music, swirling red skirts, and the “Mexican hat dance” with sombreros (example 5.14).
By placing the dancers into symmetrical geometric formations on the stage, the choreography borrows not only from regional dances of Mexico but also from European classical ballet.
In a nod to Mexico’s populations who identify as indigenous or mestizo (mixed), the ensemble also makes a point of presenting dances that represent indigenous American life before contact with the Spanish. In the absence of reliable historical information, these dances draw musical and gestural inspiration from European portrayals of “primitive” peoples through modern dance, like Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which was first performed in France in 1913. To demonstrate the idea of “primitive” people, the choreography of The Rite of Spring was purposefully heavy, including stomping of feet and repetitive motion in lines or circles (example 5.15).
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The harshness of the music was supposed to seem modern, but the gestures evoked prehistoric times. The Ballet Folklórico de México’s piece called Azteca (example 5.16) draws on similar ideas and gestures about ancient rituals. It, too, fuses ancient and modern ideas. Azteca calls on viewers to embrace indigenous heritage as part of Mexico’s identity, while also framing Mexico as part of the international showcase of nations. Although Mexico’s population includes people of African descent, they are not represented in the troupe’s offerings.74
These various representations of Mexican heritage mean different things to different people. The choreographer Anthony Shay has witnessed the patriotic and enthusiastic responses of Mexican audiences. For people of Mexican descent living outside Mexico, especially in the southwestern United States, Ballet Folklórico performances cultivated pride in Mexican heritage. In response, several University of California campuses and the Los Angeles County School District formed similar dance companies. Shay notes that these ensembles did not want to replicate folk dances exactly as they may have been performed in Mexican villages. Rather, participating in these dances created a mediated experience of heritage and ethnicity that they valued. People not of Mexican origin, in the United States and elsewhere, may experience Ballet Folklórico performances as imagined tourism: warm and festive, the dances present both novelties and ideas that are familiar from media portrayals of Mexico.
Strangely, the construction of a “United Nations” model of musical performance transformed each nation-state’s chosen musical practices and made the differences among them less apparent. Many of these “national” touring ensembles performed in similar ways.75 They typically emphasize folk cultures that seem old or indigenous but present them formally on a stage, as in a European concert hall. The dances are carefully choreographed by a professional in such a way that they can easily be televised. Vivid costumes and stereotyped gestures convey the distinctive national qualities of the performance—even if these differ markedly from how contemporary people in that nation might dress or dance. All of these traits work to establish a national “brand” that represents the nation-state to its own people and to the world—but in a form that seems familiar and comparable to other such performances. The Page 147 →philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has described this increasingly standardized system as “a collection of closed boxes.”76 Shows of this kind continue to the present day. Through them the nation-state can push particular ideas both to its own citizens and to faraway others.
Thus, pushing and pulling music helped nation-states establish themselves as “modern,” define their values as distinct from the values of others, and project those values outward to the world. Performances of this sort embody a kind of connectedness: in deciding what musical offerings to present on the world stage, state officials took the opinions of other states and peoples into account. Likewise, individuals who participated in the pushing and pulling worked to build symbolic and practical connections that felt meaningful to them. Across the 1900s these self-conscious efforts created a world where choosing music might mean taking a political position, forging an alliance, or granting a sense of belonging. More and more, people were making these choices within a worldwide system of musical representation.