Sometimes, songs are not that powerful, I mean lyrics get lost in the noise of the guitars and drums I suppose, or I don’t know how to explain this one: People magazine is saying that Mitt Romney's new running mate, Paul Ryan listens to Rage Against the Machine while exercising. RATM? Really? the band whose lyrics are full of anti-capitalism statements? I mean I am not going to give you a scoop there, but if there is a band which throws his political opinions right in your face, it is RATM! How can you pass the advocacy for an anti-capitalism, anti-oppression, anti-system, anti-religion violent revolution which is all over the lyrics? How can you pass the fact that the band wants to burn the American flag and despises the American dream, ‘Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission, ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite. All of which are American Dreams’!
So do you imagine Ryan, the guy who wants to cut social welfare, harm the poor and enrich the rich, screaming with Zack de la Rocha his despise for capitalist greed while using the elliptical machine at the gym? RAMT doesn’t only empower you to run faster, but they want you to participate into a social revolution, and Ryan has just declared he believes ‘our rights come from nature and God’! Right there everybody should be alarmed by this pure belief into social Darwinism, but this is another subject, the real question of this post is whether we can enjoy music if we strongly disagree with its politics.
Paul Ryan can apparently or may be he thinks de la Rocha is only mad at the treadmill machine he is running on? It would not be the first time a song is misunderstood, remember John McCain was sued by Jackson Browne for using his song ‘Running On Empty’ during his presidential campaign, and Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ was praised and used by Reagan and other conservatives, who had totally misunderstood the meaning.
But let’s assume Ryan is not misunderstanding RATM’s message. This is a different question that the one about being able to separate the art from the artist, in the case of RAMT there is no possible separation, their politics is their art, their art is their ideology, but somehow, Ryan, the social conservative, can obstruct the lyrics and enjoy RAMT’s music?
This is something I can’t do, when art cannot be separated from ideology, when the lyrics scream a strong opinion, it is something I find impossible to ignore. After the dramatic shooting which killed 6 people at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple, Wade M. Page’s bands ‘Definite Hate’ and ‘End Apathy’ surfaced, and there is no way I would listen to songs whose lyrics are ‘Jews burn again’ or ‘What has happened to America, that was once so white and free?’ no matter how good the music is. To answer to Iman’s post about racist hardcore bands, I certainly would not apply any censorship, but would never listen to their racist and disgusting slurs… But I suppose this is different for certain people, somehow lyrics may get diluted in the confusion of the music. I forgot who said that he couldn’t stand military music but couldn’t help but to march in step when hearing a military march.
The same question could be asked about religious music, can you enjoy it if you are an atheist? Sure, if it is only music, there is nothing offensive at listening to people celebrating something, even if you don’t participate in, but if the lyrics of some so-called-religious songs step in, lyrics such as ‘Ain't no homos gonna make it to heaven’, that’s where I draw the line!