This past Sunday I had to go to an opera. The University of Dayton sponsors a first-year immersion experience every year for the freshmen. This year the experience was going to see The Consul. I work as a tutor for a first-year program, so my boss offered to pay me and my coworkers to go see the show. Obviously, we agreed.
Before the show started a professor from the university gave a talk. It was optional, but my coworkers and I decided to go listen to it because we had gotten there early. He explained the plot of the show, but he also raised a question: what role should politics play in music? This professor explained the movement that was going on when Gian Carlo Menotti, the author of The Consul, was writing. During this time musicians were trying to separate music from politics. They wanted music to be about music not religion, race, gender or anything else.
Menotti rejected this movement and instead wrote about the struggles of living in a totalitarian country and the dehumanizing nature of bureaucratic systems. He clearly wanted to make a statement. Menotti pointed out these problems in society in hopes that it would move people. And move people it did. While it may have been one of the most depressing shows I have ever seen, I felt a lot. I felt angry when the secretary refused to help Magda, the main character, instead telling her she had to fill out more papers. I felt the despair Magda felt when her whole family was dying.
Why would we ever divorce music and politics when it makes us feel so many things? It’s simple. We don’t want to make people uncomfortable. When music comments about the injustices in society the listener tends to feel uncomfortable. We turn to music to relax or enjoy ourselves. Watching an opera about injustice does not make for a nice leisurely afternoon.
Does that mean we should divorce music and politics, or art and politics for that matter? No, no it doesn’t. Art has always been about portraying a message to your audience. Any good piece of music means something beyond sounding nice. Any good piece of literature has a thematic concept it is trying to illustrate. Any good piece of artwork, such as a painting or statue, is about more than its surface level beauty.
While we may feel uncomfortable from the political messages in art, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. These political or societal messages teach us more than school ever can. They illustrate things that we might not be able to put in words ourselves. Animal Farm illustrates the hypocrisies of communism, Picasso paints about fascism, Kendrick Lamar raps about racism. All of these pieces teach us, make us feel and make us understand. Art should never be separated from politics.
