Friday, June 16, 2023

They're Legends Now, But Before ...

 “Whole World in an Uproar” – Music, Rebellion and Repression – 1955-1972 by Aaron Leonard

This is an excellent look back at the ties between political upheaval, music and political repression.  As we enter another phase of repression similar or worse than the past – knowledge of how it went 50-60+ years ago might help.  Leonard has written 2 prior books on FBI / police actions against various branches of the Maoist and Marxist left in this period.  This book shows how repression worked in the music field.  If you are a Leftist who thinks culture is irrelevant – this book shows it is not to the ruling class. Class struggle penetrates every sector of society, especially during social tumult.

Examples from the book?  Folk singers were brought before the anti-communist HUAC committee and Pete Seeger jailed and black-listed for not answering questions.  Harry Belafonte was forced to say he was not a Communist. Jazz players put out political albums and songs attacking Jim Crow, as did folk-blues artists like Josh White and J.B. Lenoir.  Early rock and roll and R&B were attacked by the racist power structure, as it brought together white and black music styles and also people in a time of Jim Crow, weakening segregation.  Dylan was stopped from playing a song about the raving anti-communists in the John Birch Society on the Ed Sullivan show, and later garnered an FBI file.  A Trotskyist political artist like Dave Van Ronk earned his own FBI file and was later pilloried in a Cohen Brothers film. Phil Ochs was banned from the airways. Sam Cooke also had an FBI file, especially after penning “A Change is Going To Come” and associating with Malcolm X.  The Beatles were ridiculed in the press and a U.S. musician’s union sought to bar them and several other British groups like the Kinks from playing in the U.S.  Joan Baez sang at Berkley’s Free Speech Movement – a movement also denounced in the press.

That is the beginning.  All these people and events are now legends, but at the time, like MLK, they were abhorred by the conservative ruling elite.  The ‘counter-culture’ was not just about apolitical pot smoking and ‘free’ sex, but politically involved with the social struggles of the time. Leonard believes politics actually dominated the period and he is certainly right.  The book integrates the upheavals as they happened each year, and how that impacted the music scene. His perspective of the '50s and ‘60s’ period is not the standard press depiction of dopey Beat'niks' or drugged-out ‘dippy’ hippies,’ the latter best exemplified by middle-class journalists like Joan Didion in her exposé “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”    

Music Entwined With Events

Leonard pokes at folk music purists like Irwin Silber, first an editor of “Sing Out,” then an editor of the National Guardian and later a leader of a post-Maoist left group, Line of March.  Silber led the charge against Dylan and anyone else who wrote something other than protest or folk songs, with invective against folk-rock.  Leonard cites Greil Marcus as to Dylan being blocked from certain folk clubs in Britain due to the Communist Party disliking his new musical direction.  Leonard contends this purist hostility might have been one reason he stopped touring, not just the motorcycle accident.

Rock bands in the mid to late ‘60s were the target of police action across the U.S.  Drug busts, banning political or so-called ‘drug’ songs from the airwaves, blocking venues, denying visas and shutting down on-going concerts for various flimsy reasons were the most popular tactics.  A police riot occurred at an Ochs concert in LA, shutting it down; Country Joe and the Fish were physically attacked by reactionaries in a Chicago hotel lobby during the '68 Convention; Jim Morrison went to jail in Florida. The Beatles were disliked by the Philippine Marcos regime, getting roughed up several times during their visit.  In the U.S. they were the target of drug busts, a radio boycott and album burnings after John’s Jesus remark and pickets by the KKK.  No wonder they stopped touring.

1968 saw the greatest social upheaval since the 1930s in the U.S., with the assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy, nationwide black-led riots, the My Lai massacre and the Tet offensive, student strikes, the Chicago Democratic convention police riot.  Rebellions also occurred in Mexico, France, Italy, China, Czechoslovakia, Pakistan, Poland and elsewhere.  During this period not every music artist was in opposition.  For instance James Brown toured Vietnam with Bob Hope, celebrated black capitalism, told rioters to ‘go home,’ and later endorsed Nixon.  He even regretted his song “Say it Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud.”

Rock bands like the Grateful Dead and the MC5 regularly played gratis for movement events.  The folk-comedy duo the Smothers Brothers was canceled due to the subversive musicians on their show, high-lighted by Pete Seeger’s re-emergence doing the anti-Vietnam war song “The Big Muddy.”  The half-wit, middle class press claimed the Altamont concert was ‘the end of the ‘60s,’ blaming it on the Rolling Stones – even though conservative San Francisco Mayor Alito and a dispute over film rights denied permits for two prior locations that would have allowed more time to prepare.  Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young did songs about the Chicago 8 trial and the murders of students at Kent State and others wrote songs about the Attica rebellion.  John Lennon’s role in making dissent legitimate to a mass audience didn’t hurt.

Nixon’s government retaliated.  The drug war started up in high style, busting musicians constantly.  Hard hats in New York led by a Union bureaucrat Brennan attacked high-school and college anti-war protesters.  He was later appointed as labor secretary by Nixon.  Okie From Muskogee” became a hit song, though former jailee Merle Haggard later joked that he’d smoked weed.  The FBI ended Mariam Makeba’s career because of her marriage to Black Panther Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure).  And then Nixon began to withdraw from Vietnam…and made peace with China.

And a war on musicians

Conclusion

This is a good book that integrates social struggle, history and music – showing that culture is not some isolated phenomenon but directly tied to the economic and political structure of a country, both reflecting and acting upon it. Leonard includes photo-copies of various FBI file pages to show you he’s not making this story up.  Dissident musicians, writers, film-makers and painters will always face the hostility of the ‘powers that be.’  In this period the counter-culture was massive and involved millions, which was its strength. But ultimately it failed to significantly change the political/economic structure it challenged, nor could it given its diffusion.  Capitalism recovered, reformed a bit, repressed the rest, then morphed into neo-liberalism.  Now neo-liberal ideology and practice is breaking down, creating a cultural and political opening once again – which can be filled by the Right or the Left.

At present there is no real ‘counter-culture’ of a proletarian or dissident nature, as corporatization has swallowed nearly every art form.  Yet culture has become more democratic below this monied crust, with more musicians, writers, artists, film-makers, actors and other crafts than ever before in history. This presages what it would be like for cultural and practical skills under socialism and communism.  In that context more and more of the population would achieve social stability, work fewer hours, have better health and education, with guaranteed housing and food and thus be able to expand their skills and knowledge.  But that outcome is just what the ruling class does not want to happen.  The present situation with the rise of fascist and ultra-right groups is part of a reaction to that possibility.

For prior blog reviews on this subject, please use the blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms:  "A Threat of the First Magnitude" and "Heavy Radicals" (Both by Leonard);“Summer of Soul” “Let Us Now Praise the Dead,” “We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years,” “33 Revolutions Per Minutes,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “Blues and Blues-rock,” “Music is Power,” “The Music Sell-Outs.”

And I bought it at May Day Books, which has a good music section!

Red Frog

June 16, 2023

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