What SHOULD War-Related Music Do?
Posted by Li Robbins on November 9, 2007 at 03:00 AMGrowing up with folkies as parents ensures a number of things. You develop a taste for jazz. (Sorry, parents, couldn't resist.) You can sing basic harmonies, most of the time. And you experience the power of song as a way of rallying people.
Having marched (or been dragged/carried, I was very young) along with thousands of people singing against one war, I can appreciate that it isn't only bagpipes that can cause other hearts to quake. Not being snarky about out-of-tune singing either -- people singing together can feel like a pure expression of humanity.
But do songs of protest -- specifically against war, or in response to war -- make any actual, tangible difference, quaking aside? Do they make governments or politicians or even individuals change their minds about involvement in war? I think not.
Over at the "Your View" section of CBC's website, there's an in-depth feature about how musicians have responded to war through songs -- and many people have chimed in with war-related music to add to that list.
But for all those songs, some of them great and moving, it still leaves me wondering whether we should even expect songs written about or against war to have any tangible impact. But maybe that's not the point. What SHOULD music written about war do? Should it indeed "do" anything? I'd be curious to know what you think.
My best hope is that now, with the days of mass anti-war rallying seemingly in the past, music can at least provide an opportunity for deeper reflection. And that's a valuable thing in itself -- in fact for me that's really what Remembrance Day is about. Not protest, and certainly not glorification.
On Radio 2, Remembrance Day programming begins on Friday, with Here's To You, playing Remembrance Day requests, including: Jenkins' Benedictus from Armed Man - A Mass for Peace.
And on Studio Sparks, music written for a day of remembrance by Kingston, Ontario composer, John Burge -- two movements from his work, Flanders Fields Reflections.
Friday evening The Signal broadcasts Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, which he wrote while imprisoned in a concentration camp.
On Saturday morning on The Vinyl Cafe, host Stuart McLean's special musical guests are Martha Wainwright and John McDermott, and he tells the story of how Dave, while renovating his house, finds a postcard of an old soldier caught between the walls.
Then Rick Phillips plays a recording of music composed by inmates in the Terezin concentration camp, that's on Sound Advice.
On Sunday -- the 11th -- on In The Key Of Charles, Gregory Charles plays music inspired by war: renaissance polyphony by Clément Janequin, symphonic poems by Franz Liszt and Gustav Holst, contemporary choral music by Stephen Chatman and David del Tredici, and pop songs featuring Edith Piaf, Harry Nilsson, Sting and others.
Later on Sunday, on Canada Live, a concert called Of War and Peace, featuring Canadian baritone Russell Braun and Canadian soprano Monica Whicher, performing a programme featuring songs by Mahler, Britten, Morawetz, Pete Seeger, Jacques Brel and Sting.
This is followed by America and the Black Angel, a concert opening with Black Angels, a string quartet inspired by the Vietnam War as “a parable on our troubled contemporary world” by George Crumb, performed by the Art of Time ensemble.
Also, Andy Maize and Josh Finlayson sing protest songs by Dylan and Pete Seeger, and Ted Dykstra narrates Allen Ginsberg’s iconic 1955 poem Howl, in a new CBC commission from Jonathan Goldsmith.
And finally, the Sunday night broadcast of The Signal explores music that honours those who fought -- and the lives of those not lucky enough to have returned from battle. Music featuring Canadian composer Oscar Morawetz, Coleen, The Most Serene Republic and a concert by John Kameel Farah and Hauschka. The evening will end with the epic piece An American Requiem by Richard Danielpour, which celebrates life -- and the afterlife.
CBC
does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of
external sites - links will open in a new window.