Musicians as Social Commentators

Musicians as Social Commentators

“If we heard that sound coming from one of the animals on the farm, we would have done the kind thing and euthanized it.”  That was the first thought that came to me when I heard Bob Dylan “sing” for the first time.  I mean, if he were kneeling at your feet and trying to propose marriage by singing, you’d be drawing up divorce papers in your head already. Yet for me, an odd thing happened, it kind of grew on me.  There were songs that certainly made me react with a shudder like nails-on-a-chalkboard.  But others had a certain sort of charm to them.

Dylan’s career in music is a curious thing to me.  I never heard of him giving a concert at any of the major cities where I lived, yet everyone seems to know who he is.  His sound ranged from folksy to rock, and yet probably forty years’ worth of people is familiar with the sound.  But my one opinion on which I will not flex, budge, or understate is that while we call him a singer it is more honest to call him a poet  and a social commentator.  His voice is not what I had in mind when I am trying to relax.  Yet you could count on him to not pull any punches in any of his balladiering, if that is a word.

I listened to Dylan during what he himself referred to as his “Christian phase.”  I listened because a good friend introduced me to the “Slow Train Coming” album and I think we wore out the song “Man Gave Names to all the Animals” – so fun, so light-hearted, and then the cool lyric cut-away at the end of it.  The song I always skipped over:  “Lenny Bruce was Bad” (“he was the brother that you never had”).  It just felt dark and ugly.  A part of your gut always reacts to Dylan’s songs:  Music doesn’t always do this, but good poetry does.  I think he had something worthwhile to say.

I remember a decade or so after I was in college and had long shelved the records of Dylan for another style of music that seemed truer to me, I read a Parade magazine article about him.  It seems he attended his son’s bar mitzvah and the media was all over him like lint on a black sweater that somehow he was denying his Christianity being there.  (A ridiculous conclusion on their part)  He came out very succinctly and said pretty much:  “Whenever I do a genre of music, I totally get into it; that was my Christian phase.”  While I found that disappointing, I understood that he had to tell them something.  Now, twenty years beyond that, I wonder what Dylan himself makes of all of it.

Was his religious experience driving his music?  Or was his search for a new genre of music attaching itself to a religious experience …. Kind of like a barnacle on the side of a ship – not caring where the ship goes, as long as it goes somewhere? 

During that genre or phase of Dylan’s music he produced at least three albums I am aware of:  “Slow Train Coming,” “Saved,” and “Shot of Love.”  For my money, he could have skipped the last two albums entirely.  One of them was an attempt to use the standard “two gospel/soul singers standing behind lead vocal” approach.  The album wasn’t comforting, but it was energetic, in an annoying sort of way.   Yet again, I make the case that Dylan is a poet and as such he is making commentary or rumination on life from a particular angle.  For that particular reason, I believe, he recently was awarded the Nobel Peace prize.  

I found it comic that he didn’t acknowledge reception of the NPP for days.  WHO goes on tour and says they were unable to respond to the Nobel Peace Prize committee because they were on tour?  Where was he touring, Antarctica?  Did he not have cell phone reception?  Or, more to it, was Dylan possibly snubbing the accolades of a society and media that for decades tried to grapple with what he was trying to say, and re-interpreted it when they didn’t “get him”?   Maybe he gave them a dose of Poetic Justice?!   

And then there is Madonna.  Madonna, whom I wish we could ship her to Antarctica… with no cell phone service.

Madonna who, next to Gloria Steinem, has done more to HARM the role of women in our society decides she is going to be a “voice” for women at these marches people are doing?  Are you bleeping kidding me?!  If you are too young to understand the misinterpreted effect of Gloria Steinem on society in general and women in particular, please accept my humble assessment as follows:  Gloria assessed that men were “sexually liberated” (read that:  morally bankrupt, socially irresponsible, and permitted to be boors) and decided that women should have that “privilege” as well.  Consequently, she got media and pieces of degenerated culture on board with the Women’s Liberation movement and said that women should be able to have S.O.D. (sex on demand) with anyone, at any time, without the consequences of parenthood or commitment to relational ties (ie marriage).  Thus you have the birth of the STD explosion, unplanned pregnancies, the disintegration of families, exponential upswing in personal lives in crisis, post-traumatic stress disorder that was not related to an overseas war with the victims being women, etc.  I could go on and on.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I am in favor of women’s liberation:  I feel women should be liberated from being treated like sexual chattel.  I think women should be able to walk beside a man and not a few feet behind him because she is being treated as a household possession.  I know women should be paid equally for doing the same job that men do.  I want women to free themselves from situations and circumstances that cause them to devalue their worth as free human beings.  I want them to see again that the gift of love belongs in an environment of permanence, not the shaky world of part-time emotions.  Which is where Madonna comes in….

Madonna’s contribution to womanhood,  ummmm, let me see.  How can I count the ways?  She dresses like a slut and struts like she works the street corner as a Queen of the Night.  That doesn’t sound liberating to me.  It sounds like she is endorsing and promoting a whole different kind of slavery.  Her songs are vulgar and classless.  She apparently holds nothing sacred, in that she uses religious imagery –including her stage name “Madonna” - and then immediately profanes it.  If she tried that with any of the other world religions’ symbols or leadership figures, she’d be prosecuted.  Somehow the Roman Catholic Church tolerates her taunting.   I guess when you are big enough you can take the pokes of the small-minded.  She has used the profanation of the sacredness of womanhood and sexuality to make herself a millionaire.  Perhaps it is for this last reason that I cannot conjure up an adequate amount of disgust and disdain for her in my own mind.  She has led the young women of this generation down the wrong path – and the only one who benefits from that is herself.

So, Madonna, if you are out there listening, do women a favor and sit down and shut up.  You don’t speak for me.  You speak for yourself just to get more publicity and consequently more attention and eventually more money (surprise, surprise).  You are not representative of talent that has been put to good use for womanhood OR humanity.  Your gifted voice has been a siren’s call to the destruction of civilization and the self-esteem of women who are called to be noble, co-contributors to the planet.  You’ve got nothing to say.  Well, unless you can explain yourself better to the CIA for the White House remark. 

###############