The power and control of music

Music is a powerfully evocative medium. From the time of Stone Age, percussive music (drums) emboldened hunters and warriors in preparation for their deadly work. Even today, folks wear iPods to help get them through a workout or psyched up or down for one reason or another. In my opinion music is also perhaps the most seductive medium because it can work its magic on you without your knowing it. Think about the effects of Muzak, or the radio playing in the background while you’re working or driving. Reading a book or watching a movie/video requires your full attention and its effect on you, for better or worse, is mostly in your control. With music however, you can consciously tune it out but still be affected by it playing in the background. Some music producers, distributors and broadcasters who think they understand the power of music, try to alter, stifle or profit from it, but for the most part I think their attempts to control this media for the people's or their own benefit is largely misdirected.

For most of us, 9/11 is both a date and memory that is indelibly etched into our minds. We all have different, but vivid recollections of what we were doing when we heard news of the twin towers being hit. I for one don’t associate any music to this memory. It was early in California and I was getting ready for the day and catching up on the morning news when I saw the planes impact. That image is my memory. Perhaps it’s a different story for those people on the eastern seaboard. They were already well into their morning and listening to, among other things, their favorite tunes. Maybe their memories are imprinted with the music that was playing before their regular programming was interrupted. Or perhaps it was when they heard the crash or saw the fireball of the planes exploding. I think that’s one of the powers of music: the ease in which we associate a tune to a feeling or event. Right after the attack, Clear Channel Communications issued a do not play list whose song titles included words like: bomb, crash and fire among others. While the broadcasters were well intentioned, they “clearly” missed the mark. Unless the tune was about planes crashing into towers or terrorists doing harm to Americans, it was the music at that moment that affected the person, not the name of a tune.

Distributors also get into the altering or stifling game. Wal-Mart is the US’ #2 music retailer. It also happens to be the US’ largest gun retailer. Perhaps that’s why they put pressure on Sheryl Crow to change the lyrics of a song of hers. She didn’t and they didn’t distribute her album, but thankfully Ms. Crow became successful and Wal-Mart remains the largest gun seller in the country. It seems you can’t stop a good thing regardless of whether its good or not.

Of course we realize that while music is powerful and seductive, it’s also a money maker. That’s why distributors will tinker with music when given the opportunity, but sometimes they don’t have to. For example, take Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue”. To some this song is patriotic. To others, it’s the most blatant example of pandering to the sophomoric emotions of the American consumer. Who cares; it made a ton of money thank you. On the other hand, the Dixie Chicks stabbed themselves in the pocket book with a heartfelt, but unpopular, protest of the current administration. Only now is their music (which is good) back to its pre protest popularity. The point is, the music that inspires the consumer often times is successful regardless of the intentions of its distributors or the controversy surrounding its artists. Furthermore, music touches our most basic emotions which may be amplified when associated with specific events or the subject matter of the song’s lyrics. So the next time you queue up Alanis Morissette’s "You Ought to Know" (Jagged Little Pill) or whatever favorite tune you use to amp you up for that thing you have to do, say a little thanks the artist and to the powers that be that didn’t bleep or otherwise ruin the music for all of us.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

In our day to day lives, we’re occasionally confronted with ideological or cultural differences which surprise or even infuriate us. These differences seem more exasperating when it involves something as simple and beautiful as one individual’s expression of love for another. For example, if you raise the topic of same sex or arranged marriages in a group, you’re likely to stir a hornet’s nest of feelings regardless of who you’re talking to. Some things never seem to change. Forty plus years ago interracial marriage would have stirred an even bigger nest of raw feelings, which is what the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner set out to do. This academy award winning movie clearly and bluntly exposes the race prejudice, ignorance and social stigma that inter racial families must deal with in their daily lives.

Academy award winners Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn portray the successful and sophisticated Drayton family who live in San Francisco’s North Beach or Pacific Heights neighborhood. He is the publisher of a liberal daily newspaper and she is the savvy owner of an art gallery. They’re shocked when their twenty three year old daughter, Joanna, returns unexpectedly from a vacation to present her ten day old fiancé, Dr. John Wade Preston: respected Professor of tropical diseases at John’s Hopkins University who is himself en route to a post with the UN WHO in Geneva. Their reaction doesn’t come from the doctor’s credentials or his ten year seniority to Joanna; they’re shocked because he’s black. Academy award winner Sidney Poitier plays the impeccable Dr. Preston whose integrity and charm disarms any self respecting person of objections.

Screenwriter William Rose, who won the academy award for this picture, sets the story so the audience is confronted exclusively with the realities of racist and social stigma. Portraying Dr. Prentice as a model person with a “pigmentation problem” ensures that the parents and the audience must address their own misgivings of a black man marrying a white woman. The perspectives presented in the film are from various viewpoints. We see that a mother’s love of their children and hope for their happiness is universal and so is the father’s fear and uncertainty for their future. We see unfounded suspicion from long time employees of the Draytons (one black, another white) and the unconditional understanding of the teens of the new generation. A scene at the drive in ice cream shop serves to show the possible joy gained from adventure when Mr. Drayton tries a new flavor ice cream. The contentment of his discovery is dashed when his car gets in a fender bender with one of the twelve percent of blacks that live in San Francisco. The metaphor is clear: new discoveries and unions can be joyful, but can easily be dashed in the real world.

The movie’s release in 1967 in the midst of the Civil Rights movement and on the heels of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech highlights the challenges our country faced to achieve racial equality and acceptance. Dr. Preston’s retired father punctuates this when he remarks that the planned marriage of their children is still illegal in nearly a dozen states. What’s disappointing is that nearly a generation later, interracial marriages, not just among black and white, are still subject to irrational prejudice. It s also a small wonder that people object to marriage among loving adults because of their same sex, yet in other cases condone marriage among virtual strangers because of the tradition of arrangement. However in the end, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner gives us reason to hope that love and its infectious optimism cures us of our fear and ignorance so we can all take a little joy in these new adventures.