I've a feeling this is going to get a bit Routledge set*...

I think you're cock-on about the Dixie Chicks being part of the system they're critiquing, but that's an essential tenement of political progress, especially at that mass level - the hegemony of the system is perpetuated by its fluid, amorphous, nameless mass, not by it being the image of the demagogue puppeteering malificiently. The role the Dixie Chicks play is to represent the dissensus within this formless mass, the dissimulation and the re-orientation of the hegemony. It's not a question of political top trumps, but I'd argue that the Dixie Chicks tacitly and likely unconsciously represent a far more powerful movement in America in general than do, say, the DKs. This statement will necessarily be lost on most here, I'm afraid to say. A caveat - while PE galvanised and awakened political consciousness in a great many black and white men and women, their ultimate legacy is musical - anyone who was tipped into big-p Political actions by PE would've become a firebrand regardless, PE are the catalyst.

The Pistols speak of being a parody of their political selves (to my mind retroactively). 'Smash the system' is a trope, a narrative, and at this point in history, a staging, a theatrical gesture. The reason why people dislike 'corporate' punk is precisely because it reminds them of this theatrics, it reminds audiences of the suspension of disbelief that accompanies even the smallest scale of punk songs. No-one ever 'smashed the system', the system has no body to smash, it is not brittle and fragile, it doesn't adhere to any such metaphor. The system merely is, its being formed as an impossible network of organs and byways, intractable and in-negotiable.

*It's a real shame that it's only Herr Rail will get this gag, it's a good one...

^^Suscfriends^^i'm not sure if i meant that. I'm saying that by provoking a system, culture can be a useful tool in showing a side of the system that it probably never wants you to see. It lays bare the machine for what it really is.

As for stereotypes

Eventually many things seem to boil down to race but here is a new siutation..

It seems that the 'what you are not' is eventually being eroded. The 'what you are not' is what binds us together. For example, hating the Mets is a big part of being a Yankees fan or Glasgow Ranger and Celtic fans etc.

If we are no longer allowed to dis the other side than it just becomes silly. This was most evidnet in the Don Imus nappy situation...

old coal mining music is nuts! some crazy tunes.

the FANS maybe, NWA were prep school, college educated, MIDDLE CLASS "gangstas"

check out dre before his NWA "incarnation"

you talking about china? dishes?

no,you are thinking of Dr Dre and Ice Cube in particular, but before the record company found them, the NWA krew were a bunch of rapping and jacking mother fuckers from Compton, South Central and Vernon. They are still heros up the street in Compton and Watts [Watts Up bitches!]

I live on Alondra, roll with foolz from Wattz, and go to Church in SouthCentral/Vernon

.. Since this is a thread about politics, I must note the extreme political culture of gang life and subsequently everybody elses life here in Los Angeles. It is not just an exaggerated stereotype, it is some nuts shit sometimes. So bitterly complicated, these fuckers are practically lawyers, both regarding street politics and legal ones as well from so much mutual experience... This shit is like rolling around in a stereotype of tribal Africa, you have to know EVERYBODY unless you want to become a mark.

its as it has been said, the streets are a muthafucker..

dude, Cube wrote all of Easy E's rhymes, and many of Dre's. Dre produced. dre and cube ARE and WERE N.W.A.

does not lessen their music or their influence, just saying that the fake ones were sold more profitably than the real ones.

you misunderstand what I am saying. It is not about who wrote what, and really who came from where. You called NWA studio gangsters, and regardless of what Dre was doing before he started pretending he was a gangster, but the way it works in Los Angeles is that pretending or not, if you roll around with some less then pretending motherfuckers you suddenly find yourself in realer situations.. in other words, regardless of where Dre and Ice Cube came from, by involving themselves with the original NWA foolz they jumped into some ACTUAL gangster shit. This town swallows up many a bright soul and good folk into the darkness of self-destructive gang violence, all human beings have a vindictive streek..

I really like your idea about the Dixie Chicks acting as a kind of 'dissensus' within the mass, which, while ultimately limited in what it can achieve, is invariably more successful than the 'all or nothing' tactic employed by most 'revolutionaries'.

I have to disagree with your point that a 'system' (which I do agree is an annoyingly vague term, but anyway) cannot be 'smashed'. History provides numerous examples of this very thing taking place. One system may be replaced by another even more corrupt one, but it does happen. A lot. Even today, in the war in Iraq, can we not say that Saddam Hussain's 'system' has been smashed? I'm not convinced that doing so has been for the greater good of Iraq, but certainly it's been smashed.

I understand.

my favorite marley/wailers song is ZIMBABWE from SURVIVAL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm9KH...eature=related (song only)

every man's got the right to decide his own destiny/
and in this judgement there is no partiality/
so arm in arm, with arms, we'll fight this little struggle/
cuz that's the only way we can overcome our little trouble./

 

(this fits in with the politics in music thread)

I am gonna lay off Dre
his son died Saturday. Reading the stuff below makes me think, drug overdose.


Sad news this afternoon. Dr. Dre's 20-year-old son passed away over the weekend. Andre Young Jr. was found by his mother Saturday morning at their home in Woodland Hills, CA.
Andre was out with his friends the night before and came home at around 5:30 in the morning. His mother called the paramedics when she couldn't wake him. They pronounced him dead at the scene.
An autopsy was performed yesterday in Los Angeles. Andre's cause of death is not known at this time.
Dr. Dre's rep confirmed the news to People: "Dr. Dre is mourning the loss of his son. Please respect his family's grief and privacy at this time."

Even today, in the war in Iraq, can we not say that Saddam Hussain's 'system' has been smashed?

Really, when you boil down war it is about the contrast of philiosophy. Some of the 'co-alition of the willing' believe they are right saviours when indeed they maybe ignorant and wrong...

Countries like Russia have a democracy and yet they don't have equal rights. Only now some western countries are entering the 'emotional terrain' of a full and real democracy...

Yeah... but... I can't help but feel that there's two referents for 'system'. I don't think the Iraqi people rose up against their oppresor because of Green Day's 'wake me up when September ends'. In fact, so far as I remember there was no wide-spread insurrection in Iraq against Hussein. I realise this might seem a bit hair-splitting (or splitting-hairs, if you prefer), but the 'smashing of the system' to which middle-class white punks refer is a libidinal desire, not a political one. Oppressed people make mournful music, certainly, but the recently down-trodden (I'm thinking of Zimbabwe/ Rhodesia now) tend to have no voice at all - their smashing the system is a struggle for air, not a struggle for a voice.

libidinal desire,

Not always. That can be carried on behind closed doors. Not every male movement is determined by sexual want. There is a also a symbolic loss of ones position and status...

most powerful people act solely to ensure they do not lose their [position of power.
everything else is secondary.

Buckminster Fuller said in 1980 that the world had the inherent ability and resources at that time to have every single citizen of earth living like a millionaire does in the USA. The problem lies in wealthy nations,a nd wealthy cities and wealthy individuals hoarding hundreds or thousands or MILLIONS of times more wealth than they could ever foreseeably spend.

^Glice^Yeah ... but ... I can't help thinking that all this really boils down to a difference between a philosophical notion of the system, and a political one. Both can and often do inform the other but in essence, a political system (as I'm using it) refers to a social infrastructure whereas a philosophical one exists largely on the more abstract plain of ideas.

It's far harder to destroy an idea than it is an electrical grid. where philosophy comes into play for me is as a means towards laying down an intellectual framework required to encourage people to act on behalf of their own interests. Which is the one thing Marx did get right I suppose. The libidinal desire you refer to is I think the consequence of a philosophical idea being mobilised for purely philosophical ends.

And no, Iraqi people never did rise up, and even if they did, it wouldn't have been as a result of Green Day. I'll tell you what though: I've heard that American troops love a bit of Pantera on the ol' tank stereo. What that means in relation to this argument I've absolutely no idea, other than that it makes me hate Pantera even more than I did before.

I don't get the dislike of Pantera. It's the most perfect music for hideously banal tasks, like hoovering or putting a shelf up.

that depends what part of the rap industry you're talking about, if you're talking about someone like dj screw then i'd say his market was almost entirely people from the ghetto, if you're talking about puff daddy, then his market was white women who aren't from the ghetto.

Politics in music can suck my arse for sure, regardless of the nature of the problems.

There's gonna be exceptions, and massive ones when it comes to someone like P Diddy, but I'm talking more generally in terms of the industry as a whole. It's certainly true that major artists like the Wu-Tang, NWA, etc, relied almost exclusively on the college audience in terms of sales.

yeah, but on the other hand wu-tang started out by selling their first single out of the back of their cars.

Hip Hop is a shite medium when it comes to do anything politically releveant, exactly like rock and roll. It has a vague scope of influence that remains exactly that , vague, because it also delves in the oppressive nature of the treatement of people of darker colour than the lighter supremacy in such a simplistic way that becomes too incomplete and irrelevant in the reality of things. Its message is often thought as having a more powerful resonance than effectevely it has.

People do anything everywhere, Wu Tang Clan are great but ultimately irrelevant to any political decision taken by anyone seriously.

the only political band that matters is amen.

"i go to work
i lick your ass
on my way to the top
I'M JUST A LIE
IN MY MIND
I SIT AND LICK
AND COMPROMISE"

see? Brilliant.

my point was that without first gaining support in poor neighbourhoods in new york wu-tang probably wouldn't have been able to break through into the mainstream, where as this was not the case at all with puff daddy, he bank rolled himself to fame and success. i wasn't really making any point about politics.

isn't the guy from amen the son of a multi-millionaire?
i.e. that song is not about politics but about his own oedipus complex.