Can Music Hurt? - Music and Violence

Can Music Hurt? -‐ Music and Violence

Table of Contents Music and society: how should we evaluate it? .................................................................................... 1 Music and violence in Classical Greek law and religion .................................................................... 3 Personal attitude toward violence in Greek society, and music .................................................... 6 Anger and aggression in modern music: a case of rap .................................................................... 11 Melody and lyrics in projection of musical emotions ...................................................................... 16 Music and self-‐harm: a modern phenomenon .................................................................................... 19 Does musical anger transpire into real life violence? ..................................................................... 22 The Russian experiment: from Plato to Marilyn Manson in just one leap ............................. 24 Violent behavior, and music – ties that musicologists don’t want to see ............................... 32 Why the West resorted to mass production of violent music ...................................................... 37 “Problem music” and the claim of its “social therapeutics” .......................................................... 42 The issue of second-‐hand exposure to “problem music” ............................................................... 47 Why is “problem music” consistently viewed as “not a problem”? ........................................... 50 Many people believe that “music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften

rocks, or bend a knotted oak”, which raises the devil’s advocate question: can music agitate a savage breast, crack rocks, and loosen the knotted oak to such extent that it would collapse? Is there anything in the music structure itself that can cause negative influence on the person who habitually listens to that music?

Music and society: how should we evaluate it?

In today’s modern world many music users believe that there is nothing wrong with being exposed to any sort of music, and that there is no need to be aware of the “supposed” negative effects of this or that type of music. Majority of people seem to feel that the effects of consumption of music and accidental exposure to it (second-‐hand hearing) are negligible, and that there is nothing wrong with preferring any style or genre of music.

So, is it really a problem that the modern Western consumer has a hard time

locating sources of reliable critical information about the music in the marketplace? The modern status quo makes it politically incorrect to publish information that criticizes music products for their harmful influences, or to conduct research on the negative influence of music, or to investigate cases of harmful influence of music and keep records of them. All of this is not only withdrawn from the authority of the state, but it is not even delegated to any independent public organization of significant size capable of making any serious cultural impact. On top of it all, the modern legal system makes it quite hard for anyone to step forward and conduct a

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public campaign against a music product. Doing so will make such person a potential target for litigation on the ground of defamation law, which presents him with a serious challenge, both, financially and time-‐wise, to stand in court and defend his position.

But perhaps indeed there is no need to warn the general public against the

detrimental influence of certain music products. Perhaps the reason why there is no any such institution to inform the public of such matter is simply because no one really needs it.

So, let us see if music can indeed exert a negative influence on the wellbeing of

the listener – whether as an individual or within a social group. We shall do so in a few ways. At first, we shall examine the state of affairs in a culture characterized by strict control of expression in publically performed music and compare it with a culture with pronounced deregulation of musical expression. We shall then look into a culture that has passed through a quick transition from regulated to unregulated state and try to identify the ramifications of such transition for a person and society at large. We will review the findings of cognitive sciences, paying special attention to experimental research and neurophysiological studies, with the purpose to define what constitutes negative effect of music on listeners, and what exactly in music is responsible for it. Then we shall discuss how this music is handled in modern day music industry, what is the public opinion of such music, what is the consensus amongst scholars, and the reason for it.

I have to emphasize that this investigation is not a sociological study of a

particular genre of music. It is irrelevant for the goal of this study to find out exact reasons for why people choose to listen to music that has negative effect on their wellbeing, and what kind of people they are. The principal purpose of this paper is to establish whether the relation between music and its negative consequences is causal or merely correlational – and if it is causal, to identify the musical structures and mechanisms responsible for it.

To start this excursion we shall pick an antipode to modern American society

that is characterized by an “all accepting” attitude toward music. In order not to compare apples with oranges, we shall pick a historic period in Western civilization that followed compatible democratic and humanistic values. Perhaps the best model would be the Classic Ancient Greek society of the 5th century B.C. – and more specifically, the Athenian democracy where the use of music was under constant surveillance and was determined by ethical principles.

If Plato and Aristotle were correct in their assumption that “music is a moral

law,” then Greeks should have enjoyed healthier lives than we do in our society today. German philosopher and writer, Georg Novalis stated along Plato’s lines: “Every disease is a musical problem, every cure a musical solution.” If that’s the case, our modern society should have a substantial number of serious problems that Ancient Greek society did not know of. So, let’s check this premise.

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Music and violence in Classical Greek law and religion Perhaps the biggest problem that is talked about in modern media is violence. Of

course, violence is hardly peculiar to our age. Archeologists find traces of violence back in Neolith cultures. Wars were an organic part of life in any Ancient society, including the Greek. And examples of cruelty and tortures can be found in abundance in Ancient history, literature, and art. However, violence per se was never advocated by Classical authorities. According to Plato, violence was appropriate only when it was justified by justice – then, the violent actions, such as those at warfare, should have been regarded as just, noble, and courageous, even though they inflicted suffering and death. What distinguished justice from injustice was the issue of virtue. It was virtue that prevented a violent act out of love of money or fear of unwanted consequences. Virtue makes one courageous in the face of death, when one knows that “preservation of virtue stands above the purely physical results of war.”1

Ancient Greek political thought was codified by Aristotle – who coined the

principle of balance of interests in instituting public policies: “the interests of the one, the few, and the many that had to be kept in balance.”2 Restricting public access to economic and political organizations played a key role in limiting violence in the Greek political system – as opposed to the “open access” societies in modern developed Western countries. Curbing violence is imperative for any civilization, and Ancient Greeks handled it by limiting individual rights. That included limitations on the use of music which was imposed by polity.

However, such limitations did not look that oppressive. For Ancient Greeks,

human laws did not appear as impersonal theoretic rules hostile towards the individual. The Greek tradition since times of Homer has upheld the cultural value of law and its priority for all, including statesmen, commoners, heroes, and even gods – whether the law was written or unwritten. Legality was closely related to the idea of cosmos – the universe was seen as a well-‐ordered whole, fundamental to the beliefs of an Ancient Greek citizen, no matter from which city he descended. Furthermore, participation in an institutional organizations, and following their rules, were regarded as the source of political order as well as political virtue.

Being in control of one’s passions while keeping constant mental reference of

one’s position in life as related to the framework of an orderly universe, established the ideal of living one’s life in Hellenic society. The notion of harmony and

1Syse, Henrik (2008) -‐ Is War Natural to the Human Condition? Voegelinian and Platonic

Reflections on Violence, Virtue, and Wrongdoing. Conference Papers -‐ American Political Science Association, p. 1-‐23.

2 North, Douglass et al (2009) -‐ Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, p. 191.

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maintenance of equality and brotherhood within the community were central to the Classical culture, and were fixed in customs and arts. The principle of equal justice for every citizen was placed on trial – the most dramatic case of which was the execution of 6 Athenian generals after having won the deciding naval battle at Arginusae against Sparta in 406 B.C., for leaving behind the disabled Athenian warriors to sink in face of the coming storm. Classical Greek sculpture was designed to represent all men, and not a specific individual, the utmost expression of which is kouros. Such statues were erected in public places in order to reinforce the sense of accomplishment and togetherness in every citizen rather than to please any particular person.3 In addition to “good” laws, appreciation of collectivism, and civic involvement, the indispensable condition for good order was “friendship amongst people” – an emotional condition that was described by Aristotle as that which “binds the city together.”4

Violence was considered a very negative factor, jeopardizing the very foundation

of Classical society. So, what exactly was understood by “violence” back then? Aristotle, the biggest Ancient authority on violence, defined it as an involuntary action under the influence of an external stimulus, which sets an impulse for a rapid onrush – often against the internal interests of the actor. Because of this clash of interest, Aristotle considered violence to operate against nature: “everything forced is involuntary and everything involuntary is forced – forced action is action that is not self-‐caused.5 Therefore, “violence” opposes “deliberation,” which is driven from “within” and depends on the capacity to reason and speak out.

As it follows, Ancient Greeks viewed the idea of uncontrolled expression of

violence as a great source of danger to personal as well as societal life. Out of all arts, music was the least touched with the expression of violence – presumably because of music’s special status as a principal force in mental regulation, in the eyes of Ancient Greeks. They were afraid to disturb order in the minds of fellow citizens. We know that Greek oarsmen of the 5th century B.C. sang chants while rowing their heavy triremes, and there were chants devoted exclusively to a battle – presumably reserved for the expression of violence. However, these were chants, not songs!6 Greek art music was rather Apollonian in spirit, which is why even the genre of martial exhortation which called to inspire citizens to go to war for the right cause, can hardly be characterized as expression of violence – according to survived works of Callinus and Tyrtaeus.

Dionysiac cult practices, including music – which played an important part in

that cult – are often brought up as an example of expression of violence. Indeed, the

3 Crow, John (1970) -‐ Greece: The Magic Spring. Harper and Row, New York, p. 168-‐169. 4 Bargeliotes, Leonidas (2009) -‐ Relevant Hellenic Factors Favoring Effective Dialogue and

Peaceful Coexistence. American Journal of Economics & Sociology. V. 68 Issue 1, p. 205-‐229. 5 Foley, Megan (2013) -‐ Of violence and rhetoric: An ethical aporia. Quarterly Journal of

Speech, Vol 99 (2), May. pp. 191-‐199. 6 Proctor, David (2005) -‐ Music of the Sea, National Maritime Museum, London, p. 6.

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patronizing role of Dionysus towards the business of growing grapes, wine making, and wine trade, together with the celebration of fertility of soil by means of mass wine drinking, gave the Dionysian festivities a strong orgiastic flavor. As wine industry grew, turning into the flagship of Greek trade in the Mediterranean region, the Dionysiac cult expanded and became magnified in importance. By Classical times, bacchanals were associated with a range of sexual concomitants placed on public display: huge wooden phalli were carried along the sacrificial processions and towards the altar, and lusty songs addressed each phallus. Although the dithyrambs associated with the cult contained rather monotonous and dignified music, the music that accompanied Bacchic dance was rather rough, strikingly different from every other genre of Hellenic music – performed with cymbals, drums, clappers, and bull-‐roarers, and was accompanied with wine drinking, waving torches, and frenzied dancing. 7

However, the bacchanal part of the celebration which constituted the musical

expression of frenzy, was not the music that a Hellene would hear in a Hellenic city all the time. This music was seasonal, and accompanied the fertility rite central to the growing of grape – symbolic of the coming of spring to replace winter. These celebrations were usually either annual or biannual, in different parts of Greece. The Bacchanal experience was not mandatory, and its influence was therefore limited. The celebration was very different from the modern rock festivals to which musicologists like to compare it.

Bacchanal was part of a mystery game. The myth of the Dionysus-‐child, son of

Zeus, who was deceived by the wild violent Titans in their vengeance against gods – for having stripped them off of their control over the world, and thus cutting Dionysus to pieces – was re-‐enacted in the Orphic mysteries. Cutting could have symbolized spring seeding for future harvest. The mystic role of this rite was supposed to release the primordial forces that underlay civilization – forces that were responsible for new plants growing out of seeds. The cult followers paid tribute to savagery and madness against all laws that they normally abode by. They made this “sacrifice”, as exemplified in the bloody slicing in pieces of a sacrificial animal – in order to secure an orderly fruitful year ahead.8

The purpose of Orphic mysteries and Dionysiac cult was not to cultivate violence

and anarchy, but in contrary, to secure order and peace: to win good fortune for one’s business – to grow a good harvest, make lots of wine, deliver it to the trade posts without being robbed by the pirates, etc.. This cult should be regarded as the reverse side of the same coin which had Apollo on its other side. Characteristically, in Delphi, the festivals for Apollo and Dionysus followed each other every season. The opposite characteristics of Apollonian and Dionysian music were called to serve

7 West Martin L. (1992) – Ancient Greek Music. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 22. 8 Robertson, Noel (2003) -‐ Orphic Mysteries and Dionysiac ritual. In: Greek Mysteries: the

archaeology and ritual of ancient Greek secret cults, M. Cosmopoulos (ed.), Routledge, London, p.218-‐240.

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the same purpose – of ensuring order and harmony. The analysis of the depiction of Dionysiac rites on vases confirms that Dionysus was not a marginal figure, but rather, a central one to the Greek polis. He performed the role of a peace-‐maker and the guarantor of continuity by providing legitimized outlets for releasing savagery instincts for a limited duration and in a controlled space.9

Personal attitude toward violence in Greek society, and music On a personal level, most accounts of violence found in Ancient literature relate

to symposion – a private gathering of not more than 30 guests with the purpose to celebrate a specific occasion, transmit cultural ideals, and forge political relations. Drinking wine was a characteristic part of symposion, meant to ease up social restraints and promote reciprocal emotional responses amongst the guests. Thus, symposion presented a “deliberate, controlled, collective exploration of the universe of the passions.”10

The primary reason for drinking wine was religious: Greeks associated wine with the Dyonisiac cult and believed that wine was a gift of gods to reduce all miseries inherent to human condition. Some polises even prescribed its use by the citizens. 11 The religious associations prompted a mixture of aspiration and cautiousness in relation to wine – which was seen as a substance that could take possession of a drinker and even kill him. Regulation laws in relation to quantity and procedure of drinking, supposedly passed on by Dionysius to humans, were called to prevent ill effects. The head of the ceremony was in charge of supervising the rules at private parties, and three city inspectors oversaw any public parties.12

Music played an important role in symposion, regulating its emotional

environment. Conversation and music constituted the principal content of symposion. Music making and conversation between good men about good things were seen as a way to virtue and wisdom. Praising beauty, harmony, and justice were the most common topics, according to Greek literature and inscriptions on vases next to the pictures of symposion. Pleasure seems to have been the primary emotion elicited by aulos players, and dance music, by hired musicians, as well as songs improvised or prepared ahead of a time by the guests, themselves. Public

9 Isler-‐Kerenyi, Cornelia (2009) -‐ New Contributions of Dionysiac Iconography to the

History of Religions in Greece and Italy. In: Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia, G. Casadio and P. A. Johnston (eds), University of Texas Press, Austin TX, p. 61-‐72.

10 Pellizer, Ezio (1990) -‐ Outlines of a Morphology of Sympotic Entertainment. In: Sympotica: A symposium on the symposion, ed. O. Murray, Clarendon Press, pp. 177-‐184.

11 Lissarrague, François (1990) -‐ The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and Ritual. Princeton University Press, p. 4-‐5.

12 Rinella , Michael A. (2011) -‐ Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens. Lexington Books, New York, p. 14-‐16 , p.33.

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display of musical skills was seen as a sign of cultural accomplishment, that endorsed a performer’s political and social views in the eyes of his audience.13

As we see, symposion itself promoted refined culture with prominent hedonistic

content, very far from violence. Trouble came when the rules of “art of drinking” (ars bibendi) were broken, and the party attenders would leave the host’s house accompanied by hired party-‐musicians. The reveling procession (komos) would cross the city, challenging law and order with loud noises and indecent behavior (i.e. urination in public places). It was at that point when citizens would reprimand the komasts for the disturbance they caused, and the komasts would then pick a fight – especially if the party was aristocratic, and the by-‐passers were commoners, that is when violence could occur. In the eyes of the authorities such behavior was a major threat to the state – known as “hubris.” The riotous behavior by the aristocracy was perceived as an attempt to assert supremacy and a deliberate attempt to dishonor those who were not the members of the partying group.

In his Constitution of Naxos, Aristotle equated hubris with precipitation of civil

war. Solon – an Athenian statesman often credited for having planted the seeds of Athenian democracy – denounced hubris, objecting that “the wealthy are willing to destroy the polis with their mindlessness”, and reputedly made public drunkenness punishable by death. Pittacus of Mytilene, another famous lawmaker, passed a law where “if drunken men commit an offense they should pay a larger fine than sober men.”14

Evidently, not only that Ancient Greeks did not promote unjust violence, rather,

they did everything in their power to keep aggressive behavior amongst the citizens under control – and music played a pivotal function here.

Although Greek literature, and especially Greek mythology, contains numerous

references to acts of brutal violence, however, they can hardly be taken to represent what was common in Greek society. In any Classical sources, violent acts are hardly ever advocated. Noteworthy is the myth of Linus – a son of Apollo and Calliope – the muse of epic poetry. Linus was a renowned music teacher, and also, the teacher of Orpheus – his brother. Linus was bludgeoned to death by Heracles for reprimanding his mistakes in playing lyre during a lesson. To the Ancient Greeks, the staggering contrast between subtlety of music creation and frenzy of murdering one’s teacher must have served as a powerful reminder of the need to curb violent impulses – for this myth is depicted on numerous vases retrieved by archaeologists.

In Greek mythology every god stood for impersonation of certain human

characteristics. Heracles became the symbol of uncontrolled violence. The prevailing 13 Hobden, Fiona (2013) -‐ The Symposion in Ancient Greek Society and Thought.

Cambridge University Press, p. 41-‐45. 14 Rinella , Michael A. (2011) -‐ Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient

Athens. Lexington Books, New York, p. 32-‐33.

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attitude in representation of Heracles by Homer is that of disparagement for his excessive aggression. Homer’s epics, known to every Greek, range from castigation to pathetic brooding over Heracles’ actions. Odyssey describes seeing Heracles’ shadow in Hades, condemned to engage in never-‐ending, futile battles. Sophocles presents Heracles as a bipolar figure, trying to act as a civilized hero, but from time to time, lapsing into savagery. Both, Homer and Sophocles, extend this split in portrayal of Heracles in the story of his afterlife, simultaneously placing his shadow in the underworld, while elevating his body to Olympus to feast with Gods. It is likely that Greeks viewed marginality of Heracles’ behavior as a personification of the danger and temptation they faced in everyday life – that is why Heracles’ cults were extremely common throughout Attica.15

Euripides debases Heracles by depicting him as a victim of gods’ vengeance,

when Hera sent demon of madness to induce Heracles to slaughter his own family. The plot depicts progressive loss of “human” traits in Heracles, making him acquire bestial features of a “bull.”16 The opposition to the bestial cults, and specifically to the bull cults, so dominant in the neighboring Minoan, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian civilizations, was a centerpiece of humanistic message introduced in world’s culture by the Ancient Greek civilization. Greeks were quite deliberate in their anti-‐bestial orientation, as evidenced in their mythology, literature, and art.

The very ideal of Ancient Greeks was decidedly anthropomorphic: all gods

resembled humans, and the primary content of myths was the human-‐like psychology that governed gods’ actions. Moreover, each god was unique in representing a particular human personality type. The pronounced humanistic bias in Greek mythology as depicted by human-‐like gods who were always given an edge over the bestial and zoomorphic monsters and titans, thereby defeating them, very much corresponded with the mission of bringing enlightenment of civilization to dark “barbaric” tribes around Greece – as perceived by every Hellene. This political mission was seen as an embodiment of the cosmogonic order of things – the ongoing struggle between cosmos and chaos, where cosmos was destined to win because of its superiority of order and justice over the violence of chaos. 17

The humanistic ideals played a prominent role in Ancient Greek art. The realistic

looking sculptural representation of people occupied the central position in Ancient Greek fine arts. Reproduction of human behavior constituted the main content in Greek theater. Proportions of the human body were encoded in the Classical orders of columns that became the staple of architecture up to the modern day. Proportions in dividing a string served as the foundation for Western music – as set by

15 Liapis, Vayos (2006) – Intertextuality as irony: Heracles in epics and in Sophocles.

Greece and Rome / Volume 53 / Issue 01 / April 2006, pp. 48 – 59. 16 Provenza, Antonietta (2013) – Madness and bestialization in Euripides’ Heracles. The

Classicalal Quarterly / Volume 63 / Issue 01 / May 2013, pp. 68 – 93. 17 Miller, Mitchell (2001) -‐ 'First of All': On the Semantics and Ethics of Hesiod's

Cosmogony. Ancient Philosophy, 21(2), p. 251-‐276.

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Pythagoras in his experiments with a monochord. The development of the tuning system and its corresponding music theory is all based on the empirical data derived from the findings of the way in which the human ear perceives consonance, dissonance, and octave equivalence.

The idea of law and order relevant to humans permeates the entire Ancient

Greek culture: 1) from its projection of the idea of cosmic organization 2) onto social organization in the state, and 3) traced all the way to personal health. All three projections were regarded as expressions of the same principle of harmonic proportions expressed by “music”: musica mundana (music made by the planetary movement), musica humana (music made by the internal organs of the human body), and musica instrumentalists (music made by singers and instrumentalists) 18 – as presented by Boethius in his book de Musica.

So, it could be said that orderly music determined the order of all things for the

entire life of an Ancient Greek. In that sense, using Novalis’ words, “every cure” was “a musical solution” for the Hellens. The emotions consistently reinforced by music motivated people to maintain law and order: non-‐violent music produced non-‐violent culture.

The social ramifications of the relationship between order and violence was

most clearly seen in relation to sports. Athletics were regarded as crucial for upbringing of youth and the military power of the state. Competing for a prize had priority over recreational sport in the sake of health benefits or mere love of sports. Participating in the Olympic games was the dream of every young man from childhood. Winners received the greatest honors from their fellow citizens within the polis. One would think that winning by all costs would be the end moral for a contester – which would encourage violence in combat sports such as boxing, wrestling, and pankration. However, fatalities were exceedingly rare. Sport ethics was observed most strictly: contenders wanted to win not in any which way – but only along the competition lines. Following law and order was embedded into the very concept of sport. Victory in sport combats was seen as “triumph of skill and intelligence over brute violence.“19

Remarkably, Apollo was regarded as god of boxing as well as music. There is one

myth that describes how he defeated Ares, god of war, in a boxing match – vindicating skill over brutality. The only exception in Greece was in Sparta, where biting and gouging was allowed (banned everywhere else), and competition focused not on cultivation of technical skills, but on toughness. However, outside of Sparta,

18 Godwin, Joscelyn (1993) -‐ The Harmony of the Spheres; the Sourcebook of Pythagorean

Tradition in Music. Inner Traditions International, Rochester, Vermont. 19 Poliakoff, Michael B. (2006) -‐ Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition,

Violence, and Culture. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, p. 82.

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Spartans were forbidden to compete in boxing and pankration which were the most injurious sports.20

Music played an important role in athletic competitions. It accompanied all

sports. The spectators sang hymns to honor the victor. And the victor often opted to commission the epinician ode, where the verse praised his skills, and the chorus provided dance for his fans to celebrate his victory. This song could be reused at later occurrences, and its score was distributed across Greece.21

Music was also on the agenda of athletic competitions. Pythian games were held

every 4 years, 2 years past the Olympic games in Delphi, and featured competition in vocals, aulos, and kithara, as well as in athletic contests and horse racing. Prize values testify to the importance of music in Greek society: the winner of the kithara contest won more than the most prestigious sport, pankration – the cash award being equivalent to $169,000 in today’s value. Moreover, the musician’s awards featured five places, whereas the athlete’s – only two; so that the 5th place musician received more than the 2nd place athlete (respectively, $34,000 for a kithara player, and $16,000 for a boxer).22

Apollonian music set the tone for Apollonian spirit at sport battles. As

competitive as Ancient Greeks were, the atmosphere of contests was far from unruly. Perhaps the only domain where violence was looked upon by turning one’s blind eyes, was to the adolescent delinquency. Greeks tended to take it easy with the cases of excessive aggressiveness of their minors, thinking that their boldness would transpire into militant skills after accomplishing the obligatory boys’ military training. So, in literature, we find isolated accounts of such cases, as general Alcibiades’, who, in his youth, had hit his old schoolmaster for not owing a book by Homer.23

However, as Robert Garland (1991), a principal expert on criminality in Ancient

societies, reviews the situation with juvenile delinquency in Ancient Greece, he concludes that, overall, there is no evidence for the “kind of delinquency that manifests itself in acts of purposeless violence – the so-‐called ‘non-‐utilitarian delinquency’ – against persons and property” which is so common today. A handful of cases of vandalism in Hellenic society bears political motivation – such as mutilations of herms on Athenian street-‐corners, in 415 B.C. – aimed at preventing the sailing of an Athenian naval expedition to conquer Sicily, because Hermes was patron of travelling, and hence the sacrilege would have been considered a bad omen for the expedition.

20 Ibid. p. 102. 21 Young, David C. (2004) -‐ A Brief History of the Olympic Games, Blackwell Publishing,

Malden MA, p. 67-‐68. 22 Ibid. p. 100. 23 Garland, Robert (1991) -‐ Juvenile delinquency in the Graeco-‐Roman world. History

Today, October 1991, Vol. 41, p. 12-‐19.

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It seems that Aristotle’s definition of violence indeed held throughout the

Classical times, and Greeks were quite successful in controlling socially destructive outbursts of purposeless violence. There is not a single source which indicated criminality as a social problem for any of the Greek polises. Garland feels confident in generalizing that delinquency was not at all recognized in the ancient society, regarded as a private issue for the delinquent's own family, and not for the community as a whole. In Classical legal system, abuse could easily lead to litigation, and there was no statutory limit placed on the verdict – the jurors could even condemn the offender to death. On another hand, youth, the main source of anti-‐social behavior, was not liable for criminal behavior. Rather, it was the head of the household of the delinquent minor who was brought to court. This must have placed strong pressure on parents to take a close personal interest in their children’s upbringing. This also could have increased the violence inside the family in the form of corporal punishment of children, but would have kept violence off the streets. As a result, essentially a non-‐violent public culture kept perpetuating itself.

Anger and aggression in modern music: a case of rap The second half of the 20th century presents a striking antipode to the way things

were in Classical Greece. In our modern world violence serves as a prime content even for many works of art. In the last few decades alone, dozens of large scale stage works have been produced, recorded, and marketed to wide audiences across the globe. Many of which are dedicated to the most gruesome acts of violence, engaging music as a major component of the show. Protagonists in these shows include Lizzie Borden, who chopped up her parents with an axe; Jack the Ripper, who kept ripping the bowels of lonely ladies in the dark; Charles Manson, who committed a chain of ritual murders; and the fictional Sweeney Todd, the barber who slit the throats of his clients and baked them into pies. This is not to mention a genre of sweet murder ballad flourishing after the success of the 1960’s songs like “Tom Dooley;” or “suicide ballads” like the “Leader of the Pack.” The rise in popularity of such music testifies to the growing “aestheticization of violence.”24

Today an entire genre and style of music can be based on violent content. An example of this is rap: its genesis runs along the theme of violence. If “only” 27% of rap songs mentioned violence in songs that were created during 1979–1984, their share grew to 60% during 1994–1997. What is even more important, according to Herd (2009), is that the violent content tends to affirm itself: whereas between 1979 and 1984 not a single song represented violence in a positive manner, on the contrary, later songs portrayed violence predominantly in a positive light by associating it with glamor, wealth, masculinity, and personal prowess. During 1979–

24 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2009) – Music Accompanying violence. In: Dark Side

of the tune: Popular Music and Violence, M. Cloonan & B. Johnson (ed.), ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 68.

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1997, positive representation of violence increased from 0% to 45%, while its negative representation dropped from 50% to 13%.25

Violence is not just a spicy topic for professional rappers. They practice violence

themselves and take great care of their public image to look “dangerous.” The list of famous rappers killed by rival gangs includes Randy ‘Stretch’ Walker, Tupac Shakur, B.i.G., Freaky Tah, Big l, Jam Master Jay, and Proof. According to the police report, a rap artist can engage in violent behavior in order to “boost” his public image, as in the case of Big Lurch, who tortured and killed Tynisha Ysais -‐ boasting about deviant behavior is typical for marketing campaigns of Gangsta rappers. Thus, NWA (Niggas With Attitude) advertise themselves as “the world’s most dangerous group.” Johnson & Cloonan (2009) provide many more examples of criminality wrapped into the business of Gangsta rap, qualifying it as being so “endemic that the New York police have set up a special group to monitor the local hip hop business.”26

Although many musicologists of popular music deny this connection,

nevertheless, violence of rap’s lyrics indeed incites violence in its listeners. Johnson & Cloonan describe a case where a song by Ice-‐T, called “Cop-‐Killer” represents an angry protagonist who is outraged by the police brutality and goes on killing police officers, actually inspired homicide. In July 1992 four juveniles killed two officers, and according to witnesses, kept singing the Ice-‐T’s song while being apprehended. They testified that “Cop-‐Killer” gave them a “sense of duty and purpose to kill.”27

Before all else, it should be emphasized that the relation between the expression

of anger in rap and the listener is far from simple. It is not that whoever hears a violent song begins to act violently. Majority of people in modern Western society have adopted a culture of responsibility for their actions, where they contain their behavior despite stimulation of aggressiveness by music. Also, different people listen to music for different reasons. Not every listener is an angry person. Shy people can also be attracted to rap or metal as means of compensation for their perceived shortcomings.28 So, in order to find out how the message of music affects the listener, we shall focus on the objective part of the message: the music structure, its delivery, and its emotional impact that is shared by majority of listeners -‐ in other words, that which is typical for emotional communication within a given musical genre. We shall look into: 1) what the artists project from stage; 2) how what they project is perceived; 3) the long-‐term effect of such perception.

25 Herd, Denise (2009) -‐ Changing images of violence in rap music lyrics: 1979–1997.

Journal of Public Health Policy, Vol 30(4), Dec, 2009. pp. 395-‐406. 26 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2009) – Dark Side of the tune: Popular Music and

Violence, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 76. 27 Ibid. p. 112. 28 Gosling, S. D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002) -‐ A room with a cue:

Judgments of personality based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 379– 398.

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A common argument against tying violence and music is that it is the lyrics that are responsible for the incitement of violence, and not the music per se. However, the reality is that lyrics in rap are as a rule made to music, and not the other way around, as in every other genre. Kyle Adams (2008) provides evidence that the tradition of rap music-‐making first requires conception of a musical loop – to which the artist then composes lyrics, while listening to the loop. The same procedure is followed in the recording studio, with the studio musicians.29

Looping is extremely important for the rap effect: without looping a song does not “rap.” What counts here is not the endless repetition per se, but the repetition of the artificially cut off sequences of tones, usually across their syntactic organization (breaking the boundaries of musical phrases and motives). Repetition of such “forcefully” cut clips produces mechanistic and aggressive impression. This is because the original material is almost always “humanized” -‐ it contains miniscule fluctuations in tempo and loudness known as “expressive timing” and “dynamic shaping.” As a rule, expressive timing and dynamic shaping trace the musical phrase to put extra stress on longer tones and rush through the shorter tones.30

Virtually all styles of music contain expressive timing.31 Music that is deprived of

it is perceived as unemotional and mechanistic.32 It is even questionable if musicians are capable of playing music without expressive timing and dynamics33 –even when musicians are instructed to perform in the most mechanistic manner possible, they still produce temporal and dynamic fluctuations.34 Listeners and musicians appear to share the knowledge of which kind of melodic and harmonic patterns require which amount of expressive timing – what can be called expressive signatures – and their mind automatically makes adjustments for these signatures so that the overall uniformity of tempo is not perceived as distorted.35 Composers encode their music with expressive timing in mind, and performers and listeners decode them following their intuitive knowledge of musical idioms.36

29 Adams, Kyle (2008) -‐ Aspects of the Music/Text Relationship in Rap. Music Theory

Online. Volume 14, Number 2, May 2008 30 Bhatara, Anjali; Tirovolas, Anna K.; Duan, Lilu Marie (2011) -‐ Perception of Emotional

Expression in Musical Performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology, v37 n3 p921-‐934. 31 Bengtsson, I., & Gabrielsson, A. (1983) -‐ Analysis and synthesis of musical rhythm. In J.

Sundberg (Ed.), Studies of music performance. v. 39, Stockholm, Sweden, p. 27-‐60. 32 Bhatara, Anjali; Tirovolas, Anna K.; Duan, Lilu Marie (2011) -‐ Perception of Emotional

Expression in Musical Performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology, v37 n3 p. 921-‐934. 33 Sundberg, J., Iwarsson, J., & Hagegård, H. (1995) -‐ A singer’s expression of emotions in

sung performance. Vocal fold physiology: Voice quality control, 217-‐231. 34 Repp, Bruno H. (2000) -‐ The timing implications of musical structures. In: Musicology

and sister disciplines: Past, present, future. Greer D. ed., Oxford University Press, p. 60-‐67. 35 Madison, Guy; Merker, Björn (2002) -‐ On the limits of anisochrony in pulse attribution.

Psychological Research. 2002, Vol. 66 Issue 3, p.201-‐208. 36 Gabrielsson, A. (1999) -‐ The performance of music. In D. Deutsch ( Ed.) , The psychology

of music ( 2nd ed., pp. 501– 602). San Diego: Academic Press.

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It is this highly important for musical expression information that becomes

distorted by looping. All timing and dynamic envelops suggested by the beginning of a looped phrase, and expected by the listener to have certain continuation become trimmed, creating the impression of jitter or stutter. Consequently, such music receives anti-‐humanistic features. In rap, expressive timing and dynamics associated with “human feel,” to which the ear of any listener is so sensitive, are all broken. Looping can be viewed as usage of machinery to mutilate “alive tissues” of the original musical material. The idea of violence is embedded in this form of music making. It is not surprising that violation of organic expressivity of the underlying original material easily provokes violent lyrics.

Yet another aggressive tenet of looping in rap is that more often than not the looped clips belong to musicians other than the rapper. The entire field of hip-‐hop music, since its cradle, has been characterized by borrowing musical ideas from previously existing music – challenging the mainstream cultural notion of authenticity and authorship.37 As a counterculture, hip-‐hop has substituted the intellectual property norms of Western culture with the norms of its own – and sampling of someone else’s music is considered “creative” and “legitimate” within these norms.38 It is also typical for rappers to borrow music without the consensus of the original author, who often opposes such use: hip-‐hop artists have worked out a number of techniques to circumvent the law: for instance, to severely distort the original clip beyond recognition, or to replay the material themselves in order to resample their recording of it. 39 Still some hip-‐hop artists, like Gregg Gillis, adamantly deny any notion of copyright. 40 They embrace unauthorized sampling and make sure not to infringe the copyrights of the big corporations as long as this strategy pays back! Smaller size parties avoid litigation expenses.

The borrowing practices of hip-‐hop artists can be seen as forceful expropriation

of intellectual property of other artists. A number of jazz musicians objected these practices as a form of “artistic necrophilia” that takes away the body of music while killing its spirit.41 Some important Black studies scholars, such as Amiri Baraka, have blamed sampling in commodification of soul and striping music of meaning.42

37 Schur, R. L. (2009) -‐ Parodies of ownership: hip-‐hop aesthetics and intellectual property

law. University of Michigan Press, p. 46-‐49. 38 Anderson Jr, H. E. (2011) -‐ No Bitin' Allowed: A Hip-‐Hop Copying Paradigm for All of

Us. Tex. Intell. Prop. LJ, 20, p. 115. 39 Sewell, A. (2014) -‐ How Copyright Affected the Musical Style and Critical Reception of

Sample-‐Based Hip-‐Hop. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 26(2-‐3), p. 295-‐320. 40 Newton, M. (2008) -‐ Is Sampling Dying?. Spin Music Group. 41 George, Nelson (1998) -‐ Hip-‐hop America. New York: Viking Penguin, p. 96. 42 Baraka, Amiri, and Amina (1987) -‐ The Phenomenon of Soul in African-‐American Music.

In: The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues, New York: William Morrow, p. 269–75.

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Steven Feld qualified this growing trend as “schizophonia” 43 and demonstrated how it splits and distorts the original meaning, using as example a BaBanzélé woman’s playing hindewhu (a whistle), recorded in Central Africa by the group of ethnomusicologists. This tune was at first sampled by Herbie Hancock, as a base for his hit “Watermelon man,” and then by 38 hip-‐hop artists (according to http://www.whosampled.com). The original expression of joy and pride from a successful hunt was completely wiped off in sampled versions. The appropriators of BaBanzélé music took advantage of Western musicians’ superior social positions -‐ they used the available technological power to capitalize on the expressive power of the tribe members of the more vulnerable social groups – making profit without crediting or rewarding the original artist.

The sampling technology, championed by hip-‐hop, is to blame for this practice of

exploitation. David Hesmondhalgh has traced the use of samples by a trip-‐hop artist, Moby, and came to the same conclusion as Steven Feld – that sampling had raised the stakes in musical borrowing to the extent that it became a threat to the integrity of the underlying cultural traditions.44 Sampling promotes the direct borrowing rather than the artistic imitation of actual performances.

When the entire genre of music relies on using someone else’s musical

expression and evolves it into a status quo, it is hard not to take this as yet another form of aggression – this time in the artistic domain. Some famous classical and popular musicians are known for borrowing music from their colleagues, not always giving credits to their sources. However, they earned their reputation not for what they borrowed but for what they invented on their own. In the field of hip-‐hop, a music work does not sound like hip-‐hop unless it takes on some other music source: take these sources away, and there is no “rap sound.” Then the entire genre becomes one “pirate bay” – republic of musicians who hold appropriation of someone else’s intellectual property as the basic right of a hip-‐hop artist (“I take whatever I want” attitude). This attitude is very common within the hip-‐hop circle, and even has received support of some scholars.45 Together with looping, this rhetoric forges the “rap” personality type – a tough street man, seeking for every opportunity to prove his masculinity, ready to reserve to violence and robbery in order to provide pleasure for himself. Such inclinations become evident through the very structure of a rap song: both, loops and borrowings are obvious to a listener – subconsciously attuning him towards aggressive mental state.

The violent content of lyrics arises as the artist’s response to the musical

properties of the looped music. It is the obstinacy of the endless repetitions of a loop 43 Feld, Steven (1996) -‐ Pygmy POP. A Genealogy of Schizophonic Mimesis. Yearbook for

Traditional Music, Vol. 28, pp. 1-‐35. 44 Hesmondhalgh, D. (2006) -‐ Digital sampling and cultural inequality. Social & legal

studies, 15(1), p. 53-‐75. 45 McLeod, K., & DiCola, P. (2011) -‐ Creative license: the law and culture of digital

sampling. Duke University Press.

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– whether in rhythm or melody (if there is one) – combined with the mechanistic beat, that in the absence of any continuous melodic line would stream over the loop to smoothen and diversify the repetitions, that is responsible for the aggressive tone of music. The rhythm of speech comes to fight off the utmost stiff metric pulsation, causing the “ramp effect”: the impression of the build-‐up of tension. The ongoing interaction between the natural rhythms of the speech and the “automatic” beat induces a trance-‐like state, where the passions suggested by the relatively free vocal rhythm as if keep bottling up in search of release, as the song progresses. Monotonous pitch of singing further contributes to the constricting effect of music.

The fact that not all rap lyrics are about violence – indeed, some of the songs

feature humor – still does not remove the violent connotations. The very sound of rap sends a social signal that the singer is a “dangerous” fellow, to be considered, and never dismissed – even when he jokes. It is the sound of music that delivers this message. Ekincu et al (2012)46 make a point that although youth from non-‐English speaking countries do not understand the lyrics sung in English, yet they become stimulated by the “dangerous” appeal contained in the music. The principle source of stimulation in such cases is exactly music’s timbre and structures.

Melody and lyrics in projection of musical emotions In a series of experiments designed to verify the previous studies, Ali &

Peynircioğlu (2006)47 were able to confirm that melody and lyrics were processed as independent components at the perceptual level, and in fact, melodies of songs were more dominant than the lyrics in eliciting four basic emotions: happy, sad, angry, and calm. Whenever the emotion expressed in lyrics disagreed with the emotions expressed in music, the listeners tended to go by the emotion that was expressed through music.

Roberts et al (2003)48 reviewed available research literature on violence in

popular music, and concluded that overall these studies suggest that the main effects of music is carried by the emotional “sound” of the music rather than by its lyrics. Their conclusion was verified and corrected by Warburton et al (2008),49 who experimentally compared the influence of video versus musical representations of violence, with and without lyrics (vocals substituted the instrumental tone). They

46 Ekinci, Özalp et al (2012) -‐ The Association between Music Preferences and Psychiatric

Problems in Adolescents. Marmara Medical Journal. 2012, Vol. 25 Issue 2, p. 47-‐52. 47 Ali, S. Omar; Peynircioğlu, Zehra F.; (2006) -‐ Songs and emotions: Are lyrics and

melodies equal partners? Psychology of Music, Vol 34(4), Oct, pp. 511-‐534. 48 Roberts, D. F., Christenson, P. G., & Gentile, D. A. (2003) -‐ The effects of violent music on

children and adolescents. In: Media violence and children: A complete guide for parents and professionals, D. A. Gentile (Ed.), Praeger, Westport, CT, pp. 153−170.

49 Warburton, W. A., Gilmour, L., & Laczkowski, P. (2008) -‐ Eminem v. Rambo: A comparison of media violence effects for auditory versus visual modalities. In: Personality down under: Perspectives from Australia, S. Boag (Ed.) Nova Science Publishers, New York, pp. 253−271.

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found that listening to the “tone” of music elicited the aggressive state similar in strength to that of the effect of exposure to violent lyrics.

Recently, Rentfrow et al (2012)50 found strong evidence that preferences for

popular music are determined by specific music attributes, such as loudness and tempo. It is these musical structures that attract listener – and not the genre per se.

McGown et al (1997)51 experimentally demonstrated that music with a boosted

bass is preferred by males with elevated scores in psychoticism and extraversion. This connection might explain the clinical reports of people with antisocial and borderline personalities who are more likely to enjoy music with exaggerated bass.52 Cortical disinhibition as a result of prolonged exposure to such bass might contribute to violence or impulsive behaviors. McGown believes that such disinhibition may occur even in subjects without an aesthetic preference for this type of music, as a result of second-‐hand hearing of music.

A review of the literature on psychomusicology53 reveals that loudness is widely

associated with aggressiveness and pleasure. Experimental research confirms that exposure to very loud music invokes altered state of consciousness in the manner similar to drugs. Loud tones are associated with energy, dominance, greater size, and wider private space. Loud music as a rule produces more emotional impact than soft music, serving as means of exercising control – we raise our voice when we feel we are losing control over the conversation. An individual empowered by loudness feels superior. The positive reward of feeling great suppresses thinking about negative consequences of one’s behavior on others, and easily transpires into aggressive attitude. The seductive appeal of loud music masks its destructive long term influence even in the listener himself, who eventually suffers from hearing loss. But still the pleasurable “now” outweighs the suffering “in the future.”

The sociological studies display strong correlation between listening to loud

music with boosted low frequencies – such as heavy metal, rap, and techno – and early delinquency. Tom ter Bogt et al (2013) are convinced that preference for such

50 Rentfrow, P. J., Goldberg, L. R., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., Gosling, S. D., & Levitin, D. J.

(2012). The song remains the same: a replication and extension of the music model. Music perception, 30(2), 161.

51 McCown William et al (1997) -‐ The role of personality and gender in preference for exaggerated bass in music. Personality and Individual Differences, Vol 23(4), Oct, 1997. pp. 543-‐547.

52 McCown, W. & Johnson, J. (1993) -‐ The treatment resistant family. In: Therapy with treatment resistant families, McGown & Johnson (eds.), Haworth, Binghamton, New York, p. 1-‐21.

53 Blesser, Barry & Salter, Linda-‐Ruth (2008) -‐ The unexamined rewards for excessive loudness. Communication: 9th International Congress on Noise as a Public Health Problem (ICBEN) 2008, Foxwoods, CT.

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music styles at early age is a better indicator of deviant behavior at mid-‐teens than actual behavior history as a pre-‐teen. 54

Just as the way how low loud sounds unify varieties of rap and heavy metal, in

the same way they unify their ties with violence. Metal culture is even more violent than rap culture. Scandinavian bands are especially notorious for it. Johnson & Cloonan (2009)55 provide a list of renowned Black Metal musicians involved in homicide. Random murders of homosexuals, such as the ones committed by Bård Eithun (1992) and Jon Nödtveit (1998), represent an act akin to a ritual sacrifice. Inclinations towards Satanism characterize many acts of violence directed against churches: 13 fires in 1992 (9 solved); ten fires in 1993, (5 solved); 14 fires in 1994 (7 solved) – with police declaring that in every solved case, Black Metal ‘satanists’ were involved. “Artists” themselves served sentences for arsons, including members of the bands Emperor, Hades, Mayhem, and Burzum. They didn’t even spare world’s monuments of architecture, burning an 11th century national Norwegian landmark to the ground. Gaahl, vocalist from the band Gorgoroth praised all the burnings in his interview, wishing that more of them would “remove every trace from what Christianity and the Semitic roots have to offer this world.”56

It seems that these musicians became pathologically obsessed with emulation of

horror films. In 2005, Gaahl from Gorgoroth was convicted for an assault, knocking a man unconscious at his brother’s party, then beating him up, cutting him and collecting his blood in a cup, stating that he was going to drink this blood – before that man managed to break away and run out of the apartment.57 Echoing the same horror theme was the threatening note sent to one of the victims before an attempt to set his house on fire: “We are really mentally deranged, our methods are death and torture, our victims will die slowly.”58 Vampiric and sacrificial themes are commonly put on public display: The 2004 Gorgoroth’s concert in Kraków, Poland, featured cut-‐off sheep heads on stakes, Satanic symbols all around, four naked “crucified” female models, and a blood bash of 80 liters of sheep’s blood – the video of it is currently distributed in Europe and in the US.59

54 ter Bogt, Tom F. M.; Keijsers, Loes; Meeus, Wim H. J. (2013) -‐ Early adolescent music

preferences and minor delinquency. Pediatrics, Vol 131(2), Feb, pp. e380-‐e389. 55 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2009) – Dark Side of the tune: Popular Music and

Violence, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 78. 56 Dunn, Sam (2005) -‐ Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. Seville Pictures, documentary film. 57 Gorgoroth Singer Sentenced To 14 Months In Prison, February 22, 2005,

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/gorgoroth-‐singer-‐sentenced-‐to-‐14-‐months-‐in-‐prison/, retrieved 8/21/14.

58 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2009) – Dark Side of the tune: Popular Music and Violence, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 78.

59 Black Mass Kraków 2004 (2008). Metal Mind, Sweden, music film.

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Unfortunately, this culture is by far not limited to Scandinavian countries. The Dutch band, Stalaggh, named after a Nazi concentration camp, propagates “the global holocaust” by means of “transforming pain and fear into sound” in order to make the listener understand that existence is futile, and to “disturb him to such degree so that he would hate life and humanity.” This band specializes in making its recordings by accompanying the screams of psychopathic patients in lunatic asylums, and restricts itself from live performance, because “Concerts make people socialize, which is not to be supported.”60 Not any less notorious are the Satanic bands in Italy. A Milan based band, Beasts of Satan, initiated a chain of sacrificial murders and tortures that raised havoc in press. Similar incidents were reported in Germany, France, England, Poland, and Russia.61

Music and self-‐harm: a modern phenomenon

Various sub-‐genres of Metal often glorify self-‐mutilation and suicide in their songs.62 Thus, the American Death Rock band, Deicide, called its 1990 album “Sacrificial Suicide,” and featured a song, “Carnage”, at its concert presentation, which included ripping off a mannequin filled with gushing blood. Its leader, Glen Benton, exhibits an inverted cross branded on his forehead, creates songs insulting Jesus, and declares a suicide pact upon reaching a certain age.

The subject of masochistic profanation and violent misanthropy is just as

common in Scandinavian Black Metal. Niklas Kvarforth, the vocalist of the Swedish band, Shining, a “prodigy” who started his band at the age of 12, used to slash himself during his concerts until he would be all covered in blood. He often hands out razors to the audience because, as he says: “I want people to hurt themselves.” To bolster his “transcendence,” he often drinks urine on stage, and welcomes his band members, like his “good” friend, Maniac, to beat him up during the performance (and carve a swastika onto his forehead), in case his singing is too tense – so that it would get loosened up. ”63

The epitome of this masochism was expressed by Euronymous (Øystein

Aarseth), leader of the Norwegian band, Mayhem, before he was slashed to death by his former musician friend, Varg Vikernes of Burzum. Aarseth declared war against people, trying to capture an audience, albeit a small, but ready to act, with his music: “I think that if we could make Black Metal bigger than it is now, we could have a great movement growing with hundreds of brutal soldiers spreading sorrow, death,

60Guldur (2010) -‐ Interview with Stalaggh / Gulaggh (Classical interviews), 08.11.2010

http://www.mortemzine.net/show.php?id=2343, retrieved 8/21/14 61 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2009) – Dark Side of the tune: Popular Music and

Violence, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 78. 62 ibid., p. 104. 63 Shining Interview (2007). Kogalonon: Underground music magazine, 14 December

2007, http://www.kogaionon.com/en/kogaionon-‐interviews/shining, retrieved 8/21/14.

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and evil in the world.”64 Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish Black and Death metal bands apparently compete with each other in their evilness (which involves sending death threats to each other). To support such “philosophy” with action, the members of the Swedish band, Apruptum, reportedly went as far as torturing each other during the recording sessions to elicit realistic screams – apparently, in an attempt to outperform Dead, the singer of Norwegian band Mayhem used to mutilate himself on stage with a broken bottle.65

Such self-‐destructive attitudes tell apart violence alla rock from violence alla rap,

causing differences in their public image. The survey of 100 college students66 showed that radical Gangsta rap followers were perceived as a threat to society, directed at inflicting harm on rival gangsters, women, and by-‐passers. Heavy Metal fans, on the other hand, were seen as a threat to themselves. Gangsta rap fans were more likely to be described in ways that set them apart as out-‐group members. Heavy Metal fans were alienated to a lesser degree, seen more as victims of the music they consume.67

The very sound of heavy metal music -‐ well known to its fans and used to

distinguish “real” bands from complacent “surrogate” rock bands -‐ captures the destructive nature of metal and tells it apart from “rap sound.” The model for “metal sound” was set by Black Sabbath, according to the experts of this genre.68 The characteristic features of this sound include thumping drums, often deliberately delayed for a split moment in order to increase their subjective weight to make the music heavier. Sliding tones of the electric guitar glide in and out of the right pitch, representing looseness and sneakiness of character. Another trick used to project a darker sinister impression is tuning guitars lower than the standard A=440 pitch.

Finally, guttural distortion of the vocals and phaser distortion on the guitars

contribute inhuman qualities to the melodic material of a metal song. The resulting growl-‐like low frequency sound is experimentally shown to be interpreted by listeners as expression of anger and excitement associated with aggression. Recently discovered mirror neuron mechanism may be responsible for triggering a

64 Lahdenpera, Esa (1993) -‐ Northern Black Metal Legends. Kill Yourself! Magazine,

August issue No.2, Finland, http://www.fmp666.com/moonlight/mayhem.html, retrieved 8/21/14.

65 Ibid., p. 78. 66 Fried, Carrie B. (2003) -‐ Stereotypes of Music Fans: Are Rap and Heavy Metal Fans a

Danger to Themselves or Others?, Journal of Media Psychology, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 2003.

67 Binder, A. (1993) -‐ Constructing racial rhetoric: Media depiction of harm in heavy metal and rap music. American Sociological Review, 58, p. 753-‐768.

68 McIver, Joel (2013) -‐ Black Sabbath and the Sound of Evil. In: Black Sabbath and Philosophy: Mastering Reality, ed. William Irwin, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, West Sussex, p.33-‐40.

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covert growling experience in listeners, thereby inducing the corresponding aggressive state. 69

The self-‐inflicting propensity of the Metal musicians mirrored in the

spontaneous rise of “moshing” – violent dancing to music with the purpose to slam the neighboring dancers. It was inspired by punk rock of the 1970s, and its message of denouncing not only the traditional music of Western society, but even the older rock ‘n’ roll, which was too complacent to their taste.

The “stay away” message united the punk bands and their audiences, calling for

more aggressive expression than any previous form of live engagement with the audience. Hence, the paradoxical blend of affection and hostility found its way out through this new practice where most active fans gathered in a small space before the stage (“moshpit”), pogoing and pushing each other.

Tightly packed mob usually escalates in rage and fury, reaching brutal levels.

Already the earliest occurrences of moshing in Los Angeles and in New York were marked by violence. Violence as well as sexual harassment are part of pit “etiquette” – which are consensual between the participants that can reach up to 50,000 people at a time and seize the entire audience.70

Broken noses and sprained ankles are looked upon by moshers as bruises.

Broken arms and legs make the norm. Haight Ashbury Clinic in San Francisco set up a Rock Medicine program specifically to address mosh injuries, a number of which ended paraplegic and even lethal with a fatal head injury. Many club venues today install surveillance cameras to videotape the events to gather evidence that the injuries were caused by the victims’ voluntary behavior, and not by accident. Despite all odds, moshing spreads across other styles and genres: it now characterizes genres of rapcore, emocore, grindcore, in addition to punk. 71

Even more self-‐destructive is the so-‐called “wall of death,” often directly initiated

by Heavy Metal bands during their concerts. Following the vocalist’s count down, two columns of people, a few dozen feet apart, dash into each other, as the heavy riff enters in music. Notwithstanding the casualties, sometimes fatal, the “wall of death” becomes a regular stint for a number of bands, like the “Lamb of God.”72

69 Chen-‐Gia Tsai, Li-‐Ching Wang, Shwu-‐Fen Wang, et al (2010) -‐ Aggressiveness of

the Growl-‐Like Timbre: Acoustic Characteristics, Musical Implications, and Biomechanical Mechanisms. Music Perception, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 209-‐222.

70 Ambrose, Joe (2008) -‐ Moshpit: The Violent World of Mosh Pit Culture. Omnibus Press, London, p. 1-‐4.

71 Ibid. p. 4-‐5. 72 German Heavy Metal Fan Dies After Taking Part In Wall Of Death (2005), June 29,

http://www.metalunderground.com/news/details.cfm?newsid=14234, retrieved 8/15/14.

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Does musical anger transpire into real life violence?

An aggressive image is quite typical for rap and metal performance. These two genres seem to be shaped by the necessity to express aggressiveness. Quite a number of bands have earned the reputation of provocateurs of violent behavior in their audience. An example of this is Limp Bizkit, an American Nü metal band, notorious for its anti-‐gay agenda, going so far where its lead vocalist, Fred Durst, asking his audience in the moshpit to “stomp the gaymen.”73 This is not a mere rhetoric: in 2002 he had to stand in Australian court, accused of contributing to the death of a teenage girl crushed in the moshpit. Although Durst was cleared, the coroner found his actions on stage irresponsible, after viewing the video tape of the performance. As victims of moshing were clearly fighting for their lives, Durst kept performing, addressing “inflammatory and indeed insulting” words to the security staff who were “engaged in their best efforts to rescue crucially injured patrons from the crowd.”74 The embittered promoters, found guilty by the court, issued a statement that they will never again invite Limp Bizkit to perform at future events.

Hearing in court the discussions of ill consequences of his stage presence,

however, made little impression on Durst’s artistic vision – nothing really changed in his stage act. Prior to the hearing, Durst was habitually instigating violence: asking the fans to break the seats at Ozzfest 1998, or at the 1999 Family Values cheering the audience: “I can tell you motherfuckers are out of control, and that’s what I like to see.”75 And a month after the court, Limp Bizkit launched a video moshing game on the internet for their fans, where the rules were to ignore the rules: “avoid the security goons and get on stage, then dive into the crowd to score. If you hit the floor, you lose one life.”76

The hard-‐core misogynic content: hatred to whatever appears “cool” or

“smooth” in a stage act or in personal life of a popular artist, and wrath to anything remotely resembling authority, characterizes the exclusively male, and excessively loud and impulsive audience of the Nü metal. It combines the extremes of, both, Heavy Metal and Gangsta rap. Rap metal bands, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, and Insane Clown Posse were the favorites of the Woodstock ’99, which was notorious for riots of violence and raping that broke out in a crowd of 200,000 people.77

73 Devenish, Colin (2000) – Limp Bizkit. St. Martin’s Press, New York, p.48. 74 Grossberg, Josh (2002) – Durst rapped into a concert death. E online, News, Mon., Nov.

11, 2002 12:00 PM PST, http://www.eonline.com/news/44158/durst-‐rapped-‐in-‐concert-‐death, retrieved 8/15/14.

75 Ambrose, Joe (2008) -‐ Moshpit: The Violent World of Mosh Pit Culture. Omnibus Press, London, p. 214.

76 Ibid. p. 222. 77 Walters, Barry (2007) -‐ Nü metal and Woodstock '99. In: The rock history reader.

Routledge, New York, p. 313-‐315.

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The first attempt to revive the 1969 Woodstock at the Catskills (also in New York) failed, ending in a riot. The second attempt resulted in even greater eruption of aimless self-‐destructive violence. After the band’s exhortation to “break stuff”, the performance of Limp Bizkit turned the disposition of the audience from peaceful to vandalistic.78 In response, plywood was torn from the barriers and was used to surf across the crowd. Moshing escalated to fights. During the Bizkit’s performance numerous sexual assaults took place, including stripping and raping of a woman who did not cry for help out of fear of battery.

After the end of the Bizkit’s act, the situation went completely out of control: the

medical teams had to deal with about 200 cases an hour, from broken ribs to spinal fractures. The performance of the Red Hot Chili Peppers brought the entire event to a Valhalla end, when food vendors were looted, ATM machines smashed broken, all tangible objects (including the toilets and speakers) overturned and set on fire – ironically, set by the “peace candles” brought to commemorate Jimmy Hendrix. At the end, all that was left was a circle of a few hundred fans banging on trash cans and dancing to their own “music.” The official count of casualties ran to 253 cases treated at local hospitals and 4,000 at on-site medical stations. The unofficial accounts were as high as 10,000 cases (ibid.).

The connection between the violent message preached by musicians from stage

and the violent behavior of the listeners seems obvious to many, except to the musicologists specializing in popular music. Thus, Johnson and Cloonan (2009) analyze the Woodstock ’99 and find all sorts of explanations for violence, from too high prices for tickets and snacks, to gathering of wrong type of crowd in the audience – but not the most obvious connection. Instead, their attention goes to trying to prove that some of the violent incidents were occurring before the Bizkit’s performance, or cite other examples of riots unrelated to violent music (i.e. soccer riots). All that such examples prove is that violence has become part of mass culture – by this token, the soccer riots go hand in hand with the history of heavy metal.

Sport sociologists, such as Ian Taylor and John Clarke, date the beginning of the

soccer riots and culture of fan violence back to the 1960’s – the same time and the same place, England, where the genesis of hard rock took place. Taylor79 connects the development of soccer hooliganism to the attempts of the soccer authorities in Britain to attract the middle-‐class and the well-‐to-‐do working class audiences to the game – which resulted in the incidence of the resistance movement against the sport industry establishment. But this is the same story and the same people, although may be just a little younger, who formed the audience for heavy metal.

78 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin Martin (2009) – Dark Side of the tune: Popular Music

and Violence, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 85. 79 Taylor, Ian (1982) -‐ Class, Violence and Sport: the Case of Soccer, Hooliganism in Britain.

In: Sport, Culture and the Modern State, H. Cantelon & R. Gruneau (eds) University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

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Steve Redhead, a specialist in legal studies and sport, calls it “casual youth culture” – the rebellious expression of social protest, grown from the “heyday of skinheads and mods,” and fed by fanzines, e-‐zines, internet forums, websites, social networking sites, book memoirs, films, videos, and photo swapping between the fans.80 He dates its flourishing to the 1970’s – the time when the leading heavy metal bands became very popular.

Research has identified a consistent positive relationships between liking for metal and rap and psychoticism in male listeners.81 The concept of “psychoticism” was developed by Eysenck (1986)82 as a constituent in a high psychotic personality type, along with extraversion and neuroticism. It is associated with nine traits: aggressive, cold, egocentric, impersonal, impulsive, antisocial, unempathic, creative, tough-‐minded.83 High psychotic personality type by numerous studies was found to like violent music and dislike non-‐violent music, specifically preferring discordant sounds over consonant chords – which points to the fact of their attraction to aggressively sounding music structures per se.84 North (2005)85 established that fans of rap and metal scored higher than non-‐fans on measures of psychoticism and reactive rebelliousness, and were habitually involved in deviant behaviors. In general, high psychotic individuals can be recognized by their positive ratings for music that most people find disturbing and boring – which provides general support to the view that psychoticism is linked to liking for music classified as ‘problem’ or ‘deviant’.86

The Russian experiment: from Plato to Marilyn Manson in just one leap Ties between social violence and popular music are most evident in post-‐

communist Russia. When heavy metal was banned in the USSR, for a long time it lived in the underground culture, and was known to a narrow group of population, mainly in the two biggest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Rock music was

80 Redhead, Steve (2012) -‐ Soccer Casuals: A Slight Return of Youth Culture. International

Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 1: p. 65–82. 81 McCown, W., Keiser, R., Mulhearn, S., & Williamson, D. (1997) -‐ The role of personality

and gender in preference for exaggerated bass in music. Personality and Individual Differences, 23 (4), 543-‐547.

82 Eysenck, H. J. & Eysenck. M. W. (1986) -‐ Personality: An individual difference perspective. New York: Wiley.

83 Eysenck, H.J. (1992) -‐ The Definition and Measurement of Psychoticism, Personality and Individual Differences 13: 757–85.

84 Rawlings, D., Hodge, M., Sherr, D. and Dempsey, A. (1995) -‐ Toughmindedness and Preference for Musical Excerpts, Categories and Triads, Psychology of Music 23: 63–80.

85 North, A. C., Desborough, L., & Skarstein, L. (2005) -‐ Musical preference, deviance, and attitudes towards music celebrities. Personality & individual differences, 38 (8), 1903-‐1914.

86 Rawlings, D., & Leow, S. H. (2008). Investigating the role of psychoticism and sensation seeking in predicting emotional reactions to music. Psychology of Music.

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distributed through illegal copies on hard-‐to-‐buy magnetic tapes, with limited supply of tape players, radio broadcasts from Voice of America, BBC, and Radio Free Europe. These outlets remained the main sources of rock for fans in Russia from the 1960’s to early 1980’s. KGB strictly supervised all the public concerts during that time. Characteristically, the rock underground culture in Russia during that period did not feature any aggression – in contrary, the ideas of love, friendship, and pacifism (the latter of which was prosecuted by the communist authorities) were the prevailing themes.87

As the communist surveillance over rock music weakened, the first native

metallists began to deceptively sneak in a public performance, for instance by submitting false names for their bands, or samples of their songs under false titles as representative of what they were going to perform to the authorities, and then go ahead and play their real music which was far from what they pretended it to be. And that is how the process of Western assimilation began. This resulted in the genesis of Russian music to progressively depart from the mass and folk song towards Western models.

The first native rock groups that surfaced in the 1971 state-‐controlled rock

festival in Gorky, exploited non-‐Western musical idioms. Their success led to creation of approximately 200 “vocal instrumental ensembles” (which is the official title for pop-‐bands in the USSR) that engaged in regular concert activities during the 1970’s. However, not a single one of them featured even a rock ‘n’ roll style rhythm section – not to speak of a rock drive. The first rebellious bands that introduced heavy rock sound were Aquarium, Sounds of Moo, and Brigade C – in the mid-‐1980’s. Wide resonance of their critical political message combined with Western aesthetics paved the way for Russian rock which erupted in the late 1980’s – as Gorbachev’s policies legalized private enterprise in popular music.88

However, during Gorbachev’s Perestroika (policy of Restructuring), heavy metal

music was still hard to find and it was not what was commonly heard in public. The first native metallic album to reach Russian mass market was “Serving to Forces of Evil” (1988) by the band, Aria – renamed (and heavily censored) into “Hero of Asphalt” by the state authorities at the state owned record monopoly Melodiya. It took about a decade for this band to become financially independent and form the backbone of Russian metal, and turn into Russian teenagers’ craze – with the smash hit of video clips from the album Generator of Evil (1998) on the main channels of Russian TV.89

87 Cushman, Thomas (1995) -‐ Notes from Underground: Rock Music Counterculture in

Russia, State University of New York Press, Albany, p. 17-‐46. 88 Kozlov, Aleksey (1998) – Rok: istoki I razvitiye [Rock: History and development], Mega-‐

Service, Moscow, p. 155-‐171. 89 Troyegubov, Victor (2005) -‐ Ariya: Istoriya, diskografiya, materialy [Aria: History,

dicography and materials]. Nota-‐R, Moscow.

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The public debut of genuine heavy metal90 was celebrated with an onslaught of violence to a scale that was previously unheard of. The 1991 Monsters of Rock concert was meant to unify a few legendary Western metal bands with their Russian fans – for the first time since the fall of the Iron Curtain – as well as to give an opportunity to the native pioneers of this genre to try out their skills. The free concert at Tushino, a former airport area near Moscow, featured AC/DC, the Black Crowes, and Metallica, amongst a number of Russian bands. The outcome of this initiative involved dozens of knife-‐fights, spectators beating each other with chains, throwing bottles at the police, where the police with the help of the military broke out into battering the crowd. At the height of the commotion, a police general ran to the show organizers and yelled: “There's already forty people in the ambulance. We must stop the concert!” But they answered: “If we stop it, that's when the real violence will begin.”91

The press was caught by surprise. The review in Komsomolskaya Pravda, the

leading daily newspaper, concluded that the Monsters of Rock concert “put an end to a short-‐lived post-‐coup euphoria and the illusion that we are united at last.”92 Over 300,000 fans in the audience were guarded by 11,000 policemen. Altogether, 51 people ended up in the hospital (16 of whom were policemen), mostly with skull fractures. It took a whole day for the bums at the scene of the battlefield to collect the knives, jackets, and the empty bottles (for recycling) that survived the blows to people’s heads. The witnesses still remember the incredible feeling of thousands of people beating each other under a non-‐stop deafening roar of music. Although Russian history is full of examples of violence, there is no record of any riot at a music concert during the years of the communist rule.

Sadly, just in a matter of few years, experience of explicit violence in a cultural

events, novel in 1991, became a commonplace in Russia. It used to be that public assault, relatively rare before, was confined only to the adolescent fights based on gang territorial claims: certain urban districts were known for aggression towards the outsiders, and the youth there guarded their streets from neighboring peers. During the 1970’s the cause of violence became ideological: youth supportive of communist ideology incited fights with the hippies and rockers. Most fighting followed an unwritten code of honor: abstain from kicking, use only hands, don’t hit below the belt, don’t attack the person lying on the ground. After the dissolution of USSR, these rules were dropped, and fighting became “musical”: Russian skinheads (nationalists), rappers, and metallists became the primary agitators, gathering in

90 An smaller in audience size, Moscow Music Peace Festival (1989), dedicated to

fundraising to fight the drug addiction, featured mostly glam metal, regarded by fans as “pop-‐metal” – and its authenticity of expression was compromised by majority of the participating artists taking drugs behind the scene.

91 Troitsky, Artyom (1991) -‐ Moscow's metal melee. Rolling Stone. 11/14/91, Issue 617, p. 25.

92 Zakharov, L. (1991) – My khoteli tyazhelogo roka? My yego poluchili… [Did we want hard rock? So we got it…], Komsomolskaya Pravda, 01/10/ 1991.

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gangs and attacking each other – often touring the country from location to location to instill their musical taste by force. The warriors of the 1990’s began using clubs, daggers, flails, metallic rods, and flare guns, as well as boots with iron toes to effectively “finish off” the helpless enemy fallen on the floor. This on-‐going war kept taking hundreds of casualties on a monthly basis, while also hurting unfortunate by-‐passers.93

Things, however, were very different before Russia’s exposure to Western

cultural influence. Behind the Iron Curtain, Russian popular culture occupied a major part of the entire population’s leisure time. Although this culture was a derivative of the ruling ideology of “Socialist realism”, it was nonetheless a genuine culture representative of the pains and aspirations of real people – a fact that was denigrated by Western scholars as “propaganda art.” 94 Musically this culture presented a mix of its main constituents: folk culture, lighter version of high art, and the tradition of the 19th century urban romance – produced in close interaction of supply and demand chains. Paradoxically, music production within the Soviet Union (except big stage projects) were financed by ticket sales, with very little subsidies95 – which is why the content of music was representative of real people’s needs.

Gorbachev’s policy of Glastnost’ (Openness), for the first time, delivered a

serious blow to this culture by releasing piles of stories of misery and failure, previously hidden from the public under mountains of optimistic reports of achievements of the Soviet lifestyle. These revelations were supposed to shock the audience and instill in them the desire to correct all problems. But in reality they laid the ground for a new ideology of “chernukha” (derogatory word for zooming into a dark and gloomy side of life) that took over the Russian cultural space during the 1990’s. Great number of artists and journalists took advantage of new ideology to build their careers by covering sex and violence usually related to chernukha. At the same time, privatization of most cultural enterprises (except a few landmarks, such as the Bolshoi Theater) left many of these enterprises paralyzed: without sufficient income to finance their own activities. Abrupt reduction in cultural production left huge gaps in the country’s cultural life – which was quickly filled with low quality Western mass market produce and their surrogate Russian emulations. Consequently, the old “humanistic” and positive socialist culture was replaced by exhibitionism of nihilistic and cynical content in a most shocking style. “Violence and horror became tantamount to truth telling” in new popular art.96

93 Bogomolov, Alexander (2001) – Stenka na stenku [Wall against wall] Novye Izvestiya

[New News], No. 172, 10/3/2001. 94 Stites, Richard (1995) -‐ Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900.

Cambridge University Press, p. 123-‐203. 95 Rubinstein, A. J., W. J. Baumol and H. Baumol (1992) -‐ On the Economics of the

Performing Arts in the Soviet Union and the USA: A Comparison of Data. Journal of Cultural Economics 16: p. 1-‐24.

96 Borenstein, Eliot (2007) -‐ Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture. Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London, p. 7-‐23.

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Tragically, “chernukha” destroyed the cultural past and the cultural future. At

the same time it discredited the older popular culture, and blocked the way for the rise of any constructive form of new popular culture in Russia. The younger generation turned out to be completely cut off from the past. The modern youth today has no idea of works of art, literature, and cinema that once was known to everyone. Instead, they are preoccupied with sex-‐bombs, action stars, and pop idols – most of whom share a Western-‐like public image, entirely devoid of any moral and ethical values that would represent the Russian cultural heritage. The abyss between generations only grows by placing the youth in a cultural vacuum. 97

The generational gap makes the older generations feel that their youth has been

“stolen” by the alien Western mentality, hostile to all the old Russian values. Since it was America that headed the crusade against the “empire of evil” delivering an ultimate economic blow to it at the end of the Arms Race, Russian public opinion places the blame on the , and consistently generates plexus of conspiracy theories as to how the American government is committed to annihilate Russian culture because of its ingrained socialist mentality. The early 1990’s provided few years of friendly feeling toward the West, filled with expectations of an economic miracle that would turn Russia into becoming a developed democratic country, overnight. Misjudgment of the US economic advisors to Yeltsin (i.e. Jeffrey D. Sachs), together with the shift of American anti-‐Serbian policy, put an end to this short-‐lived openness. Many Russians felt deceived: that their openness was abused by the leaders of the country, bribed by the West to implant alien ideologies in order to weaken Russian youth.98

A natural response to such sentiment came in the form of President Putin’s anti-‐

American neo-‐Soviet campaign called to consolidate the population which was antagonist toward Western popular culture. Putin endorsed and financed a Russian youth movement in 2000, called “Walking Together,” whose charter strikingly resembles the Soviet youth organizations, Young Pioneer, and Komsomol, affiliated with the Communist Party. In 2005 “Walking Together” was reformed into a 200,000 membership organization “Nashi” [“Ours” – a Russian word used to refer to the Russian army as opposed to the enemy). The change of the name reflected the turnaround of the official policy of Russian government. Now it started using its monopoly on media to advocate the view point that everything good originates from Russia, and everything bad – from the West. Anti-‐Western orientation was explicitly expressed during the boycott of Estonian and British diplomatic missions in Moscow. Nashi muscled up their nationalistic aspirations by becoming involved in terrorist activities directed against ethnic minorities in Russia. Some of Nashi’s projects, such as Stal’ (Steel), specifically targeted rock and rap base – the “troubled

97 Lipovetsky, Mark (2004) -‐ Post-‐Sots: Transformations of Socialist Realism in the Popular

Culture of the Recent Period. Slavic and East European Journal, 48 no.3 p. 356-‐77. 98 Shiraev, Eric & Zubok, Vladislav (2000) -‐ Anti-‐Americanism in Russia: From Stalin To

Putin. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

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youth” – with the attempt to re-‐channel their “internal aggression” in what the leadership of Nashi saw as “productive” ways against the enemies of Russia, to “provide effective and tough action when Russia needs it.”99

Once again, popular music and the message of individual freedom coming from

the West become entangled in the cultural struggles of new Russia. In the USSR it was “formal” communist music versus “non-‐formal” Western music. After the fall of communism, and a decade of anarchy, things cleared and started taking the shape of confrontation: “Russian” music versus “Western” music. Characteristic of this is the use of the lyrics “Born in the USSR” (in obvious remake of the Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA") in a number of Russian popular songs. Yuri Shevchuk, a classical rock artist of old “non-‐formal” anti-‐Soviet orientation, in his “Born in the USSR” (1997) sings about the lost meaning in life, referring to the USSR as a dead mother, mourned by her children. Pop singer, Oleg Gazmanov, a survivor of the “formal” Soviet popular music, in his version of “I was born in the USSR” (2005) expresses pride and nostalgia for the former achievements and power. Rapper Ligalize, representative of the generations raised after the communist collapse, in his version (2006) denounces the USSR, calling for personal freedom, and rejects Russia as how it currently is.100

Such delineation is very depictive of the disposition of forces toward “freedom of

expression” and violence in music. The “Russian” camp of music genres and styles (from classical rock to poptsa) shuns from projecting aggression, and focuses on delivering messages of inclusiveness, communality, and sensibility, where one is supposed to cater to many. “Western” genres (heavy metal and rap/hip-‐hop) project an aggressive image, and focus on protest against the norms, and the right of an individual to do whatever he wants.

The ever-‐growing number of Russians are beginning to identify the new post-‐

Soviet popular culture as the product of Western cultural import, implanted by the winners of the Cold War to replace ideologically unwanted socialist culture. Everyday misery, rampant use of drugs and alcohol, loveless sex, broken relations – all, endlessly perpetuated in film, literature, and music – are seen as “a Western gift” to Russia. “The logic is highlighted in Shevchuk’s song: if USSR was the mother, and it died by the American hand, then America is to blame in all the trouble that followed.” The music of the West that carries the message of individual freedom became compromised in the eyes of the Russian public who then took a strong anti-‐avant-‐garde, anti-‐metal, and anti-‐rap stance.

99 Mijnssen, Ivo (2014) -‐ The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin's Russia, Vol. 1: Back to Our

Future! History, Modernity and Patriotism According to Nashi, 2005-‐2012. ibidem-‐Verlag, Stuttgart, p. 177-‐183.

100 Six, Irina (2008) -‐ “Born in the USSR": Searching High and Low for Post-‐Soviet Identity. Ulbandus Review, Vol. 11, High/low (2008), pp. 232-‐251

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A representative of this is the review of John Cage’s anniversary concert at the Moscow Tchaikovsky conservatory. The review seeks to find an answer to the question of why “avant-‐garde” has turned to “rear-‐guard”, and concludes that the competition in innovativeness between avant-‐garde composers has led them to move composition outside the framework of music, turning it into sound design, deprived of any meaning – when anything imaginable can be called “music.”101 As definite is the rejection of “freedom of expression” in popular culture. Marilyn Manson’ tour in Russia was cancelled: at first his Moscow concert (on a fabricated reason of a bomb threat) and then the Novosibirsk concert – after mass protests by public organizations against the kind of music he plays.102 The Black Metal band, Behemoth, was deported from Russia, after their concerts were banned and disrupted in four cities. In Novosibirsk, the crowd prevented musicians from taking stage, and beat up the spectators who showed up.103

The cultural reaction goes hand in hand with shift in political opinions. The 2014

poll reports a record high anti-‐American sentiment in Russian population. The annual Gallup poll reports that 54% of Russians consider the US to be the greatest threat to the world. This confirms the previous poll on adoption of Russian children by the American parents, when 56% of Russians supported the ban on such adoptions. The prevailing reasons were that “the overwhelming majority of U.S. parents interested in adopting Russian children are pedophiles, sadists, and child abusers.”104

Violent music exported from America must have played a big role in

constructing this scaremongering image of America. Music played an essential part in the transition from old to new ideology of popular music in Russia – evident to a great number of the Russian population as well as many Russian musicologists. The defeat of the Soviet socialist-‐realist ideology during the course of the Cold War by the Western ideology of individual freedom of expression transpired into a massive transformation of popular culture in Russia. Russian folk base became almost completely wiped out, replaced by non-‐Russian idioms of rock, blues, rap, and other Western forms of music.105

101 Predlogov, Valentin (2012) – Kak avangard prevratilsya v aryergard [How avant-‐garde

turned into rear-‐guarde], Bel Canto, News, ClassicalÅ music, 23/09, http://www.belcanto.ru/12092301.html, retrieved 8/25/14.

102 Pyatnitskaya, Sasha & Remizova, Maria (2014) – Vystupleniye M. Mansona v Moskve otmeneno [Marilyn Mason’s performance in Moscow was cancelled]. Komsomolskaya Pravda, June, 27.

103 Eremenko, Aleksey (2014) -‐ Polish Satanist Rockers Kicked Out of Russia, The Moscow Times, May 22.

104 Bohm, Michael (2014) – Why Russia is no.1 in Anti-‐Americanism. The Moscow Times, January, 24.

105 Kholopov, Yuri (1990) – Kamo Griadeshi? [Quo vadis, Domine?], Musica Theorica, No.8, Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

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Foreign forms brought with them foreign content – and it included the subject of violence, inherent to the genres of heavy metal, punk, and rap, and not typical for any of the genres of traditional Russian music. And indeed, as a matter of fact, before exposure to heavy metal, themes of inspirational romance and happy childhood were very common in Russian popular culture, whereas after 1990 they virtually disappeared.106 Today, after the new political confrontation with the West by the Putin’s administration, all of these influences are viewed by majority of Russians as cultural import from the principal winner of the Cold War, the US, forced upon Russia with the purpose to destroy its cultural integrity. This might sound ridiculous to a Westerner, but to many Russians makes lots of sense.

Martha Bayles (2014),107 a historian of public diplomacy, presents the Russian

case as only one link in a chain of systemic cultural abuse worldwide through American films and music. From importing invigorating jazz and classic Hollywood movies, America switched to murderous action films and rap/metal. Bayles establishes three factors responsible for that.

1. American film and music industries got caught up in a loop of catering to

well-‐to-‐do, yet rebellious, generation of the 1960’s, shaped by the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement.

2. The industry’s self-‐imposed censorship of violent content turned out to be a gimmick in today’s world where all such material is readily accessible through the internet and satellite services. And what appears as fictitious and unreal to the desensitized Americans, strikes the foreign audiences as real and true about the American way of life.

3. Finally, in 1999, President Clinton clearly rushed to dismantle the United

States Information Agency, which since 1953 was in charge of selecting American art for cultural export. As it turns out, Cold War is far from over.

The repercussions of the Cold War still rule the public perceptions on both sides

of the Atlantics. Russians feel defensive and inferior, because their “social realism” was compromised and defeated across the world and inside the Soviet Union, in the 1960-‐70’s. Westerners feel confident in their belief in the goodness of the premise of individual freedom of expression – writing off violence and suicide propagated by some branches of popular music. A substantial part of such faith lies in the fact that this ideology was capable of defeating “socialist realism” and convincing the majority of the world of Western values. Still, 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet empire, Westerners are suspicious towards anything anti-‐individualistic, whereas Russians feel forced to adopt the alien to them individualistic Western

106 Borenstein, Eliot (2007) -‐ Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular

Culture. Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London, p. 18-‐19, p. 112. 107 Bayles, Martha (2014) -‐ Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy,

and America's Image Abroad. Yale University Press, p. 6-‐9.

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ideology – since their cultural industry (funded by the state as an ideological support for the military industry) was broken by Gorbachev’s decree in an attempt to demonstrate his good will of cooperation to the Western political leadership in the hope of getting financial aid.108 As a result, Gorbachev has since become the most unpopular political figure in Russia, a traitor, and even an American secret agent.109

In the end, the entire saga of the rise and fall of Russian’s love of American

culture was driven by avant-‐garde and rock music. It was the culmination of the latter in the form of heavy metal that coincided with the dissolution of the communist order. The negative messages of these forms of music contributed to the decline of moral and the spirit of idealism in the Russian culture of the 1990’s. Since then, cultural pessimism has prevailed on the Russian scene, pushing those who were out of place with no purpose in life towards extreme behaviors – whether involving harm to others or to themselves. Aggressive “sound of music” only nurtured this feeling. If the Soviet mass song had inspired audiences to “make fairy tales come true, to conquer distances and spaces” and aim “higher, higher, and still higher”,110 then the new rap and metal songs inspired Russian youth to break laws, indulge in sex, and seize every opportunity to dominate by all costs, even if it involves one’s own life.

The flip-‐flop reversal of music ethics during the 1990’s coincided with the

eruption of criminality and amorality as a social norm. That was the social concomitant of the direct flight from ancient ethos to modern pathos of violence. Stalin pretty much kept the same ethical values in Soviet music culture as what Plato propagated in his Republic – and this ethic system was supplanted by the “individual freedom system” throughout the course of 20 years, as Western avant-‐garde and popular music permeated the Russian culture. So, the accompanying spike of violence should be regarded as the other side of the same coin related to the changed music ideology – one that is infused into the minds of the population through TV, radio, internet, and the playback system next door, on an every day basis.

Violent behavior, and music – ties that musicologists don’t want to see Western musicologists differ from their Russian colleagues in refuting the

connection between violence in music and violence in life – both of which are in fact so closely united and dependent on each other, just as is a music sound track put to

108 Zubok, Vladislav (2007) -‐ A failed empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin

to Gorbachev. The University of North Carolina Press, p. 316-‐335 109 Cohen, Stephen F. (2011) -‐ Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the

New Cold War. Columbia University Press, New York, p. 180-‐222. 110 The lyrics from the popular song “The Aviator’s March” by Pavel German and Julii

Khait (1923)

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an action movie. Johnson and Cloonan write about the alleged “Dionysiac dynamic of large crowds,”111 but they fail to see that “Dionysiac” experience used to be a once a year event as a ventilation for a limited group of people in Ancient Greece (the festivals in Delphi occurred biannually). The metal rap violence is an all year around occurrence. Today the “Dyonysiac effect” does not crop up at the Olympic games despite the massive number of spectators (in the 2008 Beijing Opening Ceremony there was 91,000 assembly of spectators).112 It is not the size of the crowd but the kind of music played that has power to ignite the violent moods in the crowd.

Johnson and Cloonan blame the rioting during the Woodstock ’99 on the high

price of tickets which they believe to be the reason for upsetting the fans. However, at the notorious 1969 Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert, which took place in the San Francisco Bay area known for peaceful audiences, although the concert was free, and there were no high prices to blame, yet the same signature was observed: the moment the Rolling Stones, the most rebellious of all participating bands, took the stage things went out of control. The mass fighting broke out during the performance of “Sympathy for the Devil,” while Jagger was acting as Satan. And the first murder by stabbing occurred exactly as the band was playing “Under My Thumb,” a misogynistic song that celebrated how a dominating woman was put under control.113

The entire tragedy was caught on tape from its beginning to its end, and later

released as a documentary film “Gimme Shelter.” The ending of this documentary captures the essence of the event when one of the bike gangsters hired by the “Stones” who was to provide security for their free-‐will concert, is caught on camera watching Jagger begging everyone to stop fighting – “glaring, almost smirking at the failed rock-‐and-‐roll shaman, now empty of mysticism and power.”114

The transformation of competent college kids that made up most of the audience

into aimless, ruthless thugs demolishing everything around them and beating each other — as recalled by the journalist-‐witness, Michael Lydon – could not have occurred without the call for unlimited freedom and unrestrained passions set by the Rolling Stones, the organizers of the event. There is nothing surprising in that the impulse released by the music they chose to propagate earlier in their career, like a boomerang, completed its circle to come back and hit them (they too were beaten).

111 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2009) – Dark Side of the tune: Popular Music and

Violence, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 79. 112 Bristow, Michael (2008) -‐ "Spectators awed as Games begin". BBC News. 9 August

2008. Retrieved 6 December 2013. 113 Kirkpatrick, Rob (2009) -‐ 1969: The Year Everything Changed. Skyhorse Publishing,

New York, p. 261-‐263. 114 Kitts, Thomas M. (2009) -‐ Documenting, Creating, and Interpreting Moments of

Definition: “Monterey Pop,” “Woodstock,” and “Gimme Shelter”. Journal of Popular Culture, August 2009, Vol. 42 Issue 4, p. 715-‐732.

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The reason why such people who were capable of beating other people came to

that event was precisely because the Rolling Stones earned the reputation of the iconoclast in the US. Western musicologists love to blame such riots on “wrong people” who turn out at such concerts – which is a naïve view, to say the least. “Wrong people” are attracted to the “wrong” message of violence through the kind of music these bands play. Thugs do not crowd and riot at classical music concerts. Although it is true that there were about a dozen riots on record of classical music, but they were mostly in relation to avant-‐garde which is very different from the music of common practice period – as it has different grammar, emotional content, performance goals, as well as quite different audience. The main reason for such riots was that the audience felt duped and ridiculed by the organizers of the event. They felt that for their money instead of getting the kind of music that they expected to hear, they were presented with a “mockery of what the music is supposed to be.”115 It is not the sound of classical music that instigated anger in that case, but rather the absence of it. In many of these riots the organizers deliberately tried to provoke scandal as a form of publicity. And by standards of metal, such “riots” could hardly be qualified as violent. The worst of these riots was the legendary premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, in 1913, which was accompanied by booing, hissing, pushing, slapping and spitting between those who wanted to hear music and those who wanted to stop it116 – all but a trifle compared to the fist fighting, and even stabbing and raping that take place at some metal riots.

The non-‐avant-‐garde “riots” were usually related to politics, and involved confrontation of political parties, organized prior to the music event. For instance, the 1868 riot at the premiere of Mefistofele by Boito in La Scala was a collision between Italian nationalists and German supporters, where one group tried to disrupt the performance, and another – to defend it, which ended up in a few duels after the performance. As a result, the opera was banned by the Austrian authorities (at the time Italy was occupied).117

The riot at Strauss’ Salome in 1907 was in fact not a riot at all. Simply during the

open rehearsal the spectacle of the severed head at the end of the opera, terrified the spectators so that only a few applauds broke out amidst the deadly silence. The Metropolitan board of directors therefore decided to drop the production

115 Frith, Simon (2004) – What is bad music? In: Bad music: the music we love to hate.

Routledge, Washburne, C. J., & Derno, M. (Eds.), p. 1-‐14. 116 Bullard, Truman C. (1979) -‐ The riot at the Rite: Not so surprising after all. In: Essays

on Music for Charles Warren Fox. Fox, C. W., & Graue, J. C. Eastman School of Music Press, pp. 206–211.

117 Schonberg, Harold (1970) -‐ The Lives of the Great Composers, Norton W.W., New York, p. 261

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altogether.118 The story of Auber’s La Muette de Portici spontaneously inciting a revolution in 1829 Belgium is a colorful legend – in reality the opera was used by a group of revolutionaries to plan the assassination of the chief of police in the theater so to overthrow the government.119

There is really no analog to the kind of violence found in metal riots in the

entirety of the history of classical music. Metal music is quite unique in sending a destructive message from stage and then having the audience respond to it (albeit occasionally). Yet very few musicologists of popular music investigate this peculiarity – although such musicians as Fred Durst have made this strategy part of their stage image. It is common in musicological literature to find arguments in support of the idea that what musicians intend to play is in fact unrelated to what they actually play at the concert, and that the resultant music in itself is not aggressive – it is rather the audience who has an aggressive bias towards it. The individual freedom of expression blinkers musicologists, even more so than laypeople, preventing these musicologists from seeing what was so obvious to most, starting from Plato all the way to Susanne Langer.120

Most musicologists of popular music concede that the underlying root of violent

music is in the policies of the music industry, ready to disseminate any ideas, positive or negative, once they make money out of them. The second commonly cited cause for the violent culture, according to these scholars, is the media for zooming in and reporting the negatives, and thereby scaremongering the general public. Such an outlook comes quite close to blaming the society for producing thieves, condemning the victims of robbery, for screaming, and absolving the thieves of any responsibility of evil-‐doing.

“Moral panic” is the term favored by these musicologists in relation to those who believe that music can directly cause violent and depraved social conduct121 – in other words, for the mainstream mentality that governed Western civilization from its inception to the mid-‐20th century. These musicologists strive to correct the Western civilization by advocating the necessity for freedom of any kind of expression, no matter what consequences it bears. They regard it as “healing.” Thus, Bruce Johnson argues that “every musical transaction was potentially an act of aggression”122 – therefore, if to sanitize any kind of music, every kind of music should be sanitized, since there is always someone who is hurt by a given piece of music.

118 Horowitz, Joseph (2012) -‐ Moral Fire: Musical Portraits from America's Fin de Siècle.

University of California Press, Berkeley, p. 107. 119 Taruskin, R. (2009) -‐ Music in the Nineteenth Century: The Oxford History of Western

Music. Oxford University Press, p. 213. 120 Langer, Susanne (1957) -‐ Problems of Art. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, p. 74. 121 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2009) – Dark Side of the tune: Popular Music and

Violence, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 82, 106. 122 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2011) – Introduction: Popular music and violence.

Popular Music and Society Vol. 34, No. 1, February 2011, pp. 1–6.

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If to apply Johnson’s argument to medical drugs, then there should be no drug

restricted by prescription, since there is always someone who will suffer the side-‐effects of some given drug. Such statement does not make any sense. Obviously, the problem is not in the suffering of any one person, but in a great number of such people – as well as the extent of the damage done by the drug.

And this is what many musicologists of popular music do not want to study. Very

few of them take a stand to look critically at their object of study – for instance, Michelle Phillipov. 123 She notes that “academic studies have conventionally viewed claims of connection between metal and violence as evidence of moral panic designed to scape-‐goat metal” and/or to “serve conservative social and political interests.” She confesses: “the relationship between metal and violence is not always one entirely exaggerated or fabricated by conservative critics,” and concludes that understanding Black Metal requires understanding of violence related to it, rather than dismissal of it.

The research on personality types and music preferences that has been

conducted from the 1970’s made significant progress and revealed links between the kind of music people listen to and their physiological features. Thus, metal fans are found to experience higher resting arousal than country music fans. The same applies to the arousal levels during listening to music.124 Arnett (1996)125 assembles the framework which displays how the metal concert links reckless behaviors such as drug use, shoplifting, and vandalism with music. The metal concert becomes a modern day substitute for the manhood ritual in pre-‐industrial society. Urban children often grow unattended, not developing sufficient level of confidence and social skills. Faced with the necessity to fend for themselves, they discover metal as a ritual of exercise in aggressiveness, that is supposed to toughen them up. Unfortunately, this “solution” turns out to catch them into even greater isolation and alienation from the rest of society.

Similar framework was established in relation to rap music, which differed from

metal mostly by higher self-‐esteem of its fans.126 However, both groups were found similar: made of predominantly males, and sharing societal mistrust and aggressive attitudes towards women. Their fans appeared more likely to hold women in subordinate positions and disregard their rights. Predisposition to anger was also

123 Phillipov, Michelle (2012) -‐ Extreme music for extreme people? Norwegian black metal

and transcendent violence. Popular Music History, Vol. 6 Issue: Number 1 p. 150-‐163. 124 Gowensmith, W. N., & Bloom, L. J. (1997) -‐ The effects of heavy metal music on arousal

and anger. Journal of Music Therapy, 34(1), 33-‐45. 125 Arnett, J. J. (1996). Metalheads: heavy metal music and adolescent alienation. Westview

Press, Inc., p. 15-‐18. 126 Rubin, A. M., West, D. V., & Mitchell, W. S. (2001) -‐ Differences in aggression, attitudes

toward women, and distrust as reflected in popular music preferences. Media Psychology, 3(1), 25-‐42.

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shown to relate to music preferences, despite the fact not all fans reacted with increase of anger to music. North (2005)127 confirmed the link between listening to “problem music” and deviance for both, inside and outside the US. Liking for “deviant” music styles could be predicted in his study by psychoticism, rebelliousness, and the frequency with which 12 specific deviant acts (such as carrying a weapon in public and using drugs) were committed – while liking for “non-‐deviant” music could not be predicted in this way.

Why the West resorted to mass production of violent music The extreme popular music owes its life to the same cause as for extreme

classical music – avant-‐garde of the 1940’s. This is including all of their offspring styles, genres, and techniques.128 Both, antisocial avant-‐garde and antisocial popular music would have hardly been possible unless the conventions of “societal” music were re-‐evaluated as potentially “socialist” and severed by the McCarthyism. This constituted the mainstream music of the “common era practice” (17-‐19th centuries). Deep suspicion towards anything that is popular and conventional has characterized the values and standards within the Western musical establishment since the 1950s to the modern day. Ingrained in the minds of music teachers, concert organizers, and music business executives, the new imperative of individualistic freedom of expression as a marker of “better” music, has also spread out to wider audiences, in a matter of a few decades.

It should be pointed out that at the heart of the propaganda effort put forth by

the Western political leadership was the similarity between “individual freedom” as a basic human right, and “individual freedom of expression” as an esthetic principle of artistic expression. Public awareness of cardinality of individual freedom for social fairness was deliberately used to confuse the Western audiences with the rhetoric of superiority of freedom of artistic expression over exercising any control over it. The problem here is that by far not every case of artistic control constitutes repressive censorship in the style of a communist or fascist government. Historically, there were plenty of reasons why artists themselves chose to control their expression – such as religious, moral, or esthetic ideals. All of such motivations became compromised by the avant-‐garde campaign launched by the West in its crusade against socialist realism of the East.

As a result, the conventions of artistic expression suffered a severe blow in all

forms of art, most particularly in fine art and music. Essentially, modern Western artists were given a hand in patching anything together – whatever that came to their mind -‐ inventing a sort of profound sounding philosophical manifesto to

127 North, A. C., Desborough, L., & Skarstein, L. (2005) -‐ Musical preference, deviance, and

attitudes towards music celebrities. Personality and individual differences, 38(8), 1903-‐1914. 128 Bayles, Martha (1996) -‐ Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American

Popular Music. University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL.

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explain why their patchwork did not comply to any conventional means of expression – so long as these artists played by the rules of staying out of politics, and their work appeared shockingly innovative. This was an extreme manifestation of individualism on part of these artists: they rejected the traditional rule of speaking the language everyone understood and delivering a message that was valuable to society in which they lived. But the fault was not theirs. Under normal circumstances none of them would have been interested in meaningless experimental work, and as such, they would have stopped experimenting, and would have returned to making works appreciated by the public. It was the government’s interference that ruined the mechanism by which for centuries the demand has been adjusting the supply instead of the other way round.

The government and closely affiliated to it philanthropic organizations went into

heavily subsidizing these artists, making some of them into celebrity figures. This, of course, instilled imitation amongst younger artists, and gave the “innovators” competitive edge over those artists who remained faithful to traditional values and kept working to satisfy people’s needs in meaningful ideas. Unfortunately, such artists, to a large degree, ended up by being stripped off of their artistic merit – under the pretext of lack of originality (a euphemism for refusal to participate in the game of inventing something totally new and shocking).

Nowadays the consensus that a unique expression is aesthetically superior to a

conventional expression, is quite unanimous across the Western society. Musicians have learned to abide by this standard. The amount of new works of serious art music in conventional tonal idioms is virtually null – despite obvious public preference for such idioms, as expressed by an obvious preference for tonal music compositions,129 and the great success of tonal music in films.130 This coincides with a near absent atonal film music131 and a complete absence of atonal concerts of popular music that would be box-‐office breakers.132 60 years of zealous “education” of the audiences has made little impression on their “likes”: 29% of respondents of the national survey said that their attendance would decrease if more works by contemporary composers would be played, while only 6% said their attendance would increase. 133

129 Kremp, Pierre-‐Antoine (2010) -‐ Innovation and Selection: Symphony Orchestras and

the Construction of the Musical Canon in the United States (1879–1959). Social Forces (2010) 88 (3): p. 1051-‐1082.

130 Krämer, Benjamin (2009) -‐ Four Voices, One Canon? A Comparative Study on the Music Selection of Classical Music Radio Stations. European Journal of Communication, vol. 24 no. 3 325-‐343.

131 Wierzbicki, James Eugene (2009) -‐ Film music: a history. Routledge, New York 132 League of American Orchestras. 2009 – 2010 Season Orchestra Repertoire Report, New

York. 133 Classical Music Consumer Segmentation Study: How Americans Relate to Classical Music

and Their Local Orchestras. (2002) John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Audience Insight LLC, Southport, Conn, p. 56.

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Avant-‐garde supporters usually put the blame on “corrupted” administration of the orchestras, opera houses, and concert organizations. But the figures tell otherwise. In 1950 less than 15% music written by modern living composers were performed by the New York Philharmonic.134 In 2010, according to the League of American Orchestra Report, out of 490 composers whose works were performed across America and Canada, 178 (36.3%) of them were written after 1984135 – over twice increase in performance of new works compared to 1950. The management clearly was actively promoting new post-‐tonal works – yet they were consistently rejected by the audiences: The signature pattern was that a new work survived only one or two performances, whereas works by Beethoven and Mozart enjoy way over 100 performances per year. Such pattern testifies to the fact that audiences want to hear Mozart and Beethoven, and not post-‐tonal compositions.

Evidently, despite the overall preference of the general audience for tonal music,

conventional idioms, and explicit emotional content in music, modern composers associate serious music with atonal techniques that obstruct emotional expression. They view tonal music as having lower aesthetic status. All of this remarkably prevents them from writing in tonal idioms.

Similar development can be traced in Western popular music. American popular

music of the 19th century was essentially folk music, spread across America mostly through “oral” transmission and live performance, with multiple versions of the same tune created by different performers, without much regard for copyright restraints. Strictly speaking, there is little difference between popular songs of that time in the U.S. and the Russian mass songs created prior to the institution of the Soviet Composer’s union in 1932 by Stalin. For instance, the famous Russian revolutionary song “Smelo tovarishi v nogu” [Comrades, let's bravely march on] is a folk song built on an old German tune. Russian professional composers were emulating such folk songs – i.e. Lev Knipper with his “Poliushko-‐pole” (1934), in the way American composers of the 19th century were emulating American folk songs: i.e. Stephen Foster with his “Oh, Susanna!” (1848). This similarity was perceived during the 1930’s, when the U.S. musical establishment became concerned about the communist influence on American folk music, after such popular singers as Pete Seeger joined the Communist Party USA and set a goal to build a singing movement in the U.S.136 As a result, folk music began to acquire a left-‐wing connotation “strong enough to become the target of the anti-‐communist witch hunt.”137

134 Mueller, John H. (1951) -‐ The American Symphony Orchestra, Indiana University Press,

Bloomington, pp. 182–252. 135 League of American Orchestras. 2009 – 2010 Season Orchestra Repertoire Report, New

York. 136 Wilkinson, Alec (2009) -‐ The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger. Alfred

A. Knopf, New York, p. 76-‐80. 137 Roy, William G. (2011) -‐ Reds, whites, and blues: social movements, folk music, and race

in the United States, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, p. 79.

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The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s alarmed the U.S. authorities even more so with the danger of popular music slipping away towards “socialist realism” of the communists. Despite the McCarthyism’s assault on any semblance of communist tendencies, People’s Songs (a cultural organization modeled after the British Workers Music Association) drew together musicians of leftist orientation, activists of the former New Deal, the union leaders, and protesters from college campuses, to create, promote, and distribute songs of labor and the American people. Thus, by publishing books and magazines, producing live events, establishing forums, and working in close contact with distributors of left-‐wing music, People’s Songs started giving American folk music an unmistakable pink color.138

Making popular music “anti-‐socialist” was a prime item on top of the “to-‐do-‐list”

of the U.S. government domestic agenda in the music battle of the Cold War. And here, an “anti-‐social” popular song turned out extremely handy. The rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950’s, which was the first youth rebel movement, hit a note of “anti-‐socialness” by confronting the older generation’s values and by showing no consideration for morals and ethics through their new popular music. The press of that time reveals much of the discourse rotating around the issue of an irresponsible “last fling” attitude with little respect for “God or law or man or anybody else.”139

Heavy rock music was the first genre that brought about explicitly aggressive

music content enveloped in the format of “popular” song. The first counterculture performers, such as the Rolling Stones, were delivering the same anarchistic message as their avant-‐garde cousins – only expressed in a more vulgar and self-‐assertive manner. And just as the serialist music by Boulez, Stockhausen, and Babbitt set the model for all the following breeds of post-‐tonal music, in the same way, the Rolling Stones culture set the ground for a chain of music styles that followed, most of which capitalized on the “nihilistic impulses of perverse modernism… grafted onto popular music.” 140

It is this trend to blame for detaching American popular music from its folk

roots. Modern popular music is becoming progressively a private experience, in sharp contrast with folk music. In this process, folk musical features that underlie the entire domain of American popular music have become undermined and compromised. In the end, the modern pop artists are affected by the same bias toward genuine folk music as are their post-‐modernistic colleagues of serious music, toward traditional tonal music.

The musical emotion that expresses the emotional condition of a wide group of

people is found neither in serious music nor in modern popular music. Of course,

138 Ibid. p. 129-‐130. 139 Altschuler, Glenn C. (2004) -‐ All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America. Oxford

University Press, New York, p. 99-‐105. 140 Bayles, Martha (2014) -‐ Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy,

and America's Image Abroad. Yale University Press, p. 12.

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popular music doesn’t completely break up with emotions, but what happens is that the modern popular artist becomes formalistic. He tries to invent an “original” progression of chords of pitches so that his creation would not infringe on anyone’s copyright. Needless to say that such concern becomes an obstacle for emotional expression, especially where the sentiment is supposed to reflect on the emotional condition of a group of people rather than a single individual.

Such individualistic and formalistic model has set the rules of competition in the

popular music marketplace of today – when the figure of the professional composer is practically removed from the song writing business, and is transformed into an anonymous music-‐patcher, usually hired by the singer or the record label, hidden from the public eye, and curtained by the “work-‐for-‐hire” contracts that award the composer’s royalties and fame to the singers.141

Raw, sketchy, and “anything goes” configuration of melody and harmony have

become the sound signature of modern popular music – in distinct contrast to the songs of the 1980’s, and even more so, of the earlier times when the music industry kept its standards closer to the “common practice period”, and where diverse emotional expression was a requirement for any music professional – be it a performer or a composer. The game of bidding on a single hit record to reach platinum sales and to pay for dozens of losing records, has led the entire record industry to adopt an overproduction formula: the more records are out, the greater chance for one of them to turn into a hit. “More and faster” became the industry slogan. As a result, a popular music album turned into a throw-‐away commodity. 142

Inevitably, a hastily assembled song suffers from poor emotional expression. To

compose music that convincingly expresses emotions takes time, effort, and a significant degree of qualification – very much akin to writing a convincing expression of an idea in verbal speech. Illiterate, or at best, half-‐literate singers that constitute majority of modern popular music authors, simply cannot provide high quality output under the time restraints of modern music business standards. There are no Mozarts or Schuberts in the modern popular music scene. Mickey-‐mouse job in putting music together, transpires into “Mickey-‐mouse musical emotions.” – “Ersatz form” frames “ersatz content”.

This is where emotions go sour: a rapper forges an expression of aggressive

confidence in competition with another rapper – forcing escalation in violent content, i.e. a rapper, Pimp C, puts out a song about raping and beating a pregnant woman to support his “tough” image and masculinity. Although neither he nor his fans may consider the expression of this song as “serious,” but for any outsider, especially in a foreign culture, the ersatz content of such song is not apparent. They

141 Cusic, Don (2005) -‐ In Defense of Cover Songs. Popular Music and Society, Vol. 28, No.

2, May 2005, pp. 171-‐177. 142 Clarke, Donald (1995) -‐ The Rise and Fall of Popular Music. St. Martin’s Press, New

York, p. 486.

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may be prone to take it seriously and associate its aggressive image as an utmost embodiment of reasonless cruelty. Had Pimp C’s music contained many conventional idioms of traditional music, these idioms would have offset the expression of anger, sending cues that it is “unreal” – i.e. how it is done in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, when Norina pretends to be mad at Don Pasquale in their Act III duet (“Vai caro sposino”). But because rap music rebelliously discards all traditional melodic idioms (just as avant-‐garde music does), a rap song is incapable of expressing any nuances of an emotional state. It is dead stuck on anger. And so is its affective influence.

“Problem music” and the claim of its “social therapeutics” Rap and metal are not the only genres incriminated in having a damaging

influence on the well-‐being of an individual and a society at large. The most recent overview of research literature on musical preferences and their influence on behavior and ideation,143 has been able to identify the genres of alternative rock, hard rock, heavy metal, hip-‐hop, rap, punk rock, trance, house, electronic, and techno, as what can be referred to as “Problem Music”. The statistic analysis of the literature indicates that these genres are associated with aggressive behavior and appear to have reinforcing effect on not only aggressive behavior, but also delinquency, substance and alcohol abuse, rebelliousness, impulsive and antisocial traits, including proneness to violence and suicidal ideation.

Just as proponents of avant-‐garde culture, scholars of metal music love to speak

of the stiffening grip of traditional conventions that stand in the way of inventiveness and inspiration. They praise the beauty of throwing away all rules of music making in order to follow one’s own design. These scholars of metal music also depict the historical vector for the development of Western civilization as authoritarian and stifling to the individual need for expression. They regard abolition of physical restraint as the biggest contribution of rock concert to humanity, where for the first time the Western listener is liberated of restraint that is placed on his body and mind, imposed on him by the traditional format of listening to music at a formal concert. In view of such scholars disallowing “natural” bodily reactions (such as screaming or laughing), and focusing one’s attention on the music alone, unnecessarily represses the individual. A number of researchers, such as Elias Canetti and Robert Baker-‐White see the entire “common era practice” as “collective stagnation of the mind.”144

“Problem music” is exposed as a positive social phenomenon in the framework

of such theories. They take the genres of “problem music” as a venting-‐out window

143 Lozon, Jeffrey & Bensimon, Moshe (2014) -‐ Music misuse: A review of the personal and

collective roles of “problem music.” Aggression and Violent Behavior 19, p. 207–218. 144 Baker-‐White, R. (1992) -‐ Crowds, Audiences, and the 'Liturgy of Irreverence': Rethinking

the Altamont Concert as Participatory Theatre. Studies in Popular Culture, 14 (2): p. 37-‐49.

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to rid the society of tension that has been produced by the conflicts of interests between different social groups. In that sense, these genres are elevated to the function similar to the avant-‐garde high art: they supposedly allow one to express his individuality in an attempt to define himself against the social group. Characteristically, extreme metal is closely associated with radical individualism. It is exceedingly common to hear from metal fans the motto: “just be yourself”– it doesn’t matter what you are, there is “nothing you can do about it.”145 This can easily translate into: if you are violent, let it be so, as there is nothing you can do about it.

Reactive rebelliousness -‐ vindictive and vengeful behavior -‐ is marked as a

personality trait of average metal fan in the violence research literature (as well as aversion to non-‐rebellious soft music).146 Walser (1993)147 considers metal as musical representation of ruthless individualism of capitalistic society that creates a communal attachment between its fans and enacts their collective empowerment. Arnett (1995)148 regards metal counter-‐culture as a direct product of American individualism “grown cancerous”: a shield that is designed to protect metal fans from ever experiencing the need for attachment to others – a cult of force and brutality that advocates hyper-‐individualism.

“Problem music” is the reverse side of the avant-‐garde coin. It is the “avant-‐

garde” of musically unsophisticated minds, caught up into a feedback loop, where illiteracy and ignorance of conventional language of music make it impossible to extract any “normal” emotional messages from the existing repertoire of Western music – and in this emotional vacuum the biological need for emotional stimulation generates a crave for basic emotions. This crave has to be satisfied with a simplest means of musical expression which would be understandable without much competence.

The simplest fix for this turns out to be the expression of anger serving as a

common denominator for all other basic emotions: anger creates pleasure from feeling stronger; it can also connect to sadness where one feels hopeless to resolve those negative factors that cause anger; it closely relates to fear through the causality factor; and it can lead to disgust. Anger as a musical emotion is the emotional surrogate for those who have difficulty accessing an entire emotional vocabulary via the mainstream musical language.

145 Kahn-‐Harris, Keith (2007) -‐ Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Berg,

Oxford, New York, p. 42. 146 Robinson, T. O., Weaver, J. B., & Zillmann, D. (1996) -‐ Exploring the relation between

personality and the appreciation of rock music. Psychological Reports, 78, 259–269. 147 Walser, R. (1993) -‐ Running with the devil: Power, gender, and madness in heavy metal

music. Wesleyan University Press, p. 171. 148 Arnett, J. J. (1996). Metalheads: heavy metal music and adolescent alienation. Westview

Press, Inc., p. 166-‐167.

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It is not surprising that those who fall in love with metal and rap often develop pronounced aversion to soft and happy music, which easily takes shape of extreme dislike of musical genres other than metal and rap.149 Here we can see the same pattern as habituation to a substance, which directs the drug user towards aversion to any alternatives to the object of his addiction.

“Extreme” popular music creates addictions and dependencies on a single

emotion – usually anger or/and sadness, which cause long-‐lasting disturbances. Heavy metal and rap varieties of music can be “pathological” in the same sense as smoking or excessive drinking can be “pathological” – they do not necessarily make their consumer sick, but they stress his organism and make him susceptible to the risk of developing a serious disease. Similarly, the connection between extreme popular music and emotional problems is not so much a fact, but a risk factor – a source of stress that can be absorbed by the psyche without any visible signs of disturbance; or, it can spark a violent outburst; or, it may also gradually build up towards the development of a chronic psychological condition. Puri (2010)150 traces the attachment to metal music in youngsters and shows how, against popular belief, that personal traits that are related to aggressiveness do not diminish as the person ages.

The likely path for such development has been described in a “downward spiral

model.”151 According to this model, aggressive person seeks violent music, which, in turn, reinforces his propensity to fall into an angry state, and further increases his preference for violent music – creating a negative feedback loop. The statistical analysis of cumulative effect of long-‐term exposure to violent content seems to support this model.

Further support comes from experimental research of physiological reactions to

violent computer games. 152 The findings indicate a pronounced desensitization effect: after exposure to higher levels of violence, emotional responses to gory pictures (i.e. mutilated corpses) and aggressive stimuli (pictures of weapons) cause smaller galvanic skin response. A player becomes more sensitive to aggressive cues, as he becomes less receptive to unpleasant cues. Desensitization has the highest impact when a player experiences cognitive difficulties. There seems to be an

149 Rubin, A. M., West, D. V., & Mitchell, W. S. (2001) -‐ Differences in aggression, attitudes

toward women, and distrust as reflected in popular music preferences. Media Psychology, 3(1), 25-‐42.

150 Puri, S. Cycles of Metal and Cycles of Male Aggression: Ageing and the Changing Aggressive Impulse. Can I Play with Madness?, 101.

151 Slater, Michael D. at al. (2003) -‐ Violent media content and aggressiveness in adolescents: A downward spiral model. Communication Research, Vol 30(6), pp. 713-‐736.

152 Staude-‐Müller, Frithjof et al. (2008) -‐ Hostile and hardened? An experimental study on (de-‐)sensitization to violence and suffering through playing video games. Swiss Journal of Psychology, Vol 67(1), Mar, 2008. pp. 41-‐50.

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emotional hardening due to repetitive confrontation with violence, indicating the cumulative character of emotional desensitization.

The downward spiral desensitization must be responsible for the relief of

tension many heavy metal fans report to be experiencing while listening to angry music.153. Musicologists of popular music usually refer to these reports as “proof” that listening to violent music does not directly cause a violent state of mind in the listener. Johnson & Cloonan (2009) 154 go so far as stating that heavy metal “may well be socially therapeutic” by providing a way to relieve stress related to social adjustment in those who feel “out of place in a contemporary society.”

Indeed, such relief may be possible for an individual with intermittent explosive

disorder (IED), however, if the person does not suffer from anger management problem, listening to violent music can make him feel irritated – rather than relieved. Thus, Gowensmith and Bloom (1997)155 observed in their empirical study that country fans experienced higher anger level while listening to metal than metal fans did. The researchers concluded that metal music has different emotional effect on different types of listeners.

Some experimental studies give insight into the mechanism involved into this

differentiation. Johnson, Jackson and Gatto (1995)156 took 3 groups of young African-‐American males and exposed one group to violent rap music videos, another to nonviolent rap music videos, and the third to no music videos. Two vignettes were displayed to each group: the first vignette described the violent action of a man towards a woman, and the second vignette described a youngster who chose to pursue education in order to build a career. Of the three groups, the subjects exposed to violent rap music video expressed greater acceptance of violence, reported a higher probability of getting involved in violence, expressed stronger negative attitude towards women in general, and were less confident that the youngster would achieve his educational goals.

It is much more likely to find a steady habituation to violence in a person with

the history of anger disorder. So, the reaction to violent music will vary depending on at which point of the downward spiral the listener actually is while listening to music. If he is at a “trough” phase – suffering from withdrawal effect – then violent music is likely to bring him subjective relief. If audition occurs during the “peak”

153 Arnett, Jeffrey (1991) -‐ Adolescents and heavy metal music: From the mouths of

metalheads. Youth & Society, Vol 23(1), Sep, 1991. pp. 76-‐98. 154 Johnson, Bruce & Cloonan, Martin (2009) – Dark Side of the tune: Popular Music and

Violence, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, VT, p. 115. 155 Gowensmith, W. N., & Bloom, L. J. (1997) -‐ The effects of heavy metal music on arousal

and anger. Journal of Music Therapy, 34(1), 33-‐45. 156 Johnson, J. D.; Jackson, L. A.; Gatto, L. (1995) -‐ Violent attitudes and deferred academic

aspirations: Deleterious effects of exposure to rap music. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Vol 16(1-‐2), pp. 27-‐41.

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phase, when the listener is already in a violent state, then, violent music can resonate with him and lead him to uncontrolled outbursts.

At any rate, the conclusion that a lover of violent music should keep listening to

this music in order to relieve his prostration can be a risky path to go or to advocate. The downward spiral increases the amplitude of angry swings over time. As Roberts et al (2003) conclude their review of the literature: “Neuroscience suggests that ‘brooding,’ or dwelling on one’s current emotional state, is more likely to deepen that state rather than to alleviate it.” 157

Temporary relief from exposure to angry music is quite similar to the

amelioration of drug withdrawal symptoms upon taking the offending drug by the addicted individual. In fact, the model of “addiction to violence” has been successively tried out in treatment of post-‐traumatic developmentally mediated stress disorder (PTSD). Conceptualizing psychopaths as being “addicted to violence” was found to allow for application of a number of possible treatments, thereby increasing the chances of recovery.158

Strong addiction to violence might produce a situation where violent music

would “appear” to bear no ill effects based on the listener’s evaluation – in a way similar to how a patient suffering from depression will deny that sad music makes him feel sad. An experimental study that interviewed 120 adolescent offenders (ages 13-‐18 years) found that 91 of them were fans of rock music. Of those, 54% liked themes advocating homicide, suicide, and satanic practices. Almost all of them were characterized by spending significant amount of time listening to the violent music they liked, assuming that it had no impression on their attitude to commit destructive acts (despite their obvious connection to violence, since they were locked up in detention centers as a result of committing violent acts).159

What comes first, chicken or the egg? It actually doesn’t matter, whether a

listener has already had anger problem, or whether he has developed anger problem as a result of exposure to metal or rap music – clearly, in either case, violent music is better to be avoided by such a person. Hardly anyone will subscribe to the logic that if a child is genetically sensitive to alcohol, it is all right for this child to consume alcohol while under age! However, when the matter comes to music, suddenly the argument of prior disposition to violence justifies exposure to violent music in the minds of many scholars as well as lay people.

157 Roberts, D. F., Christenson, P. G., & Gentile, D. A. (2003) -‐ The effects of violent music on

children and adolescents. In: Media violence and children: A complete guide for parents and professionals, D. A. Gentile (Ed.), Praeger, Westport, CT, pp. 153−170.

158 Hodge, John E. (1992) -‐ Addiction to violence: A new model of psychopathy. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, Vol 2(2), Spec Issue, 1992. pp. 212-‐223.

159 Wass, Hannelore; Miller, M. David; Redditt, Carol Anne (1991) -‐ Adolescents and destructive themes in rock music: a follow-‐up. Omega: Journal of Death & Dying, 1991, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p. 199-‐206.

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“Extreme” popular styles are better treated in the same way as how potentially addictive substances such as alcohol and smoking are handled in our society – to minimize their potential damage for the individual and for society at large. The combination of education and state policies such as imposing taxes or age limits have proved to be quite effective.160 161 Of course, in relation to music, education will have to come first, since majority of population, especially children, have no idea of what is wrapped in the alluring cover of “problem music.” And the fancy covers do attract very well.

The issue of second-‐hand exposure to “problem music” The 2001 official Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report162 examined the

research literature on the impact of media violence on children, and concluded that “there is a high correlation between exposure to media violence and aggressive and sometimes violent behavior.” Furthermore, the report supported those studies that found exposure to media violence to be correlated with increased acceptance of violent behavior in others, and an exaggerated perception of the amount of violence in society. In relation to the issue of causation, the report stated: “although researchers tend to agree that there is a relationship between exposure to media violence and youth aggression, there are differences in the interpretation of the relationship and the implications for public policy.” Music and film industries were found to routinely market restricted products to the underage, often specifically targeting children – undermining the credibility of the industries' ratings. The FTC officials noted that consumer education may be the most important means of protecting the consumer.

The effects of second-‐hand exposure to violent music are unpardonably under-‐

investigated. A handful of conducted investigations raise questions that imply far-‐fetched consequences. In one experiment, 194 participants heard music either with or without lyrics (digitally removed),163 and with or without an accompanying violent video, after which they were asked to serve spicy chili sauce to their fellow subjects, who had to eat the entire serving (an effective way of emulating aggression without severe consequences for the subject of the study). The finding was consistent in that exposure to music alone, and even more so, with the lyrics present, caused substantial increase in the serving portion. This effect occurred

160 Goel, Rajeev K. & Nelson, Michael A. (2008) -‐ Global Efforts to Combat Smoking,

Ashgate, Burlington, VT, p. 3. 161 Jurkiewicz, Carole L. & Painter, Murphy J. (2007) -‐ Social and Economic Control of

Alcohol: The 21st Amendment in the 21st Century. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, p.12. 162 Grier, Sonya A.; Hill, Ronald Paul (2001) -‐ The Federal Trade Commission's Report on

the Marketing of Violent Entertainment to Youths: Developing Policy-‐Tuned Research. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. Spring2001, Vol. 20 Issue 1, p. 123-‐132.

163 Brummert Lennings, H. I. & Warburton, W. A. (2011) -‐ The effect of auditory versus visual violent media exposure on aggressive behaviour: The role of song lyrics, video clips and musical tone. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Vol. 47 Issue 4, p. 794-‐799.

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regardless of traits of aggressiveness, hostility, affective state, previous exposure to violent music, and personality factors of the subjects. Apparently, an aggressive state can be elicited directly by music, without any history of hostility, regardless of the state prior to listening.

Such conclusion agrees with the Aggression Model by Anderson & Bushman

(2002), 164 which holds that personal variables can interact with an external stimulus based on the “primed cognition” in such a way that a person would spontaneously erupt in an aggressive response. Previously established neural networks can activate aggression and violence even at the absence of an aggressive situation, and they can contribute to short-‐term, as well as long-‐term priming aggression-‐related cognitions of the listeners. Therefore, there are hardly any individual characteristics that could provide “immunity” against exposure to violent music. Potentially anyone can be negatively affected by “second-‐hand” hearing of violent music, which should be considered a risk factor. Recent large-‐scale longitudinal studies put forward converging evidence linking frequent exposure to violent media in childhood with physical assaults and spouse abuse later in life.165

The danger of “second-‐hand” music consumption becomes even more dramatic

with the advances in technology that allow sound reproduction that is more powerful than ever before. The rap concert by The Beyoncé And Jay Z at the AT&T Park in San Francisco, in August 5 and 6, 2014, was so loud that within two miles citizens could hear every word through double pane windows and earplugs. There were complaints from people who had difficulty sleeping from 10 miles away.166 There is little escape from “deleterious” music in our society. Thousands of people have no other choice but to absorb the influence of rap music, whether they like it or not, even to the detriment of their well-‐being.

We find a pretty similar situation in the international distribution of music.

Cultural import from the U.S. television, internet, radio, and satellite broadcasting overtakes any national borders, disregarding local laws and policies. When such products as Black Metal cross the borders of states that have highly established traditional lifestyles, these states take the explicitly anti-‐Western attitude, and resorts to force to protect and rid their citizens from the influence of such music. An example of anti-‐Satanic campaign in Turkey during the 1990-‐2007 illustrates the extent to which the cultural import from the UK, U.S., and Germany has aggravated the cultural life in Turkey: police raided bars, music shops and homes of metal fans,

164 Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2002) -‐ Human aggression. Annual Review of

Psychology, 53, p. 27−51. 165 Anderson, C. A., Berkowitz, L., Donnerstein, E., Huesmann, L. R., Johnson, J. D., Linz, D.,

et al. (2003) -‐ The influence of media violence on youth. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4, p. 81−110.

166 Schaub, Jeffrey (2014) -‐ Dozens Of San Francisco Residents Complain About Noise From Beyonce-‐Jay Z Concert. KCBS, August 6, 2014 http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/ 08/06/dozens-‐of-‐san-‐francisco-‐residents-‐complain-‐about-‐noise/ retrieved 8/18/14.

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arresting people with long hair, piercing, and tattoos, causing the closure of magazines, and cancellation of concerts.167

If Turkey, a member of NATO and a long-‐time ally of the West, has submerged

into repressive reaction towards metal genres, other Muslim states demonstrate even stronger despise. Since 2001, a campaign very similar to Turkey was launched in Malaysia and Singapore.168 Even Western European governments have targeted Muslim rappers, considering them a threat to national security: French, Dutch, and German officials have cracked down on hip-‐hop artists and their fans; after the 2005 revolt in France, 7 rappers were prosecuted by the petition of the parliament.169 The public opinion in Muslim countries easily leans towards conspiracy theories of Zionist influence allegedly carried through heavy metal and rap with the purpose to weaken Islam’s position.170

Even more alarming are the news of successful assimilation of metal music on

the Islamic soil. Mark LeVine (2008) provides an account of a leading Moroccan heavy metal musician who speaks of deciding to play metal music because “their lives are heavy metal”171 – in order to propagate anger against traditional culture and traditional music – which, by the way, is based on Pythagorean principles of harmony of the spheres and the corresponding harmony of emotions.172 If suicide bombing has already picked up with fundamental Muslims, God knows how the suicidal ideas of Black metal will sit with the new breed of Islamic metallists: the idea that Islam is “not as far removed” from punk “as one might think” (ibid.) sounds quite foreboding – in stark contrast to LeVine’s delight of having the oppressed Muslim population be exposed to the ideas of individual freedom.

Amazingly though, the U.S. State Department shared the same optimistic outlook

with their attempt of “hip-‐hop diplomacy.” Starting from 2003, the Bush administration started sending African-‐American and Muslim-‐American rappers to North Africa, Arabic Middle East, Pakistan, and Indonesia to “deflect” the Muslim youth from violent extremism by connecting them with the “racial and religious diversity of America, as well as its freedom of expression.”173 The Western European governments apparently do not share America’s enthusiasm in this matter, as they

167 Hecker, Pierre (2012) -‐ Turkish metal: Music, meaning, and morality in a Muslim

society. Ashgate, Burlington VT, p.109-‐128. 168 Liew, Kai Khiun; Fu, Kelly (2006) -‐ Conjuring the tropical spectres: heavy metal,

cultural politics in Singapore and Malaysia. Inter-‐Asia Cultural Studies. Vol. 7/ 1, p. 99-‐112. 169 Aidi, Hisham (2014) -‐ Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture,

Pantheon, New York, p. 52-‐54. 170 Heavy Metal Is a Zionist Plot. Middle East Quarterly, Spring2010, Vol. 17 Issue 2, p. 81 171 LeVine, Mark (2008) -‐ Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the

Soul of Islam. Three Rivers Press, New York, p. 1. 172 Martin, Richard C. (2004) -‐ Encyclopedia of Islam & the Muslim World. MacMillan

Reference USA, New York, p. 492-‐497 173 Bayles, Martha (2014) -‐ Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy,

and America's Image Abroad. Yale University Press, p. 255.

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take measures to limit this exposure to their populations: i.e. French government regulated the amount of American hip-‐hop allowed on French radio stations. 174

Why is “problem music” consistently viewed as “not a problem”? The avant-‐garde ideology set forth by Arthur Schlesinger has proved to be

remarkably contagious in the U.S. Its suggestive power must be the underlying reason behind why Americans stubbornly refute the evidence of the connection between violent popular music and aggressive short-‐term and long-‐term listener’s response to it, as put forth by scientists. Despite dozens of attempts to reach out to the general audience by the scientific community, persistence in such negation prompted Huesmann, Dubow and Yang (2013)175 to investigate its patterns and causes. They were able to identify five prevailing arguments.

1) The first of them claims that there is no proof that music actually causes

violent behavior – by discarding the data coming from experimental studies on the grounds that they are done in an “artificial” laboratory setting, using measures that do not represent real-‐world aggression. This argument conveniently overlooks the multiple one-‐shot and longitudinal field studies.

2) The second argument defies the entire field of aggression research, by finding

flaws in cherry-‐picked individual studies. 3) The third argument insists on the “therapeutic” effect of exposure to violence

based on its supposedly “cathartic” influence. Unfortunately, it is the popularity of Freudian thinking amongst the public that paves the way for this argument, despite the lack of support by empirical data.

4) The forth argument accuses researchers of disregarding alternative causes of

aggression such as personality traits, and evolution. This is a straw-‐man argument: Huesmann strongly holds that “no reputable violence researcher has ever argued that media violence is the sole cause of aggressive behavior.”176

5) The fifth argument deserves special attention, as it insists that homicide rates

have reduced in the U.S. while the sales of violent media have increased.177 This criticism assumes that there are no other factors contributing to violence. The

174 Aidi, Hisham (2014) -‐ Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture,

Pantheon, New York, p. 53. 175 Huesmann, L. Rowell; Dubow, Eric F.; Yang, Grace (2013) -‐ Why it is hard to believe

that media violence causes aggression. In: The Oxford handbook of media psychology. Dill, Karen E. (Ed); New York, NY, U.S.: Oxford University Press, pp.159-‐171.

176 Ibid., p. 164. 177 Olson, C. (2004) -‐ Media violence research and youth violence data: Why do they

conflict? Academic Psychiatry, 28, p. 144–150.

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reduction in violent crime can be explained by desensitization of the portion of adolescent population that exercises deviant behavior. They could have started finding less satisfaction in reckless behavior and instead become more involved into computer games that generate stronger emotional experience without the risk of breaking the law and bearing responsibility for it.

The habituation mechanism is known to cause cognitive desensitization so that

violence is perceived as more normative.178 The record high peak of violent crimes in the U.S. during the 1990’s immediately followed popularization of new genres of rap and Black metal, when they were novel, after which the initial splash of responsiveness rolled off as their novelty faded out.

The 2011 Gallup poll 179 supports this hypothesis with the report of the

characteristic discrepancy between the actual reduction of crime rate, and public perception of criminality level. Despite the widely available statistics that violent crime victimization has dropped by 40%, and property crime by 28%, nevertheless, 68% of Americans believe that there is more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago. About 4 out of 10 Americans feel unsafe walking near their homes at night, yet only 1 out of 10 say that crime is serious around the area they live in. Such obvious discrepancy can easily be explained by emotional factors. That part of the population which is not addicted to violent music has not been desensitized by violent music as the fans of violent music have been. That is why they are more sensitive to the violent content in media. The emotional reaction of non-‐aggressive individuals to violence is “fear”. Which is why a substantial portion of the population feels afraid of violence and justifies its fear by claiming that crime rate is on the rise. Ubiquity of violent music must play a major role in reinforcing this emotional reaction.

Presence of violent music in our society reinforces an acute cognitive

dissonance. On the one hand, majority of people are stressed by the expression of violent content. On the other hand, films, computer games, and music have made violence appear commonplace, especially for the younger generations. The ideological heritage of the Cold War also keeps a strong hold over the Western mentality. As a result, many individuals who suffer from the consequences of exposure to “problem music” do not want to accept the fact of its detrimental influence, and to deal with its ramifications. Huesmann180 identifies four major constituents of disbelief in ties between exposure to media violence and behavior:

178 Krahe, B., Moeller, I., Huesmann, L. R., Kirwil, L., Felber, J., & Berger, A. (2011) -‐

Desensitization to media violence: Antecedents, consequences, and content specificity. Joumal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(4), p. 630-‐646.

179 Saad, Lydia (2011) -‐ Most Americans Believe Crime in U.S. Is Worsening. Gallup Poll Briefing. 10/31/2011.

180 Huesmann, L. Rowell; Dubow, Eric F.; Yang, Grace (2013) -‐ Why it is hard to believe that media violence causes aggression. In: The Oxford handbook of media psychology. Dill, Karen E. (Ed); New York, NY, U.S.: Oxford University Press, pp. 159-‐171.

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• In a consumer society, general public is motivated to take whatever that is a

bestseller as virtue, simply by the token of its exceeding popularity: If everyone uses something, then it cannot be bad! This attitude is aggregated by the interests of many consumer groups: fans defend what they consume, manufacturers protect their produce, and scholars defend their field of study.

• For those who are concerned with the harmful influences on children, it is easier to seek cognitive consistency by denying harm coming from media rather than questioning all merits of “individualism” – the cornerstone of Western ethics. In general, people tend to have aversion to being controlled, and insist in taking charge of their preferences.

• “The Third person effect” arises from the two factors above, and reflects the

tendency of people to believe that the mass media may be affecting other people, but not them or their children; it is more convenient to resolve the cognitive dissonance by believing that they themselves are impervious to harmful influences, even if others are not.

• “Desensitization” effect mediates perception of violence by normalizing the

violent content of film, TV, video games, and music, and exaggerating the importance of violence in the real world – because majority of people are used to violence in media and not used to experiencing violence in real life.

All in all, violent music can exercise harmful influence through numerous

channels, when it is used consistently:

1. Causing addiction in psychologically vulnerable subjects, and then catching them in the downward spiral development towards greater alienation of them from society, leading to greater stress, prostration and the sense of distrust and embitterment.

2. Increasing predisposition to depression. 3. Producing emotional one-‐sidedness in those who lack skills or

opportunity to engage in making and/or listening of emotionally diversified forms of music, or a great multitude of genres of music.

4. Potentially exacerbating aggressive state in those already suffering from anger management problems.

5. Desensitizing listeners who have a healthy aversive response to violent music, making them take this music as normative, and therefore increasing their exposure to it, causing overstimulation or stress.

6. Inspiring fear in those who are averse to aggression -‐ upon exposure to second-‐hand listening of violent music.

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7. Instilling anarchistic attitude towards cultural establishments, traditional values, law and order.

8. Unifying adolescents attracted by image of power and risk-‐taking, and promoting negative attitude towards such qualities as prudence, modesty and tenderness.

9. Depriving these adolescents of a chance to develop social skills sufficient to build a successful career.

10. Cultivating discrimination to women.

11. Contributing to the decrease in popularity of emotionally diverse and sensitive forms of music.

12. Promoting antisocial behavior, and thereby increasing social contrasts and conflicts in society.

13. Promoting use of recreational drugs and alcohol.

14. Encouraging deviant behaviors which might lead to development of perverted moral standards.

15. Creating international friction between the U.S. and countries that do not approve of violent music culture.

16. Promoting violent cultures abroad, with the risk to hybridize a new breed of super-‐violent movement in anti-‐Western countries.

By no means this list should be taken as a definition of the genres of metal or rap

musics. Neither it is a verdict of their sociological impact. Of course, in real life, there are thousands of factors that contribute to the influence of a music genre in a given social group. Social and political factors intertwine and very well can lead to substantial positive consequences from the use of violent music for a certain group of people. In fact, there are a number of applications where the stimulation by such music might be justifiable: for instance during weight-‐lifting – as long as it is done in private setting and not on continuous basis. Needless to say it is a pleasurable experience brought by listening to this music for those who really like it. This list is a mere reflection of the potential negative outcomes that might happen as a result of habitual use of this music, especially at the abstinence from any other type of music – it’s a list of risk factors. It should not be interpreted as vendetta against metal or rap: it equally applies to any other genres of music that might come into being in future based on the idea of cultivation of emotion of anger.

Music makes one feel a certain way. Music allows to cultivate certain feelings.

Music has power to unite those who share the same feeling. Music can control people’s minds without them being aware of it. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao, all took great advantage of the suggestive power of music. Music played a central role in their brain-‐washing propaganda machines, and proved to be very effective in inspiring people to act in a way that was in the interest of these dictators.

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Now, unwillingly, America is involved in a grand new cultural experiment – what is going to happen if the power of music is completely let loose? What will be the social consequences for the entire world when mass produced music would generate all sorts of messages, destructive as well as constructive?

Destructive and constructive are not going to counter-‐balance each other.

Destructive force tend to prevail over constructive force, because it is easier to destroy than to construct. We can already observe the immense growth of “problem music” – in a short period of about 30 years that passed since its inception. According to the Nielsen Soundscan 2013 report, hard music, rap, and electronica, together comprise 21.9% of the total album sales in the U.S..181

On another hand, we know that in 2009, already 76% of American adolescents

owned portable playing devices, 66% owned a cell phone, and 29% -‐ a laptop – that were all used to listen to music. Today, figures would be even higher. And an average youngster was found to spend almost six and a half hours a day with media – even more, whooping eight and a half hours, if to count them doing so while multitasking.182

Putting two and two together, it is easy to see that the road to this downward

spiral is wide open to millions of people – paved by the best intentions of cultural diversity and freedom of individual expression. The more the youngsters listen to violent music, the more normal it will appear to them, and the greater impression it will make on their minds in the shadow of their subconscious. Just as how sensory marketing embeds attitudes towards certain brands without the consumer’s awareness, “problem music” embeds its own messages that transpire into “problem behavior” and “problem children.”

Of course, it is hard to estimate real figures in order to draw an accurate

quantitative comparison between the modern U.S. and the ancient Athenian societies. Of course, it is questionable to attribute the observed cultural phenomenon to this or that specific factor. However, overall, survived documental evidence leads us to believe that “youth behavior” did not constitute problem in Ancient urban life. Historians are confident that the Classical culture did not contain any juvenile counter-‐culture, and did not know of juvenile delinquency as a social problem the way we are all too familiar with its contribution to the ills of our society.183

181 Nielsen issues 2013 U.S. music sales, streaming data (2014). Broadcast News, Jan.8,

http://rbr.com/nielsen-‐issues-‐2013-‐us-‐music-‐sales-‐streaming-‐data 182 Rideout, Victoria, Ulla G. Foehr, and Donald F. Roberts (2010) -‐ Generation M2 Media

in the lives of 8–18 year olds. The Kaiser Family Foundation, Menlo Park CA. 183 Garland, Robert (1991) -‐ Juvenile delinquency in the Graeco-‐Roman world. History

Today, October 1991, Vol. 41, p.12-‐19.

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In general, absolute majority of traditional societies seem to take care to raise youngsters in a way that is harmonious for that society – paying attention and providing support to the youngsters on a day to day basis from all adult members of the society. Such societies have been cautious not to use an instrument as powerful as music to incite aggressiveness between its members – so far, I was not able to discover a genre of traditional music culture dedicated to the purpose of bringing the listener in genuinely aggressive state. Genres related to warfare, the most common application for aggression, in fact serve as expression of courage and bravery rather than rage.

More obvious is the significant increase in violence and crime in Russia, as the

country switched from Platonically driven ideals of ethics related to popular music culture, to Western consumer-‐based individualistic culture, including violent genres of music. This turn of events was recognized by the Russian population, and served as a prime reason for its anti-‐American and anti-‐Western sentiments. Similar developments are observed in other non-‐Western countries, signaling to an alarming growing problem, when the world’s music market is nearly completely controlled by Western companies that operate on the premise of freedom of expression, allowing the production of astronomic amounts of violent songs that cross national borders and the privacy of families through technological means of modern communication.

A substantial part of such music’s impact occurs on a pre-‐attentive or

subconscious level. There are three principle mechanisms for musical emotion to trigger an affective reaction in the listener. The "synesthetic”184 perception of music (or, how other scholars name it, “crossmodal correspondences”) is the most direct of the three. It occurs via cross-‐modal sensory integration:185 loudness is perceived in terms of size/intensity; register -‐ size/mass; etc.. 186 Their integration is experimentally verified,187 and must have been developed through the process of evolution:188 auditory sense was the most valuable sense for survival -‐ it works over distance and transmits information about the location of the source of the signal (even when one is asleep). Therefore, brains of almost all mammals are wired in such a way where the audio sense cannot be shut off.189

184 Simner, J. (2012) -‐ Defining synaesthesia. British Journal of Psychology, 103(1), 1-‐15. 185 Parise, C. V., & Spence, C. (2009) -‐ ‘When birds of a feather flock together’: Synesthetic

correspondences modulate audiovisual integration in non-‐synesthetes. PLoS One, 4(5), e5664. 186 Evans, K. K., & Treisman, A. (2010) -‐ Natural cross-‐modal mappings between visual and

auditory features. Journal of vision, 10(1), 6. 187 Bien, N., ten Oever, S., Goebel, R., & Sack, A. T. (2012) -‐ The sound of size: crossmodal

binding in pitch-‐size synesthesia: a combined TMS, EEG and psychophysics study. Neuroimage, 59(1), 663-‐672.

188 Spector F., Maurer D. (2009) -‐ Synesthesia: A new approach to understanding the development of perception. Developmental Psychology, 45, 175–189.

189 Wilson, Edward (2000) – Sociobiology: the new synthesis. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 235-‐236.

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Synesthesia seems to be a part of a system that is called in to translate the sounds into bodies responsible for their production (i.e. the steps of a big animal present more danger when they are close, and require immediate action). Thus, synesthetic connection between brightness and high pitch is found in chimpanzees as well as humans.190 When we hear a musical sound, our brains are hard-‐wired to keep using the same old mechanism embedded in our brains. We cannot switch it off -‐ we can only learn to disregard this information. That is why our brain is vulnerable to music that uses negative synesthetic features (loud, low sounds, in fast tempo, etc. -‐ since this set of features is associated with a dangerous predator charging). There are certain genres of music that have been designed with the purpose to use these types of sounds in order to express musical emotions of anger (i.e. heavy metal). Such genres invoke states of aggressiveness in listeners despite of whether or not the listener pays attention to this music, and whether he enjoys it or not.

In addition to the synesthetic action, music also acts via the priming

mechanism: 191 the listener learns certain patterns of melody, harmony, and articulation, and associates them with certain emotional states (i.e. fanfare -‐ with proclamation of something important and usually festive). Then every time he recognizes a familiar pattern, it triggers a corresponding emotion, reinforced with every repetition. At the end, the mere entrance of familiar pattern of sounds will evoke the conditioned emotional state even if the person is not consciously aware of music.192 This scheme of emotional communication through music is less direct than the synesthetic one, because it requires learning and needs reinforcement. There is yet a third type of signification -‐ aesthetic -‐ based on intellectual evaluation of the expression of music. Emotionally it is the less effective of the three, since the reaction to music comes only after the musical information was processed and identified. However, it still is capable of triggering emotional response.

Metal and rap are more powerful than any traditional genre of music, because

they focus on the synesthetic aspect of expression, while putting little strain on the intellectual and aesthetic aspects of communication. They have crystallized within the developed industrial society, with the help of marketing science and financial power of the music industry that controls almost the entire world music market. These genres are much more “popular” than any traditional form of music, because they have been designed to require as little comprehension as possible, to be catchy, hook the listeners, and appear as trendy.

190 Ludwig, V. U., Adachi, I., & Matsuzawa, T. (2011) -‐ Visuoauditory mappings between

high luminance and high pitch are shared by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (51), 20661-‐20665.

191 Pribram, Karl (1982) -‐ Brain mechanism in music: prolegomena for a theory of the meaning of meaning. In: Music, Mind, and Brain: The Neuropsychology of Music, ed. M Clynes, Plenum, New York, pp. 21–36.

192 Juslin, P. N. (2011) -‐ Music and emotion: Seven questions, seven answers. In: Music and the mind: Essays in Honour of John Sloboda. I. Deliège & J. Davidson (Eds.) Oxford University Press, New York, p. 113-‐135.

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Take classical music, it has also cultivated the genres that specialize in

aggressive expression: i.e. “vengeance aria” in opera.193 However, there is a big difference between this genre and genres of rap and metal. Aria of revenge is a subordinate genre that is a constituent of a genre of opera. A metal song is a stand-‐alone genre, surviving primarily in a form of a concert show -‐ listening to the recording of a single song is secondary and would not culturally sustain unless an artist keeps giving live concerts. An entire metal concert then becomes predominantly an expression of aggressiveness: over an hour of anger shower vs. 3 minutes of vengeance aria. Also, an opera contains many other genres, which cultivate different emotions. In toto, opera only fractionally expresses aggression (also, there are lots of operas that do not contain any aggressive content at all).

Also, classical music of the common practice period is characterized by

dedication to the “theater of emotions” – starting from the 16th century (with “musica reservata”).194 Western composers were competing with each other in their ability to represent emotions convincingly. Emergence of free market made Western classical music quite special in forging dramatic development of the emotional characters – exemplified in opera and the symphonic cycle. It is normative for such music to feature diversity of musical emotions that are fast paced in their change. Rap and metal, in contrary, focus on very few musical emotions, and most of their listeners choose these types of music for the purpose of affecting their emotional state in one particular manner (i.e. release anger, increase confidence, etc.). Therefore, the aggressiveness of rap/metal has by far longer and more focused effect than aggressiveness of aria of revenge.

Once the rap/metal song is aired, it is free to cross any borders and affect

listeners, whether they like it or not. The only way out of this Pandora’s Box is mass education. But in order to make this possible, the myth of avant-‐garde culture has to be debunked. There is no “individualistic music.” Music is social by definition.195 And application of the philosophy of individualism onto music is likely to cause social problems. It was not imperative to resort to individualist music as an ideological weapon during the Cold War. There were other means of winning the cultural battles with the Soviets.

It is important to rise above ideological clichés, and to acknowledge the problem

if we are to curb the flourish of violent music. That is possible. Something very similar happened in the history of tobacco control movement. Paradoxically, it was initiated by the Nazi -‐ with measures such as instituting anti-‐smoking classes in

193 Rosand, E. (1991) -‐ Opera in seventeenth-‐century Venice: the creation of a genre. Univ

of California Press, p. 331. 194 Grout, Donald J. (1973) – A History of Western Music. W. W. Norton, New York, p. 283 195 Cross, I., Morley, I., (2005) -‐ Music in evolution and evolutionary theory: the nature of

the evidence. In: Malloch, S., Trevarthen, C. (Eds.) -‐ Communicative Musicality: Narratives of Expressive Gesture and Being Human. Oxford University Press, Oxford

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elementary schools, distributing free anti-‐smoking pamphlets, offering lectures, founding National Institute for Tobacco Research, banning smoking by minors and by military/police on duty, and smoking in many public spaces. This campaign was the most effective anti-‐smoking effort in German history as of today.196 The prime reason why Post-‐Nazi Germany was never able to put smoking under control was the association of anti-‐smoking campaign with Nazism. From the 1960’s on, tobacco industries and smokers’ rights groups have been exercising anti-‐fascist rhetoric to describe public health authorities and anti-‐smoking advocates as oppressors who discriminate against smokers, acting like “health fascists.”197

Nevertheless, the Western scientific community as well as the general public was

intelligent enough not to buy into the cheap argument that Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco detested smoking, while Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin enjoyed smoking very much. The public opinion did not fall for considering smoking “anti-‐fascist,” instead, it supported taking measures necessary to educate and control smoking in order to make youngsters aware of the hazards of smoking until such time that they would be able to make an educated decision for themselves – while at the same time to protect the population from the hazards of second-‐hand smoking.

A similar wisdom is needed in handling “extreme music.” Certainly, the research

on it is far from being complete, but the tip of the iceberg made visible by recent studies is alarming enough not to wait for another decade or two until the issue will be totally clear. It appears that certain types of music can cultivate negative emotions, which can have negative impact on those listeners who had prolonged exposure to it, provided a number of risk factors are present in their environment. If that is the case, then the general public should be informed about the problems associated with extremity in music, and address it with a massive effort to educate children starting from the elementary school198 – as this is the place where the future of music is decided, and this is the time when the preferences for popular music begin to crystallize.199

This educative effort should involve introduction of a new type of music course

that would teach what music actually is, and what emotion actually is, and how they are connected with each other. None of the existing courseware even contains definition of music and emotion. In addition, the older family members better understand and share responsibility for music choice. Research shows that the most

196 Doll, Richard (1998) -‐ Uncovering the effects of smoking: historical perspective,

Statistical Methods in Medical Research 7 (2): p. 87–117. 197 Schneider, Nick K.; Glantz, Stanton A. (2008) -‐ "Nicotine Nazis strike again": a brief

analysis of the use of Nazi rhetoric in attacking tobacco control advocacy. Tobacco Control: An International Journal, Vol 17(5), Oct, 2008. pp. 291-‐296.

198 Roulston, Kathryn (2006) -‐ Qualitative Investigation of Young Children's Music Preferences. International Journal of Education & the Arts, v7 n9 p. 1-‐24.

199 Policy statement—Impact of music, music lyrics, and music videos on children and youth (2009). Council on Communications and Media; Pediatrics, Vol 124(5). pp. 1488-‐1494.

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common route for initiation of minors into antisocial music genres and styles are through older siblings.200

Meanwhile, as the ideology of freedom of expression continues to prevail, the

vicious circle keeps rotating: a handful of emotionally damaged “former children” are getting adored by millions of “teenagers”, who keep angrily reminiscing about “the multiple damages of the disappearance of loving, protective, attentive adults” in every commercial medium – while reaping a fortune from it.201 This has become the musical ethics of our time.

200 Kirsh, Steven J. (2010) -‐ Media and Youth: A Developmental Perspective, Wiley

Blackwell, Malden, MA, p. 199. 201 Eberstadt, Mary (2005) -‐ Eminem Is Right. Policy Review, Dec 2004/Jan2005, Issue

128, p.19-‐32.

Can Music Hurt? - Music and Violence

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