Musical Artivism

Ethnomusicologists all over the world have studied the relationship between culture and

music and have found that music has always been an integral part of humanity. Language and

music, both, are the building blocks of our society. Music is almost magical in the way that it can

flood into us, unlocking suppressed memories imprinted within melodies or invoking

uncontrollable laughter and tears. It seems fitting, then, that Nietzsche, an avid musical

philosopher throughout his life, has dubbed music the “language of emotions” in his essay Über

Musik. For many popular songs, the title alone conjures memories of lyrics, tunes and a certain

timeframe in the listener’s life, while other songs, instead of evoking the personal, have become

irreversibly tied to messages and images associated with certain social movements. Music can be

the vehicle to deliver those individuals, struggling with acceptance, through their hardest times

and, if they are truly lucky, to the doorstep of a community that has formed to support each other

through this shared experience. These communities often become the same ones that have

banded together over the last several decades to fight for equal rights and fair treatment within

our country. Music has fostered individual perseverance through hard times and created

collective inspiration. Music can even make us feel like we matter and that we are capable of

changing the world. People can more actively participate in political discussions through the use

of musical activism since music can cross more cultural boundaries than language alone, making

it crucial to the fight for equality in the face of sexism and intolerance.

The ritual of music includes the spaces in which it is performed, and the relationships

fostered through it, granting music the power to be universally influential. This, in turn, allows

music to easily travel between art and activism. This ability is evident in the frequent censorship

that some governments have placed upon music. Fortunately, here in America, our constitutional

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right to free speech allows for music to be a viable strategy for reaching people within a

marginalized community as well as those without; allowing the number of people who

sympathize to grow and reach critical mass to create change. It can also combat the inherent

power of governments that are often usurped by a majority group that uses the government’s

power to foment their own twisted set of beliefs. Musicking, as defined by Christopher Small in

his book Music of the Common Tongue, is not a thing but instead an activity that we engage in

including everyone from the composer to the performer to the listener. The concept of musicking

is invaluable to the study and application of music’s benefits to humanity. Examination of the

ways in which musicking has saved lives and supported movements will allow for a more

effective use of this tool. As Friedrich Nietzsche also remarks in Über Musik that “[a]ll qualities

are united in music: it can lift us up, it can be capricious, it can cheer us up and delight us, nay,

with its soft, melancholy tunes, it can even break the resistance of the toughest character” and it

has been used for that reason in both the personal and public spheres. Learned hatred is one of

those twisted beliefs that is often the toughest ideology to combat.

Music and musicking can advocate for the right to equal treatment and respect. Both

songs that have been purposefully created to make a statement and those that incidentally have

the same effect must be identified and analyzed so that they may be used to their full potential.

Once these songs have been surveyed the battle must then be fought on two fronts; the individual

and the public. Many people have been lost to the struggles of self-acceptance and bullying.

Non-compliance to normative gender structures have caused suicides and murders alike.

American society has been in the midst of a battle for gender and racial equality for a over a

century, and while we have made great strides in the last decade, we are not nearly close enough

to truly achieving those standards. Although the specifics are different in each of these themes,

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the underlying notions and difficulties are rather similar; mainly that no person should be

relegated to a sub-standard status due to any particular physical trait or personal life choice.

Diana Taylor defines “Artist-Activists” or “Artivists” in her 2016 book Performance as

people that “use performance to intervene in political contexts, struggles and debates” (147).

Performance weaves through the many different ways that art and performance intersect. Focus

is placed on the use of bodies as a tool to create meaning and at times, as the very space upon

which messages are displayed or given meaning. Taylor discusses Richard Schechner’s

distinction between “something that is performance… versus something that can be studied or

understood as performance” and while music is commonly associated with the concept of

performance, musical activism should be examined as performance (Taylor 27). This concept

combined with Schechner’s definition of performance as a “twice-behaved behavior” poses a

difficulty within the new wave of recordings, radio and music videos (Taylor 26). These

technological advancements have allowed one singular performance to reach a much greater

audience than those directly in attendance, changing the artists’ ability to impact social

movements. This change places more emphasis on the productions of music and music videos to

be a more thoughtful performance, allowing them to become more influential. Despite the value

of lyrics and music, a song cannot have any effect without first being brought to life by a

performer. While live performances last a finite amount of time, and must be repeated for any

additional impact, recorded performances are able to increase their range of influence because

they can be accessed any number of times by different people in different places. This added

accessibility has allowed musical artists to become more effective Artivists and consequently,

they have placed more effort into the production of their songs and videos.

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 There have been many great milestones in the fight for equality on the legal front; the

right to vote, eradication of Jim Crow laws and the recent legalization of same sex marriages on

a national level. Changing the minds and hearts of individuals to remove their conditioned hate,

however, is still a difficult and ongoing battle. This is where music becomes crucial. Since music

connects to emotions on a much deeper level, it can achieve goals that language alone cannot.

One recent example of the efficacy of this tactic is Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Same Love”,

released in 2012, that hit record success levels as the first song to explicitly embrace and

promote gay marriage that has made it into the Top 40 according to a New York Times article

published in 2013. The article quotes Macklemore to have said that “he composed the rap in

March 2012 after reading a news article about a teenager who committed suicide after being

bullied. He said he thought the epithets routinely heard in rap music might be partly to blame,

and that denying gay adults the right to marry might also contribute to despair among gay

teenagers” (qtd in McKinley Jr). This song that rose to such popularity was written in response to

an individual having lost their own battle of acceptance and this proves how valuable music can

be in this fight and how connected the individual and the public truly are. In the aftermath of

California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage, many people in other states began to form

initiatives to argue the unconstitutionality of this ban. Macklemore and Lewis personally offered

this song to the groups working to pass Referendum 74 in Washington state, where they are

from, which did succeed in legalizing gay marriage in their state. The song did not expand to the

urban hit that it is today until it started to be used as an anthem for the resistance during the

supreme court hearings against Proposition 8. Attention surrounding this song may have died

down, but Macklemore and Ryan Lewis made a national imprint upon the gay rights movement

with their song. Musicking, in this case, expands to involve activism that has affected the laws of

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our nation. As much as this legal win has had ripple effects all over the country, the song

cautions us to remember:

Some would rather die

Than be who they are

And a certificate on paper

Isn't gonna solve it all

But it's a damn good place to start

No law's gonna change us

We have to change us

and the fact remains that while Proposition 8 was overturned as unconstitutional, it was first

voted into place by a majority of the Californian voters that turned up at the polls in November

of 2008.

The launch of MTV in 1981 changed the face of musical experiences. As television’s

popularity increasingly called for artists to add a music video as part of a song’s performance,

disembodied voices on a radio or live performances were no longer limits to a song’s circle of

influence. Today’s internet obsessed public has driven this trend even further. P!nk’s “You’re

Fucking Perfect” has taken advantage of visual aids to display personal battles often experienced

by societal outcasts. P!nk pairs lyrics that call to “change the voices in your head, make them

like you instead” with a video of a little girl that never quite manages to fit in as she grows up.

Shots of a teary-eyed little girl covered in paint shies away from looking out of a window at

other children. The other children noticeably fit into society’s assigned gendered roles. During

this scene, P!nk sings “Mistaken, always second guessing, underestimated/Look, I'm still

around” reminding everyone that not fitting in doesn’t hinder success. The powerful message of

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this song is stopped in the middle with a poignant scene of the same little girl, now a woman, in a

bathtub with a razorblade in her hands, having carved “PERFECT” into her arm. She drops the

razorblade onto the ground to P!nk’s spoken lyrics:

Done looking for the critics 'cause there everywhere

They don't like my jeans, they don't get my hair

Exchange ourselves and we do it all the time

Why do we do that, why do I do that?

Why do I do that?

The uncertainty of the silent moment is broken when the girl gets up with a determined air. She

cuts her hair and embraces her own unique creativity and personality by painting a self-portrait.

She smiles for the first time in the video and the emotional progression begins to gain a

triumphant air. Ultimately the song ends with our character mouthing the line “You are perfect to

me” to her own sleeping daughter. P!nk alludes to the suicides committed by disenfranchised

individuals, often teenagers, with the current established binary gender system. Language alone

is an inefficient tactic to grasping the hearts of those individuals that feel so forlorn. Music’s

efficacy lies in access to both the mind and the heart. “You’re Fucking Perfect” provides a

relatable heroine that permits any listener to believe that they too can overcome their isolation

and achieve happiness and success.

These two songs place P!nk, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis squarely into Diana Taylor’s

definition of Artivists since these two songs were specifically written with a political purpose.

While “Same Love” is inspired by the story of an individual, it was used to impact the whole

country. With an opposite tactic, P!nk uses her public platform to reach the individual. Not all

politically relevant songs were intended to be that way but have been appropriated for that

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objective, nonetheless. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” is a great example of this occurrence as

it has become symbolic of the gay and feminist equality movements though it was not intended

to. The song now invokes the image of a wonderfully bedazzled Drag Queen emoting every lip-

synced line and pouring their heart out. It has become iconic in the journey to proclaim strength

and resolution through any adversity faced by men and women grappling with the probability of

being denigrated for outwardly expressing who they feel they are on the inside. The song

describes a story of finding one’s personal strength in the aftermath of a rough breakup, yet, it

has taken on a life of its own, since its release in October of 1978. In 2015, it was even

recognized by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or artistically significant" and

was selected to be preserved in the National Recording Registry.

The American public has become familiarized with popular images of bedazzled drag

queens through film, music videos and television shows. LGBTQI communities, that were once

an underground subculture, have now become better known in mainstream culture. The 1991

American documentary Paris is Burning by Jeannie Livingston, has had a lot of influence in this

shift. While the film faced its own set of criticisms, it exhibited late 80’s “Ball Culture” and the

“House System” in New York’s African American, Latino, transgender and gay communities.

Contestants created outfits to fit multiple different themes or categories then they would “walk”

to music, much like a fashion runway, to be judged on clothing, dancing ability or the “realness”

of their performance. Many categories included an attempt to “pass” as a heterosexual man or

woman, a necessary skill fostered in the face of the discrimination and violence that these groups

often encountered. Dorian Corey, when being interviewed about “realness” as a category for the

balls says that “When they're undetectable and they can walk out of that ballroom into the

sunlight and onto the subway and get home, and still have all their clothes and no blood running

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off their bodies- those are the femme realness queens” which demonstrates the drive behind the

competitive spirit of the events. Balls may bear an element of fun, but the fearful reality of most

underclass communities is present as well. Within the height of the hysteria surrounding the

AIDS epidemic, many of the individuals in these communities died from attacks or disease.

Many transgendered individuals that are ousted or shunned for being who they are and could not

hold regular jobs, so they often resorted to prostitution. This is the case of saddest moment in the

film is when the death of Venus Xtravaganza is revealed. She was found dead in a motel room

and it is implied that her means of making money was the cause of her death. The real-world

consequences of being gay or transsexual in America during this time is made all too real.

The film explored the inner workings and drama of the balls and the individuals that

participated in them. Houses or families are micro-groups within the larger community of like-

minded people adopting each other to create support systems. Coming out as gay often ousted

people from their biological families but these communities gave them a sense of inclusivity,

familial validation and devoted friendship. Dancing and music became a major part of

competition in these balls and they were also used to settle ties with head to head dance-offs.

Voguing, a form of dance that originated in balls, is a style of dance that includes elaborate hand

gestures and near gymnastic levels of contortioning. Stereotypical poses of supermodels being

photographed for magazines are invoked, like its namesake, the magazine Vogue. The dance was

first exposed from the underground ball scenes by Madonna’s 1990 song with the same title. In a

2014 interview with Vogue magazine, Madonna said that she was at a New York club when she

met a couple of members of the Xtravaganza house that frequented the club and when she saw

them dancing she was “blown away” by them and wrote the song “Vogue” about the dance

thereafter (Johnson). She felt that it was fitting that they would be part of the performance in the

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music video and recruited Jose and Luis Xtravaganza to go on her Blond Ambition tour

(Hluchy). Paris is Burning, released a year later, gave people a much more in-depth view and

explanation of the culture, including videos of and interviews with the Xtravaganza members and

Willi Ninja, arguable one of the most recognizable faces in vogue dancing today, that were also

featured in the “Vogue” music video. Controversy has surrounded Madonna with several of the

songs she released around this time and “Vogue” was no exception. Madonna was credited by

many for rocketing voguing as well as house and electronic dance music, previously mostly

confined to clubs and underground gay scenes like the balls, into the mainstream and on to the

charts. She was an outspoken advocate for AIDS research and care for afflicted individuals

during a time when it was not popular to do so. Many drag queens over the years have heralded

her as an icon and in 1999 at the VMA awards, several drag queens paid tribute to her career by

dressing up in outfits inspired by those she had worn in music videos over the years. This

positive image and support has not halted the criticisms she has also received. Madonna has been

an Artivist in her own right even if the motives behind her work have been questioned.

Madonna and her work has begun to be compared with that of current pop and hip-hop

star Beyoncé. Many have noted similarities between Beyoncé’s 2013 music video for her song

“Haunted” with Madonna’s “Justify My Love”. Beyoncé wears a black pinstriped suit with short

cropped blond hair reminiscent of Madonna’s style. They both arrive at a hotel and as they walk

down the hallway, the camera pans past rooms showing snippets of individuals in that room. In

“Justify My Love”, Madonna walks down the hallway looking tired and disoriented. The people

in the room are shown engaging in all manners of non-heterogeneric sexual behavior. The

images play on sadomasochism, homosexuality, bisexuality, voyeurism: the images give a

general sense of sexual deviancy. Madonna’s character participates in a sexual fling with a man

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and a woman dressed in drag as a man. In the end, Madonna seems revitalized by her encounter

and runs out of the hotel smiling and laughing. This video has received similar criticisms of

exploitation and cultural appropriation as the song “Vogue”. Beyoncé’s music video for

“Haunted” similarly has her walking into a hotel although her character is poised and resolute.

As she walks down the hallway, the views into the rooms she passes include men wearing vests

with painted white faces and all black eyes. There are other characters in leather masks, also

invoking sexually deviant behavior, and as the song progresses, she is surrounded by lace-clad

dancers as she herself changes into a lacy lingerie outfit, similar to the one that Madonna wears.

There are those that argue the similarities between the videos to be Beyoncé calling out

Madonna’s shortcomings and cultural blind spots while others would argue that it is a tribute.

Criticism of Madonna’s activism through her music raises the question of who has the

right to voice the complexities or concerns of any culture or group. As can be expected, after

recognition of oppression, many people call for the repayment for the wrongs that the oppressed

group has experienced. While this can produce some great results and circumstances, it can also

become excessively weighted to the other side causing resentment. Today’s politically correct

culture is a result of this effect. American society has attempted to right its wrongs by banning

certain words from acceptable vocabulary. A secondary effect has been criticism of anyone that

speaks out for a subjugated portion of society that does not have firsthand experience by being a

member of that group. These advocates are often labeled arrogant or elitist. At times, even

people that do have the first hand or at the very least second-hand experience are shunned for

speaking on behalf of the oppressed group so long as they are not direct members of it. This

could include men that speak for women, a white person that speaks for a black person, or a cis

straight woman speaking out for gay and transgendered men. Although Madonna is primarily

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criticized for financially benefitting from her music, she is also heavily criticized for representing

a subgroup that she did not know, first-hand, what they are going through. The main argument

for this dogma is that speaking for someone else implies that they are incapable of speaking for

themselves. While it is true that lacking a personal experience may cause for a misrepresentation

or a misunderstanding, no one should be shunned for trying to bring light upon the hardship of

others, regardless of their motivations, if they are able to help the condition of that subgroup or

subculture.

Musicians have a unique platform granted to them by their popularity. For those few that

take the risk to their financial status and their careers, giving a voice to the unheard can be a

powerful form of Artivism. Our nation has had a long history of people that have spoken out for

societal subgroups that they were not part of. A few examples include Thomas Paine in 1775 and

Frederick Douglass in 1848, considered to be early profeminists having used their own political

platforms to fight for women’s rights and equality (Kimmel and Mosmiller 63, 211). Today there

is a fine line between: those who have the right to say something and those who would be

criticized for saying the same thing. Men still have the privilege of being accepted and listened to

in this arena while women are still heavily criticized. Bono has been knighted for speaking up on

behalf of third world countries while Madonna has received criticism for decades of outspoken

support for gay and transgendered men, providing evidence of this paradoxical belief.

Another example of both our double standard and politically correct restrictions is the

popularity and acceptance of the drag icon RuPaul Charles. Since the 1990s, drag has become

even more trendy and mainstream with TV shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, now in its ninth

season. RuPaul was shot into drag queen stardom by the popularity of his song “Supermodel

(You Better Work)” released in 1993. RuPaul was part of the ball scene in the 80s and 90s and

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was a staple of New York’s nightclub scene, so much so that J.J. Abrams is considering a

dramedy based on RuPaul’s extensive experiences there (Kornhaber). RuPaul has said that his

newest album titled American is a political statement that a black gay drag queen is as American

as anyone. The album’s titular song “American” reminds everyone that he is “American, just like

you too” then he calls other Americans to action with the verse:

You-ou-ou, you got the right

Stand up for yourself, we've just begun to fight

Ain't no way we're going back in time

Forward to the future baby, yours and mine

He has always been an outspoken Artivist and is known for deejaying fundraising events to raise

money for groups supporting AIDS research and institutions like Planned Parenthood. In a 2017

interview with Spencer Kornhaber of Atlantic Magazine he recalls a moment in which the

producers of RuPaul’s Drag Race asked him if he would be willing to teach the show’s host how

to look and act like a supermodel and he responded by saying “I’m not doing drag to give you

makeup tips. This has always been a political statement” and he followed this by saying that

“[f]ollowing your heart is the most political thing you can do” (qtd by Kornhaber). As a long

standing Artivist, RuPaul has always been focused on politics and he has become even more so

since the election of President Trump. The advertisements for the latest season has the tagline

“drastic times call for dragstic measures” highlighting the increased political tension that

America’s famous drag queens have become outspoken about. RuPaul says that he has always

approached drag as “punk rock, an instrument of resistance” (qtd by Kornhaber).

Both RuPaul and Madonna have been outspoken political Artivists on the same cause that

has commercially benefitted their personal work, but one has received much more criticism than

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the other. The payoffs of successful political activism can be monumental, regardless of the risks

and the criticisms. Congressman John Conyers and Senator Edward Brooke introduced a bill to

make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday shortly after his death. The bill languished

Congress for over a decade, however, before being voted upon in 1979 where it fell short by five

votes. In response to this failing Stevie Wonder wrote and released the song “Happy Birthday” in

1980. Wonder went on tour, thereafter, with appearances by other musicians like Michael

Jackson to bolster support for the cause. After his 1980 tour that feature this and other songs to

raise awareness and support for both the civil rights cause and the battle for the holiday, Wonder

hosted the Rally for Peace Press Conference in 1981. In this rally, he spoke about the platform

that artists have to fight for equality by saying “[a]s an artist, my purpose is to communicate the

message that can better improve the lives of all of us” (qtd by Baram). Due to Wonders’ efforts

and the popular support he was able to raise for the holiday, Reagan signed a bill on November

2nd of 1983 making the holiday official, though it was not celebrated until January of 1986.

While music provides a great platform that has often been successful, it is not a risk-free

endeavor. Many artists have used their platform at the loss of their livelihood, careers and even

their lives. Musicking and protests are seen to have connections in countless circumstances. Our

modern technological advancements have given us access to more cultures than those within our

quotidian livies. Though many here in America are familiar with the likes of those already

named and many more like Nina Simone or Joan Baez, as well as specific protest songs that have

become known nationwide spanning from “Yankee Doodle” to “Fuck the Police,” the use of

music as a tool for activism is entrenched within all humanity. On June 25th of 1998, on an

eastern mountain road of Algeria, Lounès Matoub was killed in his car by a spray of bullets from

masked gunmen. The cause of his assassination was his twenty-year career as a musical Artivist.

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Matoub’s home country of Algeria, in the historic region of Kabylie, rejected Islam as a colonial

religion imposed by Arabs. In school, they were being taught to speak Arabic instead of their

native Berber. As a child he skipped his Arab classes in protest. He began to sing at the age of

fourteen and immediately used his talent to gain him a platform against colonial forces. Over his

career, he wrote songs like “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Great” in which he sarcastically sung

about Islamic prayer practices as a satirical commentary on the religion. Another famous song is

“Monsieur le Président” or “Mister President” where he sings in French to “address you with a

borrowed language, to tell you, simply and clearly, that the state has never been the homeland”

and he directly addresses his President and government for the “metaphysical, mystical, juridical,

political abstraction of the country”. Matoub wanted democracy, secularism and freedom of

speech and for the crime of speaking out on behalf of these ideas, he was killed.

Through musicking, activism is propelled to a unique platform whose power is fueled by

the popularity that gives music its power. We are weaved together from individuals to a

collective consciousness whose conscience can be tapped into through the emotional pulls of

music. Patriotic lyrics have given nations a sense of identity and they have been used to

invigorate the masses during war as well as in protests. Many songs seem bubbly and fun to

disguise the underlying message; a dog-whistle to marginalized people. Musical philosophy is

not a new concept in the arena of human thought, but its uses and benefits, especially within

activism, have not been explored well enough. Intolerance also exists through music, but analysis

of these songs can provide insight into the source of hatred so that we can better combat it.

Music is the stepping stone between the mainstream and the marginalized making it instrumental

in fomenting a society that endows equality to all of its members.

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 Works Cited

Baram, Marcus. “How Stevie Wonder Helped Create Martin Luther King Day.” Cuepoint, 18

Jan. 2015, medium.com/cuepoint/how-stevie-wonder-helped-create-martin-luther-king-

day-807451a78664.

Charles, RuPaul. “American.” RuCo, 21 Mar. 2016.

Hluchy, Patricia. “The World Is Voguing.” Mclean's, vol. 104, no. 19, 13 May 1991.

Johnson, Noah. “Exclusive: Madonna Talks Art, Death, Drugs, and More.” Vogue, 1 Dec. 2014,

www.vogue.com/article/madonna-interview-magazine-cover.

Kimmel, Michael S., and Thomas E. Mosmiller. “Book Reviews: Against the Tide.” Beacon

Press, vol. 9, no. 1, 1992, doi:10.1177/088610999400900114.

Kornhaber, Spencer. “Why Drag Is the Ultimate Retort to Trump.” The Atlantic, June 2017,

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/rupaul-gets-political/524529/.

Lewis, Ryan, et al. “Same Love.” Macklemore LLC, Feb. 2012.

Livingston, Jennie. Paris Is Burning. Off White Productions, 1990.

Matoub, Lounès. “Allahu Akbar.” Mar. 1988

Matoub, Lounès. “Monsieur le Président” Feb. 1984

McKinley Jr., James C. “Stars Align for a Gay Marriage Anthem.” The New York Times, The

New York Times, 30 June 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/arts/music/stars-align-

for-a-gay-marriage-anthem.html.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Über Musik.” The Nietzsche Channel: From My Life. 1858., 17 Sept.

2012, www.thenietzschechannel.com/works-unpub/youth/preview/1858-fml-

preview.htm.

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P!nk. “You’re Fucking Perfect (Explicit Version).” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Jan. 2011,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocDlOD1Hw9k.

Small, Christopher. Music of the Common Tongue. University Press of New England, 1998.

Taylor, Diana. Performance. Translated by Abigail Levine, Duke University Press, 2016.

Wonder, Stevie. “Happy Birthday.” Motown, 1980.Works Cited

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