Media Music Can NOT Be Unpolitical

Music has always been political. From Shostakovich with his hidden regime critizism, to propaganda march music or political songs, it has been a vehicle for political standpoints over centuries.

However, there were also a lot of composers who chose to create music as an absolute art without any political implications but simply for the esthetic and/or rational value.

If you write music out of any audiovisual context, you can still approach music today without any political implication but even there it is becoming more tricky.

For media composers however, it is increasingly tricky to not be political. And I don't necessarily mean taking sides in a traditional political way but being sensitive about cultural and sociological topics.

But let's maybe back up a bit. If you have been following the "classical music world" over the last year, there has been a controversal debate, mainly started by musicologist Philip Ewell. He posed the thesis that the classical musical literature as well as the theoretical approach is based almost exclusively on 18th/19th century white male composers from central and western Europe. The theoretical approach we learn in university is incredibly eurocentric and therefore racist. I can't explain this all in detail in this article but I urge you to watch Adam Neely's Video on this topic where he also interviews Philip Ewell.

The discussion and debate about this has been going on for about a year now, with both sides having valid arguments. And no matter where you stand in this debate, its existance shows that we live in times that are considerably different than even a decade ago.

It is often incredibly cringy to watch TV shows from the 90s or 2000s and regularly observe how carelessly they dealt with sexism, racism, homophobia etc. But then again, these topics were not as sensitive in these times. And I can understand how people complain about how complicated these things have become to be constantly cautious of approaching sensitive topics properly.

But where in all this is media music and why is it political as I stated at the beginning? As I'm most familiar with Williams' body of work (and his career spanning so many decades) let me point out two instances where we can clearly see how times have changed and how even a highly educated person like Williams made creative choices that would not be possible today anymore without a public outcry.

I have been looking to find that scene on Youtube but couldn't get hold of it so let me describe to you what is going on. In Jaws 2 (1978), there is a scene at the beach. The camera pans over the crowd but also captures a few close up shots of butts of large women. Williams chose to score these shots with a few Tuba notes. From the 1978 perspective, this was a fun and cheeky remark (if not particularly funny) but from the 2021 perspective it is sexist and additionally body shaming. We have to factor in that the scene was already designed in a way that the close ups were clearly set out to be emphasized by the music so it was probably a mutual "Do something fun with the music on these shots" decisions. Yet, something like this would not be possible today anymore.

The second example is from 1997 when Williams scored ROSEWOOD BURNING. The score has recently been re-issued as a complete release from LALAND RECORDS and on its own is phenomenally well written but the catch is the context. The movie deals exclusively with racism towards blacks in the US. The score is centered around specifically written gospel songs in the tradition of black gospel songs, sung by a black choir and using musical tropes and vocabulary from the black musical tradition. While Williams captures that idiom very well in his score, the decision to have that movie scored by a "white old man" would not be possible today anymore and would be considered as cultural appropriation.

And it is not as if Williams got into this job by accident but he specifically "fought for it". In an interview, he stated that the director was reluctant of hiring Williams questioning whether he would be able to deliver the right tone and idiom for it. Williams replied that he had written a lot of worship arrangements in his younger years knowing how they work and how to write them which eventually persuaded the director. But again, someone like Williams scoring a movie like this and using the musical idiom of the black culture is unthinkable nowadays.

From my own experience, I think I mentioned that story already in another post but a few years ago a client asked me to use "jungle drums" on a scene where a plane flew over a rain forest showing an indigenous settlement and only with a lot of persuading I could convince him to not go this way.

So yes, times have become more complicated and these issues have become more sensitive. It of course takes away from the carelessness and impulsive creativity of just approaching a musical situation intuitively. And I have to admit, I would be incredibly tempted to also dive into the idiom of writing music with a black cultural idiom just to broaden my horizon and figure out how this works but I would never dare to seriously score something that way which of course is creatively limiting.

I can see how this development has both positive and negative consequences for the life as a media composer and everybody needs to figure out on their own which of the sides they feel outweighs the other, but it is not possible anymore in today's time to score something without thinking about what sociological or political implications the scoring approach that you're just taking has.

So as a bottom line, we have to adjust to the times that we live in. Arguments like "but composer x has done that in a score 15 years ago, so I can do it, too" are not a good idea to make decisions on.

I personally feel that the end of this debate is not reached yet and I also have not completely made up my mind which is right way. The chance of touching matters of a marginalized social group is becoming increasingly higher and the "creative wiggle room" increasingly smaller. It is in my opinion absolutely correct to be aware of these matters but at the same time it limits the possibilities and creative freedom if at every turn you have to question whether you are touching a sensitive topic with what you're doing or whether scoring that scene with this particular music is a cultural appropriation or could create associations that touch marginalized groups.

I would be interested in your standpoints in these regards so let me know in the comments below.