Thursday 24th March, 2011, 5.00pm
Seminar Room 4, Room No. 119, First Floor, New Arts Building

Music Terror and 9/11

Seminar by
Professor John Anderson, Head of School of IR, University of St Andrews

Bio:

Professor John Anderson took three degrees as the LSE before undertaking post-doctoral research at Moscow State University. His primary research interests encompass Soviet and post-Soviet politics, and the relationship of religion and politics. He taught at LSE, Westminster and Edinburgh universities before coming to St Andrews in 1991, and he is currently head of the School of International Relations. His five single authored books are: Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and the Successor States (CUP, 1994), The International Politics of Central Asia (MUP, 1997), Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia’s Island of Democracy? (1999), Religious Liberty in Transitional Societies – The Politics of Religion (CUP, 2003), & Christianity and Democratisation: From Pious Subjects to Critical Participants (MUP, 2009). He is currently research various topics relating to the politics of global Christianity. He has an interest in music and politics, on which he has given a couple of papers focusing mostly on opera, and finds an escape from academic life in watching ice hockey!


Abstract:

This paper represents an amateur’s take on some musical responses to terror and to 9/11 in particular, rather than a sophisticated cultural critique. It offers some general reflections and musical illustrations (assuming the technology works) on the relationship between music and politics, from Plato to contemporary concerns about the corrupting influence of music, and notes the reflective approach to political violence evident in works by Stephen Sondheim and John Adams, before turning to the post 9/11 responses. Difference responses are noted from what might called ‘kiss-ass patriotism’ evident in the work of country singers like Toby Keith or Darryl Worley, but also in some rap musicians, to the more ‘critical patriotism’ of Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle. Along the way it touches on the censorship issue, Karl Rove’s brief intervention, the problem of memorial music, and the change in attitude consequent upon the invasion of Iraq. In conclusion it is noted that there is ‘other music’, and the final question is ‘so what’?