Arts: Music hath charms, but can it save the world?

Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun 


Nathan Willett (L) of Cold War Kids performs during the 2009 Lollapalooza music festival at Grant Park on August 9, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois.

(Photo by Jeff Gentner/Getty Images) /


VANCOUVER — Popular music and culture are rife with religious symbolism and public displays of social activism, but you have to look hard to find a legitimate spiritual message in the music or the actions of the stars.

The Beatles travelled to India in their search for meaning, but their studies with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ended badly and little if any of his teachings infused their music (though the sitar was used extensively on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, so it wasn’t a total waste of time).

To find a band that does have a spiritual message, look to U2.

Bono and the Edge successfully straddle a wide gulf, making secular rock as Christians rather than musicians making Christian rock, which is almost entirely religious in content.

A handful of churches around the world teach Christianity through U2’s lyrics in a program called U2charist, intended to attract younger people to the teachings of the Christian church.

U2 rose to global prominence at Sir Bob Geldolf’s ambitious Live Aid concert to aid famine victims in Ethiopia. The group has been unstinting in its support for social causes both in action and in lyrical content.

While U2 weaves the band’s Christian philosophy subtly into its music, others artists do not.

How to explain the horrorcore circus barkers of Insane Clown Posse declaring their devotion to God or the existential ramblings of Motorhead’s Ace of Spades?

Madonna and Marilyn Manson extensively use religious symbolism in their videos and performances. Which would you judge to be the more spiritual person?

Manson has spoken extensively about his religious upbringing and says he was inspired — not by the modern Christian interpretation of Jesus’ message — but by His status as an outcast and a rebel to start his infamous rock band.

The Beautiful People was Manson’s response to attending a Hollywood party that he thought oozed insincerity, hypocrisy and vacant celebrity, an experience that could well have led Jesus to a similar outburst.

Though his world view tends to the eccentric, Manson (real name Brian Warner) is a product of Christian education and a student of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, naturalist Charles Darwin and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. He also has an impressive knowledge of Kabbalah, which brings us back to Madonna, an avowed practitioner of the obscure branch of mystical Judaism.

The Material Mom is a vocal critic of the Vatican, but pens spiritual children’s books in her spare time, presumably when she isn’t posing for picture books about sex and squirming around in a wedding dress on a music video set.

How is a sane person to parse the seemingly deranged spiritual messages delivered by the music world?

“Why would we expect that pop stars and celebrities are authorities on spiritualism, religion and political activism?” countered Simon Fraser University communications professor Martin Laba. “I don’t.”

Celebrities who dabble in spiritual issues only serve to trivialize the quest, according to Laba. “It’s what I call the malaise of celebrity.”

Much of secular pop music is built on a chassis provided by black R&B and gospel artists steeped in the church music of their communities and the musical forms, dance and spirited preaching that were the theatre of the Afro-American Christian church service.

Ray Charles and Sam Cooke came straight out of that gospel tradition, though they dropped most of the spiritual content from their original compositions.

Musical expression has a capacity for good, but not as practised by the pop stars of today, Laba said.

“The message of rock music is more or less antithetical to spirituality,” he said.

While large-scale fundraising concerts can pull together cash to help out with an extreme crisis such as the aftermath of the tsunami that flattened many towns and villages around the Indian Ocean in December 2004, aid concerts in general fail the karma test.

Buying a concert ticket is not the same as effecting social change, argued Laba. “It’s the notion that you can go shopping to save the world.”

It’s all in how you go about it.

Cultural expression and popular music play an important role in social and political movements, as a binding agent.

“Change comes from informed, engaged, participating citizens,” said Laba, who has seen that power up close in his development field work in Ghana.

Music is a metaphorical gathering place for communities in Africa today just as it was for African-Americans from the emancipation in the 1860s right through to the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Aid concerts, he contends, do little beyond alerting people to an issue they might not otherwise have heard about or understood.

Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope raised $5 million, but may have helped steer the public’s attention away from the developing world’s other pressing concerns and opportunities for long-term good.

In fact, they may do more harm than good because they are built on a flawed model of international development.

African-born scholar Dambisa Moyo argues that only genuine economic integration with the developed economies of the world will help Africa and that aid, whether it comes from governments or the charitable foundations favoured by the stars, has increased corruption while barely making a dent in poverty.

Canada spent $440 million over 45 years on development aid in the African nation of Malawi, even opening a new embassy five years ago. That embassy closed a few months ago and most of the aid money was diverted.

Africa is out of vogue with governments and aid concerts.

Laba said his African colleagues were seriously disheartened by the world’s response to the 2004 tsunami, lamenting that attention would be diverted from long-term efforts to improve conditions for people in Africa.

Worse, a survey by Oxfam has since revealed that much of the money for tsunami relief in Aceh, Indonesia, went to higher income people. In Sri Lanka, government corruption and customs charges on heavy equipment and vehicles brought in by Oxfam siphoned off millions of dollars. Karma, go poof!

In the modern era, folk singers such as Pete Seeger and gospil singers such as Sam Cooke get the most karma points for commitment to social change. Whether it be rallying striking miners in a quest for better working conditions or galvanizing public sentiment against the Vietnam War and fuelling civil rights marches, folk music tells the tale of the Everyman and his struggle against oppression.

Simple singable songs that require no more accompaniment than clapping hands or a single guitar make folk as portable as it gets and that counts when you need to inspire small groups. It has worked as well in North America as it does today in Africa and the rest of the developing world.

Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Individual action matters. Celebrities, not so much. Pop stars can do some good in the world, but let’s not depend on them.


