World Music and Activism Since the End of History [sic]

Abstract

While the decline of protest music in the U.S. has often been noted, a global perspective reveals that progressive, activist protest musics occupied lively niches in many music cultures worldwide (e.g., of Jamaica, India, Spain, Latin America) during similar periods, roughly the 1950s to the 1980s. While on one level these music movements were embedded in particular socio-political movements, on a broader level they reflected an ardent commitment to the secular universalist ideals of the Enlightenment. The subsequent dramatic decline of all these protest musics—roughly since Fukuyama’s much-debated "end of history"—reflects a broader transformation of the global political climate. This transformation has been interpreted from diverse perspectives, and with varying degrees of optimism or pessimism. It has had both salutary aspects—notably the spread of democracies—and dismaying ones, notably the decline of Enlightenment metanarratives and their replacement by militant, intolerant, chauvinistic neo-tribalisms, which have found their own passionate expression in music. In this essay, I suggest that the decline was part of a much broader change in global culture, and that a cross-cultural exploration of the parallel trajectories of diverse political song movements can enrich our understanding of the global socio-political climate as a whole. In presenting my case I draw from various music scenes outside the Euro-American mainstream, since the parallels between them so dramatically highlight the global nature of the cultural transformation. In looking at diverse international music scenes over a period of some three decades, my treatment is perforce cursory rather than detailed, but I contend that more extensive examination of the genres in question would reinforce rather than undermine my arguments. In this article, I also restrict my focus to music genres that are explicitly allied—primarily via their song lyrics—to socio-political movements. Well aware of the dangers of indulging in a mere exercise in nostalgia, I focus on tangibly documentable musical developments, and offer interpretations as to the broader factors that have collectively enervated them.