All Shook Up: Music, Passion and Politics

by Carson Holloway

In the 15 years since Tipper Gore & Frank Zappa feuded over raunchy lyrics, a furious debate has raged over popular music's effect on character. Shattering the assumptions of pop music's critics & defenders alike, Carson Holloway shows that music is both more dangerous & beneficial than thought. Conservative complaints about popular music focus on lyrics alone, appealing only to public decency & safety. Liberals, swift to the defense of any self-expression, simultaneously celebrate rock's liberating ethos & deny its cultural influence. Neither side appreciates the true power of music or is willing to examine its own musical tastes. Previous ages weren't as naive as our own. Plato & Aristotle, who saw that music can awaken the soul to reason or inflame it with passion, insisted on the cultivation of temperance thru musical education. Rousseau & Nietzsche likewise recognized music's power, tho modern prophets of passion encouraged precisely the sort of music the ancients deplored. The curious exception to this political concern with music is found in the intervening Enlightenment--the source of American politics. In their rejection of the classical notion of "statecraft as soulcraft," Locke & contemporaries blinded themselves to the influence of culture on citizens' character. Only in recent years, as pop fare has reached depraved extremes, have some Americans--most famously Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind--begun to worry about music's destructive potential. Bloom looked beyond lyrics to the music itself, but in his elitism failed to consider music's full moral influence. Holloway, by contrast, is sympathetic to pop's appeal. His well-rounded study compels us to take all music seriously. What he proposes--a rediscovery of Plato & Aristotle's musical wisdom--will completely change the way we think about music.

Genres: Music

232 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2000

About the author

Carson L. Holloway teaches political science at the U of Nebraska & was a trustee of Shimer College & a visiting fellow at Princeton's James Madison Program. He's recipient of a John M. Olin Foundation faculty fellowship & of grants from the H.B. Earhart* & Wm E. Simon Foundations. He's a member of the Family Research Council, American Inst for History Education, CatholicVote.org & Board Member of NHE-PAC (home educators) & director of The Assn for the Study of Free Institutions (freestudies.org). He's contributed articles to The National Review, Catholic Social Science Review & The Witherspoon Inst. [*Earhart's provided funding to European organisations promoting right-wing/neoliberal agendas. Regular recipients include the Inst of Economic Affairs think-tank & the Atlanticist Centre for Strategic Studies at the Univ of Reading headed by former Reagan official Colin S. Gray.]

Reviews

[Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought it was just OK.