It’s really an unavoidable subject, one that has come up time and again in various ways: what exactly is the power of rock, or any music for that matter, for causing harm or for promoting evil? In particular, what is the effect of all these references to Satan in the lyrics and imagery of so much rock music? And if music can be an uplifting spiritual influence in the context of religious ceremonies, can it have a detrimental effect outside of that context?
If we consider that certain music has beneficial qualities–and indeed, we know that some music is used clinically in music therapy to treat psychological and physical ailments–then certainly it would seem logical that some music can have detrimental qualities–that it can produce harmful psychological and physical effects. So, we should keep this in mind as we proceed through our analysis.
Many of us are aware that various new types of music for young people have been referred to as the work of the devil for almost 100 years now–starting back when jazz was considered to be a scourge by some. This go-to complaint goes back much, much further than that, however. A review of that history in Western Christian culture will help give us some insight into this tendency.
Medieval wandering minstrels, with their secular music were viewed by the pious as having a pernicious influence at best—patently pagan at worst. The church father Tertullian warned the faithful way back in the 2nd century that “musical concerts with viol and lute” belong to the Roman gods, and for that reason “must be the object of loathing and aversion.” Music, or the use of musical instruments outside of the voice, was banned entirely at various times for hundreds of years afterwards. Saint Augustine took the position that since the beauty of even worship music could cause him to be swept up in the experience and forget God, he should probably err on the side of caution and avoid music and help keep it out of church. Bruno Carthis went so far as to say that God “has no more need of music than He has of human sacrifice.”
Once the longstanding heebee jeebies about the lingering influence of Roman culture started to subside, however, people started remembering the many exhortations in the Bible to sing and make music for God, which appear over and over again in the Old Testament. St. Basil helped turn things around by pointing out how worship music helped ingrain the message of the gospel. Over the next thousand years, music grew in the church from simple plainchants that were standardized and spread throughout Europe with remarkable consistency to a healthy competition for experimenting with more harmonic complexity and breadth of expression, eventually spilling out of the church and forming the Western European classical music tradition.
So, we see that there has been a “fear of music” for quite a long time in Western culture, and looking back over the last 100 years we can see this coming through in the recurring tendency—found especially in the older, more conservative people—to label anything new, rowdy, and difficult to comprehend as a product of evil forces. But, on the other hand, we’ve seen since the 1970s that there have been many musicians and bands who have consciously projected an image—and in some cases emblazoned themselves in that imagery—that is dark, grotesque, or satanic. Surely this proves some of those naysayers right, does it not?
These questions have taken on great importance for me personally over the years. When I was a teenager on a church youth group mission to Myrtle Beach, we were lectured by a guest speaker about how ALL rock music was satanic, because supposedly pretty much all the musicians were putting blatant or secret evil messages into their music, and because the very nature of the electrical sounds used and the beating of the drums was intrinsically harmful and worked aggressive against spiritual pursuits. Of course, I rejected this idea as preposterous–that even “All You Need Is Love” was somehow a force of evil hacking away at the goodness in the world—and I would later conclude that these types of blanket denunciations do far more harm than good by making people less receptive to the possibility that some music in some contexts can possibly be harmful to some people in some situations. Over the years of my strange personal journey in music and philosophy, this question of whether music can cause harm has popped up again and again, and I felt compelled to make a thorough evaluation of it, both from the perspective of the objective influence of sound vibrations as well as from the subjective experience of a listener responding to the instrumental and lyrical context of music, as well the influence of the personal lives of the artists themselves.
First of all, we should consider the critical idea that music is an art form, and so there is a need to understand music beyond its face value. There are many evil, or tragic, figures in opera, for instance. Mozart’s Don Giovanni depicts a repugnant womanizer who gets away with the most horrible abuses, and whose consequences come in the form of a tormented afterlife. Shakespeare’s plays similarly have many violent acts in them. We understand that these are depictions of things in the world, and they are being presented to tell a story. We aren’t fooled into thinking that Don Giovanni promotes depraved deceptions for sexual conquests, just because the lead character is given many opportunities to express his low qualities and motivations. Filmmakers who depict violent characters are not condoning such behavior either. They are painting pictures, for us to observe and contemplate.
Well, what is a song if not a miniature story? Sure, the “voice,” or character, being expressed through many rock songs is not far off from the singer’s own personal views–and indeed they may be intended to be bare-bones personal expressions of the singer (just throw a dart at the catalog of John Lennon songs, for example, and you’ll easily find great examples of this)–but many times the singer is taking on some type of character in order to tell a story from a non-personal perspective.
When Guns ‘n Roses sang I wanna watch you bleed, they weren’t expressing a personal, sadistic view that they held, but were rather giving voice to a character who represents certain people in society who actually do take some form of pleasure in seeing other people suffer, or who are callously indifferent to the suffering that others experience as a result of their actions. On a similar but deeper vein, when the Grateful Dead sang one of their most famous lines A friend of the devil is a friend of mine, they were telling a classic outlaw story through poetry that has many different interpretations, and speaks to us on multiple levels—none of which are the face-value interpretation that someone can make by taking that single phrase out of context.
One prime example of this type of giving voice to a character is the Rolling Stones song “Sympathy for the Devil.” Now, just the title alone is enough to raise the ire of some people. “Oh, the Rolling Stones want us to have sympathy for the Devil.” No. Of course not. The song is about how the devil, as this symbol of that force which gives impetus to people to do evil things, tries to elicit our sympathy in subtle and tricky ways. Evil hides in respectability, but it commits atrocities, and confusion is the key tool that evil uses to trick people into committing or supporting evil acts. So, sure, there’s plenty of evil out there for us to see, but perhaps the most dangerous evil for any given individual is the subtle one they haven’t even detected yet that broods in their own internal confusion.
So, this is deep, religious, philosophical stuff here, that the Rolling Stones gave us. But yet, how easy would it be to take a shallow view and just say that Mick Jagger is relishing all these acts of evil that have been committed over time, and is encouraging allegiance to Satan? I think most reasonable people would agree that such a conclusion can only be made if this song is horribly misconstrued.
Well, perhaps some music is more easily misconstrued than others. Does that make the music bad or something to be avoided or condemned? Before we answer that question, let’s consider how anything can be misconstrued by anybody at any time. A well-known example is Charles Manson. Manson apparently held a belief, or at least he certainly justified to his followers that he held a belief, that the Beatles had signaled to him through their White Album, and in particular the songs “Piggies” and “Helter Skelter,” that the time for what he believed to be the “great race war” was at hand and that he was being called to kick start it by organizing the murder of whoever happened to be at the home of Roman Polanski one night (which he probably thought was still the home of Terry Melcher–this guy that Manson had pinned his hopes of being a big rock star on, before he got let down by him). So, this was clearly a lunatic’s interpretation, and Manson could have interpreted, really, any music to tell him the same thing, or to tell him some completely different insane thing.
Now, should the Beatles have stopped writing music after these murders happened? Should the White Album have been taken off the market? No. Absolutely not. Clearly, there was no cause and effect, and even eliminating all music, and all human art, would not have necessarily stopped the warped Manson mind from constructing some type of delusion from the external world to provide him with the directions to do what he did.
Ok, so, let’s look at other examples that may not be so clear-cut at first. There have been some famous murders and suicides that were blamed on specific musicians, and even specific songs. One highly publicized incident came out of a troubled boy whose suicide in 1984 was blamed on Ozzy Osbourne. The boy had suffered from clinical depression, but the parents blamed Ozzy and sued him because of his song “Suicide Solution.” Now, you might thing this would make sense if Ozzy had written some warped anthem, “Come on all you boys and girls, this is Ozzy saying ‘go ahead and kill yourself now, get it over with.’” Or whatever. But that was not the case at all. This song is about the dangers of alcohol abuse, and how alcohol–which is a chemical “solution”–is tragically used by the alcoholic to essentially commit a slow, protracted suicide. The courts ruled in Ozzy’s favor in the lawsuit, but it generated a lot of bad publicity. And then he had to defend against another similar lawsuit in 1991, which he again won.
Then there’s the rape/murder case from the mid-90s that was blamed on the death-metal band Slayer. Three really demented teenage boys committed some heinous acts and killed a girl from their school. One of them developed a guilty conscience about a year later and confessed, and in the subsequent investigation it came to be known that one of the three boys was obsessed with the victim, and had become obsessed with the idea of killing her. In their defense at trial they stated they committed the crime as part of a satanic ritual that they thought would give them the power they needed to become a famous rock band. (And on that latter point, it’s interesting to take note of some correlation here to Charles Manson, who’s demented view also included wanting to be famous.) So, the victim’s parents sued Slayer, asserting that their lyrics inspired the murder. That case was thrown out, as was a follow-up suit against the band and the record label for allegedly distributing harmful materials to minors. The judge in the 1st case pointed out that the family’s accusation opened a door in which there would be no limit to the scope of media products such as books and film that could be subjected to such lawsuits. After all, they say the typical 18-year-old has seen 200,000 acts of violence in TV and film and over 40,000 killings. The judge in the 2nd case, ruled that there was nothing harmful to minors in Slayer’s music. Although the music describes acts of violence, it does not promote or encourage violence–certainly not any more than violence is encouraged or promoted in film and TV.
And just how influential are some of these films that many of us have seen and enjoyed? Well, quite a few murders have actually been “inspired” by specific movies, as attested to by the killers themselves. To name a few, Natural Born Killers, A Clockwork Orange, Scream, The Dark Knight Batman film, American Psycho, and even Rambo–in some cases, multiple different killers for the same movie, and some serial killers and mass shooters. So, the question naturally arises: do movies turn normal or unstable people into killers, or is it simply the case that killers watch movies and occasionally incorporate them into their fantasies?
“Okay, point taken,” some may say. But, moving on, “there’s certainly no defense for bands and musicians who are blatantly satanic, blatantly promoting evil.” Well, to tackle that question, we’ll have to define what is the difference between “blatant promotion” and “artistic expression.” What may seem “blatant” to one person could amount to nothing more than a misinformed, misconstrued perspective to many others. A little walk-through on the history of this embrace, acceptance, or promotion of Satan in rock music should be helpful.
If we go back to the roots of rock music in the great Depression-era blues musicians–and for that, there’s no greater example than Robert Johnson– we find ample references to succumbing to the devil’s influence. Over time, a legend even developed that Johnson’s amazingly inventive and enlivening guitar techniques and skills were the result of a Faustian pact he made with the devil at some legendary “crossroads.” What actually was happening with Johnson (and, in fact, was also happening with many other blues musicians who similarly sang about the devil), however, is that he was expressing how he had embraced his decision to pursue life as a secular music, and live with the inevitable stigma that many in the communities he played for and beyond were quick to ascribe to him. Since he was not playing church music, many of the faithful commonly referred to him and his fellow musicians as playing “the devil’s music.” This was an intractable view that was not going to be changed by a few wandering musicians or the people that truly appreciated them. So, they decided to wear it like a badge—essentially saying, “Yes, I play the ‘devil’s music’ [as you would say].”
Well, fast forward a couple of decades when rock and roll was becoming a huge sensation through Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and others, and many church authorities, politicians, community leaders, and media figures were denouncing it as the devil’s music. Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis were among the first of these musicians to take the criticism to heart and hold serious doubts about whether they were creating sound vibrations that were intrinsically evil, and this fear actually had a real impact on their careers for a time.
References to Satan or the devil in the early 60s were more playful or metaphorical—the Beatles sang She’s got the devil in her heart, a remake of “The Devil in His Heart” by the Donays. In such songs, the idea of the devil is used as hyperbole for someone breaking another’s heart. Some of the blues tradition of embracing general accusations of the evil lifestyle of the itinerant musician survived through the years, but for the most part it became dormant through the early 60s until the blues-revival and psychedelic era of the mid to late 60s began. Then, the exploration of the dark side of human nature in popular music really took off, and “Sympathy for the Devil” is just one small example. Before “Sympathy for the Devil,” the Rolling Stones already had some abusive or dark characters in their songs, and they even put out an album called Her Satanic Majesty’s Request (their response to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), which ironically was more of a “peace and love” album than much of their other work, and whose title was probably influenced by their desire to further the “bad boy” image they had taken on.
Soon after this, however, bands like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, and others staked their claim in this territory by writing songs about all kinds of crazy and evil people, events, and forces. Roger Waters’ blood-curdling scream on “Careful with that Axe, Eugene,” still, to my mind, out does every so-called “screamo” band that has come in the years since. The demonic, ogre voice on Pink Floyd’s album Meddle, that says One of these days, I’m going to cut you into little pieces, would I’m sure have made my parents cringe in horror if they had heard me listening to it as an adolescent. Pink Floyd’s later offerings commonly dealt with mental illness, evil political figures, and (in the story-line of The Wall) an attempted suicide.
The band name King Crimson refers to kings under whose reign there is much war and bloodshed, but is easily expanded, and regarded by many, as a conception of the general source of evil in the world, i.e., the devil. There is much in the music of the first few incarnations of that band that deals with psychosis and evil forces, just as there is in the music of Black Sabbath, who take their name from an old horror film. These bands were by no means promoting evil, but were more or less saying, “Hey, there’s evil in the world. Here, look at it. What do you think?” Black Sabbath specifically wanted to evoke feelings in their music that one gets from watching horror films. But the horrors of the world—violence and war—were to them something to rail and fight against. Far from promoting evil, they wanted to soldier in the fight against it.
As the 1970s progressed, things really took off as heavy metal bands began adopting satanic iconography. AC/DC’s Angus Young wore devil horns on an album cover picture, and sang about “Hell’s Bells” and a “Highway to Hell.” Iron Maiden used a demonic-looking skeleton as their mascot while releasing albums like The Number of the Beast. When Ronnie James Dio took over for Ozzy Osbourne as singer for Black Sabbath in 1979, he started popularizing the so-called mano-corna (literally “hand-horn”) sign, made by holding up the index and pinky fingers while holding down the middle and ring fingers with the thumb. This actually comes from an old Italian superstition, and the symbol was widely used because it was supposed to ward off evil. As its use spread throughout the heavy metal community, however, it supposedly took on the meaning of demonstrating some allegiance to Satan, and is now made the focus of attacks and complaints by many who seek to dismiss as many musicians as they can as being satanic.
Many parents were understandably up in arms about these and other developments, which they only saw from the surface and did not have the wherewithal or interest in understanding more fully. There became so much demonic and satanic imagery with the heavy metal bands, that it really has become ubiquitous, a level that remains today within some subgenres. So, it became easy for some people to start seeing Satan in everything related to heavy metal, and by extension all rock music in general. There were organized community record-burnings of heavy metal albums, and when they figured out that the fumes were toxic they turned them into hammer-smashing events. These harkened back to the record burnings during the John Lennon publicity scandal in the mid-60s in which Lennon made some controversial statements in an interview about how so many of the youth were disenchanted and unenthused about the Church of England. So, again in the 1980s parents were protesting and successfully getting some of their children involved in the protests. But in the end, these spectacles likely just increased attention, and drove up sales and interest in the bands amongst kids who indirectly got the message that this stuff was forbidden, and was considered by parents to be awful and corruptive, and therefore . . . it must be something really good.
Let’s face it: rock music has been about rebellion from its beginnings. Rebelling against conventional culture, rebelling against older moral codes, rebelling against racial inequality and bigotry, and ultimately (by the 70s and 80s) clearly rebelling against the limited religious and philosophical views that pervaded Western societies. It is definitely true that organized Christian religion and its leaders were questioned by the youth culture for their support of, or failure to address, certain evils in the world that were as plain as the nose on the faces of that younger generation. This is undoubtedly one reason why the satanic imagery did find some footing as a symbol of the rebellion against organized religion and its sordid history with bloody wars, torture, slavery, terrorism of minorities, thievery, and other abuses.
Some of the youth counterculture arising in the 60s naively believed that organized religions from the East could solve these problems. And this opened up a huge door for exploring other philosophies and religions. While challenging popular Christian mores, these youths by and large strove to hold themselves to higher standards, trying to follow the noble tenets of Jesus in regards to how to treat and respect one’s fellow man. And they mostly understood that in Jesus’ own teaching, the greater sin is to not love one’s fellow man, as opposed to rigidly adhering to the ever-changing expectations of “respectable” society (for example, the expectation that men should not have long hair). So, in a sense, they were looking for a more meaningful Christianity–one that was more understanding and compassionate, as it was intended. They were also clearly looking for one that could appreciate people from other cultures on their own terms, with an understanding of why they saw the world the way they did. A logical conclusion was drawn: to defend Jesus and the type of world he envisioned–which was indeed the type of world the central figures of a number of other religions also envisioned—meant that one had to get up in the face of those who misrepresent and abuse, and challenge them.
When Marilyn Manson would later rip up Bibles in his concerts, he would do it to express a view about people who use the Bible as a weapon to abuse other people. And it was actually a character he was portraying that was doing the ripping, to express something about the story he was telling (which is an allegory that deals with how mankind considers itself to be godlike while largely feigning to obey a god that they mostly use for their own purposes; and how the religion of celebrity is rotting away at what little dignity we have left, and is sucking more and more of our attention away from spiritual pursuits and what really matters in life). Of course, there’s an element of shock in it too, that helped propel the band further into the limelight, but it wasn’t what many people have taken it for—the face-value, misconstrued view that the band hates Jesus and wants people to do the opposite of what Jesus taught, which is not true at all. And despite the fact that the band’s leader has made this crystal clear in interviews and statements, the misconstrued view is still used by many people to cast them incorrectly as something they are not.
Now, that’s certainly a risk for such an artist, and ripping up Bibles is not a choice that I would personally have made, or something that I would have recommended or participated in, but I can understand why he did it. And I think that those who object to it can still hold two simultaneous thoughts in their mind—to object to a misuse of their printed scripture, and symbol of their holy religion, while also understanding objectively what the artist was trying to express.
Now, circling back to the question of how some rock music explores other philosophies and religions–of course, if that’s your beef, you’re going to find ample examples to support your concern. The music of the late-60s and early-70s was especially inspired by Eastern philosophies and alternative views of Western philosophies, including some interest in the occult. This is a springboard for a lengthy theological discussion that far exceeds the scope of this article, and that in itself should garner some respectability for rock music amongst those who dismiss it as trivial or mindless. I would also point out here that it is quite odd that some people find it perfectly acceptable to embrace Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and others, but have strong objections to other bands that simply have an image that appears from the outside to be counter to Christian culture. Some of the artists in the latter category are actually far less of a “promoting” force, if you will, for alternative philosophies than some of these classic-rock era artists were.
I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but Jimmy Page was very much into the occult, and on top of integrating occult imagery into the band’s artwork, he purchased the old home of Aliester Crowley (called Boleskine, in Scotland), where Crowley reputedly “mystically received” his primary writings about the occult. Some Led Zeppelin song-writing and recording was actually done at the house, and a sequence from their film The Song Remains the Same was filmed there. Jimi Hendrix, in making the blues not only up to date but shooting it way into the future, fully embraced the longstanding blues tradition of talking about voodoo. And the Beatles, like a host of other 60s musicians, talked about, and were well familiar with, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as updated for the modern age.
Now, personally, I think dabbling in the occult is serious business and shouldn’t be taken lightly, and a fair amount of the musicians of that time who did dabble have offered their own words of caution. I’m not trying to condemn or cast any of these musicians in a bad light, but I point it out for a matter of perspective, and to demonstrate that with some artists we seem to have a capacity to take the good out from them and not worry much about things about them we consider bad, but yet with other artists who have not spoken directly to us in our experience, we are more likely to take the things about them we view as bad and let them form blanket prejudices against them.
Another important aspect of this discussion that we come to here is the issue of following musicians as leaders, and the fear that parents have had that their children will try to follow in the footsteps of their favorite rock stars, with their interests in Eastern philosophies, the occult, or whatever, and their abuses of alcohol and drugs. How many deaths from overdose or alcohol-related accidents have their been now? Far too many to count–for the last 40 years. So, in some instances, it’s not only the current generation of parents that have these fears, but their own parents, and even some of their own parents’ parents. It’s by no means something new, but by and large, we managed to survive the dangers.
As much as some like to single out musicians, and even filmmakers, as people who are dragging society down, they are more often than not clever handlers of mirrors, showing us what we are and what we are becoming. So, there’s a bit of killing the messenger that goes on in the criticisms and attacks against some of our musicians.
If anything, I’ve found that the most respected “leaders,” as you might call them, of rock musicians have been those who told their fans “Don’t look to me for answers, think for yourselves. I’m just relating through my music some of the questions that have plagued my mind, and I can feel how some of those questions may resonate with you.” Yet still, no one can prevent anyone from being thick-headed. So, it’s like the Monty Python character in the Life of Brian movie, this accidental Messiah, who stands up before the crowd and tells them “Don’t expect me to give you the answers, you’ve got to think for yourselves,” and then the crowd mindlessly repeats “We’ve got to think for ourselves,” obviously missing the point, saying the right words but not even considering what those words actually mean, and not ready to even make the first step in taking responsibility for themselves and coming to terms with the big question of what is “the meaning of life.” You can lead a horse to water . . .
Now, in contrast to this, there are actual bands out there who truly try to incorporate the black mass or actual satanic rituals into their music. There is some blatant proselytizing going on with them. I think this is mostly relegated to those who are connecting Satan to old pagan rituals, as opposed to those who actually worship the Biblical Satan in order to gain some temporary power in this world at the expense of harming others, and to the express destruction of their spiritual life (although, we must recognize that there are some people in the world who actually do this). But, regardless, I can understand how this is a true concern for many people. Whether these are conscious attempts to promote satanic ritual, or a gratuitous latching onto something for personal gain, there is certainly room for concern about the harmful consequences of this. So, notwithstanding all the previous disclaimers and calls for deeper understanding, I’m not going to discount the possibility that some may be taking it too far and are actually putting forth a product that generally gives no benefit, and which may be harmful.
So while some parents and organizations like the PMRC have gone overboard at various times with calls for censorship, boycotts, and whatnot, an important point, I think, was missed by many. Instead of engaging in this senseless black and white arguing over whether something is bad or harmless, we missed out on opportunities to form more balanced perspectives. And that is–that just as certain video media and games may not be appropriate for young ears, so too certain music may not be. And although with film and television, we learn from an early age how to recognize “good guys” and “bad guys,” and that the bad guys are at least supposed to get some type of severe consequences for their actions, younger kids may not yet have the intellectual sophistication to understand that music also portrays various characters, and they will undoubtedly be more prone to misconstruing things that they hear.
With older kids, engaging in dialogue with them is probably the best way to deal with that risk, because much of the music is omnipresent anyway, and some of the stuff they’re interested in that we might find questionable may actually be far more engaging and intellectually stimulating for them than the mindless hedonism, sex, and self-aggrandizement that is all too pervasive in the offerings of our current crop of pop music stars. So, the danger of being hypocritical with our kids, or signaling that we don’t care enough to try to understand the reality, may be far more worse than any imagined influence of the music or artist images themselves that we are initially shocked by.
The PMRC did successfully implement a warning label system, intended to be similar to a film rating system (objected to by artists as far ranging as John Denver and Frank Zappa), but it failed horribly. The warning label debacle is quite ironic, to my mind, in that unlike with film and tv, most kids only become interested and exposed to this music we fear when they become teenagers anyway. The warning labels earned by some bands were intentional and became something they specifically strove to attain (since the kids perceived it as a credential). In the process, some parents missed out on the opportunities to engage in dialogues with their kids because they relied on an arbitrary system to tell them what was good and bad. By now, we’ve become numb to the labelling and it virtually has no meaning, as some of the most popular middle-of-the-road type pop artists get the “explicit content” label, and our elementary-school-age kids gleefully dance to their music.
I mentioned out the outset that perhaps some music is intrinsically disturbing due to the nature of its sounds. Music therapy applies certain music in a clinical fashion to help people. Can other music harm people? We know that heavy metal, and loud, aggressive music has been used as part of “enhanced interrogation techniques” to antagonize people. AC/DC was supposedly blasted at Manuel Noriega to get him to come out from hiding during the U.S. invasion of Panama. Well, of course, loud, pounding music that keeps you from resting or sleeping is going to be super-irritating. But like with the Chinese water-torture, you could put on just about any song, even an easy listening or soft-rock song, and play it over and over again and it will eventually become torturous.
But as for some intrinsic quality in the music, it’s obvious that some music is sedative and other music is stimulative, even different sections of the same music. Beethoven and the Romantic period composers were criticized by some for being too passionate. The music was not refined and restrained, like Mozart, but was all over the place, and the intense emotions were the calling card. Listening to the 1st movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony all day will almost certainly make someone more agitated than before. And this, I think, gives us our clue. Music expresses all kinds of emotions. Emotions are natural, and composers and musicians who, with honest intentions, express various emotions tend to catch our ear and our interest. But whether certain music can actually be bad for us seems to be subjective and depends on not just how one particularly responds to such music but how much one blends with it. Certainly, some music is extremely aggressive, and assaults our ears. Listening to music with negative energy, however, can actually be a good way for us to release our own negative energy, just the way listening to a sad love song might console us when we are sad ourselves. And whereas older folks may have listened to the Who’s Quadrophenia, while raging at the world, today’s kids are doing the same thing to other music.
But too much of the same thing may eventually produce some harm. Or, to be more precise, it may serve as an exacerbating influence to a problem that already exists. I wrote in my book A Big History of Music that “It seems to me that somewhere in each of us there is an invisible line between blowing off steam and establishing a foundation for a long-term, destructive mental state.” The powerful emotions that Beethoven communicated 200 years ago may actually be even more intense than some of the pounding rock music of today. So, there is no simple answer, unfortunately. But I find Victor Wooten’s views, as expressed in his book The Music Lesson, very instructive, in that when we listen to music we inevitably blend with the artist to some extent, and blend with the music, and so we need to make sure we have enough of our own positive energy to balance out any of the negative energy that we take in. The fact is, we have to do this with film and television media as well.
People who enjoy a variety of music might have the least worry about such things, because their tastes are naturally creating some sort of emotional balance at the input level. But, don’t forget, perfectly adjusted and balanced kids may enjoy listening to screamo metal, and completely disturbed, violent kids may enjoy listening to other pop music that seems perfectly benign. The music they listen to might be a reflection of what they’re already going through internally–which is why it speaks to them and they gravitate towards it in the first place–or, it might say nothing about them. Maybe it’s just wallpaper or an accessory to them. MUZAK for teenage life.
So, parents talk to your kids. Kids, talk to your parents. And musicians, hang in their. Don’t be gratuitous, but keep trying to express your vision, and keep searching, because it’s the people who do the searching who we’re usually most interested in hearing from.
If this article raises more questions than it answers, then it’s done a good job—because that’s just the nature of the subject, and that’s the nature of good music. From its very beginnings, music has always been a primary tool for helping us understand the world and our place in it, and to deal with the energies and forces that we can’t see. Music itself is an unseen energy. Energy can do lots of different things. We all have to keep deciding what we are going to do with the energy around us and what energy we are going to put out from within us. Good music challenges us in this process, and the process can be scary at times, as we look at who we are, how we got here, why we are here, and where we are going. It can be fraught with uncertainty. But it’s very rewarding, and certainly better than sleepwalking through life.
So, yes, the devil is in the details–sometimes literally. But in many works of art, from Milton to William Blake to Black Sabbath, it is the overriding concern with what is good and what is evil, and what is the human condition, which is being brought forward. And so long as we are human, we can appreciate these works for how they speak to us–or, at the very least, how they speak to others.
