The Dictator’s Music

No wonder, then, that dictators have to sleep with one ear open for fear that people might start dancing, or rampaging, to tunes that could subvert the cultural order or shake the political establishment. As the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates recognized, “Never are the ways of music moved without the greatest political laws being moved.”

So, how do dictators try to stay ahead in the race for sonic hegemony?

At one extreme are theocratic regimes like the Taliban, which, when it last ruled Afghanistan, latched on to a dubious hadith (basically, hearsay about the statements and actions of Prophet Mohammed) to outlaw all music. The theological debate about music in several Islamic countries, of course, has less to do with religion and more to do with controlling people. With the Taliban now grabbing territory in Afghanistan, it’s likely that once again even plucking on the strings of a rubab could mean death. Such extremes, however, are rare.

At the next level of music-control are the bans, arrests, and exiles of dissident artists, all of which are standard options in a dictator’s playbook. However, what deserves greater scrutiny is how dictators often try to use music to their advantage.

The first method is to construct an ideal national soundscape. Authoritarian regimes are maestros at using anthems, national songs, and even co-opting certain tonal and compositional structures to promote propaganda, rally support, and mould a collective identity. During the Russian Revolution, for example, composers were encouraged to incorporate the clamor of the factories and streets to create a “music of the working proletariat;” thus, in Alexander Mossolov’s “Zavod” there is a discordant clatter of steel, and in Dmitri Shostakovich’s “October Symphony” a factory whistle. In China after the 1949 revolution, Mao ruled that there were only two kinds of music: capitalist and proletarian. Communist songs and hymnal odes to Mao were acceptable, and those who didn’t follow the rules could end up in a labor camp. The music scholar Mao Yu Run succinctly captured the “crude resemblances” of the music popular at different stages of the so-called revolutionary development: “pentatonic scale, narrow register, four-measure phrases, two-four time, simple rhythms, and texts concocted of fine-sounding platitudes in different permutations of no more than a hundred characters.” Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution only eight “revolutionary model operas” were allowed on stage. A somewhat more benign example of political identity-building through music is Singapore. In 1988, the Psychological Defence Division of the Ministry of Communications and Information launched the Sing Singapore programme, which through books, tapes, and video clips of approved songs sought to build national consensus on values and ethics.

The problem with this approach is that when music becomes obviously prescriptive or tightly controlled, people may try to subvert it. For instance, in Singapore, a bunch of musicians released a Not the Singapore Song Book, along with a tape, in 1993, parodying some national songs and critiquing the lack of free speech. Even iron-fisted governments like those in China or the Soviet Union could not prevent the emergence of subversive musical subcultures, and bans sometimes had the opposite of the intended effect. For instance, the 70s’ Czech rock band the Plastic People of the Universe never set out to challenge the Communist government, but when they were banned and persecuted because of their rebellious style (like long hair) and dark lyrics, a passionate underground culture grew around them, eventually feeding into the revolution that ended the regime. The group’s saxophonist Vratislav Brabenec has since said that the band would never have been political had it not been made political by “offended” politicians and their draconian actions.