Want people to “love” each other again? You can start with the “music” they listen to

I have to admit that when I see scenes of white and black protestors hugging each other because they “love” each other, I can’t help feeling a strong dose of cynicism. One black protestor doing this hugging says he wishes we could “love each other again,” which is a fine sentiment, as if it was ever true. Somebody at work thought I wanted to see something “real”—a video of a black man in a grocery store getting in the face of a white woman who just wanted to do her shopping, daring her to be afraid of his “righteous” anger; the guy who showed me this couldn’t understand why I thought this wasn’t the way to gain “sympathy” for the “cause.” On the other hand, we shouldn’t be too surprised by this type of behavior; after all, we can certainly say that this country is suffering under a president and administration that feeds off hate rather than “love,” a president who mocks the Bible he never reads in his hand, let alone abides by its precepts, in a hypocritical photo op after the protestors were cleared away. 

Donald Trump has certainly made no great effort not to pretend that he only “loves” those people who support his policies that emanate from his own personal hatreds, and in turn his supporters have made no attempt to disguise the fact that hate is what motivates them—that is to say, outside of self-love for “thankfully” being born “white”; people of Irish descent seem to be particularly susceptible to this kind of self-evaluation; I remember when I was in the Army, some guy working in a supply room expressed unhappiness that people thought he was a “Mexican”—he was “Irish,” dammit, as if anyone actually gave a damn. The other day, I noticed some guy at a bus stop wearing a suit yelling out toward an SUV occupied by several Hispanics that “I’m white, assholes.” He was a bit on the “olive-skinned” side, perhaps one of those mythical “black Irish.” One thing for certain, though: there sure are a lot of people who “hate” the idea of being “mistaken” for “Mexican,” given this country’s lack of “love” for them. 

I’ve been around for quite a while now, and frankly I don’t much about this thing called “love”; fear, rather than “love,” was the emotion I most recall most from my childhood, and once I went out on my own, my main motivation to survive in this world was to avoid. It also didn't help my outlook on life when I came to the realization that the principle reason people reacted to me differently than to my younger siblings was because I didn't look anything like them; I wasn't "white" like they were, and all that time I thought I was no different than they were or all those white kids I went to school with. That really hit "home" when I enlisted in the Army, when a drill sergeant who didn’t like the way I folded my socks asked me “Is that the way you fold your socks, you Mexican?” When I told him I wasn’t “Mexican,” he proceeded to try “Cuban” and “Puerto Rican" before running out of geographical terms to slur me. Those terms were meant to have pejorative meanings for many, just as they do today. 

One thing that did serve as an escape from a world of hurt was listening to top-40 pop radio, because it provided a world as I wished it would be, not how it really was. Growing up in the Seventies, “love,” “peace” and “getting along” was the “feeling” mostly promoted on music radio stations. We are as far away from that “feeling” today as could possibly be imagined. Back in the day, major record labels and their subsidiaries controlled output, and most sought to avoid “controversial” material, such as that which employed vulgar language or promoted social unrest. Sure, there were social protest songs, and songs that addressed social issues (Sly and the Family Stone’s “Family Affair” and Stevie Wonder’s “Living For the City” come to mind), but there were others songs (Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead” and William DeVaughn's "Be Thankful for What You Got") that questioned the choices some people made with their lives. And most recording artists at the time took pride in either their own prowess with musical instruments (mainly guitar or keyboards) or the sound of their “natural” singing voices, or you had producers with “classical” pretensions who liked “big’ sounds and orchestration. 

And what musical artists generally sang about was some variation on the theme of love and relationships. Not for nothing was Seventies’ music stereotyped as making people feel “good” about life. As Paul McCartney sang: “Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. And what's wrong with that, I'd like to know.”

Today, with advent of digital downloads and streaming, physical medium like compact discs have seen decreasing sales, outside of catalogue titles and hits compilations purchased mainly by older people who yearn for the days when music was actually “music.”  Making records where people actually play musical instruments or even write songs that are capable of carrying a melody or a catchy riff (hell, let alone “singers” who don’t need their voices “enhanced” by Auto-tune) are simply not cost-effective. Instead, you have some vastly-overrated “artist” like Taylor Swift being named the “Artist of the Decade” for recording just two albums of mostly narcissistic whines and a handful of what pass for “hits” these days, "hooks" or not (more like "not" to my ears). 

The concept of “love” and “peace” really took a hit in the 1990s. You started to hear praise for female singers, like Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple, who engaged in what one unimpressed TIME reviewer called “juvenile revenge fantasies,” and that continues to infect much of “pop” song content today.  And then there was the advent of rap music, which has taken a death grip on black music since the early 1990s, giving voice to “street” anger and resentments, and because musically (if that is the correct term), it relies on simple electronic “beats” that can be recorded or purchased off a computer; anybody who thinks they have something to say can record a rap album for less than $3,000 and then try to “promote” it for sales, either on their own or through an “indie” label. The “music” and lyrical content continues largely unevolved from its “roots,” still more often than not promoting the negative in thought and action. It may be “real,” but it doesn’t offer a way out, except through mostly violent means. 

I remember once working a temp job doing some piece work with some people who were listening to a local radio station playing contemporary hits, the same dozen musically witless songs over and over again. I mumbled something about this lack of “diversity,” and someone suggested that we could listen to stuff I liked for a while. Unfortunately by then the only station left in Seattle playing music I liked was one playing what now passed for “oldies”—late Seventies and Eighties stuff. After about three songs were played, one person present said that was enough, and turned the station back; she implied that “love” songs were “OK” in very small doses, and certainly not all day. The odd thing was than none of the three songs were what I would consider “love” songs; I think she was more discombobulated by songs that had actual melodies and sung by singers in their natural voices rather than by the actual lyrical content. 

There are those who would say that songs (such as they are) and music (such as it is) is “better” when it’s “real.” I don’t agree with that at all, especially when being “real” is self-obsessed negativity. People (of all races) who blast aggressive vulgarity from their car stereos are not seeking to promote “peace,” and people who are enraptured by the self-serving whines of conceited singers are not interested in “love.” Music ought to provide us a world how we wish it to be, a better world to strive for, or at least put the listener in a better frame of mind. That is not what we are listening to now, from any direction, either politically or culturally.