MUSIC AND THE MOVEMENT
Rosen, Jay
Music and the Movement MUSE represents a happy match between rock 'n roll and resistance to nuclear power fay Rosen All afternoon, the 200 young people who had volunteered to solicit donations,...
...At news conferences the week of the event, reporters kept asking the curious question: What makes musicians feel that they have a right to so much power...
...They dared not relax...
...Along the far edge of the crowd, where the island of Manhattan slipped into the Hudson River, kids threw Fris-bees and made castles in the dirty-white sand while a few couples snaked around in the dunes...
...By 6 P.M., when Graham Nash bounced out the opening chords of "Teach Your Children" and familiar friends Crosby and Stills chimed in on cue, the volunteers had stopped collecting and selling and cleaning and were straining for a look up front...
...Despite such dedication by the musicians, there is still the question of where to place music in a political movement...
...But all music has historically done that...
...I was really counting on things like full-page ads from the nuclear industry denouncing hippies and rock stars," he said...
...Does anyone consider that illegitimate...
...The musicians who planned the MUSE concerts insisted on keeping the political pitches to a minimum, despite pressure from some activists for more talk between songs and acts...
...The historical tradition of music as a motivating force was recalled vividly when Crosby, Stills, and Nash pulled 200,000 people to a common ground in an instant...
...But none of that appeared...
...In the end, the measure of music's impact on the Movement will be its ability simply to mean something— often, the same thing—to people active in the fight against nuclear power, those already affected by the issue, and those disaffected or aloof...
...Most of that age-group has proven difficult to reach...
...The major media clearly distrust the lure of rock music, as well as the motives of rock stars who agree to do benefits...
...Such a scale is now imaginable after the Garden, although not in the immediate future...
...Leaders of the anti-nuclear movement, who themselves grew up on rock 'n roll, hope that the act of faith in which the musician and the audience join can, in time, become the bond between a movement and its members...
...The string of all-star lineups in Madison Square Garden (capped by the largest anti-nuclear rally ever on the fifth and final day) was designed to raise funds, advertise the issue, and secure for the Movement the confidence of the pop music community, from which it can now begin to tap the enormous flow of money, trust, and cultural heroism that comes the way of big-name musicians in this country...
...These people are in this for a long time...
...Popular music is in for keeps with the anti-nuclear movement...
...There are several songs already on the record stands that strike directly at the nuclear issue, while a number of rock critics have noted that the simple structuralism and repetition of the newer forms of rock lend themselves ideally to transmitting a political message...
...It turns out they knew their audiences better than we did," Fenton admitted...
...Benefits by such superstars as Earth, Wind and Fire and Donna Summer would bring out black audiences, but no one is pretending that concerts themselves will politicize an audience—any audience...
...The MUSE concerts did send the phones ringing at safe-energy groups all over the New York City area, but the masses of young people who gave the anti-war movement such a strong base are not expected to rush into activism just because their favorite stars have...
...Yet if there is any idealism smoldering within the youth of America, chances are it got there through rock music...
...There is little doubt that the September concerts were just the christening of big-time performers' involvement in the nuclear power cause...
...MUSE also sees itself as an important link to black America, which the anti-nuclear movement has been trying to interest with only minimal success...
...The utter hugeness of the popular music audience may be one reason...
...Though they clearly used rock as a money-making and marketing device, the MUSE people also respect it as a genuine force in American culture—at the moment a force much more powerful than any progressive political issue...
...That's why I think MUSE must branch out into other styles of music...
...It has a certain commercial power and a spiritual power, the ability to move people...
...I don't think we are ascribing any mystical sort of power to rock," Fenton declared...
...Couples stood arm-in-arm...
...The potential power of pop music in arousing its audiences cannot be limited to concert performances, but must extend to the music itself...
...Identification with a particular audience is one of the most dramatic advantages pop music can offer the Movement...
...Nearly everyone connected with the event knew thatthe 300,000 people who attended the concerts and rally came to hear the music, to enjoy but not necessarily to enlist...
...While the masses were being courted by the anti-nuclear movement, the volunteers worked steadily under a strong September sun—just enough seriousness showing through to make it clear they knew why they were there...
...It's no longer: 'Hey, let's get together, do a concert, and we're all done,' " Lovejoy said...
...Leaders of Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE)— the non-profit foundation set up by the performers— had no illusions about capturing the hearts of the Me Generation in one, or even five, big blasts of politically inspired rock 'n roll...
...If the anti-nuclear movement can summon many more such moments, it will have a spirit and a decade to call its own...
...the tops of the dunes for a better view...
...Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine the nuclear industry being calm about the prospects of seventy-city benefit tours, with rallies, teach-ins, and workshops at every stop...
...Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, John Hall, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and others have pledged to continue playing benefits until the Movement's goals are achieved...
...None of the performers felt bold enough to turn the question around on the journalists, but Donald Ross, who ran the New York City rally, had a sharp response: "When the Republican National Committee invites Bob Hope to a fundraiser, does anyone question his rights...
...The loose ends of the crowd drew in tighter, that strange sensation of an audience leaning forward as one giving the people the first sense of their own depth...
...Music and the Movement are priming themselves for " the 1980s, and last September's benefit bash in New York City needed no Woodstock analogies to give it meaning...
...With the technical success of MUSE—smoothly handled crowds, no audience or artist complaints, no disasters on-stage or off—the anti-nuclear movement gained a reputation for competence which will almost certainly attract some big-name artists who previously had disdained politics...
...Those who had just joined up, those who had considered joining, those who were wondering what joining meant, and those who had always joined everything now joined Crosby, Stills, and Nash in a song that dared them to change the world...
...The expectations of those in the Movement are not nearly as grand as the concerts and rallies seem to suggest...
...America's changing demographics will make the connection to pop music an increasingly valuable one.' 'There's no question that the rock music constituency is going to become the dominant age-group," Fenton observed...
...New York was chosen for three reasons: to crack the Los Angeles folk rock image and thus diversify the core of musicians who have been doing anti-nuclear benefits on the West Coast since 1975...
...Almost everyone I talked to merely hoped to make information about nuclear power available to large numbers of people and to insert large musical gatherings as a common link between popular culture and the anti-nuclear issue, which they see as an "easy" cause to join...
...to help urbanize a movement whose roots are essentially rural, and to prove to the music industry that the anti-nuclear movement could cut it in the world of big-time arena rock— Madison Square Garden...
...Lovejoy is among those who concede that "rock 'n roll has a polarizing influence on many people...
...The kids climbed to Jay Rosen is a free-lance writer in Buffalo, New York...
...Frisbees were grounded...
...In Britain, the punk rock wave has produced anthem after anthem and hero after hero for a large bloc of alienated youth...
...today, Fleetwood Mac's latest will sell ten times that number...
...They are counting on the power of rock 'n roll for something more than numbers...
...Behind the stage, preoccupied Movement people and their trusted assistants scurried about with furrowed brows, battered clipboards, and walkie-talkies pinned close to their ears...
...MUSE officials reported three weeks after the event that a number of artists and booking agents had already expressed a willingness to join in...
...David Fenton, a former Rolling Stone publicist and also a key figure in MUSE, expected the concerts to generate more cynicism...
...Jazz, soft-pop, and classical are among the styles with which MUSE may experiment...
...We're operating on the assumption that people will respond to a politi'These people are in this for a long time' cal message when it comes from those they identify with their culture, in a setting where they're comfortable," said MUSE press spokesman Mike Cas-selman...
...Each time they settle into their seats, the young are asked to suspend disbelief and join in a collective act of imagination, an act which for many reveals more about their lives—and their dreams—than any other popular medium...
...Long-time activist and MUSE principal Sam Love joy expects several more MUSE-type events on a smaller scale in the coming months...
...The Movement people had put away their clipboards and taken up seats on the sides of the stage, clapping in unison after Crosby's urgings...
...Whether the spirit of the 1960s is waiting to be reborn somewhere within that match is almost another question...
...It also spurred the "Rock Against Racism" movement, which preceded the MUSE involvement in the United States...
...In the mid-1960s, Beatles albums sold about one million copies...
...Music and the Movement MUSE represents a happy match between rock 'n roll and resistance to nuclear power fay Rosen All afternoon, the 200 young people who had volunteered to solicit donations, sell T-shirts, and pick up after the crowd of 200,000, kept a relaxed but reserved look on their faces...
...In its own eclectic way, rock music is itself becoming more political...
Vol. 44 • January 1980 • No. 1
