11 MUSIC AS A THREAT (Taruskin, 2001)

BOX 6.11 MUSIC AS A THREAT (Taruskin, 2001)

Music has often been a threatening force and sometimes can produce a violent reaction. Perhaps the most extreme example of a backlash against music was seen in the brutal regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan (1996– 2001), which sought out musical instruments, cassette tapes and videos, and cassette players and burned them in public pyres. Musicians caught playing were beaten with their instruments and then imprisoned. Other puritanical authoritarian regimes also opposed music. Believing it had hypnotic or addictive effects, theocratic ruler Ayatollah Khomeini banned music from TV and radio in Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Such extremes have also been seen in Western church and secular tradition as well, however. Plato’s Republic was highly suspicious of music as taking hold of the soul. In the history of Christianity, there have been many religious leaders suspicious of music, including such diverse company as St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and various conservative Protestant groups.

Music also derives power and threat from its culture of associations. For many years the German nationalist composer Richard Wagner was not performed in Israel (by custom, not by law). When composer Daniel Barenboim broke this taboo in 2001, the decision was very controversial and many Israelis found his choice insensitive.

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The advent of music videos in the early 1980s offered a new outlet for women to be presented as sex objects and ornamental decorations, much as they had long been portrayed in much advertising and many entertainment genres. Music videos also provided more opportunities for the intertwining of sexual and violent themes.

One content concern with popular music has been the promotion of drug use. Roberts, Henriksen, and Christenson (1999) analyzed the lyrics from the 1000 most popular songs in 1996 and 1997, They found that 17% of the songs overall had reference to alcohol and 18% to illicit drugs. With rap, however, figures were much higher (47% for alcohol and 63% for illicit drugs). Furthermore, any mention of negative consequences of drug use was rare; only 9% of songs mentioning alcohol mentioned any negative consequences of its use. Tobacco was rarely mentioned, although more often in rap and hip-hop than other genres.

These antisocial themes were generally higher in music videos than in the lyrics themselves, especially in rap videos (DuRant, Rich, Emans, Rome, Allred, & Woods, 1997). For example, Jones (1997) found the following percentages of themes in rap videos: guns (59%), drug use (49%), profanity (73%), grabbing (69%), alcohol use (42%), and explicit violence (36%).

Content analysis itself does not tell the whole story, however. The interpretation of that content is important, and different ages do not always interpret lyrics in the same way (Hansen & Hansen, 2000). For example, teens see less sex and more love than adults do in the same lyrics (Rosenbaum & Prinsky, 1987). Girls often see a sexy woman as a powerful figure, whereas boys see her as a plaything. Children will interpret a concept video more literally than a teen or adult will. Often teens did not fully understand the lyrics anyway (Desmond, 1987, Greenfield, et al., 1987; Strasburger & Wilson, 2002).

There may also be a socially positive side to even fairly extreme lyrics. For example, some have argued that rap music has a positive social role, being a voice for a very marginalized and disenfranchised group, at the same time empowering young black males and drawing the attention of their plight to the broader society (Krohn & Suazo, 1995; McDonnell, 1992).

These lyrics or videos probably serve to prime ideas and serve as cues to retrieve related knowledge. If a teen watches lots of videos that portray women as sexual playthings, for example, that will prime gender-role memories and attitudes consistent with that type of schema. This in turn will guide future attention and information processing, directing attention toward exemplars that confirm such beliefs and away from those which are inconsistent with it. For example, Gan, Zillmann, & Mitrook (1997) found that sexually enticing rap videos primed a negative stereotype for African American women in White viewers, and that this negative schema was subsequently used to evaluate other Black women in more negative ways.

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Effects

Parallel to popular judgments about media violence, people often take an extreme position on popular music, either damning it as the cause of all moral collapse in society or dismissing the criticisms as “no big deal.” Although it is difficult to do well-controlled research on causative effects of music consumption, we do know something about its effects.

There is clear research support for arousal, that is, music does arouse us emotionally, even though specific tastes differ greatly and what is pleasant for one person may be aversive for another. It also can clearly affect mood (Ballard & Coates, 1995). Although a possible causative role is not entirely clear, there is some evidence that a preference for heavy metal music, in particular, may be a marker for alienation, psychiatric disorders, risk-taking, and/or substance abuse in adolescence (Strasburger & Wilson, 2002), in that heavy metal is disproportionately preferred by teens with these conditions.

Reactions to music can depend on one’s prior knowledge/ experiences, and prejudices. Fried (1996,1999) conducted a couple of very interesting experiments on reactions of adults of various ages to music lyrics. The lyrics to an old Kingston Trio folksong “Bad Man’s Blunder” from the 1960s were pretested and shown to be not recognized as a folk song and equally credible as country or rap music. The lyrics, very similar to the controversial Ice T “Cop Killer” rap of 1992, tells of a young man who intentionally shoots and kills a police officer and shows no remorse for it. The written lyrics were identified as being from an artist named “D.J.Jones” and were then shown to European-American and Hispanic adults in public places like malls and coffee shops. The key manipulation was that half were told it was a country music song and half that it was a rap song, two genres identified as surprisingly similar by some text analyses (Armstrong, 1993; Noe, 1995). Participants were then asked to rate the lyrics on seven attitude scales like “I find these lyrics offensive” and “This song promotes violence, riots, and civil unrest,” from which a composite score was created.

Results showed that adults over 40 rated the lyrics much more negatively when they were identified as rap than when they were identified as country. Adults under 40, however, showed no difference as a function of the genre attribution and produced much more positive ratings overall. A second analysis, partitioned by whether the participants had children instead of by age, showed that adults with children rated the allegedly rap lyrics more negatively than the allegedly country lyrics, but adults without children showed no difference. Clearly the reactions are not only to the presented lyrics but also to prior knowledge and attitudes about the musical genre. In the case of older adults and adults who are parents, rap is far more negative. Fried (1999) offers several possible explanations for these findings. One invokes a subtle racism, where the rap music is associated with the urban

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White and Hispanic parents. Another factor is familiarity, where the less familiar is more threatening. The older adults were probably less familiar with rap as a genre than with country. In any case, these studies show that we bring considerable emotional baggage when we respond to music.

There is also evidence of desensitization effects of music. For example, exposure to violent rap videos can lead to greater acceptance of violence in dating situations and lower academic aspirations of young AfricanAmerican teens and college students (Johnson, Adams, Ashburn, & Reed, 1995; Johnson, Jackson, & Gatto, 1995). Watching rock videos with antisocial themes led to greater liking of antisocial behavior (Hansen & Hansen, 1990b).

See Box 6.12 for an example of the use of music in attempts to gain international influence.

BOX 6.12

POP MUSIC IN THE SERVICE OF DIPLOMACY Who is the largest distributor of Arabic-language popular music in the

Middle East? It is Radio Sawa (“Together”), and it will probably surprise you to know that Radio Sawa is funded by the United States government in its efforts to woo the hearts and minds of young adult Arabs. Radio Sawa is the successor to the Voice of America Arabic service, a seven- hour-daily news service on shortwave radio that was little more than U.S. political propaganda with little popular appeal even for those few who could receive it. Designed by Norman Pattiz after intense local market research, Radio Sawa broadcasts on FM and sometimes AM with a 24- hour format of eclectic popular music from the Arab world, the U.S., and elsewhere. There are also two hourly news segments (a 10-minute segment with correspondent reports and a 5-minute headline segment), as well as PSAs on topics like drugs, drunk driving, and AIDS. In an attempt to win local appeal, announcers use local Arab dialects and broadcast local news, weather, and traffic reports. Of course, the most controversial aspect is the news, this being a part of the world with a high level of distrust and dislike of the U.S. government. What do you think of Eminem and Britney Spears being an integral part of the U.S. diplomatic message to the Arab world? Radio Sawa has its headquarters in Dubai and is broadcast to Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Djibouti, and Cyprus, with access from these places to Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere. (Gubash, 2002).

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Music as a Memory Cue

Music turns out to be an excellent cue to memory, with melody providing an additional possible retrieval route beyond the words themselves. In many societies, extensive oral traditions have been handed down for generations through music, with the melodies serving to help encode the verbal information and preserve it in the collective memory (Rubin, 1995). Marketers have long known that musical jingles can aid memory for products advertised (Yalch, 1991). Songs can also be powerful cues for remembering the events of one’s life (Cady, Harris, & Knappenberger, 2004; Schulkind, Hennis, & Rubin, 1999). People strongly associate certain songs with their senior year in high school, a long road trip with friends, or driving to work at a certain job. The popularity of oldies radio stations and classic rock in general is no doubt due to the highly effective triggering of personal memories by these songs. Cady, et al. (2004) found that, when college students were presented with a list of songs popular during certain eras of their lives (e.g., preschool, middle school, high school), most could easily recall a personal memory associated with that song. For the most part these were very pleasant memories, with the earliest ones being the most pleasant and the more recent ones being more vivid.