The 1st Freemuse World Conference on Music and Censorship was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in November 1998. Among the participants were musicians, reseachers, human rights activists and journalists from all over the world.

The conference was covered extensively by international medias.


Read the speeches (98 pages)

Some of the speeches is referred under.

Political Correctness: A Letter From Maalouma

Mauritania: Political Correctness –A Letter From Maalouma

Speech by Ms. Ms. Maalouma Meida Mint, at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998 I was born in an artist’s family. I was taught traditional music by my father who was known as the best musician in my country. I was distinguished from other musicians because I was considered to be the first “modern” musician. I sang many songs composed by myself. I was on National TV for the first time in 1986, and since then I was given the name “The star of The National Television”. And from then on I became the country’s national star. I was the first who sang for the people in a modern way and I met people’s feelings through my music. The people welcomed my music because it touched the “real” feelings of the public and what was going on in reality.My songs quickly became easy to repeat and were extended to other societies of the Middle East and North Africa. For this reason I expected much support and encouragement from the government but unfortunately the authorities did not understand me at all. In fact our culture gives little attention to musical development. There is not one single academic curriculum in the country today that teaches music or develops it.In 1991 I sang a song about “freedom of speech” and another about the “beloved of the people” who was about the man holding the opposition during the electoral presidential votes in 1991. Since then the ruling party decided to impose a sanction against me and I was soon banned from national TV and radio.The authorities banned me from concerts and from all contact I had with organisations. They denied me having a permanent address. Before I was always invited by all the top embassies at all ceremonies. I have been banned out of all these contacts, both socially as well as professionally.I have written several songs on politics although they are not well recorded due to the poor equipment in Mauritania. Since my sanctions I have not travelled anywhere for the progression of my career. I live in hard conditions of which I could perhaps speak more about to you later.Again I thank you for your interest and co-operation.Yours faithfully Maalouma

Nina Crowley: The Marilyn Manson Saga

USA: The Marilyn Manson Saga

Religious lobby groups influence politicians and recording industry & the Marilyn Manson SagaSpeech by Ms. Nina Crowley, at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998My name is Nina Crowley and I am the director of Mass Mic, a non-profit organization which works to promote and protect free expression in music.Since the “birth of rock” in 1954 no less than 51 individual religiously based organizations have been documented as attacking popular music. These attacks had their effect. But in today’s America, as a result of the speed and breadth of internet communications and the American press’ fascination with scandalous controversy, the knee jerks of religious zealots are magnified ten times over what they were 40 years ago. Their effects are far reaching and long lasting.As a case study of how the religious right can mount an attack on popular music I would like to focus on the “Marilyn Manson saga of 1996, 97, and 98”.The band, Marilyn Manson, was formed in 1991. With the exception of one, all members of the band take their first names from pop culture icons and their surnames from serial killers hence: Marilyn Manson, Twiggy Ramirez, Madonna Wayne Gacy, and Ginger Fish. Their “shock rock” albums have contained songs entitled Cake and Sodomy, Smells Like Children and May Cause Discoloration of the Urine or Feces. In 1995 Manson himself was arrested twice in Florida for indecent exposure. Protests against MM shows in the past three years have forced a three-fold increase in police presence, no one in the band has been arrested since 1995.From the latter part of 1996 through the fall of 1997, the band toured the US and was coming under attack at virtually every stop. Early in 1997, rumor had it that the religious right would try to make ‘an example’ out of Marilyn Manson. The rumor became truth.Over the course of the tour there would be 145 articles in 45 newspapers in the US and Canada, countless tv and radio debates and discussions, many of which I participated in. Articles discussing the band’s live performances appeared in religious and secular magazines. From December 1996 to fall 1997 they were picketed in 22 cities. Protesters preceded and followed the band’s trek across the US, unrelenting when Manson joined Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Ozzfest 1997′, and on to Canada during the summer of 1997. This is a story which has not ended.Of the myriad religious right organizations operating in the United States today there are 4 who were instrumental in directing the faithful in this campaign.The American Family Association (AFA) of Tupelo, Minnesota. Founded in 1977 by Donald Wildmon the AFA puts their membership at ½ million and circulation of the AFA journal also at ½ million. The AFA stands for traditional family values and focuses primarily on the influence of television and other media on society. They believe that the entertainment industry, through its various products, has played a major role in the decline of those values on which our country was founded and which keep a society and its families strong and healthy.Focus on the Family (FotF) began in 1977 in response to Dr. James Dobson’s increasing concern for the American family. Dr. Dobson holds a Ph.D. in child development, worked 14 years as an associate clinical professor of pediatrics, 17 years on the staff of the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, and was advisor to President Ronald Reagan in the 80’s. Dr. Dobson and his organization command a great deal of power. When he calls upon his followers to support him by pressuring Washington, James Dobson has the ability too cause 500.000 to 1 million phone calls and letters to descend on Capitol Hill in a matter of hours.FotF has more than 74 different ministries requiring nearly 1.300 employees. Their daily broadcast explores family issues on over 4.000 facilities worldwide. The organization produces six additional broadcasts, ten magazines sent to more than 2.3 million people a month, award-winng books, films, and videos. FotF also responds to as many as 55.000 letters a week, offers professional counseling and referrals to a network of 1.500 therapists, and addresses public policy and cultural issues. Dr. Dobson’s method attempts to “turn hearts toward home” by reasonable, biblical and empirical insights so people will be able “to discover the founder of homes and the creator of families – Jesus Christ”.Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition (CC) in 1989 to give Christians a voice in government. They represent a growing group of nearly 2 million members and supporters who believe it’s time for people of faith to have a voice in the conversation we call democracy. The Coalition is driven by the belief that people of faith have a right and a responsibility to be involved in the world around them. That involvement includes community, social and political action. There are 2000 local chapters of the CC producing newsletters, voter guides and action alerts.The Bob Larson Ministries (BLM) of Denver, Colorado has been actively fighting rock music since the 60’s. It founder Bob Larson likes to relate experiences from his previous career as a rock musician in which he reports being forced, by record company executives, to produce obscene songs. In 1967 this rocker turned fundamentalist published a book entitled “Rock and Roll: The Devil’s Diversion”. His book contains the “Anti-Rock Pledge”.Readers were urged to sign the pledge, include their name and address, and return it to Bob Larson directly. Bob Larson has long believed that capitalism is being undermined by subliminal messages in rock songs. Larson’s more recent book “In The Name of Satan” purports to tell parents how the forces of evil work and what they can do to defeat them.It is also important to remember as the events of this tour unfold that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution states “government shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of or abridging the freedom of speech.” It has been upheld in the courts numerous times that this proscription also applies to state and local governments and their representatives. In a 1997 survey conducted by the Freedom Forum, a majority, 50% of American’s polled cited freedom of speech as the freedom they felt was most important. When asked if they would approve the First Amendment if asked to vote on it today, 93% stated they would approve it. In that same survey, 68% of those polled said that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, but the minority, at 31%, said musicians should not be allowed to sing songs with words that others might find offensive. Popular music, rock, rap, disco, hip-hop, r&b etc. have always existed as the bastard child of the arts. Seen as a less worthy art form by the artistic comunity at large and an expendable form of art by those outside the community. It is interesting to see these statistics played out by government officials and the public during the course of the Marilyn Manson tour.The controversy surrounding the tour began in December of 1996 in Salt Lake City, Utah. On December 19., John Whitake, director of the publicly funded Fairpark Coliseum announced the cancellation of a January 11. Marilyn Manson concert stating “The Utah State Fairpark desires to maintain a reputation of standards in all phases of our business activities”. Nine Manson fans filed suit against the Coliseum on December 27. They sought a judgment prohibiting the Fairpark from discriminating against performers based on the content of their music, as well as an immediate order to allow the show there.US District Court Judge David Winer refused to force Fairpark to stage the show because the promoter, Scott Arnold, now refused to assure him that the show would go on at the Coliseum. Arnold reportedly didn’t want to alienate Coliseum management as he hoped to be able to do business there in the future. A Salt Lake City newspaper praised Fairbank’s decision saying that “If groups are permitted to spew profanity and anti-establishment swill from the Coliseum’s stage – for a profit, yet – the state may be seen as endorsing their disgusting speech, possibly lowering community values and standards of conduct in the process.”February 1997 brings the resurgence of the Bob Larson Ministries. Larson’s TBN TV program called Talk Back begins marketing a 30 min. video of Marilyn Manson for a 50$ pledge to the ministries. The video “Rock Music Madness”. -The latest of the worst in rock music including the group Marilyn Manson. The volume is described as a must-see for concerned parents.A February concert in Las Cruses, New Mexico, is cancelled due to lack of security and February 4. sees a Lubbock, Texas show attended by 2.000 fans and 75 picketers. Rev. Dale Webster, pastor of Temple Baptist Church, looked on as the line of teens waited to enter and shook his head. “If this is what the fair promotes in the off-season, how can they expect us to support them as something good and positive for the community?” and protester Molly Fogel said she was “praying for the souls of the people going to the concert, and also for the members of the band – just that Christ will come over them and that he will send his Holy Spirit to the concert and that he might change lives there.”“Oklahomans for Families and Children” have asked for cancellation of the February 5. Oklahoma City concert charging that Manson’s show may violate the state’s “harmful to minors” act. Gov. Frank Keating, Oklahoma, announced his support of a cancellation stating that “these people are peddling garbage. It’s further proof that society’s moral values continue to crumble.” Manson’s attorney, Paul Cambria met with Oklahoma City officials and had with him a copy of a lawsuit against them. The show is reinstated.In February 7., The Elmbrook Middle School bans the Marilyn Manson “look” from the school. Including: black lipstick, fishnets, white face paint, pentagram jewelry, and band t-shirts. This incident marks the beginning of the “fallout” from the Marilyn Manson witch hunt. From this point on to today, schools across the country will institute clothing bans and expel students for “Manson attire”, “band t-shirts” or “disruptive attire”.Also on February 7., Christian Coalition Chairman Pat Robertson on his TV program “The 700 Club” announces: “I think it’s time that people protest all over this nation. This thing is the most degrading … It incites people to murder, to rape … saying date rape is no big deal. In an era where we’re so concerned about sexual harassment … how harassing can it get?!”Robertson sided with OK Gov. Frank Keating who urged a boycott of a May 2. Oklahoma show.Reporter Richard Hunt posts an article to “The 700 Club” web site dated 2/3/97, telling of a MM internet church with a “digital counter clicks away” from “the number of souls that have been damned as a result of sampling the web page”.Omaha, Nebraska Mayor Hal Daub warns parents to keep their young ones at home with them on the night of the concert because “Marilyn Manson is a group that promotes themes such as Satanism, murder and date rape.”A parochial school teacher and 8 of her students, from Fitchburg, Massachusets, supposedly stumble upon MM on the internet and file with the city council to cancel a scheduled February 21. MM show. Church leaders meet privately with the Mayor to discuss cancellation. There are tears, prayers, and hymns and a petition to stop the show is distributed. Church officials are asked to circulate the petition during local church services. The Mayor announces in the local paper that he believes the founding fathers did not have MM in mind when they wrote the First Amendment. Three weeks of picketing by religious organizations is followed by a heated city council meeting where two petitions are submitted to the council asking for a cancellation. A christian organization “Hope for America” is allowed to decorate the council chambers with their banner. The City Solicitor rules that the show cannot be cancelled. One counsellor accepts, at the meeting, a private check for $5.000 towards paying the band not to play and proposes that the council and Mayor raise other money. Council rejects this idea. I have distributed flyers from the picketers at the Fitchburg show. (“Please realize as you descend the stairs and rows to your seats, you are descending into great spiritual darkness”. “Counsellors will be available as you exit tonight’s event.” “You will be able to identify them by small ‘glow in the dark’ crosses taped to their jackets”.)Area religious organizations call for “a code of ethics” to be formed for future concerts. More MM fallout – this instance is the first of what will be many calls for concert ratings and concert review boards. The idea of “concert ratings” will persist and grow into another major attack on the free expression of bands and music fans over the next two years.Anchorage, Alaska, Normal, Illinois, and Biloxi, Miss. experience protests by religious groups. The Anchorage City Council passes a resolution that the band’s promoter be notified about the city’s obscenity laws prior to the performance and Anchorage Assembly member Cheryl Clementson says “There won’t be any eating little animals on the stage, or oral sex, or aything else that they have claimed to do.” Clementson and church leaders urge parents to buy up the tickets so kids can’t get them.In April of 1998, the most effective strike in the MM war is directed by the American Family Association with the help of its regional chapter the Gulf Coast AFA. The Gulf Coast AFA launches an internet web site entitled “Christians opposed to Marilyn Manson Concerts In Their Town”. The web site was complete with information on the band and their schedule, directions on how to mount a protest, and “sworn” affidavits by teens attesting to “satanic church services”, “naked female guitar players”, drugs being “constantly passed out from the front to the back”, and “real and simulated sex” by band members. Print versions of the “sworn affidavits” begin to be circulated at MM shows.On April 30. 1997 Manson’s attorney, Paul Cambria, sends a cease and desist order to the AFA in regards to “sworn affidavits” Cambria announces that they are preparing a lawsuit against the AFA, the parent group of the Gulf Coast AFA for defamation of character. All trace of the affidavits are instantly removed from the web site and no one seemed to be able to find them. Gulf Coast head David Rogers tells the New York Times in April that the affidavits removal had nothing to do with either their validity nor their graphic nature. He prefesses that the “affidavits” were taken down at the request of a mysterious, unnamed, Oklahoma organization who were allegedly conducting an obscenity investigation with the help of two unnamed government agencies. He declined to identify the group saying, “We were cautioned by someone who’s working with an investigative group that (the affidavits) should not have been made public, so we inadvertently got information out that shouldn’t have got out.”The unsubstantiated and erroneous statements in the supposedly sworn affidavits will reappear in the hands of protesters for months to come.On April 10.: Columbia, South Carolina concert scheduled for a state owned venue is cancelled and is not been reinstated. State Treasurer Richard Eckstrom after hearing of Manson’s Satanism at church writes to University of SC (venue) calling Manson “needlessly offensive and dehumanizing” and demanding immediate cancellation of the concert. SC State Representative Dan Tripp (R) introduces a referendum to the SC House of Rep. banning Manson from ever performing in SC on state property. The referendum passes. The state will also pay Manson $40.000 not to play.The payment comes from prior concert proceeds at the venue. SC Govenor David Beasely’s office is “very pleased” the university cancelled the show. SC State Rep. tells me on CBS Radio during interview 4/16/98, says when it comes to state property he has to answer to a “higher power”.State Senator Ron Farris of Miss., citing the Gulf Coast AFA web site writes to promotor asking that groups with “counter-cultural and/or radical messages” refrain from bringing their “spectacles” to Biloxi, MS, and 5.000 people contact the Jacksonville, FL Mayor’s office calling for cancellation of their April 17. show.It should be noted here that in each case, despite protesters and their sympathetic city officials only two concerts have actually been cancelled permanently. The American Civil Liberties Union and Manson attorneys stepped in time to defend the rights of the band and its fans.Ultimately officials had to acknowledge the existence of American’s First Amendment right to free expression. In May of 1997, Mass Mic also facilitated a statement in support of MM’s free speech rights signed by 26 major US first amendment advocacy organizations. Mass Mic began circulating this statement to city officials in each town across the US where protests arose.As the tour continues Manson “fallout” continues on April 17. – The Texas State Finance Committee approves a measure to ban Texas state entities from investing state monies, ie pension funds, in any company which holds 10% or more interest in companies which take part in the production, distribution etc. of music with offensive lyrics. This bill will eventually pass the house and senate and be signed into law by Texas gov. George Bush. Only after a court challange is the law overturned in 1998. – Later in 1997 – similar bills will be introduced and fought in California, and Maryland.In Saginaw, MI. Reverend Dana Wilson collected 20.000 signatures asking for a cancellation of their April 25. MM show arguing that the Bill of Rights does not apply to people under the age of 18. The Reverend has asked the city to institute a ruling that minors could not get into the show without a parent. Rev. Wilson, “Someone somewhere has to draw a line and say what these concerts are exposing our youths to.” Reverend Wilson calls for a concert rating system so that future concerts such as this would receive an R rating.On April 29., the Bill McGinnis Ministries issues an internet prayer to “bind” the evil spirits of Marilyn Manson.In May of 1997 the Detroit News reports that the MI State Senate will urge concert halls to ban minors from performances by bands known for raunchy lyrics. The resolution, written by Senator Dale Shugars, passed on a voice vote. Shugars says his resolution is in response to a Marilyn Manson concert in Kalamazoo. He has reportedly received a 10.000 signature petition to stop Manson from the Kalamazoo Citizens for Children and Families.Later in 1997, Senator Dale Shugars submits a formal bill which would ban attendance by any under 18 not accompanied by a parent at any concert which has received a harmful to minors rating. The bill calls for a citizen board to be formed which would make judgments about ratings for a band based on albums and past performances. Mass Mic and hundreds of activists in the music and free speech comunity fought this bill and its rewritten versions throughout 1998. This summer (1998) the 4th writing of the bill was sent back to committee for revision. It still sits in committee. Although support for the bill has waned and it is not expected to reappear this year. Senator Shugars swears that he will be back with a new bill next year and onward until he succeeds.In May, the Rev. Shirley A. Jackson marches along the steps of the Richmond Coliseum site of an upcoming MM show praying aloud. “The Lord came to me”, she said, “and told me that for 13 days I had to come out here and pray.” “We believe we are casting out the devils”. Jackson was previously famous for her Median Strip Ministry where she and her two foster children would preach and sing daily along the media strip on Chamberlayne Ave., Richmond. Protests occur before concerts in Hamilton, Ontario, Utica, New York, and Washington D.C.The Reverend Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association tells USA Today that Marilyn Manson is “blatantly anti-Christian in the songs they sing … what flows from it is Satanic messages.” Although he reports never having seen a show.In the July and August 1997 “American Family Association Journals”, there are two anti-Manson articles. One of them which asks that: “God’s people should recognize what God has ordained song: A song is much more than sound and rhythm; a drama, more than players on a stage; …. these works are the deepest window into the soul of the artist”. Citing Manson’s statement that his band may, through song, be able to bring about the downfall of Christianity, they propose that “alternative” and “heavy metal” music are as less brazen, but still proselytize a bitter vision of a world gone hopelessly wrong. An that “rap”, “dance”, and contemporary “r&b” feature “illicit sex and vulgarity” as their dominant themes, and “Gangsta rap” mixes in violent motifs and has been linked to numerous real life crimes.”The August articles author calls Manson the “most demented artists to hit the scene in the history of rock music.”Richmond, Vancouver city officials cancel a May 10. show after City manager Robert Bobb states that MM “was not consistent with our community standard”. “Satan worship and animalistic type of programming is not consistent with the image we’re building for our community”. After American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) action the concert is rescheduled.In June, responding to reports of puppy eating at concerts, “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” organization writes to Manson’s management to make sure no animals are being injured during Manson shows.US Senator Joe Lieberman in the press calls Manson “the sickest group ever promoted by a mainstream record company”.Concerts in Calgary, Winnepeg, and Edmonton, Canada come under heavy attack from religious groups.As I mentioned earlier, it was fall out from this very campaign against the band which led to the violation of the rights of many students in the fall of 1997 and throughout 1998. The US Courts have previously found in that t-shirts, clothing, were a means of expression and were therefore protected under the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The courts have ruled that school officials could not stop such actions unless they “substantially interfered with the school’s discipline and operation.”On 9/30/97 – 18 students were stopped as they tried to walk out of South View High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Half of those students were suspended. The students were protesting a school ban on “disruptive” t-shirts. “Disruptive” t-shirts were defined as those of Marilyn Manson, “gangsta rap”, such as Wu-Tang Clan and Tupac Shakur. One student had been suspended the day before for a home made t-shirt which bore only the spray painted words “Tupac Shakur” and “Marilyn Manson” on the back and “First Amendments Rights R.I.P.” School principal Tony Parker told reporters that if he had his way offensive t-shirts would be banned nationwide and that too much freedom of expression can cause problems. “When it downgrades the moral fiber of our society, I do”, he said.In December of 1997 – An 18 year old man is arrested in a New Braunfels, TX grocery store. He is charged with violating the city obscene display ordinance for wearing a Marilyn Manson t-shirt.In January 1998, the ACLU of North Carolina announces that it will come to the defense of teenager from Cumberland County High School who were disciplined for wearing Marilyn Manson t-shirts.And in April 1998 – a 20 year old woman is arrested in Tenn. At the Tater Days festival for wearing a MM t-shirt on the fair grounds. Authorities say she violated the state harassment statute.As we come into the fall of 1998, the band Marilyn Manson is again on tour. In October, the Charlotte, NC Coliseum Authority meets to discuss an upcoming MM concert scheduled for November 10. The band’s contract already includes a $10.000 fee if the band calls for fans to leave their reserved seats. Council member Nasif Majeed called the band “repulsive” and “sickening”. And mandates three times the usual number of security personnel in attendance (at the promoter’s expense). Authority members critized the band and said they would look into a ratings system for future Charlotte concerts.And in Syracuse, New York – Mayor Roy Bernardi is joined by some Onondaga County legislators to pressure operators of Syracuse’s Landmark Theatre to cancel a show scheduled for November 19. 1998. County Legislators threaten to withhold $30.000 in state development funds to the theatre if they don’t cancel. The Mayor threatens to pull the theatre’s entertainment permit if the show goes on. Resultant Syracus Post-Standard editorial points out Mayor Bernard’s evangelical Christian bent and recent attendance at Promise Keepers rally.In October of 1998, Houston, Texas reports that a teenage boy brutally stabs a teenage girl friend. The papers and police officials note that he and the girl were watching a Marilyn Manson video on the afternoon of the stabbing. On November 10. 1998, we learned that in Fort Worth, Texas, a non-profit organization called the Crime Prevention Resource Center (CPRC) is offering “Marilyn Manson Awareness Training” for educators. Although no fees will reportedly be collected for the seminars some State funding is allegedly used to support the CPRC (unconfirmed funding as of yet).Impetus for the sessions is Manson show in Dallas on November 5. and in Houston November 4. and the October stabbing.By TX state law any group can be defined as a gang if there are 3 or more of them, they dress alike. The CPRC is recommending that Manson fans and fans of other goth-rock bands be considered gangs. Ramon Jacquez, program director states “a majority of them are taking drugs, do graffitti in their neighborhoods, on the school, on their books.” Such criminal activity puts them in the same category as Crips, Bloods, and Latin Kings. Mr. Jacques reportedly has no data to support his claims of criminal activity. Jacquez also believes a majority of goth-rock fans engage in ritual sacrifice. 3 sessions of MM training were held over the summer of 1998 and more are planned. The training includes: “Marilyn Manson and Other Cults: The Impact on Education”, a discussion of Manson’s biography with handouts of text segments, songs, viewing of MM “Dead to the World” home video, and reprints of fan and official web sites. Jacques stresses “no interest in censorship”. But says teens already “fragmented minds” may make them more susceptible to lyrics like “Kill your mother, Kill your father” – what will that do to that mind.” There is reported to be some inclusion of gangsta rap in this seminar but we have yet to secure those details.A Chicago area Rock Island County Regional Education Office employee is reportedly participating in similar seminars. Delano Gilkey, authored a manual for a conference on Satanism and Satanic Youth – the conference was sponsored by the Rock Island County Regional Office of Education, RICROE of Illinois. Gilkey’s manual sites the Jewish Star of David and the Islamic Crescent and Star as symbols of the occult. Is has been reported that Gilkey may speak at a Texas “Manson” session.In November of 1998, the AFA distributed a Marilyn Manson Action Alert regarding Marilyn Manson’s new tour. They now describe Manson as not satanistic, not hedonistic, but nihilistic – Manson’s message they say is shared with three devils of the twentieth century – Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. The article goes on to discuss this form of atheism, Nietzche, and nihilism complete with URLs for more info. This year their advise if Manson comes to your town – Educate yourself and others, work with city officials to organize a citizens commmittee to prescreen incoming bands before they are booked and insist that police and other officials strictly enforce local ordinances against drugs and nudity. They state “A strong argument can be made that if a concert will likely draw a crowd where illegal activities are inevitably going to take place at a level that police are overwhelmed and cannot enforce the law, the concert should not be allowed to happen.”Mass Mic has to date received e-mails from young people regarding t-shirt bans in 16 high schools and Jr. high schools across the country and we are certain there are many, many more that we never hear about. We are still fighting Sen. Shugars concert rating bill and expect to fight it and other’s like it for years to come. In 1998 we fought bills in Georgia and Tennessee which would prohibit those under 18 from purchasing CDs of allegedly “obscene” music and we will surely have to fight more such bills next year. In every instance the band Marilyn Manson is cited as a kind of music which spurs the ban or the bill.This struggle to either destroy or preserve free expression in music is far from over. Ms. Nina Crowley, director Mass Mic, USA.

Hans Skaarup: Censorship on music during the German occupation

Denmark: Censorship on music during the German occupation

Speech by Mr. Hans Skaarup, at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998 Imagine a young person in a music quiz in the radio or on TV. The question is: “Has the German composer Mendelssohn ever been prohibited in The Danish National Radio?”. You can imagine the answer: “No, of course not”.But the answer is wrong. Mendelssohn and all other Jewish composers were banned in the Danish radio during the German occupation from 1940-1945. The same happened to the composers and musicians which the Nazis stamped as ENTARTET, degenerated.The German censorship in The Danish National Radio during the Nazi occupation of Denmark is relatively well-documented in recordings in the radio archive. There is documentation in a few books about the history of the Danish Radio but as far as I can see, nobody has been especially engaged in that part of the history, not even in radio programmes. The Danes and the staff at the radio house had to accept the situation at that time and did so without protest. But the radio director F.E. Jensen and the radio board tried to keep as much of the radio administration as possible on Danish hands.The German Reich-Rundfunk tried with strong persistence in the end of the thirties to tempt the Danish Radio to transmit the endless speeches of Adolf Hitler. The Danes thanked courteously NO, and broadcasted only very short cuts in the news and programmes.When the Second World War broke out on the 1st of September 1939 the radio-board decided to make severe restrictions regarding the light programmes and they cancelled entertainment and cabaret. Instead they concentrated the energy on news and programmes. Broadcasts ended as early as 11 o’clock pm.When the German troops attacked Denmark in the morning at 4 am on the 9th of April 1940 there was silence in the radio studios of the old radio-house at Kongens Nytorv close to the Royal Theatre. The first programme began at 7 am and was broadcasted according to the plan, while the technicians heard the shooting in the streets of Copenhagen. Just before 8:30 am German troops entered the radio-house. It was done quietly and no-one put up resistance. The Germans ordered the Danish speaker Mr. Schiønning to read the German proclamation, thrown as flyers over the larger Danish cities by aeroplane.From that moment on the Danish Radio was governed by Nazi ideology. The real head of Radio Denmark was now Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich Secretary of Propaganda. From now on and for the next 5 years it was this highly gifted brain of the Nazi top in Berlin, who controlled Danish cultural politics. On the evening of the 9th of April Goebbels spoke in the Great German Radio informing the German people about the invasion of Norway and Denmark.The new political regime was characterised by extreme racism. Music of Jewish composers was immediately prohibited in Denmark: Mendelssohn, Fritz Kreisler, George Gershwin – just to name a few. Planned programmes with Jewish composers were cancelled. However, it was not just the Jewish composers. In Nazi Germany they had an expression for art, not accepted by the Nazi regime, it was called ENTARTETE KUNST – degenerated art, and many world famous Arian artists was stamped with this expression.For me today it is completely impossible to understand. For me Mendelssohn’s music seems politically harmless and from a musical point of view very German and very important.Totalitarian States have always known how important ART is as a spiritual weapon. During the occupation of the Danish Radio the Nazis showed an extreme fear of any criticism of the system and especially of DER FÜHRER, Adolf Hitler. Here the worst in the Preussian attitude to life was combined with an extreme hypersensitive Nazi angle, totally lacking humour and self-irony. The years of the German occupation of the Danish Radio is a story combined of tragic and humorous elements. A fight between Danish humour and the stupidity of the fanatic Nazi ideology.Immediately the day after the occupation the Danish tone changed. A German military censor moved into the radio-house. It was his duty to monitor the programmes so that nothing would conflict with German interests. As soon as the 12th of April, a civil censor came from the short wave radio station in Berlin. The Danish National Radio was now a part of the German cultural front and the programmes were forced to promote Danish-German understanding. Danish nazi friendly programme controllers were hired. Teaching English and French in the radio was to be stopped immediately. The Danes were forced to learn German only. But the radio-board would not accept this so the English teaching programmes was for a very long time a point of tension between the leader, Mr. Jensen and the German radio commissioner Mr. Lohman. Mr. Lohman declared that English would not play a part at all in the new German dominated Europe after the war.Even weather forecasts were not allowed, because this way allied flyers would know how the weather was in Denmark and would be able to find the right time to throw weapons down for the Danish resistance people.For the board and for Mr. Jensen especially, it was a balance at knife edge and a lot of tactfulness was required in the relationship with the German authorities. It was important to keep as much as possible of the administration on Danish hands. Many jobs were involved and after the battle of Stalingrad it was clear, that the Germans were not going to win the war. Therefore it was very important that the Danish staff was intact when the war was over and the Germans had left Denmark.The first years of the occupation passed quietly. The radio programmes became more and more boring and the Danes listened to the English BBC instead, who broadcasted news in Danish every evening. The Germans installed jamming stations all over the country but with a good antenna it was still possible to listen to the BBC.When USA and Russia entered the war, American and Russian music was prohibited too. Danish national songs with anti-German lyrics were forbidden and the Danish Schallburg Squad, Danish soldiers in German service, fighting at the eastern front in Russia, took beloved Danish songs and gave them a Nazi inspired lyric.The great radio hit in 1941 was the German song LILI MARLEEN sung by Lale Anderson. It was recorded in 1939 but was quite unknown until the German soldiers who occupied Beograd, chose it as their battle song. After a very short time the lyrics were translated into 42 languages and was sung all over the world. In Denmark it was recorded with an in-offensive Danish lyric and the march rhythm was reduced.The national disposition and the talk in Copenhagen during these years was very ironic and witty as a contrast to the German occupation. The lyrics of Lili Marleen were rapidly changed to an anti-Nazi version.It is very difficult to ban the wit of the people. The Minister of Justice himself sang the persiflage version at a cabinet meeting. The Germans demanded the unofficial lyric stopped immediately. But how could the ministers stop the Danish wit. It was impossible. Then the Germans banned Lili Marleen completely – even the German version with Lale Anderson. It was not allowed to be played in restaurants, with or without the lyrics and it was banned in radio programmes.For many years physical exercises were a tradition in the morning programme. It was a tradition too, to begin the programme with a cheerful melody or a march. One morning in 1943 the speaker played Sousa’s “Liberty Bell”. Big trouble!In September 1944 the Germans arrested the Danish police and sent the police-officers to German concentration camps. The radio was silent a couple of days and when it started the first song played was the overture of Franz von Suppes “Banditenstreiche”, in English this means something like Scoundrel-Tricks. Both speakers were threatened with a court-martial. But Mr. Knuth who played “Banditenstreiche” did not understand what he had done wrong. He told the German radio-dictator, Herr Lohmann, that he wanted to play “a cheerful piece of fine German Arian music”. He could not see that anything could be wrong there. This make believe NAIVE attitude saved him from a court-martial.The period of the German occupation is full of stories of this kind. It was also forbidden to play another specimen of good German Arian music, namely Carl Maria von Weber’s “Jubel-overture”. Weber was Arian through and through but the problem was that the end of the overture: “Heil dir im Siegerkranz” is the same tune as “God save the Kind”. Emmerich Kalmann’s Operettas “The Czardas Princess” and “Countess Mariza” were also banned. Even if only the lyric-writer was of Jewish origin, this was enough to ban the whole operetta.During the occupation the Danish National Radio was forced to transmit Hitler’s speeches in full length without translation. Ib Wiedemann, who worked as a speaker during the last 3 years of the war, has told me about the transmission of Hitler’s last speech on the 30th of January 1945, the 12 anniversary of the Nazi regime. Hitler finished with the words “Und möge der allmächtige das Grossdeutsche Reich bewahren” – “And may the mighty God save the Great German Empire”. Mr. Wiedemann couldn’t hold back a quiet AMEN. The German controller who was a convinced Nazi from Berlin, came up and strangle-held him and said: “You could have saved me from that”. A friendly Austrian occupation officer told Mr. Wiedemann to escape for some time to avoid a court-martial. When he came back the Nazi apologised and told him that his wife and 5 children were in Berlin and Hitler said nothing about the Russian soldiers who were approaching Berlin at that time. This was why he reacted to strongly.For Mr. Wiedemann the night between the 4th and the 5th of May 1945 was the greatest event of his life. From 11 o’clock in the evening until 8 o’clock in the morning he was free to play all the banned records, still available in the archive.This was the most euphoric moment in the history of the Danish National Radio. Mr. Hans Skaarup, producer, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Denmark.

Martin Cloonan: Britain at War

United Kingdom: Britain at War

How music was “restricted” during the Falkland and Golf War Speech by Ph.D. Martin Cloonan, at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998 What I would like to do is to give you a taste of censorship in Britain. Britain is quite often seen as a place where censorship doesn’t occur but it certainly does. I will explain how the law works in Britain and then talk about broadcasting regulations and then come on to talking about the Golf war. Let me start with the legal situation in Britain. The legal situation in Britain is quite complicated because the constituent four countries in Britain have slightly differing laws about censorship. However the most important law which covers England and Wales is called the 1959 Obscene Publication Act. This covers obscene articles of all sorts, books, films, records etc.The law bans material which would deprave and corrupt its likely audience. There have been cases where music has been held to have that capacity. It is a very controversial piece of legislation. It’s been on since 1959. There have been numerous debates about what to do with it. Let me just give you a taste of what happens should you be in the unfortunate position to be a musician who has become victim of this law. I will give you an example from 1991.The police in Nottingham raided a record company called Earache Records which is a death metal and speed metal organisation. They raided the record plant and took away a lot of stock. What happens is that the police will raid and take your stock away. But they have to list the stock that they take away, and this is where it becomes very interesting. A list of stock ceased from Earache Records included stock by bands called The Filthy Christians, Carcass and various things. But it also has some wonderful things where the police get slightly paranoid so there are copies of newspapers among other things. My very favourite one is that they ceased an Alice Cooper poster complete with ‘blue-tack’. So they can presumably stick it on the wall in the police station. That material was held for about 16 months before it was returned to Earache Records, it was not actually prosecuted. That is the kind of thing that happens.The situation in Britain is also complicated by the fact that censorship is not centralised. Local councils still have power over film and over licensing of venues and so on. Regional police forces have a great deal of autonomy, there is no national police force. So to an extent the type of censorship you are subject to in Britain depends on where you live. Most importantly of all, the British State has farmed out the broadcasting to the broadcasters themselves. Whilst there are legal restrictions upon what broadcasters can broadcast, essentially broadcasting is run by the interpretation of various rules.The broadcasters in Britain are covered by the law but also their own regulations. Both the commercial stations and the state owned BBC Network have obligations not to offend taste and decency, this is written into their regulations. OK, so what’s taste and decency? I think we heard this morning that there is a very important role played by interpreters of regulations. Obviously at times of national crisis the definition of taste and decency tends to narrow a little. This is most obviously the case in times of war. One of the things that is quite obvious with censorship is that it is inexplicably linked to contemporary events. There is a sort of censorial climate which goes up and down. Certainly in times of war the censorial hate will come up. What has happened in Britain is that whenever there has been war, censorship has increased.For example if you go back to the First World War there were censorship of musical songs. During the Second World War obviously the BBC was not particularly keen on playing German music. There were bans during the Falklands war for certain records. I think it would be fair to say that records that criticised the government policy during the Falklands war did not get a great deal of airplay. Of course the longest running saga of censorship in contemporary Britain was the war in Ireland. We heard this morning of Paul McCartney getting banned and there were various bands and records about the situation in Ireland.So by the time we get to the Golf war in the early 1990s you can see the broadcasters have a history of being sensitive about certain material. I think it is probably true to say that it is not a matter in Britain of the central state saying, “you can’t play this”. It is a matter of broadcasters saying, “we’re supporting our boys in this one, we’re not going to rock the boat”. The broadcasters has a somewhat ambiguous role during the Golf war. At one level, a whole BBC Radio station was devoted to coverage of the Golf war, minute by minute, 24 hours a day. They kind of separated the Golf war from main stream broadcasting. I think what effectively happened was that popular entertainment, popular music was not allowed to impinge on the war. Even though Radio One, the main broadcasting station, went out to the Golf and broadcasted from there, there was still a sort of mental separation that popular entertainment must carry on regardless of the war. So what happened was that during the run up to the Golf war on commercial radio, on Jazz FM, a man called Gilles Peterson decided that as the United Nations deadline for action against Iraq was coming close he would play two hours of peace music. Fairly impartial, one would have thought, just to play music calling for peace. The result of that was that he was sacked, he was deemed to have broken broadcast regulations for displaying political partiality. Independent commercial radio in Britain is supervised by the Radio Authority. When complaints were made to the authority about the sacking of Gilles Peterson for playing peace music they said that it was an internal matter, it is just what the station decides itself. However, they upheld complaints against Jazz FM for not being politically impartial.Meanwhile back at Radio One and back at the BBC a famous list of records was produced. What happened was that this list of records was not a ban as such it was just a list of records produced which BBC producers and DJ’s might like to consider carefully before playing. This is not a ban, it was produced by local radio within BBC. Just a few examples from this list. It says, “Be very careful about playing these records during the Golf war”: ABBA: Waterloo, Kate Bush: Army Dreamers, José Feliciano: Light my Fire, Queen: Killer Queen, 10CC: Rubber Bullets. I think in retrospect one of the things that this ridiculous list of records did, because it got quite a lot of press, was actually to make the war thing less important. Whatever the persons making this list intended I think in Britain it made the war seem less serious than it was.We heard some talk today about musicians having a history of resistance. During the Golf war in Britain I think it was very hard to resist the war and not be tainted with being a supporter of Saddam Hussein. It was very hard politically to do that. There was a group called Musicians Against the War, which was formed. It got almost no press and I think apart from holding a singing outside the BBC to protest against this list, its overall impact I would say was nil. There were other sorts of petty acts of censorship during the Golf war. During the annual Brit Awards for music in 1991 the artists who appeared on that show were told not to mention the war. Artists who broke that rule, including people like Lisa Stansfield, who said when she was receiving the award, “This award is very nice but it would be a much better reward for me if the war stopped”, received a great deal of media hostility straight away. Sinead O’Connor also spoke out against the war and boycotted the Brit Awards that year. She found that instead of a video of Nothing compares to you being shown, that they showed a video of Whitney Houston singing Star spangled banner as a direct insult to Sinead O’Connor who had been protesting against having the American National Anthem played at a concert. So all sorts of petty spite going on.Within the record industry they knuckled down as well, saying we don’t want to rock the boat here, we don’t want to offend people. Forget the fact that the British Army is out there slaughtering Iraqis. So they asked bands to change their names, Massive Attack became Massive, The Happy Mondays have a song called Loose Fit which talks about blowing up an airport base, that line was dropped from the song when the single was released. A band called Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine had a record called Blood sports for all which is a critique of racism within the British Army. The record company made them swap that and put it on the B-side of the single during the Golf war. So there are various sorts of petty censorship going on. So I think that overall this is not the sort of central state saying, “you must do this”, there is a kind of atmosphere where you don’t rock the boat. The context of all this is that the BBC was being accused of being left wing in the 1980s. The Conservative Party was not very keen on the BBC at times. So by the time the Golf war came about, the BBC was very sensitive about what it did during the war. For example when asked whether they would play the Rolling Stones record High Wire, which is a critique of arms dealers, the head of Radio One at that point said, “No, we won’t play it because we don’t want to be the leftie BBC fighting the enemies of freedom again”. So there was a kind of attack on the BBC. At the same time the commercial networks had just been subject to new legal restraints from the 1990 Broadcast Act. So they kind of censor themselves anyway and they don’t need the state to tell them.So I would argue that popular music at its best probably is when it is resisting and being a dissident voice and during the Golf war that voice wasn’t heard at all. I don’t think you have to be a supporter of Saddam Hussein to hope that at least next time popular music might get more voice and get back its radical tradition. Mr. Martin Cloonan, Ph.D., Researchfellow, University of Stirling, Scotland.

Svanibor Pettan: Music and Censorship in ex-Yugoslavia

Croatia: Music and Censorship in ex-Yugoslavia

Speech by Mr. Svanibor Pettan, at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998 Peoples who dominated the first Southern Slav state from 1918 to World War II (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes) or became fully recognized in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Montenegrins, Macedonians, ethnic Muslims, ethnic Albanian minority) differed in several respects. In some issues they had very little in common, in others they were mutually opposed. Lack of commonality can be seen e.g. in a comparison between the Central-European Alpine style of music in Slovenia and the Balkan, Turkish influenced music in Kosovo. An opposition can be seen in highly respected epic songs in which Christian and Muslim singers, respectively, glorified heroes belonging to the mutually opposed sides. What one ethnic group looked at as the glorious past, the other looked at as a national tragedy. Consequently, patriotic songs of one ethnic group were treated as nationalistic by the other.Yugoslav authorities made considerable attempts to bring people together on common grounds. Organizers of musical life were sent from one part of the country to the other, folklore ensembles were stimulated to perform programs with songs and dances from all republics and provinces, and music in the media was directed in a way that would promote “Brotherhood and Unity” among the peoples within Yugoslavia. Instead of these basically positive aspects of Yugoslav cultural policy, I will concentrate rather on some negative, less known ones, since they are more likely to help us comprehend the violent end of Yugoslavia. The key word is “enforcement”, nicely composed in an adage used by American anthropologist of Serbian descent Andrei Simic: “Woe unto a brotherhood and unity imposed by force of law”.Political authorities in post-World-War-II Yugoslavia were aware of the impact certain music could have on the population and therefore forbade public performance of (1) songs related to national identity of the constituent peoples of Yugoslavia – if not within the frame of Yugoslavia, and (2) songs with religious contents outside the places for religious services. I shall present two cases to document the former category and another one to document the latter.The Croatian national anthem »Lijepa naša« (Our Beautiful Homeland) was recognized as such by the Croats on both mutually opposed sides at the time of World War II – by the Ustashas and by the Partisans. Strangely enough, this particular song was officially proclaimed as the anthem much later, first in the 1972 amendments and finally in the 1974 Constitution. But still, it was not supposed to be performed neither alone nor together with Croatian patriotic / nationalistic songs. It was supposed to be performed only next to the Yugoslav national anthem »Hej Slaveni« (Hey, Slavs), thus pointing to Croatia as part of Yugoslavia. Otherwise, according to ethnologist Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, it could have been treated as a criminal offence and sanctioned with a sixty-day prison term.Another indicative example of censorship was the song about ban (viceroy) Josip Jelačić. Jelačić was a 19th century Croatian politician who at some point militarily opposed the Hungarians – and not the Serbs, nor any other group later included in Yugoslavia. But Yugoslav authorities considered him a Croatian nationalist leader, for whom the Croats called with this particular song whenever they felt repressed. The statue of Jelačić was removed from the main square in the Croatian capital Zagreb after World War II by the communist regime and was re-erected only in the course of political changes a decade ago. The example of the song »Ustani, bane« (Wake up, viceroy) demonstrates that a song related to different historical circumstances can be – and in fact was – recognized as a threat by the authorities and therefore banned.As far as religion was concerned, music director of the brass band in the Croatian town of Samobor was discharged after the performance of the ensemble in a church procession in 1953 (according to Bogolin 1992). Religious symbols were never mentioned nor shown in radio and television programs about traditional music, so a poorly informed listener would be led to the false conclusion that traditional weddings in Croatia had nothing to do with churches. I remember that as late as in the 1980s cover notes accompanying some recordings of traditional music in the archives of the national radio station in Zagreb conveyed warnings such as: God is mentioned in this song, so be very careful about using it or do not use it in regular programs at all. In general, radio editors showed no interest in recording religious songs in the course of their fieldwork, because they knew that such songs should not be broadcasted. It is important to note that it was the editor himself / herself who was claimed responsible for obeying the limits. And this kind of imposed auto-censorship was very efficient.From today’s perspective one could also laugh at certain examples of banned music from the post World War II period. At the time, however, such examples were interpreted in very serious terms. As an example, a Croatian choir gave concert in Montenegro about 30 years ago.Its repertoire included a traditional song from their home-town Samobor entitled »Samoborci piju vino z lonci« (The inhabitants of Samobor drink wine from the buckets). Local authorities in Montenegro claimed that the word »Samoborci« could also be interpreted as the two words – »samo borci« meaning “only the (partisan) fighters” – and forced the choir to remove this particular song from the program. Another example is related to a performance of the Croatian professional folklore ensemble named Lado in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1980s. The problem was raised by the fact that the dancers’ traditional belts resembled the colors of the Croatian national flag – red, white, and blue, and that there was no Yugoslav symbol on it – the red star – which was present on the flag.Some of the finest musicians were punished after World War II for having been on the “wrong” side in the war or simply for their bourgeois background. The conductor Lovro Matačić, who later became well known, used to be the principal for military music in the Independent State of Croatia during the war and was sentenced to death in 1945. The sentence was later changed to a prison term (according to Završki 1993). The composer Boris Papandopulo, of aristocratic background, was forced after the war to be a truck driver (according to Martinčević 1993). Composers known for being religious were on black-lists and their compositions were rarely publicly performed. Jakov Gotovac’s opera-oratorio Petar Svačić was forbidden in 1971 for political reasons (according to Tomić 1992).Part of these problems can be explained in regard to the ideology of proletarian egalitarianism favored by the communist partisans who emerged victorious from the war in 1945. Their cultural concept was opposed to the pre war bourgeois culture. As an example, the conductor Pero Gotovac recalled the performance of his father’s opera Kamenik in the main Zagreb theater in 1946: “…during the second act, a group of young people came in whistling, beating with their feet, and shouting the slogans ‘Burn the score’ … and ‘Down with … author’. I think it was a group from the partisan secondary school, young people in uniform, some of them armed. The archivist … hurried to conceal the score, and my father barely escaped from the Western door [probably back door, op. S.P.] of the theater, while the protesters spontaneously formed the Kozaračko kolo [a popular partisan circle dance, op. S.P.] all around the theater” (Tomić 1992).Silvije Bombardeli, one of the rare composers faithful to the partisan ideals as late as in 1986, wrote: “Although abnegated through the liberation war and revolution [World War II, op. S.P.], the bourgeois understanding of culture consolidated again, and from the 1950s on became particularly aggressive. As opposed to the bourgeois thesis that the synthesis of art and revolution is impossible… I claim that only their synthesis can result with the relevant!” (in Vesanović 1986). The fact is that the urban (“bourgeois”) culture, based either on the Habsburg or the Ottoman tradition, was too deeply rooted in various parts of Yugoslavia for any kind of newly created syntheses to be widely adopted as an alternative.The process of liberalization following the constitutional changes in the 1970s and the death of the principal Yugoslav authority, Marshal Tito in 1980, brought into the political arena several concepts about the future of the South Slav state. Former emphasis on commonality among the groups gave place to the emphasis on mutual differences. In late 1980s, the attempts of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to achieve greater autonomy and determination of the Serbian state to cut off the autonomous status of that province were reflected in lyrics of the songs. Historical topics justifying the right of either group over Kosovo were mixed with current events (e.g. alleged Albanian rapes of Serbian women) and new heroes (a verse about Slobodan Milošević “although you are a Communist, we love you like Jesus Christ”). Forceful suspension of Kosovo autonomy, with Vojvodina and Montenegro already being dominated by the Milošević’s regime, raised anxiety and quickened the events in the western part of Yugoslavia. Slovenia and Croatia were soon followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina and also by Macedonia in their attempt to reach sovereignty, first within Yugoslavia (only if transformed into a loose confederation), later also outside the Yugoslav framework. And music was there to help – to mobilize people for their new roles and to support those who gained political power.By the late 1980s, the national(ist) insignia, often with problematic connotations related to the World War II period, were available at street stands in all major cities throughout Yugoslavia.Music cassettes with songs emphasizing Serbianness, Croatianness, and so on (rather than Yugoslavianness), many of them forbidden for decades, suddenly became available. In Croatia, at least, many people interpreted this change as a sign of arriving democracy. One of the first ensembles to perform and even record Croatian songs that had been forbidden for political reasons was neotraditional tamburica band “Zlatni dukati”. After a concert in late 1989, the ensemble members were called to the police for an informal interview. Josip Ivanković, the ensemble leader, recalls it: “The police officer asked us if we knew that these songs were forbidden. ‘No, where is it specified?’ – I replied. ‘It should have been specified in a written form to be an argument’. But this was an unwritten law and everybody knew that these songs were not supposed to be performed. Police officer documented what we said, and if the political conditions would not have been changed so fast, I am positive, we would be sentenced for the famous two-month prison terms.” (personal communication 1993).Political changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s set the terrain for the breakdown of some boundaries and for the creation of the new ones. Ideologically motivated ban of public performance of nationalistic, anti-Communist and religious songs ceased to exist in Croatia, while the ban related to the shared heritage with the enemy (pro-Yugoslav and pro-Communist songs, the Balkan-style novokomponovana narodna muzika – newly composed folk music folk-pop genre) came into existence. No music-related censorship was mentioned in legal documents, but the »unwritten law«, just like in the Yugoslav period, called for the sense of self-censorship on behalf of the individuals employed in the state media.Censorship in music in Croatia and in other independent states, brought to life through the break-up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, however, opens up a new topic and will be considered at some other occasion. Mr. Svanibor Pettan, asst. professor, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Naim Majrouh: The talibans have banned all music in Afghanistan

Afghanistan: The talibans have banned all music

Speech by Mr. Naim Majrouh, at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998 Ladies and Gentlemen!In the last 20 years due to war, political and social instability, disorder and lawlessness many aspects of our culture have been devastated. Museums have been looted, libraries have been burned, important and valuable books and documents destroyed or sold in the neighbouring countries. The contents of Afghan National Archives have disappeared and the music has been banned. The musicians were forced to leave the country. As a whole the rich cultural heritage of Afghanistan is in danger of disappearance and destruction and talents are being wasted.According to the theme of this conference “Music and Censorship”, I would like to focus only on one aspect of our cultural devastation, which is the Afghan music. Here I will share with you some information and ideas about the glorious past and the present tragic situation of music in our country.The history of music in Afghanistan is deeply rooted in the Arian civilisation of the city of Balkh in northern Afghanistan, centuries before Christ, that started from Regvida Religious Songs.After the introduction of Islam to Afghanistan, schools of Sufism were established that mixed music with religion. Eight hundred years back Maulana Salaluddin Balkhi (Rumi) has established the Mulavia School of Sufism worshipping Allah with music and dance. He has repeatedly mentioned Rebab (one of the oldest music instruments) in his poems. Kwaja Mohenoddin Chushti of Chust of Herat in western Afghanistan has created the Chushtia school that worship Allah with music and songs which is later called Qawwali in India. The Sufi’s schools of thought were introduced to northern India under the Mongol and Afghan Khilgi, Lodi and Suri dynasties.Classical Indian music was elevated to a height by Amir Khusran Balkhi who is considered the inventor of modern Sitar and Tabla. He has invented Rags and Tals of which one is particular for Pashtu music. According to some sources of information the Afghan Rubab was converted into Sarod by a Pashtun settler, among whose descendant is modern India’s most celebrated Sarod player, the great Amjad Ali Khan.In the 19th century during the rule of Amir Sher Ali Khan classical music was introduced to the upper class of Afghan society. The Amir invited a group of Indian musicians to Kabul in order to promote classical Indian music and to train Afghan musicians. Their presence was viewed by many Afghan musicians as a challenge and efforts in the form of cultural re- awakening started. From this time of our history besides traditional music a cell of Indian classical music was established which was called “Kharabat”. While the concept of Kharabat is rooted in our classical literature it has a broader meaning rather than simply the name of a musical house or cell.During the rule of King Zahir Shah (1933-1973) Radio Afghanistan was established which played a crucial role in promoting the culture of folk music. Two other main centres were created and developed namely “Logari” in the south of Kabul and the Malang Jan (national poet and composer) School in Ningarhar in the East.The famous composers, singers and musicians of past time were Khalifa Qurban, Ustad Qasim, Ustad Gholam Housain, Ustad Natu, Ustad Nabigul, Ustad Mohammad Omar and Ustad Mirac. And the later time Ustad Durai (the founder of modern Logari music), Merman Parwin, Ustad Mahwash, Ustad Zaland, Ustad Awal Mir (the singer of the unofficial anthem), Ustad Sar Ahang (the crown of classical music), Ustad Ayoub, the Elves of Afghanistan Ahmad Zahir etc. Great composers such as Nainawas and Zakhel have composed many famous songs and trained many singers.Kabul Television (opened in 1977) played a vital role in the development of Afghan culture and music.Unfortunately the downfall of music started after the Communist coup of 1978. The Communist regime has corrupted the music culture by implementing the Soviet style of music and dance for the sake of pleasure and not as an aspect of culture. They were organising music and national dance shows in Kabul Television performed by teenage girls and boys recruited from schools. Selected pretty girls were invited to special parties of alcoholic drink and prostitute dance for the pleasure of high-ranking officials. Family members who prevented their children from attending such parties were either arrested or killed. Female musicians were forced to prostitution as well. A number of musicians who were not singing the Communist slogans were arrested or forced to leave the country. The great composer Nainawas was executed and famous singer Ahmad Zahir arrested and apparently killed in a car accident in 1979.The music further suffered by the attitude of Islamic extremists within the resistance. A ban on music first started by the extremist resistance groups during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Shouting the slogans of international Muslim brotherhood they started banning people from exercising their cultural traditions and customs. Those defending the country’s national interests were marked as nationalist infidels charged like the Communists. Afghan musicians in exile were banned from performing music and were threatened. Female singers Bakht Zamina and Khan Qarabaghai were killed in Kabul.After the fall of Kabul the so-called Mujahideen leaders’ council decided the first official censorship on music in April 1992. On the first days when they entered Kabul while watching television in the palace they criticised the appearance of women newscasters. The council ordered the female staff to wear Islamic clothes (cover themselves). Next evening when the council members were watching a television programme the female newscaster appeared in Islamic dress with covered head and arms. Most of the council members said that she looked prettier than before. A fanatic member of the council has suggested that she should turn her back to the camera or not appear at all. As a result women and music was eliminated from Kabul Radio and Television. But later on some Mujahideen marches were mixed up with musical instruments.Music for the people was censored but musicians were forced by the high-ranking officials to perform music at girls prostitute dancing parties for men only. In July 1994 when Gulbodin Hekmatyar entered the city of Kabul as Prime Minister of Rabani a total ban on music in radio, television, restaurants, shops etc. was ordered and cinema theatres were closed. When the Taliban religious militia took over in 1995 they did not only ban music but also executed TV sets by hanging them from electric poles in major intersections. They started searching vehicles to confiscate and destroy music cassettes.Because the Taliban consider music to be against Islam then television, movies, videotapes and even pictures are seen to be against Islamic morals, codes and values. Although there are some groups within the Taliban’s ranks that are not against music. However for the time being all of them try their best to maintain unity and avoid division and differences in order to achieve the final goal which is total victory over the opposition.For this very purpose they share a common position regarding the issues of music, women’s rights and education. Related to music there are some grounds and reasons for Taliban’s position. The Afghan traditional, classical as well as folkloric music was negatively affected by Indian and Pakistani movies and music cassettes made only for commercial purposes and were imported to Afghan markets. Under the Communist regime and so-called Mujahideen government, music and dance was misused for immoral and improper purposes. Thus, they brought music and national dance from a position of being an important part of tradition and culture to being instruments of improper pleasure. However in relation to music the Taliban should re-consider their position. Because there is no clear indication pro or against music in Islam.“The Holy Prophet Mohammad (POBH) was once on a journey with a caravan of camels. A woman on a camel back was singing. The Prophet called the woman by name and asked her not to sing and said that the camels will travel faster and they will be unable to travel enough the next day. The Prophet Mohammad was in a place where a wedding was going on nearby and women were singing.He was lying down with his face covered when Abubarker Sedig (the first Khalif) came in and called on the women not to sing. The Prophet rose his head and said to Abubarker to let them sing because it is a wedding.”(from Imam Mohammad Zekria Reni)Culturally the Afghan music is cheerful and part of national and individual pride. When you listen to musicians in Kabul or in the countryside you will find a variety of music that reflects the culture of various regions. Their songs and melodies are full of excitement. The classical Afghan music is the return of music from India that carries religious considerations too.Therefore music is a vital part of the Afghan culture and traditions. Without it the Afghan nation will loose its cultural identity. Traditional dance such as “Atan” performed during weddings and other ceremonies or collective work and folkloric poems “Landai” and “Char Baiti” which distinguish the Afghan culture from the rest of the world will also be lost. Because the short two-sentence poems called Landai (Shorty) made mostly by women play a major role in describing every aspect of Afghan life from war to love and from criticism to politics. During the Afghan-British war a single Landai said by a brave Afghan woman (Malalai) changed the nature of the war and turned the retreating Afghan army into a victorious one.Ban on music has drastic effects on weddings and other celebrations, the art of production of musical instruments and the life of the musicians and the cultural heritage. Lack of music is slowly turning the Afghan people into a dead nation, their weddings and funerals are performed in the same manner.Censorship on music has increased the people’s desire for music – they discreetly listen to music in their private homes. In villages where there are lesser Taliban influence people openly listen to music and celebrate weddings and other ceremonies with music. Folk music in these areas is still alive in its original tradition but the situation in the cities is tragic.A life without Afghani music is impossible, an alternative solution is found called the Taliban songs. The Taliban songs or marches are songs without musical instruments. It mostly consists of national poems describing the situation or criticising the deeds of the opposition or concern stories of Jihad (the holy war against foreign invaders and their puppets). The Taliban songs are composed based on the famous Afghan songs with traditional melodies that are sold widely in Afghanistan.Music cassettes and videotapes are smuggled into Afghanistan from Pakistan, India and Dubai for black marketing and are available everywhere like drugs in the West. So far no reports of arrests and punishment in this regard have been received. Taliban young people discreetly listen to music cassettes and even some times watch videotapes of folk music. Radio stations such as Kabul, Herat, Kandahar, Paktia, Pul-e-Khomri, Ningarhar and Mazar-e-Sharif follow a total ban on music. These stations broadcast only the Taliban songs besides news and other programs.In Afghanistan the ban on music is not only a cultural disaster but also the lives of thousands of artists and musicians have been threatened. Musicians living in Taliban controlled areas have to live very low profile as ordinary people or leave the country. In areas under the control of the opposition they face security problems. A large number of Afghan musicians live in Pakistan but only a limited number of professional musicians have the chance to financially support their families. They have to compose music according to the market demand or the demands of the person who pays them. Poor musicians after late night performances at weddings often have to share their income with the Pakistani police officials on night duties.Unfortunately the Afghan music in exile is influenced by foreign culture and it is going to loose the traditional composition of the genuine melodies. Poor economy, lack of qualified composers, lack of good music instrument players and lack of a studio of their own is resulting in the Afghan music gradually loosing its original style. The classical Afghan music is slowly disappearing.A small number of Afghan musicians who managed to get to the West have had to adopt themselves to playing keyboards due to the lack of music instrument players. An increasing number of young amateur musicians or entertainers perform music in every Afghan community in the West. A small number of them with good talents manage to keep the tradition of the music culture alive but most of them lack the skill to compose new songs. A common problem is that they steal or copy songs and tend toward the dance music with keyboards and lack respect for the Afghan music principles.Realising the current tragic situation and for the purpose of reviving the culture of music the Afghan Information Center (AIC) is going to open a recording studio in Peshawar where a large number of Afghan musicians live in very poor conditions. The studio will rehabilitate the culture of the Afghan music with the genuine melodies played with traditional music instruments. This project called “Afghan Folk Music” will provide the musicians with financial support in exchange for music recordings. Besides that the late Professor Majrooh (founder of the AIC) started to collect popular songs during the war of liberty. AIC continued collecting those songs after his assassination in Peshawar in 1989. The center has managed to collect about 1500 hours of songs with and without musical instruments.In order to achieve this goal in spite of financial limitations, I personally managed to purchase some digital recording equipment in USA and transfer them to Peshawar. This time again I am carrying a big load of necessary equipment to Peshawar. This would serve as a first step for our goal which is free Radio Broadcasting for Afghanistan.We Afghans respectfully expect all concerned people of the world to pledge their support in any category or magnitude to cover the expenses that may be required to fulfil this dream and do a great service to a nation that once had a very proud place in the international community.Thank you. Mr. Naim Majrouh, director of the Afghan Information Center, editor in chief of Afghanistan Quarterly, USA.

Bashar Shammout: The Situation for Musicians in the Arab World

The Situation of Musicians in the Arab World

Speech by Mr. Bashar Shammout, at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998

Music in the Arab Islamic world has been discussed for centuries and it has been debated among conservative Moslem societies whether it should be permissible or not. Some fundamentalist Moslems do have an aversion towards music as it is associated with the taste of pleasure and luxury, two elements of life which somehow stand in contradiction with the principles of modesty in Islam. The dominance of religion in the Islamic world led to the paradoxical situation that on the one hand music was forced to become unpopular among certain fundamentalist societies – as it is the situation today in Afghanistan, and on the other hand it was naturally very much able to emphasis many mystical and spiritual elements of Islam and reaching by that a high level of development in its musical structure – Qur’an chanting and Sufi music in particular. However, neither the “Sunnah”, the theological soul of Islam, nor the Qur’an itself have clearly and precisely prohibited music as a cultural element in Moslem societies.

By the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century the situation of Arab musicians started to change when two major factors influenced many societies in the Arab and Moslem world, especially in Egypt in the second half of the last century. The first was that music started to get involved in the political struggle against colonialism and the second was that colonialism itself made the Arab world become exposed to modern European civilization and to its values of art and music.

An important milestone was set by the opening of the Cairo Opera House in 1869. The social acceptance of the musician as an “Artist” in the modern western sense of understanding started then. Music teaching in private and public took place as well as theatres performing the latest works of local musicians. However, until today the influence of religion on music is still sensible, especially in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Algeria and of course Afghanistan. Muhammad Abdel-Wahhab, one of the most leading and most respected Egyptian composers who died 5 years ago, was insultingly attacked by Moslem fundamentalists after publishing one of his compositions in the late 1980’s in which he raised the question of human existence. Other musicians lately in Algeria had to pay with their lives!

The other major and more limiting control on Arab musicians is that Arab governments and regimes today, as many others in the third world countries, have recognised the influence and power of arts in general, and music in particular as a carrier of direct political messages. Most Arab musicians have to pass the stage of political state censorship as well as to accept the idea of self censorship regarding religious issues, before being able to enjoy any kind of professional rights. Commercial musicians and those who run along with the official political line of the ruling system can usually survive and might even become wealthy and powerful. Others, like Marcel Khalife, an outstanding Lebanese composer and singer who became very popular in the 1980’s when he committed the major part of his art to the political struggle of the Arab and especially the Palestinian People, is now living in France away from any kind of political censorship and mental self censorship.

Personally, I had once to pay the Jordanian intelligence service a visit in 1994 to explain my involvement in a music group called El-Fajer, which was performing political songs in the late 1980’s in Kuwait.

To ensure the functionality of the state control Arab governments usually set up a direct link between copyright protection, as one of the major professional rights, and censorship. In most Arab countries such as in Jordan the word “copyright” remains, despite official regulations, practically a “foreign word”. Only in some countries of the Arabian Gulf, musicians, artists and journalists can enjoy a well functioning copyright protection which is carried out usually by the Ministry of Information, however in combination with a strict, mainly political and moral/religious censorship.

Politically independent, and on economic basis functioning copyright institutions such as the European GEMA, SACEM or BIEM in the music business or equivalent in other media sectors do not exist in the Arab world. There are several trade unions and institutions of journalists and artists that have a rather political character, and therefore are again directly controlled by the governments themselves.

In the Palestinian territories the situation is even more difficult. The terms “Palestinian Art and Intellectual Creation” have for many years been understood as politically engaged artistic works and intellectual productions. This was and in many ways still is due to the political reality of “occupied” Palestine. No professional rights, no freedom of expression, only a tough strict censorship practised by the Israeli Military forces. A friend of mine, a Palestinian musician, had to spend 6 months in Israeli prison after he was caught at a checkpoint during the Intifada transporting with him hundreds of recorded cassettes of his music calling for freedom and struggle against Israeli occupation.

Now that some Palestinian territories are being controlled by a local national government, Palestinians are becoming more and more aware of the necessity of the establishment of a functioning regulation to protect their intellectual property, giving them freedom of expression without having to pass through censorship. The fear is big that censorship in Palestine will follow some examples of other Arab states. An open discussion in Palestine with this context (workshop is planned for January 1999) could be the first of its kind in the Arab world and might lead some other journalist and arts associations to follow. Artists and musicians and also journalists are in real need, more than ever of a powerful lobby of their own to protect their professional rights and interests while being able to enjoy the freedom of expression and thinking.

Mr. Bashar Shammout, Recording Engineer, Bertelsmann, Germany/Palestine.

Peter Verney: Sudan – Can’t dance / Won’t dance?

Sudan: Can’t dance / won’t dance?

Speech by Mr. Peter Verney from Sudan Update, held at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998 In the 1980s, I used to take a mobile disco around the shanty areas of Khartoum – until 1989, when the security police of the National Islamic Front (NIF) came and took it away. Around the same time police burst into a women’s traditional Zar ceremony, armed with Kalashnikovs, and carted everyone away to the lock-up, confiscating the drums that powered the ritual and calling them ‘pagan’.The dictatorship of Sudan’s NIF embodies in repressive laws the attitude that can’t dance and won’t let anyone else. Musicians such as Abu-Araki al-Bakheit, Mohammed el Amin, Saif al-Jami’a, Yousif al-Mousli and the band Igd el Djilad have been prevented from performing in public and banned from the airwaves.In Sudan there’s an added dimension to the ages-old argument over the legitimacy of music and dance under Islam: one third of the people affected by it are not even Muslim. And whatever their religion, Sudan’s people – 300 ethnic groups – embody such a collision of Arab and African cultures that it’s often impossible to tell where one culture ends and the other begins.Arab tribes arrived in the 14th and 15th centuries from across the Red Sea and the northern fringe of Africa; in the 16th century West Africans began journeying through northern Sudan on the pilgrimage to Mecca. Both settled and intermarried with the indigenous people. Southern Sudan, largely cut off until the mid-19th century by the vast swamps of the White Nile, was treated as a source of slaves, ivory, ostrich feathers and gold. No wonder the continent’s largest country has an identity problem alongside a deep-rooted civil war.SCENES FROM MODERN HISTORY Itang refugee camp, near Asosa, Southwest Ethiopia, 1990 Nubian superstar Mohammed Wardi gets even the lame dancing, at a concert for Southern Sudanese displaced by a horrific civil war. Land-mine victims on crutches and able-bodied alike respond enthusiastically to a singer who transcends the murderous hostilities between north and south Sudan. Unity and harmony momentarily seem to be more than just cliches. The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army videos this extraordinarily moving occasion, but fails to exploit it.Scene Three: Khartoum, mid-1994 The government-controlled media gives extensive air-time to hardline Islamist mosque leaders campaigning to outlaw secular music altogether.Scene Four: Abri, Wadi Halfa province, Nubia, Northern Sudan, September 1994 75 wedding-guests are arrested when police with tear-gas, batons and live ammunition break up defiant party-goers protesting at a ruling that wedding parties – formerly an all-night affair – must end before sunset prayers and be supervised by sheikhs and police. Conflict is sparked when guests, including children, arrive after dusk. Demonstrations continue for several days until the army moves in.Scene Five: Omdurman, Sudan, October 1994 Travelling home at night, a professional violinist is stopped, taken to the edge of Omdurman and severely beaten by security police who smash his instrument. Told he should stop playing music and follow Islam, he turns round and quotes eloquently from the Quran in his defence. His tormentors are left speechless.Scene Six: Omdurman, by the Nile, November 1994 Khogali Osman, a well-loved singer in his early forties, is killed by a ‘fanatic’ – a religious primary school teacher – who talks his way into the Musicians’ Club and stabs several people in the belief that secular music is an abomination. ‘Merdoum King’ and international recording artist Abdel Gadir Salim and a violinist are wounded.The government denies any role in the assault, but buries the singer in great haste to avoid public protest. Security police threaten other musicians not to talk about the killing. (Meanwhile the regime increases its efforts to appear tolerant on the international stage, supporting ‘cultural festivals’ in London and Paris. )Scene Seven: Khartoum, Sudan, 1998 The National Islamic Front (NIF) government enacts a new law banning women from dancing with men or in their presence during folklore celebrations or wedding parties. It also segregates the sexes on public transport.So long as the NIF is in power, you’ll have to go to the rebel-held territory of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (most of Southern Sudan) to join in ‘legal’ mixed dancing – no such hang-ups there.The lyre, that ancient instrument, is a common instrument throughout Sudan, usually in various forms of improvised construction. In war zones like south Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, these days the instrument is just as likely to be made from a hub-cap or a land-mine casing as from the gourds of old.Even today, few Sudanese musicians have access to modern recording studios, although a couple more have recently been built in Khartoum. A growing number of Sudanese CDs has been released on the international market, but few people in Sudan have CD players and many classic performances are still on cassette only – if you can find them at all.SOUTH SUDAN In 1992 the controllers of Radio Juba – government-held capital of the south – wiped its unique tapes of the celebrated Southern Sudanese singer Yousif Fataki. It’s an apt demonstration of the government’s attitude to the south, to erase a cultural artefact to make way for its own propaganda. And although South Sudan, like the Nuba Mountains, creates plenty of music, there are fewer opportunities to hear it now than in recent decades.Back in the 1960s, a Southern Sudanese musician and folklorist – Dr William Remzy – was working at the University of Khartoum. In the 1970s and 80s, while there was peace, the southern capital Juba had nightlife: groups like the Skylarks and Rejaf Jazz, and venues like DeeDee’s Disco, taking their inspiration from Kampala and Nairobi. All are long gone, dispersed by war…Nowadays the best chance to hear Southern Sudanese music may be in church, possibly in the refugee camps in northern Uganda, or among the rebel soldiers. There’s an ever-growing repertoire of new songs about war and liberation – defiance and yearning for peace.‘New Sudan Sings’, a recording from 1997, is an essential dose of reality – songs from the war zone. Sudan’s imbalance of power is highlighted by the fact that these stirring and poignant field recordings by Maggie Hamilton are about the only musical material from Southern Sudan available at present. Among the group chants and hymns – Dinka, Zande, Nuer, Didinga and other languages – are some extraordinarily beautiful unaccompanied women’s songs. Words like ‘[peace] agreement’ and ‘Killington [Clinton]’ stand out in an otherwise unfamiliar tongue.NUBA MOUNTAINS The Nuba are caught on the dividing line between the warring cultures of north and south Sudan. The government has bombed them and deprived them of aid, but they are fighting its programme of ‘ethnocide’ with their own reawakening identity. Under the squeeze of the government’s crude ‘Islamisation’ campaign, the diverse, multi-religious Nuba communities are uniting in resistance, defending their own culture as much as their land. The Kambala, or harvest festival, is still celebrated, and there is a proliferation of new songs and artists. The vibrant Black Stars are part of a special ‘cultural advocacy and performance’ unit of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the Nuba Mountains. Their most famous vocalist is Ismael Koinyi, an accomplished guitar player who sings in Arabic and in several Nuba languages.When journalists were flown in to the Nuba Mountains for an anniversary celebration in 1998 by the charismatic Nuba SPLA leader Yousif Kuwa, they were treated to an amplified concert in the remote mountain retreat courtesy of solar power. Electricity is a rare luxury, however, so with stringed rababas, a clay-pot bass drum, tin bongos and shakers, Nuba bands usually play their form of ‘Je-luo’ – a catch-all term for Kenyan or Congolese guitar styles – unplugged. The lyrics of Nuba bands like the Black Stars dwell on the battles – military and psychological – through which the Nuba continue to struggle, and the dancing often goes on till daybreak.Don’t confuse the Nuba of south-west Sudan with the Nubians, like Wardi and Hamza al-Din, who are from Nubia in the far north of the country – between Dongola and the Egyptian border at Wadi Halfa (and beyond). Both groups are indigenous Sudanese, rather than of ‘Arab’ origin, but any link is ancient history.Northern Sudan – a crisis of identity The rest of the country is more divided – to the point of split personality, sometimes. Few Northern Sudanese wholeheartedly support the government’s obsessive division of the sexes, lots are repressed dancers, and many older ones look back nostalgically to the era before 1983 and Sharia law. That was when President Nimeiri, with NIF support, closed the bars in Khartoum and chucked the alcohol in the Nile. Two years later, the Sudanese people chucked Nimeiri out. (I remember a soldier of the Presidential Guard breakdancing on our veranda, overjoyed at being out of a job.) But in 1989, the NIF came back, seizing total power in a military coup. The drinking, and the dancing, still go on behind closed doors. But in a totalitarian, informer society, who dares admit to such sins?Attitudes towards music within Islamic societies are certainly problematic. The Quran does not itself clearly prohibit music, and music has always been very important in Arab culture. Some Quranic verses have been interpreted as approving, others as condemning it. Choosing only the latter, the ‘fundamentalist’ stance is that music is linked with illicit sex and drinking, dangerous diversions from religious duty. Dancing is likewise equated with immorality. Not much difference from ‘fundamentalist’ Christianity, in other words. (And a small proportion of today’s missionaries in South Sudan enforce equally daunting views.)The Sufi teachers who brought Islam to Sudan were by no means ‘fundamentalists’, however, and happily made use of music and dance. Quranic recitation, which is sung, is not regarded by Muslims as music, but the influence of this technique on the secular art is unmistakable – and the devotional chanting of the Sufi Zikr must be somewhere between the two.Early days Modern urban music in Northern Sudan began taking shape between the 1920s and 1940s. Regarded by some as the father of contemporary Sudanese music, singer Khalil Farah was also prominent in the independence movement.The Sudanese Graduates’ Congress used a song entitled ‘Sahi ya Kanaru’ (‘Wake Up, Canary’) to spread resistance to British rule. Since then, many others have used the image of a beautiful creature, woman, or lover to refer obliquely to their country, and have stirred feelings sufficiently powerful to get the author jailed, sometimes. Translations, of course, rarely capture these allusions.As early as the 1920s Egyptian producers brought Sudanese singers to record in Cairo, and instruments of the orchestra began to replace the chorus in call-and-response.Southerners, Nuba and other non-Arab communities were well represented in the police and armed forces across the country. For impoverished young conscripts in post-independence Sudan, the police and army ‘jazz-bands’ offered the best access to equipment, and what started out as British military brass band styles often metamorphosed in the 1960s and 70s to become ‘jazz’ in the East African sense. This imitates the intersecting guitars of Kenya’s Shirati Jazz and the myriad Luo language bands around Lake Victoria – although any soukous, rhumba or benga gets called ‘Je-luo’ in Sudan. (By the time their music reached as far north as Khartoum, even African stars like Franco and Tabu Ley were frequently rendered anonymous in this way. Few knew their names, they just recognised the style. Is this loss of identity symbolic of a wider process?).Foreign artists During the 1960s, Ray Charles (‘Hit the Road, Jack’) and Harry Belafonte made a big impression on urban Sudanese musicians such as Osman Alamu, and Ibrahim Awad – who became the first Sudanese singer to dance on stage. (1985: Sherhabeel Ahmed, a quietly progressive musician and illustrator whose wife used to play bass guitar, sings ‘Kingston Town’ at a famine concert echoing Live Aid. Harry Belafonte is in the audience, representing the charity USA for Africa, and is openly moved to tears.)In the 1970s it was the turn of James Brown and Jimmy Cliff. Kamal Kayla modelled his style on the hugely popular JB. The 1980s made Bob Marley and Michael Jackson household names. Marley was recognised by some as the spiritual kinsman of Sudan’s own Sufi dervishes, and an inspiration to thousands of ghetto children.DANCE AND TRANCE The Sufi Muslim dervishes, or darawiish, brought the first wave of Islamic influence to Sudan several hundred years ago. Their often wild and colourful appearance, some with dreadlocks and elaborate patchwork clothes, and the spectacular manner of their religious devotions, made a lasting impression on the British rulers of the ‘Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’ in the late nineteenth century.But the Victorian caricature of the ‘whirling dervish’ misses the point. Within the religious tradition of zikr – ‘remembrance’ – the dervishes use music and dance to work themselves into a mystical trance. Undulating lines of male Sufi dancers bop their way to ecstasy with a physical grace that confounds ageism. Their tolerant spirit has profoundly influenced the easy-going approach that characterised Sudan until relatively recently.ZAR The most spirited rhythms – in every sense – are mainly for women, in the psychotherapeutic zar cult. Zar sessions combine mesmeric drumming with incense, massage and a licence to release deep frustration. Under the guidance of the sheikha az-zar, gatherings last either four or seven days, drumming from dawn to dusk for different spirits that plague people and have to be brought out and pacified.These are occasions outside the bounds of life’s ordinary rules, when women can smoke and drink and act out rebellious fantasies without having their religious piety or social respectability called into question. The zar cult is older than Islam and works around and through it rather than compete against it. But like everything else that challenges the ruling National Islamic Front’s social programme, zar is suffering a government clampdown under the pretext that it is anti-Islamic.Mohamed el Amin song lyric: Al-Jarida – The NewspaperYou seem distracted … my love, absent-minded, lost in thought. I can read my life in your eyes … while you are absorbed in your newspaper. Tell me, what are you reading … talk to me‘ Is it really that important? Do you have to read an entire article, even a whole story? How many months of separation did we endure, nothing between us but distance? Our eyes, filled with tears, are crying … our hearts, filled with longing, are still hoping, each thought that crossed my mind .. each story or piece of news. I have important things to tell you, things that reflect the longing in me Spare me just one moment and listen to me … don’t be so obstinate. Should I tell you … or would it be better to leave you to your newspaper?– Mohammed el Amin Mohammed el Amin is a Sudanese folk-hero for his majestic voice and superb oud playing, and a brilliant composer and arranger. Born in Wad Medani, central Sudan, in 1943, he began learning the oud at the age of 11, taught by the well-known professor Mohammed Fadl. He wrote his first compositions aged 20, and went on to become honorary president of the Sudanese Artists’ and Composers’ Society. Frequently in trouble for provoking one military dictatorship – he was jailed by Nimeiri’s regime in the 1970s – he moved to Cairo after 1989 to avoid similar run-ins with the National Islamic Front, but returned to Khartoum in 1994 and kept a low profile.Mohammed Wardi ‘Art is like water: you can’t seal off its source. It will trickle inexorably through the rock to emerge in a new spring somewhere else’ – said Mohammed Wardi, exiled leader of the Musician’s Union, speaking in London at the Memorial Concert for Khojali Osman, the singer who was murdered at the Musician’s Club, Omdurman, November 1994.The soaring voice of ‘golden throat’ Mohammed Wardi has won acclaim right across the African Sahel and the Arab world. Although this singer from Nubia – born in 1932 near old Wadi Halfa – is now in exile, his music always stirs emotion for many Sudanese. His first hit was in 1960, and he still has the most extraordinary effect on a Sudanese audience, having come to embody the collective memories and aspirations of an entire nation. Mohammed Wardi sings not only in Arabic but also in his native Nubian – drawing on 7,000 years of culture.Sometimes he sings with directly political allusion – to the October 1964 popular uprising, for example – and sometimes more obliquely, but always with powerful resonance. He’s had spells in jail which only confirmed his popularity; at a human rights demonstration outside the Sudan Embassy, his unaccompanied voice galvanised the spirit of an otherwise sombre gathering.But the most compelling occasion of all must be his 1990 concert at Itang, temporary home to 250,000 war-displaced southern Sudanese in Ethiopia, performing from a makeshift wooden platform in the dusty wastes of a refugee camp. The healing power of music was never more convincingly displayed, and for a while the prospect of reconciliation in this torn country seemed a little less forlorn. POEM BY MAHJOUB SHARIF The contemporary poet and teacher Mahjoub Sherif often writes in colloquial Arabic, mixing observations on everyday life and politics with love songs and poems for children. He has also been detained for long periods under Sudan’s military dictators. Even in the remote western desert prison at Shalla he continued writing lyrics that became songs of resistance. Many have been set to music by Mohammed Wardi. Hey, buffoon’ Cling tightly’ Beware falling apart’ Beware and be alert’ Bend your ears to every sign of movement Keep watch on your own shadow and, when the leaves rustle, Shut yourself off and keep still’ Life is so dangerous, buffoon.Open fire’ Bullets aimed at everything every word uttered every breeze passing without your permission My lord buffoon.Instruct the sparrows, the village lanterns, the towns’ windows, every whispering blade of grass to report to you.As police, let the ants infiltrate and build the security state Ask the raindrops to write their reports, Buffoon…(credit translation: Africa Watch 1991)Abu Araki al-Bakheit The songs of Abu Araki al-Bakheit, like Wardi, were banned from the airwaves by the NIF. In the early 1990s he was arrested and told by the authorities not to sing his political songs at public gatherings. He responded by saying he would prefer silence, and would no longer play. The public outcry at this news eventually prompted him to sing again, in defiance of the authorities, but at the cost of repeated harassment and threats. His friends say he is walking a tightrope, and his popularity is his only protection.Igd el Djilad The multi-vocalist band Igd el Djilad was formed in the mid-1980s by a dozen young music students with progressive aims. Their song lyrics reflect these concerns, and their music strives to be both forward-looking and reflective of the country’s roots, using rhythms and chants from right across the country. To an outsider this seems innocuous enough, but it’s an approach that takes courage. Members of Iqd al-Jalad have been arrested on several occasions, questioned by security police and threatened. Rather than being stopped from playing altogether they were forced to give written assurances that they would not provoke the authorities with songs about poverty and famine.KAFKA BY THE NILEThe fact that you can still find plenty of music in northern Sudan might give the impression of freedom, but it’s a system that Kafka would recognise for its arbitrariness, in which repression can descend at any moment. It is still possible to find, for example, cassettes of Mohammed Wardi on open sale despite the probability that the singer himself would be imprisoned if he returned because of his outspoken role in opposition to the National Islamic Front. In this split-personality atmosphere, nothing is straightforward.The NIF both fears and seeks to manipulate music and musicians. Any references to past freedoms in Sudan prior to the 1989 coup are unacceptable. Periods of repression are alternated with periods of coercion; officials differ in their interpretation and application of the 1990 Public Order Acts which regulate performances.Hostile to art that it cannot control, the NIF has introduced an ‘Islamisation of Art’ programme in an attempt to dictate the terms of the discourse. All performers and works of theatre, cinema and music are supposed to be approved by religious jurists. Songs in praise of the para-military Popular Defence Force and jihad are broadcast all the time. Sporadic prohibition is enforced on ‘low grade’ Western music. More important, the diverse range of folk music and dance within Sudan itself often fails to meet the criteria, or is relegated to condescending ‘ethnological’ broadcasts.ATTACKS ON ARTISTSIn 1996 the Cairo-based Sudanese media workers association reported to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan, Dr Gaspar Biro, on harassment of musicians in Sudan by the NIF.The Morality Monitoring Unit of the shadow ‘police force’ known as the General Administration of Public Order extends its remit to musical performances at wedding parties – the most frequent venue for music. Weddings are regular targets for raids on the grounds of Public Order Act offences, mixed dancing, or ‘unapproved’ songs or singers. Seven singers were arrested in one week at the beginning of 1993.Broadcasting editor Salma al-Sheikh was interrogated for hours after allowing a student at the Institute of Music and Drama to use a radio tape of Sudanese songs banned by the regime. She played music by Mohammed Wardi, Mohammed al-Amin, Abu-Araki, Mustafa SidAhmed and Yousif al-Mousli on her daily radio programme ‘Good Morning My Country’ until it was taken off the air in 1992.In the early 1980s, song lyrics referring to women’s bodies were among those banned. The official decree remained on the books after Nimeiri’s overthrow, but was ignored by broadcasters. The NIF coup in 1989 was followed by a decree in which the Director-General of Radio Omdurman prohibited the broadcast of any song other than those glorifying religion or the jihad of the National Islamic Front.Video and music cassettes of songs mentioning kisses or wine, or with political allusions, have been erased and pro-NIF speeches and religious sermons recorded over them. Large amounts of irreplaceable studio archive material have been lost in this way.In 1995 singer Sayyid Khalifa declared that all songs in the archives of the national radio station, Radio Omdurman, were being reviewed and revised. New ‘moral’ versions would be made, excising all unacceptable references.THE INSTITUTE OF MUSIC AND DRAMA When Sudan’s Institute of Music and Drama was begun by the civilian government in 1969, dedicated teachers like El-Mahi Ismail, its first director, helped provide college-level practical instruction and research in music, drama and folklore for the first time in Sudan. Despite funding and status wrangles, the Institute survived until 1989, when the National Islamic Front regime took power and it became a target for political demolition. A new director began ‘Islamization’ of the Institute: new, ideologically-approved lecturers were brought in, and the talent test for admission was replaced with an interview on religious attitudes.WOMEN SINGERS Half a century ago, urban women singers such as Mihera bint Abboud and Um el Hassan el Shaygiya began carving individual styles from the rich oral heritage of traditional women’s songs. The most famous woman from this era was the accomplished Aisha el Fellatiya, who made her name as a singer during the Second World War when she toured the camps of the Sudan Defence Force across North Africa to boost the troops’ morale.Demurely echoing the rise of the 1960s girl groups in the west, a few female duos rose to local popularity including Sunai Kordofani, Sunai el Nagam and Sunai el Samar. In the early 1980s three gifted teenage Nubian sisters with a supportive father formed the group Balabil . Trained by oud player and songwriter Bashir Abbas, who also found lyricists and musicians for them, they found an avid audience around the Horn of Africa. In the uncertain climate of Sudan’s ‘sharia’ law, however, they were sometimes banned from television.The fortunes of women singers mirror the social trends of recent years. Consider an extreme case, Hanan Bulu-bulu, the pouting provocative Madonna (or Marie Lloyd) of 1980s Sudanese pop. After the popular uprising that overthrew President Nimeiri and ended his despised version of Islamic sharia law, Hanan Bulu-bulu reflected a new mood at the 1986 Khartoum International Fair. Her notoriety arose from her stage act, captured on video, which borrowed the sensuous bridal ‘dove-dance’ of Sudanese weddings and orchestrated the often saucy songs of the urban women’s daloka or tom-tom tradition.But the backlash came soon after, as Islamist hardliners banned her concerts and beat her up for immoral behaviour. They insulted her ‘half-Ethiopian’ background, which for them was a euphemism for sexual licence. She was by no means the best singer, but a welcome antidote to the hollow pieties of the fundamentalists. (Apparently she’s still performing, somehow, somewhere.)More credit should go to women such as Gisma and Nasra, from whom Hanan Bulu-bulu took much of her act. In the 1970s and 1980s they pioneered a performance version of the erotic kashif wedding display, coupled with torrential drumming and facetious, worldly-wise lyrics. They were popular at private gatherings and were frequently arrested for the irreverent and revealing nature of their songs.Despised by the political elites of left and right, they were regarded as a much-needed source of dirty realism by the lower classes. Home truths such as ‘Hey Commissioner, we know your Toyota’s the pick-up for the groceries, and your Mercedes is the pick-up for the girls,’ and ‘This sharia is driving us to drink’ were never likely to endear them to the authorities. Most Sudanese women can drum and sing, and delighted in reproducing Nasra and Gisma’s salty treatment of the traditional daloka style.MUSIC IN SUDANThis draft extract of a report for the Rough Guide to World Music (2nd edition, November 1999) was the basis for a talk at the 1st World Conference on Music and Censorship, in Copenhagen, Denmark, 20-22 November 1998.See also: ‘Does Allah like Music?’ by the editor of Sudan Update in Index on Censorship ‘Smashed Hits’ December 1998, and ‘Verfemt – Verbannt – Verboten: Muzik und Zensur – weltweit’ (Der Gruene Zweig 206, Werner Pieper Hg)DISCOGRAPHY A good selection of cassettes is available from Natari in the UK and Africassette in the US. For information on field recordings, including Zar and women’s music, contact Sudan Update, (see e-mail address below).•CD: MOHAMMED WARDI ‘Live in Addis Ababa 1994’ (Rags Music, UK) • Cassette: ‘New Sudan Sings’ (Cassette – Counterpoint, Christian Aid, Birmingham, UK, 1997) • CD: ‘The Rough Guide to the Music of North Africa’ (World Music Network, UK)Peter Verney, Editor, Sudan UpdateWeb: sudanupdate.orgSudan Update is an independent, non-profit information and referral service which aims to encourage informed dialogue towards peace and reconstruction in Sudan. It publishes a media review twice monthly, available by post and by e-mail.

Miguel Angel Estrella: Culture and the development of a lasting freedom

Argentina: Culture and the development of a lasting freedom

Speech by Mr. Miguel Angel Estrella, at the 1st Freemuse World conference in 1998 Many artists and intellectuals throughout all times, believing that culture and art were a privileged way of transmitting aesthetic beauty, have asked themselves how to implicate their profession within the socio-political reality in which they lived. Following different ways, but each achieving a capital impact, musicians such as Bach, Händel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Moussorgsky, Bartok, writers such as Machado, Unamuno, Zola, Victor Hugo, Goethe… have done so, and with them, all those who have understood that, without liberty, there is no art but that without art there can be no liberty.In order to speak of what I know best, I should say that South American military dictatorships have always considered artists and intellectuals as a potential danger.At the end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties, I used to be one of the students member of the National Conservatory of Buenos Aires who were asking themselves a number of questions:Why were the programs we had at the time the exact replica of the Paris conservatory from the 1920?Why would music be divided into either popular or so called classical, and the first one was considered as a third class inferior product, or in any case of mediocre origin?Why, if Mozart or Stravinsky were universal, did the greatest part of the population, that is to say the poor, have no right to listen to them?Such questions were enough to get us accused, in spite of the fact that the majority of us were actually Christians; we got branded as communists and started to be the object of surveillance.Fifteen years later, in the south cone of Latin America, military rules have imposed their dictatorships. Many young artists and intellectuals had set up some kind of cultural programs for the benefit of the whole population, but while doing so, they had focused their attention mainly on the poor. We were the Vatican’s children and we were trying to implement its teachings with our own actions.Very soon, we became the object of searches and arrests as subversive elements. The south cone secret police had a model: It was designed like in the Soviet Union and it applied the same methods. Actually, we have to admit that the south cone police force had set up a most efficient cooperation. Argentineans would “vanish” into Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia or Paraguay or Chile and vice versa.My torturers were in the habit of telling me: “We know that you are not a member of the guerrilla… but you are worst, because with your piano, your ‘charisma’, you can put the ‘negrada’ working class into your pocket. Over here, we are the Gods and we are wagging an anti-communist, anti-catholic crusade in the south cone. You, you could be rich, but you have chosen the ‘shit’ society, the negro workers, the peasants, the Indians, the poor populace… and much more of the same kind.”To be “worst” for them was to fight against their ideology with words, music, art and culture Weapon less, but relying on the example of a life totally devoid of compromise. This meant that our battle was more a matter of contributing to the people’s education so that they could themselves hold their own destiny into their hands.I remain convinced, as I was at the beginning of my socio-musical involvement, in the middle of the sixties, that music and art in general, that is to say culture, can bring a fundamental contribution to society.Today, we do not have to face any more any military junta capable of bygone cruelty, fine, yet it may just depend on where you happen to be. Anyway, it does not happen any more in the vast majority of Latin American countries.In order to serve our socio-cultural cause, we need to meet head on and tackle a number of crucial issues. In spite of the fact that “Musique Espérance” (Music Hope) – the non-governmental organisation (N.G.O.), I had created those fifteen years ago – has been able to prove that it is possible to unite art and culture in a number of development programs, which aim at a higher quality of life, I shall mention a few of the negative tendencies or drawbacks with which we have been confronted and against which we ought to be fighting.The invasion of ephmerous subcultures of consummation, which are totally rootless and designed solely for moneymaking purposes – subcultures which propagate violence, bad taste and the objective of which is to unify thoughts so as to mondialise them by cramming down minds with an unsavoury fast-food which of course sells very well. This kind of “integration” of profitability is apparent in the music field, and signals itself by such catch words as “the look” or by “integrals” which commercial marketing laws force down onto us. Pseudo-music is being globalised according to criteria of a strictly mercantile nature, in just the same way as bad taste, alienation, poverty, indigence are mondialised.The lack of understanding of the political class which persists into looking upon art as just a decoration, an ornament, a privilege, and not an all consuming passion. To re-gilt “the look” of a political figure, prestige campaigns are launched and fortunes are spent. But when you talk to those same politicians about any long-term social program, they grow reluctant. It does not hold any interest for them. What does hold their interest on the other hand, is what can be seen, what will come out through the television screen and have a bold impact.Social life is in constant regression, on account of the problems inherent to the present society of our times, which generate the continuous expansion of a highly dangerous individualism. The lack of communications between neighbours and within one’s own family – there are places where couples do not even dance together any more, but each for himself or herself, locked up into a kind of autism… I mention this just to give an example of the kind of deterioration which is taking place on the level of social and familial relations.The most powerful among the communication media do not display the interest they should for the initiatives developed by the civil society. They demonstrate or evince a morbid complicity by dealing with taboos and displaying the sores of society. Such information is occasionally broadcasted in a libertine manner which amounts more to a kind of disinformation of the public whilst diverting its attention to totally different topics. For example Clinton’s fly, the fact that Pavarotti or Placido Domingo earn millions by singing just “boleros”, or that Julio Iglesias has devalorised tango… or the issue of Michael Jackson’s fatherhood, are considered more important by such medias . But it is difficult, even practically impossible to broadcast a letter from Yehudi Menuhin addressed to President Clinton and to Saddam Hussein enjoining them to avoid war.In this kind of political invasion of the “show business world”, it is extremely difficult to find a space in order to say that Musique Espérance and UNESCO are working together in order to create an Andin Indian culture centre which will be open to the influences of all the various cultures deeply rooted into the local history… or to find a space in order to say that, with the intervention of culture, such NGO as Musique Espérance are likely to be able to set up and implement whole development programs, or to invent some new North-South and East-West relations… or to suggest in which manner musicians could help the Chernobyl victims or participate in the rebuilding of Lebanon or other countries which have suffered wars and whose populations have been massacred.How are the news broadcasted by those medias being selected? I shall give a single example: When democracy was re-conquered in Argentina, we were subjected to some systematic bashing up of the military dictatorships by the media. Information was essentially focused upon the morbidity and perversity of the tortures… but it was not focused on the attempted aim of the military junta. In my opinion, this information was demobilising, for one did not know how to, nor did one want to put in evidence the deep hatred of the military party, not only against the workers, the peasants and the natives indigenes, but as well against the whole fabric of the civil society.There are integrations of all kinds racial, musical, political. In other words, intolerance, such as we can see displayed in front of our eyes every day. Even a democracy like France with the human rights tradition of that country, has fallen into the trap of extreme right.Preconceived ideas such as: Poor are uncultured, what is the point of playing any Beethoven or Fauré to them since they will not be able to understand anything? We have been working for many years in order to flood the places where we hold our concerts with good jazz music, rock, so called classical music, rural folklore, Tango.We want to establish a dialogue with the young people, get to know their medium of expression, try to establish with them a musical and cultural dialogue which helps them regain a sense of their own value, and create with them some long lasting links. PROJECTS WE ARE WORKING ON – Program of integrated development on the basis of the local cultures. – North-South Relations: Twin cities and other kind of cooperation. – Chernobyl: Ensure that young musicians from the three republics (Byelorussia, Russia and Ukraine) pledge their cooperation for and with the victims in the rehabilitation centres (physical and psychological) which have been set up by UNESCO. – East-North-South Relation. – Music and Peace (with UNESCO): Youth for solidarity. Twin cities, sponsorship (Berne-Tafi del Valle) – training of social musicians who will perform concerts and live shows in workshops in high percentage immigrant areas, in the jails, hospitals and rural country. – Organise concerts which cater to a wide range of music types. – Select young people. Combine a high level of aesthetic sense with a high humanistic level. Replace aggressive competition with social projects in which the selected musicians will become the actors of solidarity programs.WHAT WE HAVE NOT YET BEEN ABLE TO DO – Create an orchestra of young people. “East-West-South” (Byelorussia – France – South Cone of Latin America). – Create an orchestra of young Arabs and Israelis.But we have already been working in this direction. Mr. Miguel Angel Estrella, musician, director of Musique Espérance, Argentina/France.