On Music and Politics
On Music and Politics
Henry Cow, Avant-Gardism and its Discontents
Reflecting analytically on the practices of the avant-garde socialist rock group Henry Cow and their aftermath, this chapter argues for an expanded account of the multiple mediations of music and politics. Such an account would take account of at least five distinctive orders of musical practice and their non-linear conjunction, each potentially the basis of a politics: first, animating or building alliances with wider political and social movements; second, the politics of music's institutional forms, evident in Henry Cow's practices of self-organisation and self-management, its creation of new labels, performance and distribution networks; third, the politics of the social relations of the performance ensemble, of rehearsal and of the performance event; fourth, the politics of musical materials; and fifth, the politics of lyric writing. What we see in Henry Cow, however imperfectly realised, is a concerted attempt to orchestrate multiple dimensions and forms of political invention and experimentation.
Keywords: politics, Henry Cow, performance, avant-garde
British Academy Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
