With these five songs, we can see that the western influence of rock and roll has swept over the entirety of Europe. Similar to the Soviet rock and roll from Tuesday’s class, each song has a strong and openly political message addressing the common concerns and crisis of the time. I found the fourth song particularly interesting due to its seemingly strong support for communism. While we recently have been discussing the Soviet people’s growing discontent for their controlling government and see that reflected in their music, this German song had lyrics singing about how different places “belong to us” under communism and even sang “out of the way, capitalists, we’ll win the last battle.” I wonder if the Soviet discontent was only beginning and had not yet reached the people of East Germany, or if following the destruction of World War II, the people saw a benefit to communism at least in its early stages. All of the songs had a revolutionary sentiment and what we would consider leftist views, suggesting that coming out of fascist governments these people of both Germany and France would like to gain freedom and agency once again in their lives.
Music and Politics in 20th c Europe (HIST 315 F19)
Sing the song of your people!
I also think the idea of destroying capitalism in our listening today to be quite interesting. I was recently talking to a professor who said the world has been in “late stage capitalism” for 50 years, and I am hard pressed to disagree with that statement. As a GWS minor, I find myself viewing capitalism as a way to subjugate human agency. When everything you do is assigned a price tag, it is hard to make art that may not be commercially successful. Capitalism is a wild system that I am not necessarily prepared to talk about in class, but I agree that I think discussing how communism is being talked about in 1960s France in comparison to 1980s USSR is at odd. All I really can say for certain is young adults are fed-up.
I agree & I think we are really able to see in our generation a kickback to capitalist ideas, even through small things like memes on twitter. I don’t think that it is too bold to say that our generation takes more to socialist ideas and does not have a fear towards it like older generations. Also, as the student debt crisis hits a new high here in the United States, it will likely contribute to more bad feelings towards capitalism by the younger generations. Potentially this could lead to our own version of May 1968 in France?