He [author Chinua Achebe] made a statement near the end of the evening that had relevance for me. He said the “emperor” prefers that artists and writers and musicians relegate themselves to making beautiful things. The “emperor” says that the arts and politics should not mix, that political decisions should be left to the politicians. But Achebe implies that all art is political — even if, like the emperor approved work, it denies being anything but beautiful. That too is a political statement and a decision. To not act, not to not include part of life in one’s work is to leave it to the politicians.
That, to me, does not mean that I should write a bunch of rabble rousing songs — though I might if I thought I could — but rather that every creation implies a worldview, a social context and resonates meanings beyond what it objectively is. I think we feel and sense all this, all these layers of meaning, without consciously bearing this moral and social weight. A song can be light but deep — that’s part of why we like them. As animals that is what we have evolved to be — beings that can sense the subtle meanings and repercussions of things. We have evolved to read intention, deceit, love and tenderness in faces, but we also see, read and hear music and everything else with the same mental and emotional acuity.