[Forty
years ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recorded
their single “We are the
World” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]
On how art
can radically change in meaning alongside history.
The song,
and one of the cultural works in any media, that became most overtly associated
with September 11th and its aftermaths was released almost exactly a
year before the attacks. America Town,
the second studio album from Five for
Fighting (the stage name of singer-songwriter Vladimir John Ondrasik), was
released on September 26th, 2000 and included the song “Superman (It’s Not Easy).” That
song, an interesting psychological examination of Superman’s inner perspective
and emotions, was the album’s second single and had already become a minor hit
by September 2001; but in the aftermath of the attacks it became an anthem for
the first responders, an expression of their collective service and sacrifice
on and after that horrific day. Five for Fighting’s live piano performance of
it at the October 20th
Concert for New York City was one of the most moving moments in a
period of American and world history full of
them, and cemented this song’s enduring status as a definitive artistic
expression of the best of post-9/11 America.
Obviously
all of Bruce Springsteen’s 2002 album The
Rising comprised another, and much more intentional, such artistic
expression. But interestingly enough, perhaps the single song from that album
which became most overtly connected to 9/11 and its aftermaths—including a similar
live performance at another benefit concert, September 12th,
2001’s televised special “America: A Tribute to Heroes”—was
likewise written a year before that event. Springsteen first wrote the song “My City of Ruins” in
November 2000 for a Christmas benefit concert for Asbury Park, New Jersey, the
seaside community that had been such a vital element of Springsteen’s childhood
and early
musical career alike. By 2000 Asbury Park was in pretty rough shape (hence the
need for a benefit concert), and so was the titular city of ruins to which
Springsteen’s speaker repeatedly implores that it “come on, rise up!” By
performing the song at the Tribute to Heroes benefit Springsteen already began
to shift its association to post-September 11th New York City,
however, and then his inclusion of it on The
Rising—indeed, it is the album’s concluding track—cemented that new and
enduring association.
The
specific circumstances and ways in which these two songs became so closely
associated with September 11th are thus quite different, but the
fundamental facts are nonetheless similar: songs written in the fall of 2000
becoming repurposed a year later after the attacks and in the process coming to
feel like collective artistic anthems of that moment and its emotions. And
that’s what I would especially emphasize about this interesting and telling
pair of 9/11 songs: a particular and potent form of what literary critics would
call reader-response
theory. That critical
perspective argues that the meaning of texts is made not by the authors (nor
by intrinsic elements within those texts), but by audiences through their
engagement with and responses to the texts. In my understanding reader-response
generally focuses on individual reader/audience member, but there’s no reason
why we can’t think about collective such responses, and indeed when it comes to
historical events that affect an entire community or nation, it makes sense
that there would likewise be collective experiences of cultural and artistic
works. Moreover, Springsteen sought to produce such a collective experience
with his post-9/11 album The Rising,
and it’s clear that he succeeded very fully indeed.
Next
musical activism tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Activisms you’d highlight?
