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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Music Censorship Spans Globe, Report Says
By Nigel Williamson
LONDON (Billboard) - Afghanistan was notorious for its outright ban on music under the deposed Taliban regime, but censorship remains a global problem.
A new survey declares censorship of music "alarmingly widespread." Even in the United States, where the right to free expression is ingrained in the Constitution, a debate rages over entertainment content.
The report, "Shoot the Singer! -- Music Censorship Today," asserts that governments, corporations and religious authorities are all guilty of attempting to silence musicians who express views that they oppose.
"We're not only talking about government-imposed bans. Censorship of music can come from retailers, corporate interests and lobbying groups," says Marie Korpe, director of Freemuse, a Copenhagen-based international organization formed in 1999.
RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
The organization, funded largely by the Danish and Swedish governments, documents violations of the United Nations )' declaration of human rights, as it applies to musicians and composers.
"It's striking how different societies worry enormously about music and use a broad range of techniques to repress it," Korpe says. "And in most cases they violate international conventions on human rights."
"Shoot the Singer!" is due to be released at a one-day conference May 18 in London that will include academics, human rights campaigners and musicians.
Among the speakers will be Thomas Mapfumo, the most popular artist in Zimbabwean music for the past 20 years.
He has been forced to move to the United States after his criticism of prime minister Robert Mugabe's regime sparked bans of his music and death threats.
"In Zimbabwe they've tried again and again to censor my music and my ideas," he says. "But all over the world there are authorities who will go to great lengths to silence musicians."
Korpe, who edited the report, draws attention to two images included in its pages.
One shows a Taliban bonfire of music and videocassettes in Afghanistan.
The other depicts the smashing of Dixie Chicks CDs at a "destruction rally" organized in 2003 by a U.S. radio station.
"The two photographs offer a poignant reminder that the same mechanisms apply to vastly different parts of the world with very different ideologies," she says.
GLOBAL PROBLEM
Freemuse points out that music censorship goes beyond Islamic countries and that all sides of the political and ideological divide are involved. Other examples highlighted in "Shoot the Singer!":
- Iran: The country's regime may have liberalized somewhat since the 1979 revolution, but a 1997 ban on women singing in public remains in force.
- Lebanon: Singer Marcel Khalife has twice been prosecuted for blasphemy after he set verses from the Koran to music.
- Turkey: All-female group Koma Asmin was recently tried in the Istanbul State Security Court for singing a 60-year-old banned Kurdish anthem.
- Palestine: Israeli authorities have placed wide-ranging restrictions on the free movement of musicians traveling to and from the West Bank.
- Mexico: The popular ballads known as narcocorridos are censored to varying degrees on the grounds that they glorify drug bandits.
- Cuba: Carlos Calafell, director of radio station Nueva Gerona, was sacked for playing a rap song mildly critical of Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s regime. Gorki Luis Aguila Carrasco of the much-censored punk group Porno Par Ricardo was sentenced to four years in prison last year on drug trafficking charges without evidence.
- United States: In addition to the well-publicized uproar over Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines ' criticism of President Bush , Freemuse cites the refusal of visas for Cuban musicians to attend this year's Grammy Awards.
Freemuse, which has received donations from such prominent bands as Oasis and the Pet Shop Boys, actively campaigns on behalf of musicians anywhere in the world, regardless of political or religious affiliation, who are persecuted because someone in authority doesn't like the noise they make.
Further information is available from freemuse.org, and case studies are highlighted by Index on Censorship (indexonline.org).
Reuters/Billboard
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
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| Main Offender |
You must realise that Mike Powell (Colin Powell's brother)is the head of the FCC. Go figure! |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
Main Offender wrote:
You must realise that Mike Powell (Colin Powell's brother)is the head of the FCC. Go figure!
Really? I thought it was his son. But I don't think that's either here or there...necessarily. Censorship is anathema to a conservative. |
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| Monkey Woman |
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
Censorship is anathema to a conservative.
No, only the censorship of their ideas by other regimes (or their political adversary's administration) is anathema to the conservatives. When they are in power themselves, it's not called censorship but protecting morality and family values. 
[Edited by Monkey Woman] |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Yeah you're right MW. I should have qualified the statement further. Theoretically I think that most old school American conservatives (I don't consider Bush a conservative) are against censorship. I'm not sure about what a conservative is in Europe. I guess by now here in the States most old school conservatives have morphed into Libertarians. (Not Libertines! LOL.) |
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| egon |
speaking about shooting the singer,
how about that chick from the cranberries?
just a thought... |
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