Places and forms of power

PLACES AND FORMS OF POWER

I’m going to talk about the notion places and forms of power through the power of song.

First of all, I would like to give a definition of power.

Power is the capacity, for a person, to influence the behaviour of others on the course of events.

So we may wonder: To what extent can we say that songs can have a form of power? 

First, I will talk about committed songs and then we’ll see that songs can influence people in a detrimental way too.

1. Committed songs

To speak about committed songs, we can talk about of Baltimore, a song by Prince.

Prince’s song pays tribute to two black men killed by the police without any real reason. They are Michael Brown and Freddie Gray.

The police officers who made the murders were released without any real prosecution, without being tried while they were guilty, which provoked demonstrations.

In the video clip of this song, we can see that the scene takes place in Baltimore; we can see, all along, people that are demonstrating in the city.

The picture of Martin Luther King is present too, it’s not necessary to recall that MLK is the figure of the movement for the Civil rights of Afro-American.

In the song we can hear many times the expression “If there ain’t no justice then there ain’t no peace”, demanding justice for the two men, that the police be judged, otherwise there will never be peace between blacks and whites.

For Prince, I quote, “the system is broken” because the rules are not respected, so, Prince complains plainly and openly about the American system and In the end appeals to the young to change it in order to create “A new life” so that black and white people live on equal footing.

The song is committed to defending the cause of the Afro-American people.

Even if the Civil rights Act has been signed, discrimination is not totally abolished.

So, we can say that Prince denounces a real cause which is discrimination. So we can say that committed songs are therefore an effective way to convey messages, support revolts, for example.

1. The influence of people by songs

However, songs can also influence people in a detrimental way.

In effect, for example, we listened to a report that deals with the relation between pop songs and alcohol.

The research from a University shows that in the United Kingdom, one in five songs speaks about intoxicating beverages and that the number of songs which refer to alcohol consumption is double compared to 1981.  

Songs can encourage the young to drink more and more alcohol.

So according to this report, health professionals should verify the lyrics because they may go against public health warnings that try to prevent young people from drinking alcohol.

We studied another example that shows that songs can have an evil influence:

We talked about the unfortunate story of a teenager.

A 19-year-old teenager committed suicide after listening to hard rock singer Ozzy in Osbourne’s album Speak of the devil.

His parents filed suit against Osbourne but the Court said that the lyrics were protected by the first amendment to the American Constitution which guarantees the freedom of speech. So, Osbourne was not found guilty and then the parents lost the case.

We can make a link between the two kinds of songs.

One deals with alcohol and may increase in consumption of alcohol.

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