It’s also central to the modern popular music economy, especially since the massive disruptions wrought by the internet on the recording industry. Audiences, too, assume that local venues will feature a stream of international performers.Īn advertising board at the entrance of the Bataclan concert hall. From Jenny Lind’s Barnum sponsored American tour to the festival circuit today, touring is how musicians build audiences and hone their skills. Travel has been intrinsic to the practice and consumption of popular music – all music, in fact – since at least the 19th century. World music expo Womex, likewise, has encountered visa issues and associated difficulties regarding the mobility of artists. British musicians have had problems in the past, such as, for instance, getting visas to play the South by Southwest festival in Texas. If, as looks to be the pattern, border controls tighten and international movement becomes more difficult, this will put extra constraints on a form of cultural activity for which touring is crucial, and increasingly so. Music across bordersīut there’s another, slightly more troubling, irony in the fact that the response to these attacks could make life more difficult for artists. One of popular music’s historical strengths has been a show of defiance through having a good time.
It stands as an implied rebuke to the joyless, fascistic ethos of the attackers. But there’s an irony in the fact that the consumption of hedonistic, neon sub-metal has provided a rallying point for conservatives – the censors of old – and liberals alike. Obviously censors of this ilk should not be compared to the murderers who carried out the Bataclan attacks. The draconian reaction to Pussy Riot’s “punk prayer” stood out and drew international attention, but punks and metalheads across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa have also been subject to repression and censorship. But economic status aside, they are still often subject to hostility from reactionaries and fundamentalists of all stripes, particularly at grassroots. Given that rock and pop are commercialised and transnational cultural forms, we tend not to regard them as particularly fragile. It’s apposite that one focus of the attacks was a rock concert. But as the fallout spreads and discussion moves to the policies and actions of nations, it’s worth dwelling briefly on an aspect of modern culture that was both at the centre of events and, understandably, swamped by their magnitude. That those atrocities were an assault not just on Western values, however defined, but on all civilised discourse is beyond argument. The tensions of those Cold War concerts, political or otherwise, fade to nothing against the trauma that beset the recent Eagles of Death Metal gig in Paris. When Zoot Sims was asked what playing with Benny Goodman in 1962 Cold War Russia was like, following a tour beset with official and personal aggravations, he was typically sardonic: “Every gig with Benny is like playing in Russia.” Sims could at least afford a wry quip.
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