Funny, the right-wing anger about ‘Europapa’, the Dutch entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. The sample happy hardcore, a playful ode to Europe, is denounced by the radical right as perfidious Euro-propa-papa-ganda. Naturally! A boy with platinum blonde hair making a bit of cheerful Euro fun: pure disinformation!
Yes, music is never innocent. Or indeed?
The murder of gangster rapper Danzel Silos alias Bigidagoe (not necessarily ‘street slang’, by the way, but sranan tongo for an important or fatuous figure), was reason to include it in the talkative and blustering genre. It was a reprehensible “reflex” to see that music as a “cause of violence”, one expert complained. Well, rap was “intertwined” with street culture, which in turn was intertwined with crime, so violence and crime are “a bit part of it.” But rest assured, folks, there is no “causation.”
Should that be reassuring? If things are so ‘interwoven’, who needs a ‘causal connection’? And what would that mean: that a rapper automatically reaches for a gun just by one rhythmic syllable? You can also ask too much of a statement.
Of course it doesn’t work that way. Just as no one (hopefully) thinks there is a ‘causal link’ between wearing an Afghan coat and taking LSD.
It does raise the question why rebellious pop music is often so cautiously defended: really, it’s not the music’s fault. It is also remarkable how much rock stars – with them sweet sixteen and groupie culture– have come through the #MeToo years unscathed.
No doubt that defense is a response to the age-old demonization of ‘loose’ music. Like Christian rednecks in the 1950s, smashed LPs (long-playing records) by Elvis and later The Beatles to pieces in orgies of moral purity. Not to mention the Taliban and other fundamentalists, who hear the lure of Satan in every mandolin.
But then again, pop music is not sacred – not at all.
Another reassurance that does not reassure. HP/De Tijd explained the increase in anti-Semitism in the Netherlands is grossly exaggerated. The current anti-Jewish ‘expressions’ are mainly ‘politically’ motivated.
Oh good. As if that wasn’t already the case in the 1930s. For a Jewish restaurant also a small consolation: that stone through the window was only ‘politically’ motivated.
Anti-racists like to claim that intentions don’t matter, it’s the effects that count. What is perceived as racist is that too – according to that moral. Only, strangely, as soon as it concerns anti-Semitism, intentions are suddenly allowed to carry a lot of weight again. Not reassuring.
Sjoerd de Jong writes a column here every Thursday.