fandomhigh | Music Appreciation

Hannibal nodded at the students once they were settled in. "Last week, in the course of discussing home, we mentioned war a few times. There are any number of songs about war, its effects, its aftereffects, and the feelings it elicits. Today we'll be discussing those songs."

//It's fascinating, in its way,// Jono added, from his usual spot leaning against the desk at the front of the room. //There's such a broad cross-section of approaches to music about war, it's impossible to cover every point of view. The songs of each war are very much defined by the attitudes of the people living through those wars at the time. The bitter, the frightened, the adventure seekers looking for glory and those who discovered the hard way that 'glory' is absolutely the wrong word for it. The songs of the victors, the lament of the defeated. The cheerful sarcasm of those who are in over their heads and who refuse to let that fact drag them down... It's ugly. War is so bloody ugly. But the music that comes out of it is some of the most raw expression of human emotion you'll ever hear.//

"Music can also serve a purpose in war," Hannibal continued. "I will start today with a selection of drums from Japan. Drums there, as in many cultures, were used to set a pace for marching to war, to carry orders long distances, and to inspire the troops. This particular piece comes to us by way of a Chinese film showing the horrors the Japanese troops of the time perpetrated on the city of Nanjing, but offers some context to the music."

Once that had played, he continued. "Of course, there is also the much more romanticized and removed view of war presented in operas such as Bellini's Norma. In this aria, Norma calls her people to war so she may have revenge on an unfaithful lover. It shows a much less visceral facet of music."

He queued up the next song. "From the other side, we have Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. It was commissioned for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, after the prior cathedral was destroyed in the bombing of World War II. In response, Britten composed a requiem - the traditional Latin mass for the dead - interspersed with poems written during World War I, creating a poignant pacifist piece. We will listen to his "Dies Irae", or "Day of Wrath", from that piece."

Hannibal smiled, "I would be remiss not to include The Year 1812, festival overture in E♭ major, Opus 49. Or as some of you may know it, the 1812 Overture. The Russian composer Tchaikovsky wrote it to commemorate Russia's successful defense against Napoleon. It includes the - somewhat anachronistic - French national anthem, a notable war song in its own right, and was scored for woodwinds, strings, percussion, brass, and an entire battery of cannons. It is not often performed with full orchestration indoors, for obvious reasons," he added, amused.

"Not all war songs are about war, so much as used during it. For propaganda, morale, or simply distraction. During World War I, a popular French song was "Quand Madelon", a story about a young woman 'entertaining' the troops, although it's actually remarkably tasteful for the genre."

After that, he shook his head. "Still, lest you think that all of the more modern songs are critical of war, I offer you "Heureux Piou-piou", in which a soldier from World War I sings of the glories of war and how much he enjoys soldiering."

Jono gave his head a shake when his turn rolled around. This was a topic that hit a little close to home.

//I tried to come up with a selection of songs that gave a pretty decent representation of the past century of wars on Earth myself,// he noted, //but there's going to be a definite slant toward the anti-war protest songs here, as well. A few of them, such as Eric Bogle's The Band Played Waltzing Matilda and Bruce Robison's Travellin' Soldier - popularized by the Dixie Chicks well after the song was written - offer a retrospective look at the aftermath of wars that happened decades before. The first looks at the slaughter of Australian troops at Gallipoli during the first World War, and the second shows the loss of a young life in the Vietnam war through the eyes of the girl back home who loved him. U2 sang about the horror of the Bloody Sunday massacre, where British Troops shot at unarmed civilian protesters in Northern Ireland, exacerbating the Irish anti-British sentiment and raising support for the IRA. They actually cut out verses from the song before releasing it for fear of their own safety.//

Jono's voice had gone curiously flat during that last part. He'd seen the results of that particular conflict first-hand. It wasn't the sort of thing you forgot easily.

//They've all got a very different feeling from the more tongue-in-cheek songs written for the soldiers themselves during the war,// he said, dropping that weird neutrality from his tone. //Songs that were meant to keep the spirits up while acknowledging just how in over their heads they were, such as Arthur Aksey's Kiss me Goodnight, Sergeant Major from the Second World War, or Irving Berlin's Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning from the First, for example. Songs that took a comedic angle on the life of a soldier were something of a coping mechanism when things were the darkest.//

Jono's own soldiers had come up with no small number of songs meant to keep their spirits up during Glacia's war, for that matter. No, he wasn't sharing any of them in class today. For one, that would involve singing. For another, he was trying to actively avoid any music that might put him back in those moments, today.

//Some songs resonated on a more personal note with anybody who listened to them. Lili Marleen was so popular in Germany that Lale Andersen had them translated and released the song in English as well. It was massive hit on both sides of the same war, singing a story that people could relate to no matter where they called home, and was covered by numerous artists. Allied troops even took the tune and repurposed the lyrics into a bitter number about how their contributions to the war in Italy were being talked down on, and they were being referred to as D-Day Dodgers.//

So help him god, he wasn't done yet.

//Vietnam saw a different attitude toward songs about war, with songs like Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire, War by Edwin Starr, and Fortunate Son by CCR singing out against it outright. This prompted songs that embraced a patriotic fervor in turn, such as Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets, which sounds, interestingly enough, as though it would be more at home with the songs of the Second World War instead.//

It had been a long and bloody century. Jono had left so many things out. And he was still going. He ran a hand through his hair and then looked tiredly up at the ceiling before pressing on again.

Hannibal shifted a little to bump his elbow against Jono and send him a feeling of strength and support. It earned him a little sideways glance and a nod of thanks before Jono pressed on.

//I'm going to wrap this up on a few songs that have come out of more recent times still, prompted by the state of the world and the Iraq War. Jack Johnson's Crying Shame is another song in protest of war, though it's less angry than many others and more just... tired. Avenged Sevenfold wrote their song, M.I.A., to try to give some perspective of the toll that war takes on the psyche of a soldier, portraying the singer looking back on the horrors that he's seen and perpetrated himself. Metallica's One is about a soldier who was left stuck inside his own head after the injuries he sustained at war left him blind, deaf, and unable to move. They spliced scenes from the film ~~meta for~~ Johnny Got His Gun into their music video to better hit their point home, and ultimately bought the rights to the film in order to continue to show their video. And Muse's most recent album, Drones, is a concept album that follows the main character's journey, having his humanity and identity basically stripped away as he was indoctrinated into the military to become a killing machine in Psycho, leading to his eventual defection and victory over his enemies.//

Jono was making a mental note, next time they had a class about war, he was bringing the kitten.

Hannibal had not brought a cat, but he had brought food and drink? There was coffee and tea, and a number of pastries that he waved the students at. He'd taken a small tart and a cup of coffee for himself to share with Jono. "So, how do you feel these songs reflect or are affected by the wars of their times? What songs about war do you know, and which do you relate to best? What, in your opinion, should a song on the topic involve?"

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"There's 'Holiday' by Green Day," Roscoe suggested. "I like the sarcasm in that one. It's cool when artists throw in beats or samples that sound like they could be super pro-government but then undermine them with the lyrics."

//Does an excellent job of stirring up a certain mood just to turn around and spit in the face of it, doesn't it?// Jono gave a nod. //There were quite a few of them over the course of and in the wake of the Iraq War, with a lot of artists feeling betrayed and disillusioned by the things that the government was telling them. Basically any war has them, of course. So long as there are people fighting for somebody else's cause, there'll be those who choose to use song as a platform to spit in the face of it.//

"Betrayed is a good word for it," Roscoe said. "Because you can have a song about violence that takes a neutral stance, or fuck, tons of songs even glorify it, but all these songs about war are smart to call out the government for taking advantage."

//After all, it's rarely the person who declares war who feels the effects of it the most keenly,// Jono agreed. //And the ones they pull in often don't completely understand what they're about to step into. 'War' often sounds like adventure and glory to the ears of people who don't know better, and they head out thinking that they'll come back heroes. Nobody at the top warns them about the other hand, the one where they come back broken, or not at all.//

"Propaganda's a bitch," Roscoe summarized. "So it's important that music can sort of lay out the contrast between what's being said and what actually is happening. But then half the time, a song that really challenges the government and comes from this place of anger will wind up being misunderstood in the mainstream and all that meaning gets lost."

//And songs can be misunderstood in the most drastic ways,// Jono mused. //People hear what they want to hear, and music is no exception. If they can find one lyric that speaks to them, they'll throw away the context of the rest of the verses around it and make a song of protest into a patriotic anthem.//

"Yeah, artists practically have to include a disclaimer on the front of the album announcing 'This content is subversive' to get the message across," he sighed. "But even then people are gonna take it as a joke."

//So long as there are fools in the world, no message is foolproof, I suppose,// Jono quipped. //I'd love to have a penny for every time an artist looked at an audience's reaction to their work and went, 'wait, what?'//

"That would piss me off so bad if I was an artist," Roscoe said. "If I put out this, like, angry anthem and people thought it was some sappy love song, or whatever. Then I'd probably wind up in trouble for calling all my fans idiots on twitter."

//Well, some people probably need to hear it,// Jono mused, reasonably. //Ah... I suppose it's all for the best that I'm not a famous musician myself.//

Even if he'd come close, once.

"Did you want to be?" Roscoe wondered. And then he realized, "Wait, how would that even work? Oh."

Communicating telepathically did make it a little harder to be a musician.

"That seriously fucking sucks," he said eloquently.

//Little bit,// Jono replied, because understatement was his specialty. //But that's life, I suppose. And I still have guitar.//

It wasn't the same, but it was something.

"And you could write," Roscoe added. "If you write music. I mean, I don't."

He felt a little bad for getting into this.

It was okay, Roscoe. Jono had come to terms with this years ago, now.

//I do still write,// he offered, giving his shoulders a shrug. //I don't exactly share it, these days. But that's fine enough by me. So long as I have my mind, I can still make music.//

"I'm not familiar with that particular song, but that sort of sly, multi-layered storytelling lends itself well to political statements," Hannibal agreed.

"When it's done right," Roscoe agreed. "Because if you go too subtle with it, then a message that was supposed to be this powerful piece of irony can get taken at face value and lose all its meaning."

"Or it can be misappropriated by those who don't realize the irony," Hannibal said. "I remember there being rather a problem with a song like that years ago."

The naming of which would ruin his reputation for not knowing pop culture after his birth date.

"Which one's that?" Roscoe said, trying to mentally comb through the past ten years of music history.

...There were more than ten years of music history, Roscoe.

Hannibal stifled a sigh. "Born in the U.S.A.," he answered. "There were quite a few people, some rather close to the conservative campaign at the time, that read it as a patriotic anthem, rather than the critique it is. As I recall, the singer was rather unhappy."

Not if you were fifteen!

"Oh. Oh! That was supposed to not come off like that?" He frowned. "Huh. Yeah, that did not go well."

"Demonstrably not," Hannibal agreed. "I don't have a copy of the song myself, but I'm sure we can find it..."

Because Hannibal might generally feign a lack of knowledge of pop culture, but he had no qualms about admitting that he knew how to use a computer or a search engine, Jono.

It took him less than a minute, and he had found a version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuJUq58VQXQ) with the lyrics on the screen. "See what you think."

Music Appreciation | Monday, period 1

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