Analysis of Censoring in Music: The Issue of Jonas Tarm

Analysis of Censor Author Author Affiliation Analysis of Censor Introduction The referenced discussion (Reddit, n.d.) is about the recent cancellation of Jonas Tarm’s performance at Carnegie Hall. The musical organization cited 'offensive content' as what informed the decision (The_World, 2015). Tarm’s nine-minute piece includes a 45-seconds musical piece of the 'Horst Wessel Lied, the German Nazi anthem. According to the artist, the composition is dedicated to the victims of totalitarianism and polarizing nationalism. The composition, which includes historical themes from the 2nd World War Germany and the Soviet era, has the Soviet Socialist Republic national anthem, which ought to have caused outrage. Tarm argues that his music is supposed to evoke and not to provoke people. However, the cancellation means that the music is offensive to a section of the population that would rather not hear it. The Reddit discussion on the controversy is vital because it branches into several relevant subtopics.  When a piece of music acquires a new meaning, do any old meanings become irrelevant? In the discussion, one user argues that music is a sociohistorical phenomenon because it is how people implicitly experience it every day. As a result, music has an elaborate referential framework including social, political, cultural, religious, and economic content. It, therefore, implies that composers incorporate their experience of the environmental context in which they composed music. Horst Wessel Lied was composed during a watershed moment in the history of the world when German Nazis sought to exterminate the Jews. With it carries the context of the political and humanitarian crisis of the time. Over the years, since World War II, compositions like Horst Wessel Lied are banned in Germany because the Nazis appropriated them. While the Nazis would have welcomed this composition, it is offensive to modern society, implying that its meaning has changed from a perceived good to evil. However, the relevance of the old meaning and their political correctness (at the time) only becomes obsolete when a majority within society agrees. As posted by another user, the melody of Horst Wessel Lied can be traced back to How Great Though Art was written in 1860 in Sweden. It suggests that the composition would have had different meanings way before the Nazis adopted it. The relevance of these old meanings died with the generations that appropriated it in their different contextual domains like politics, economics, and humanity. The only contextual framework we can use to judge the piece is its association with the Nazis. The death of old meanings has implications because it denies composers like Jonas Tarm, who are increasingly under pressure to self-censor, a sociohistorical framework to inform the meanings of musical compositions.   Is De...