Music As A Political Influence

Music can often be very influential towards people’s emotions and can be used anywhere in the world as a means of expressing an individual or groups thoughts and emotions, which can quickly spread throughout the masses, making it a very efficient way of influencing people’s opinions and as a result, an extremely effective method of conveying the artist’s political views. Music has been used as a political tool for a variety of different societies at different points in history, and each use different methods, some of which we will discuss further in this paper.

Throughout time, in some cases as far back as 428 B.C.E with the philosopher Plato, music is recognized as an influential political tool and was used to educate the younger members of

These indigenous people, used music politically as a way of resisting colonial culture without confrontation, so that the indigenous people could maintain their own culture. As seen in the following quote from the article Colonial resettlement and cultural resistance: the mbira music of Zimbabwe music is described as “the intellectual conception of a conflict to a practical way for parties to engage with a struggle.” Which assists in strengthening the idea that music can influential on a community and helps unite people in their efforts to continue their own political stance despite the influence of colonial settlers. AN example of this is what happened with the people of Zimbabwe, Africa being relocated in the late 1800’s for economic colonial

An example of this is Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime show in 2013 which broadcasted her political views, specifically on the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement with various references to it throughout her performance. She had her backup dancers dressed in all black, similar to how the Black Panther Party had dressed in the 1960s, in all black with berets. The most obvious reference to the political statement she was making was apparent in not only in the performance itself but in the way that she had released her single ‘Formation’ just a day earlier, which had a video with obvious references to police brutality as well and hurricane Katrina, which images’ of her on top of a New Orleans police car which is submerged in water and the image of an African American child dancing in front of a line of police