Music and the Tucson shootings

Anyone who has been raised under the sway of a spiritual belief system -- Christian or Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or pagan -- knows that when a crisis arises, one thing you do is listen for a sound. A still, small voice. A heavenly choir. A righteous cry unto the Lord.

Sound, especially music, often shapes our emotional responses and guides our thought processes. But since Saturday, when a gunmen identified by police as Jared Lee Loughner aimed his deadly weapon at U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her consituency in Tucson, I've been waiting to hear something that might help me comprehend what's going on. And all I hear is static, like the restless turning of a radio dial.

Usually, when an event like the Tucson shootings occurs, a soundtrack quickly emerges. Music tends to play two roles in such situations. It focuses our anger or softens the impact of our grief.

If the disaster has a human cause, like the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 or Bard College at Simon's Rock in Massachusetts in 1992, music often fills the need for a scapegoat. Trying to grasp the motivations of young killers such as Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine or Wayne Lo at Simon's Rock, those tasked with interpreting their mayhem looked for signs blasting from boomboxes.

The frenzy surrounding the Columbine shooters' alleged interest in industrial and goth rock eventually subsided; in his important book on the rampage, published a decade later, journalist Dave Cullen thoroughly disproved the link. And Lo himself denied that hard sound motivated him. In a prison letter to the rock critic Chuck Klosterman, he insisted that the T-shirt he wore that day -- emblazoned with the name of the hard-core band Sick of It All -- was an arbitrary choice, and wondered what conclusions observers might have drawn had he pulled one hawking Poison from his drawer.

It's mostly a good thing, I think, that music (or video gaming, another easy target) isn't being blamed for Loughner's alleged actions.

“These details are dug up by journalists in part to give 'color' and personality to the gunmen, often in haste and without much fact-checking,” journalist Beth Winegarner writes in an as-yet unpublished piece inspired by media reactions to Loughner's alleged deed. This time, former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin  and the odious Fred Phelps, founder of Kansas' Westboro Baptist Church, whose members were planning to picket the funerals of shooting victims, have provided all the color pundits need.

Winegarner, who is working on a book about media reaction to teen violence, notes that the media tend to focus on the cultural tastes of teens in such situations, while blaming mental instability when adults are responsible.

Still, music's lack of traction in the 24-hour news cycle seems notable. Loughner had been in a band; he upset one of his college instructors by scrawling “Mayhem Fest,” the name of a touring summer festival, across a quiz. One of his creepy Youtube videos featured the already-controversial song “Bodies” by Drowning Pool. Ten years ago, people would have been stringing together these facts and drawing (or jumping to) conclusions.

Instead, the heat has gathered around another controversial cultural energy source. Almost immediately after the shooting became a national story, people were heaping scorn on the “gun sights” poster put forth by Palin's political action committee and, more generally, on "tea party"-generated hate speech. It's almost amusing that the one professional airbag to point a finger at music is Rush Limbaugh, the spiritual daddy of all those provocateurs otherwise being blamed. Events such as the Tucson shootings always trigger necessary conversations that leap the boundaries of relevant facts. This time, music-driven pop culture just doesn't factor in. America needs to confront other demons, ones who manifest on talk radio, at political rallies and, increasingly, in the halls of Congress. The spoken diatribe and the tweeted word, not music, scare and excite us now.

If music isn't helping us channel our anxieties, it still could be serving as a salve for our sorrow. Yet so far, no one song or artist's work has risen up to define that process. This seems like a failure to me, not on the part of anyone mourning, but of our pop-driven culture itself.

It may just be too soon. There hasn't been time for Bruce Springsteen to write a song such as “My City in Ruins,” as he did after 9/11, or for his mirror opposite, Toby Keith, to kick out “Shock and Y'all.” Yet consider how music mattered almost immediately after other incomprehensible events. It's hard to think of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. without hearing Mahalia Jackson's voice ringing out on “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” or to revisit those cataclysmic first days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and not recall Randy Newman's “Louisiana 1927.” Many still associate the patriotism that bolstered the Middle East policies of both Bush presidencies with Lee Greenwood's anthem “God Bless the USA.” As recently as last year, Haitians kept hope alive after that country's devastating earthquake by singing hymns in the streets.

Music must be healing some of the pain of the Tucson shooting -- there have been gatherings in churches and other sheltering spaces, including the Rialto Theatre, where local musicians picked up instruments and played. But so far, its strains haven't reached beyond those private moments.

Perhaps that's because most of today's hit singles are so aggressively flip, focusing on sensual gratification and life's material enjoyments instead of on the spirit. (Last year's best somber hit, Eminem's “Love the Way You Lie,” expresses too specific a form of loss to work in a broader context.) Or maybe we are all just too lonely in our listening habits now, clustering around indie music microcultures and keeping our playlists to ourselves.

When I asked my community of Facebook friends what they thought might be played during the memorial service the Obamas would attend Wednesday, no one reached agreement. Barry Shank, an American studies professor at Ohio State University who's written extensively about regional rock scenes, put it best: “The event must stay away from any political segmentation. It must be about unity. And music today is too segmented into presumed categories of affiliation (political and otherwise), to enable much of it to function as a unifying force at this moment. Is there any music now that everyone likes?”

There are many good things about living at a time when no one is presumed to like the same music. The seemingly infinite varieties of sounds available for pleasure and inspiration can be overwhelming. It does seem a little sad, though, that no songs now are helping us know that we shall overcome the senselessness of a terrible moment, or the sinister conflicts surrounding it. Americans could really stand to lift up our voices and sing.

-- Ann Powers

Images: A memorial in front of the University Medical Center in Tucson (EPA); Drowning Pool (Eddie Malluk)

Comments

[albert quick]

The Columbine killers were big fans of KMFDM and Rammstein, so check your source on that.

[Vince McCleary]

Nice article. One factual error: Bruce Springsteen did not write "My City of Ruins" after 9/11. He wrote it earlier and it is actually about the decay of Asbury Park, New Jersey. He did perform it on the the televised 9/11 benefit concert.

[SanitysRest]

It's far too early to say that music-driven pop culture "doesn't figure in." But it is looking more likely with each passing day, as more information about a very psychologically troubled Jared Loughner emerges, that talk radio and cable tv and political rhetoric were NOT factors. Only one person knows for sure. But at this point, he's not talking. He's sitting in a cell, smiling to himself. Anything else is pure speculation.

[Ann Powers]

Sorry about the Springsteen mistake. Dave Cullen's excellent book on Columbine makes the case that Klebold and Harris's cultural affinities had little to nothing to do with their act. They may have been fans of those artists, but that's not what caused them to be violent. That was my point there. Thanks!

[Huh?]

Any artist stepping forward with a "song" relating to the recent Tucson incident will be accused of trying to "cash in" on the tragedy. It would truly be in bad taste.

[Dana]

Surprised U2 hasn't cropped up. Could use the aggressive call to peace that is "Sunday Bloody Sunday", the yearning lament of "Peace on Earth" or the call to unity in the face of difference that is "One". Bono's rant before SBS in "Rattle and Hum" is kind of appropriate.

[dennis c]

"The frenzy surrounding the Columbine shooters' alleged interest in industrial and goth rock eventually subsided."

Actually, I believe Cullen and Jeff Kass (author of Columbine: A True Crime Story) both confirm in their books that the killers were interested in industrial rock. Not saying it was a driving factor, but the interest was there. The alleged is misplaced.

[Paul]

A couple of days ago I found myself wanting to hear a song I hadn't listened to in years, Sufjan Stevens' "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." A song in the middle of an overstuffed album by a man concerned with nothing less than the hidden history of our country and the ultimate moral destiny of mankind, in which for once all the Steve Reich appropriations and strings and choirs give way to a simple acoustic guitar part and a haunting evocation of the childhood of another of America's proud crop of killers, sung with infinite vulnerability by a self-described Christian who for once, isn't judging: "...and on my best behavior, I'm really just like him. Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid."

[hoopla]

Ann, I like this piece very much. You ask "Is there any music now that everyone likes?" Probably not, although who knows what a songwriter might yet come up with to capture the current zeitgeist.
For years after Kent State, if I heard the song Ohio I would cry. It was cathartic.
These days, I find the songs Imagine (Lennon) and Aftermath (A Lambert..."you are not alone") ring true for me.
I like anthemic music...songs that you knew were touching or rallying hundreds of thousands of kindred spirits (at least at that moment) simultaneously. Songs with a message, in addition to the silly fun of pop.
Nice job.

[Walt Mitchell]

Well thought out and well stated, Ms Powers (Springsteen error aside). I add as a response to "Huh?" that any artist who put out a song about the tragedy would not be considered to be "cashing in" on it if he/she/they donated all of the royalty money to a fund to help the families of the six victims and the recovering wounded.

[SteveB]

The author thinks we should tone down talk radio but not music. Why would one be more influential then the other when this guy seemed to be a metal head and had no known political affiliation? The author is a crybaby liberal who doesn't understand that neither talk radio nor music should be censored. The author works for the system created by the media that blames conservatives. Al Gore's wife Tipper was the the one who wanted all heavy metal banned not the conservatives. At this rate gun sales are only going to go higher because crybabies like this author threaten to take away anything they can when it tugs at their heart strings. Liberals will lose more seats hopefully before the hippies bankrupt us into the next century. Tone it down crybabies. Losers.