Earlier this month, in my East Asia in Western Art Music class, a discussion of the intersections of John Cage’s music and Asian influences prompted Conservatory second-year Faith Meshida to assert that “John Cage’s success is rooted in white supremacy.” Understandably, this sentence spiraled into a class-wide discussion on meaning in music, political connections to artists, and white supremacy.
John Cage, the late prominent avant-garde American composer, when discussing his musical inspirations, famously stated, “I am interested in social ends but not in political ends because politics deals with power, and society deals with numbers of individuals. … In other words, I’m interested in society, not for purposes of power, but for purposes of cooperation and enjoyment.”
Known for insisting his music had no inherent meaning, once stating sound doesn’t have to be anything more than sound, Cage’s music was also built on the traditions of Asian music. While benefiting from the contributions of marginalized groups and claiming an apolitical ideology, Cage was effectively a hypocrite. Music cannot be apolitical if its origins stem from the politics of power. This is because when Cage adopted an apolitical attitude, he simultaneously exploited and diminished the contributions of marginalized artists. Cage continuously cited influences of Asian music but simultaneously claimed the music he produced from those inspirations had no meaning.
If an artist like John Cage claims his music has no meaning, that is a message in itself. He had the privilege to produce provocative, outlandish-sounding music that means nothing because of his social identity as a white man. Undoubtedly, society would not give as much grace to a person of color. While Cage’s homosexuality was an open secret in the art world, he was closeted to the general public. As a result, his relationship with society was not automatically politicized. The power he wielded as a white man in America was enough to sustain him throughout his career. He had no interest in using his power and voice to make a change, and that gives enough meaning to his music to make it undesirable to many.
Similarly, because music is inherently political, we can not separate the art from the artist, even in cases of artists like Kanye West. This is not to assert that everyone must stop listening to and enjoying their favorite music or art if it was created by an individual with contested political beliefs, but rather to prompt discussion.
In an empirical study titled “Separating art from the artist: The effect of negative affective knowledge on ERPs and aesthetic experience,” psychologists found that “emotional responses can be evoked not only directly by the piece of art, but also indirectly by our knowledge about the artist.” So, clearly, our perception of art is contingent on our understanding of the artists and their beliefs, even if we claim to separate the two. This is why such a naïve statement of “separating the art from the artist” holds no value.
Mark Leuchter, a religion professor at Temple University, emphasized the ridiculousness of the aforementioned suggestion.
“If you have people that are paying attention to your art and giving it a place in their lives and letting it affect their mind and letting it affect their emotions, then you, as an artist, are affecting their minds and their emotions,” Leuchter said.
When we perform John Cage, we must acknowledge that the success he has is due to his identity as a white man with the privilege to compose music “without meaning.” When we listen to Kanye West, we must acknowledge his antisemitic messages. When we enjoy the art of Pablo Picasso, we must acknowledge the abuse enshrined in the abstract brushstrokes, and when we read the words of J. K. Rowling, we must recognize the hate speech between the lines, as well as the active financial contributions to groups advocating for transphobic legal policies. Without these considerations, we fail to acknowledge the impacts artists’ ideologies have on our own perceptions of music, people, and world events.
