![conflict desert storm remastered conflict desert storm remastered](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61O9axvWZLL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
![conflict desert storm remastered conflict desert storm remastered](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/36/35211/thumb_620x2000/ravenfield_2020-02-29_22-42-04-590.jpg)
Nevertheless, examining pop music after 9/11 does have validity, extending – ironically perhaps – precisely from its more ephemeral nature. For that reason, popular music is perhaps the least introspective of artistic mediums, given its limited scope for reaching serious insight or meaning. Unlike film, theater, or the novel, the format of the popular song impedes the capacity to delve into subjects and themes in much depth. The standard 3-4 minute pop song restricts what can be conveyed both musically and lyrically. Popular music as a vehicle for political and social commentary is also constrained by its very format. It would, moreover, be unrealistic and indeed strange, to expect that such a mode of expression would somehow coalesce into some overarching universal statement on a subject as broad and controversial as the War on Terror. This vast industry of musical production was always going to offer a wide range of views and responses that would be difficult to capture within the space of a short study. Pop music is a medium spanning many genres. In trying to make sense of popular music’s response to 9/11 and the political events it interpreted and reflected, inevitably present problems of organization and structure. The First Cut is the Deepest in the Zeitgeist Since the liberal democratic West, in theory at least, possesses the liberty to articulate a plurality of viewpoints, it is plausible to ask how the popular music idiom addressed the complexities of the twenty year encounter with the War on Terror? Did the artistic response tackle the central moral, ethical and political complexities of the age, and how well did it do so? Given the trauma and disruption the 9/11 era caused, it was to be expected that the broader culture would seek to assimilate, interpret and reflect upon the tumultuous events of this period. The reverberations from 9/11 continue to make their presence felt, be it in the enhanced security measures at airports and most points of travel, and the greater levels of surveillance across all sectors of society, through to the persistent instability in Afghanistan and Iraq, the protracted Syrian Civil War, and the continuation of jihadist attacks in the West. These spasms of violence were the accompaniment to widespread instability in the Middle East, often stoked by Western military interventions, culminating a decade later in the events of the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011.Ī further decade on from the Arab Spring, and two decades on from the shattering events of 9/11, many parts of the world are still living through the era of the War on Terror. – Spain, the United Kingdom, France and Germany among them – were also to suffer regular “home-grown” jihadist assaults. The name given to this epoch, the “War on Terror,” extended from the Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon in September 2001, to the invasions of Afghanistan in October of the same year, and later to Iraq in 2003, but which also encompassed widespread Islamist inspired attacks across Southeast Asia, India, North and West Africa. The events of 11 September 2001 ushered in a new political era in the United States and much of what is termed the Western world, the axis of democratic, ostensibly liberal societies in North America, Europe and Australasia. Ironically, icons of popular music instead turned their ire on those who voted for an anti-establishment President Trump who vowed not to involve the U.S.
![conflict desert storm remastered conflict desert storm remastered](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/36/35211/thumb_620x2000/ravenfield_2020-02-28_22-08-58-121.jpg)
Ironically, interventionist “rednecks” became disillusioned with the endless wars of intervention, whilst the “protest” writers lost their voices after President Obama came to power. One little observed dissonance that a longitudinal survey of the musical response to political violence reveals, however, is that over time the attitudes of protest songwriters and the patriots transvalued. These anti-war songs did not attain the stature of those that characterized the era of protest during the Vietnam War, nor did they offer a musical accompaniment to a social movement with any enduring political significance. As the United States moved toward the invasion of Iraq, pop music also began to reflect the divisions in society between patriot-artists who supported the invasion, most notably in country music, and protest-artists who articulated critical attitudes to war. Initially music offered a way of mourning and coping with grief. Popular music was the most immediate way in which the cultural response to 9/11 manifested itself.