happy

An Iranian Experiment Writen by Ed Howes

Most White early Baby Boomers in the United States, heard very
little of the Blues on their radios before the Rock and Roll
step child took hold. White authority, especially parents, saw
the music as corrupting. They were correct. Cold war tensions
were high and the nation was gripped by fear and civil defense,
the fifties equivalent of Homeland Security. The new subversive
music was a pressure relief valve for White youth.

The music did not incite rebellion in a direct way. It was the
spirit of the music that moved young hearts. It had hope. It was
OK to have a good time with the world going to hell. We needed
to know that. As we gained mastery over the fear that gripped
authority, we became less fearful of the Black culture that
produced the music. Most White youth knew without question that
something big was happening. There was a generation wide
excitement that should have been shared with the Black youth of
the same age group because their culture was gaining badly
needed exposure. So began the United States' Civil Rights
movement. It was a violent fight that would have been far worse,
if not for the music coming first.

The very same thing happened a little differently in England. I
never asked an English War Baby or Boomer if they shared the
same exuberance in the mid fifties that we did. This may have
been an international phenomenon as it likely occurred in Canada
as well.

It could be argued that many elements had to come together at
the time to create the Civil Rights movement and the disregard
of presumed authority that followed, but I am not sure. It was
the music and the spirit it evoked in young hearts that was
still there and strengthened in 1963 with the British Rock
Invasion. For the next seven years, freedom was the real issue
in the "land of the free". College professors began explaining
to students what was happening to freedom in the U.S. and the
methods elitists used to control and manipulate the people.
Rebellion soon spread to challenge elitist agendas wherever they
were exposed. There was just enough violence to keep the rebels
focused on change.

The early years of Rock and Roll were mostly feel good music.
It was rhythmic romance. It had to reach the late sixties to
become protest music. Everything happens faster now - perhaps
twice as fast. What took eight to twelve years to develop in
America back then, could take four to six years in other places
today.

Iran, with seventy per cent of its population, thirty years and
younger, is ripe for such an event. Young people, not yet ready
to oppose presumed authority, as the U.S. youth were not in the
beginning, are defying the edicts of authority. This is a
healthy, pre revolutionary development. Iranian youth are exploring the Internet and forming rock bands in basements and listening to music from other cultures. This is very much like what happened in England.

If it is the spirit of the music that is the critical agent for
change, Iranian youth should be introduced to early American
Rock and Roll, to find and know that spirit. I would say the
first five years, from 1956 through 1960. Then include Blues
music from the course of its history, acoustic and electric, to
make the connection of the musical expression of oppressed
people and the obvious connection to Rock and Roll. Can it be
the music of the oppressed that leads to liberation in ways a
foreign army never does?

If Iranian youth are encouraged to listen to early U.S. Rock
and Blues, their social and cultural revolution can be much less
violent than without this old music. Feel good music somehow
creates better judgement for exuberant youth. They begin to
weigh the happiness they feel against the consequences of
political action and civil disobedience. It tempers the need to
act from hate, which blinds one to opportunities for progression.

What if it is the Iranian youth who produce the new Beatles
that spread a happy revolution, not only throughout the Middle
East, but around the world? Could they not rekindle that spirit
for those of us who now only know it as a distant memory?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if the music of Iranian youth does for
the world what U.S. foreign policy fails to do in Iraq? The
spirit of modern Rock music is not the same. It does not
generate hope in the oppressed. It is a mistake to think all
Rock music is the same and will produce the same result. I have
not listened to that old Rock and Roll much since the sixties.
Maybe I should have. Maybe I will now.

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