“Let me write the songs of a nation – I care not who writes its laws.” – Plato
Parents, listen carefully.
“Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.
This description may seem exaggerated, but only because some would prefer to regard it as such. The continuing exposure of rock music is a reality, not one confined to a particular class or type of child. One need only ask first-year university students what music they listen to, how much of it and what it means to them, in order to discover that the phenomenon is universal in America, that it begins in adolescence or a bit before and continues through the college years. It is the youth culture and, as I have so often insisted, there is now no other countervailing nourishment for the spirit. Some of this culture’s power comes from the fact that it is so loud. It makes conversation impossible, so that much of friendship must be without the shared speech that Aristotle asserts is the essence of friendship and the only true common ground. With rock, illusions of shared feelings, bodily contact and grunted formulas, which are supposed to contain so much meaning beyond speech, are the basis of association. None of this contradicts going about the business of life, attending classes and doing assignments for them. But the meaningful inner life is with music.
This phenomenon is both astounding and indigestible, and is hardly notice, routine and habitual. But it is of historical proportions that a society’s best young and their best energies should be so occupied. People of future civilizations will wonder at this and find it as incomprehensible as we do the caste system, witch burning, harems, cannibalism and gladiatorial combats. It may well be that society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself. The child I described has parents who have sacrificed to provide him with a good life and who have a great stake in his happiness. They cannot believe that the musical vocation will contribute very much to that happiness. But there is nothing they can do about it.” - Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 74
Where is the music which could have enriched the soul of this teen? There is so much music with a magnitude of offering – the whimsy of great animation viewed in youth sound tracked by the musical giants – Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven. Later, undertaking the challenge of learning an instrument to play these great works. Utilized in personal prayer and at Mass, music allows us to “pray twice” and develop the spiritual life.
Society has stripped us of these building blocks of music. Cartoons are frequently senseless chatter aimed at keeping a child “out of trouble” and frequently there is no connection to the picture and the music presented. Schools have eliminated music programs citing it as not important compared to reading and math. Sadly, our culture is “unchurched “ – leaving secular music free reign to grasp our youth, who does not know to wrestle free from the entanglement.
The remedy is complex yet simple. We must relearn to differentiate between music and noise. Not the joyful noise of the Psalmist, but just NOISE. In addition, the more we eliminate all types of noise (not just musical) the more present we are our God, to ourselves and to others. This changes the trajectory of any society for the betterment of all.