by mim3@mim.org, June 9, 2003
Our favorite track on this album is the Rage against the Machine "Calm Like a Bomb" song. Fittingly, regarding the vestigial Christian imagery and the paeans to Zion, there is also a Christian rock track by P.O.D. titled "Sleeping Awake." We also hear the music for the obscene dancing and sex scenes in the movie in close proximity to the religious imagery--which we appreciate as the conscious intention of the film directors.
The Dave Matthews Band treats us to an image of people having sex while the world is ending. That sums up the Neo and Trinity love scene pretty accurately. The whole CD easily could have gone off the apocalyptic Christian deep-end, but instead it often substitutes sex where spiritual lift-off would occur in the mind of the more Bible-prone.
We should also mention Marilyn Manson's abuse of the public in the song "This is the new shit." It's about the predictability of sex, parties, violence and rebels and could be seen as mocking himself, the movie and the audience.
Despite these songs with lyrics mentioned above the most important part of the album is instrumental music. When the robots attack Morpheus's ship with a thud, the "thud" is actually music. Likewise, when the masses are dancing after a Zion sermon, there is instrumental music.
After one sees a movie like "Matrix Reloaded," each of the songs on an album like this one conjures up specific images. In such a context, we Maoists favor the use of instrumental music. In contrast, playing instrumental music today from composers hundreds of years ago usually ends up supporting reactionary ideas, because the context is missing or reflects the pre-occupations of the rising bourgeoisie or the petty-bourgeoisie in their day hundreds of years ago.
The instrumental music on the CD is especially apt at describing the sentinels chasing after the humyns and the frenetic nature of the conflict. We hear extreme alertness and danger in the music. There is also the dancing music that occurred in Zion church.
The problem with all instrumental music occurs when it becomes detached from its original context and distributed for money or other reasons unconnected to its original purpose. The fact that people can make money or use music to pacify various people in various different situations is not the fault of composers, but such a truth should be the assumption of all composers.
To act as if instrumental music has no politics and hence no context is to aid the money-making abilities of those trying to profit from original artistic work. It is above all the bourgeoisie that wants to use music of all people for "universal" purposes, all the better to sell the music in more places. Hence, a symphony made originally to celebrate Polish revolutionary nationalism may end up at funerals, in churches or debutante balls of the rich and famous. It will be like seeing the music of today by the "Clash" used to sell deodorant or the "Sex Pistols" to pass the time on elevators.
Likewise, but on a lesser scale, the king's court in monarchist societies also has its political purposes for music sometimes beyond the original intentions of the composer. While we are in favor of remaking music to fit revolutionary purposes through "recycling," such recycling by revolutionaries differs from that by profiteers or monarchists and other status quo or reactionary opportunists in that we recognize we have to change the music at least slightly to fit a revolutionary purpose for today.
That is to say "original music" does not drop from the sky. It arises from music prior to it. No music is so "original" as to escape all the social context of the composer.
Even music that originally had revolutionary intentions, becomes reinterpreted and misunderstood to the point of being co-opted over time. In this case, we are going to give the "Matrix Reloaded" soundtrack a pass, because it accompanies a progressive movie (at least up to this point: the last part of the movie is not out yet.)
Over time though, this sort of CD product starts a reactionary movement that detaches the symphonic music from its original context. There will be those listening to it who do not know what it is connected to. In that case, the music will serve the status quo, by pacifying its unknowing listener.
On the other hand, we can hope that this symphonic music will not take on much of a life of its own in the cultural world apart from the movie. Whatever sickness in society that occurs where people latch on to the music without knowing what it refers to is offset by the progressive use of the music in connection to the movie. The "Matrix Reloaded" soundtrack is in fact an example of one of the best ways to sell symphonic music today. We only hope the money does not go to supporting more classical music concerts for Beethoven, Bach etc. That is yet another political question--a question of financial priorities and hence music production--which is separate from the content of music itself.
Symphonic music expressing the moods of then new but now old or gone classes from hundreds of years ago deserves to have no market outside museum-like audiences --at least till the day when we can all upload information through cartridges in the neck like the people do in the "Matrix." For now, most pre-rock "classical" or symphony instrumental music plays in snobby venues where the only common knowledge of the listeners is that upper classes used to listen to the same music hundreds of years prior.
During the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976), Chao Hua addressed the controversy surrounding politics and instrumental music: "In fact, a composer clearly has in mind what he wants to praise or oppose and what content and mood he means to convey, when he is composing the absolute music." We can see how this truth applies almost 30 years later in the "Matrix," because each symphonic soundtrack goes specifically with a movie scene.
The belief that humyn moods are not political is wrong. All people feel sorrow and joy, but they do so for different concrete reasons having to do with class, nation and gender. There is no transcendent humyn mood expressed in music just as not all people at this time are from the same class, nation and gender. At this time, some music drives toward the future of communist unity better than other music. Such progressive music deserves airtime and publicity.
It is important to note as Chao Hua and Lu Hsun did that the feelings of the famine victim collecting cinders for a living and a rich old retired man growing flowers do differ for concrete reasons. At the same time, now that post-modernist subjectivism is the fad, we do not want to push that difference to the point of saying that rich men cannot know the feeling of the famine victim. We can say that the rich man's moods are produced by his circumstances, but it is incorrect to say that each persyn has his or her own circumstances and individual mood unknowable by others. The general conditions producing moods and the moods themselves of the varying classes can be known generally. If this were not true, it would not be possible to make music for fictional worlds like the "Matrix" and have MIM give it approval.
Note: Chao Hua, Peking Review #9, 1974.