Moogfest 2017

Is Resistance Futile? This presentation asks the question: Can music be an effective means of protest? Using examples from blues and gospel, participants explore the ways that music can–and cannot–resist oppressive systems. The discussion will raise several examples in order to argue that while music is generally ineffective at spurring certain kinds of political change, it is highly effective—necessary, even—as a method for proposing the possibility of a better world.

Drawing on an idea formulated by scholar Ashon Crawley that he calls the aesthetics of possibility: “We act, through the aesthetics of possibility, as if we already are what we want to be, as if we already have what we want to give away, as if liberation is already with us, as if resources were already equitably distributed. In such desiring, in such aspiration, is the enactment of the otherwise world.” Blues and gospel help bring us into the space of the aesthetics of possibility, and thereby allow us to glimpse a better world, and enlarge the very idea of resistance.