John Cage: Ghost or Monster?

Abstract

S ome years ago I received through the letterbox, as a supplement to my regular copy of China Pictorial, Mao Tse-Tung's at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art. Talks were written in 1942. In a recent edition I notice the Chinese commentator says: The 'Talks' are a magic mirror for detecting the and in our theatres. Apparently this is a reference to the blood-curdling apparitions that featured in traditional Chinese drama. In the West today, I take the ghosts to symbolise the myth, madness, magic and mysticism idea (politically: anarchy) that infects many artists, and the monsters to symbolise the various more or less explicit anti-people ideas such as the naked ape, nuclear doom, white supremacy, etc. (politically: fascism). It is a healthy exercise to hold up such a mirror to one's own work and the works of those one greatly respects or has greatly respected. Genuine criticism is motivated solely by the desire to strengthen what is good. Of course, by strengthening what is good, it will also contribute to the decline of what is not good, or no longer good. Good here is understood to refer to everything that contributes towards social change in the desired direction, i.e. towards socialism. The first problem is: literature and art for whom? (-Talks at the Yenan Forum) Whom does Cage's music serve? We can answer this quite simply by looking at the audience, by seeing who supports this music and who attacks it. Ten years ago Cage concerts were often disrupted by angry music-lovers and argumentative critics. It was the most bourgeois elements in the audience who protested against it. But they soon learned to take their medicine. Nowadays a Cage concert can be quite a Society event. audience has grown enormously, and its class character has become clearer. What happens is that revolutionary students boycott Cage's concerts at American universities, informing those entering the concert hall of the irrelevance of the music to the people's liberation struggles raging in the world. And if his music does not support those struggles, then it is opposing them and serving the cause of exploitation and oppression. is no middle course. There is no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. (-Talks) Works of art as ideological forms are products of the reflection in the human brain of the life of a given society. (-Talks) What aspects of present-day society are reflected in the work of Cage? Randomness is glorified as a multicoloured kaleidoscope of perceptions to which we are omni-attentive. Like Jackson Pollock's painting, Cage's music presents the surface dynamism of modern society: he ignores the tensions and contradictions underlying that surface. He follows Marshall McLuhan in seeing it as a manifestation of our newly acquired electronic consciousness. He does not represent it as an oppressive chaos resulting from the lack of planning characteristic of a capitalist system in decay-a riot of greed, exploitation and corruption. However, if progressive people begin to understand the music as representing that oppressive chaos, then it will become identified with everything we are fighting against. Many younger composers and artists have been deeply affected by Cage's work at one stage or another (I include myself in this category) and he has become a father figure to a number of rebellious movements in the arts. In the Thirties