I have so much to say about this topic I could write a series of stacks of my own about it and probably will one day. But to get the the most pertinent point:
Conservatives have no friend or foe system through which to publish music. Unless you're blisteringly unsubtle, people have no way to recognize at a glance that this music was made for them, to fight for and uphold their political leanings. If there were a reliable way to submit music to be distributed through conservative circles, that would handle that issue because the source would be recognized by the customer, but there isn't.
So most conservative musicians make music that is as subtle as a YouTube thumbnail and just as likely to be considered art in the future. You can make great music, subtle, subversive, fun, whatever, but unless it sacrifices nearly everything appealing in exchange for brick to face obvious explicitly political messaging, no-one will know it exists, because it'll fade into the background noise of people releasing music on the internet with its most unique aspect completely unseen, a drop in an ocean.
I know this because I've been doing it. My first song I thought would take off was a fun, sarcastic. grunge/nu-metal track I called Fuck Trump because I was at a concert and the singer started a song by getting the crowd to chant "FUCK TRUMP" and I thought what a great song it would be if it was a fuck Trump chant accompanied by what you're actually against if you're against Trump (jobs, world peace etc). A song sung from the perspective of someone saying "fuck trump" that satirizes them. But I'm not a conservative celebrity and thus had no way to signal that this was not your garden variety fuck trump song beyond painfully spelling it out which partially ruins the fun of the lyrics.
Other songs with titles less antagonistic (and thus potentially misunderstood) titles saw no greater success, because I've committed to making a good song first (what's the point if it isn't good?) and thus haven't made it vulgarly political or obsequious. And without a conservative friend or foe system, also known as a curator, it's just internet background noise.
Thanks for linking, I hadn't read it, but just did. A few things:
The beginning about how big con (what they should be called) won't be coming to help in the "culture war" in any way was very cathartic to read. Their near-total refusal to create or promote culture for the culture war in any way that isn't 100% self-serving (and also awful) is mindsplittingly frustrating.
But I find his conclusion to be almost completely ridiculous. So I'm meant to keep my head down, not be overtly political in my speech, if I'm political in my art ensure it is sufficiently veiled, so that I can blend in with leftists (whose purity tests are growing increasingly deranged by the day), so that I can one day "change it from within" whatever that means, as if once I start changing it from within all that effort, subterfuge, and frankly, lying, won't be immediately tossed out the window by these people we know to be so ravenously purity spiraled that they constantly devour their own?
Absurd.
Are there any examples of this happening, or do we have multiple examples of people at the very top being immediately unpersoned when they stepped out of line? They keep firing warning shots at Chris Pratt for being so bold as to be Christian and like having a family. But even that is irrelevant because any single person's chances of becoming Jay Z are next to nil. So if your plan starts with "become Jay Z" then it's a bad plan. We need plans that are able to leverage middling degrees of success to make change, and that plan exists and is time tested: creating a scene for your art. Underground, sure. But in that arrangement each member artist contributes to a greater whole. In Cosmo's arrangement, no-one makes any difference until that artist is big enough to "change things" and then gets immediately kicked out as leftists use him as a cautionary tale of why you have to vet your artists better.
What's more, things are feeling like they're headed in a "line up against the wall" direction very, very fast. We don't have time for talented, convincing, charismatic and evocative people to be keeping their voices muffled while they work their way up leftist ranks. We need everyone saying everything they can, right now. Yesterday.
This political and cultural movement is less than a decade old. Convincing yourself that there's no way funding, community or promotion will arise from it is premature. At a bare minimum, I still see support from con inc to be more realistic than becoming Jay Z and magically not being removed from every lever of influence the moment I start to "change it from the inside". If you're a talented artist with something political to say, you should say it as loudly as you can to inspire others to join you. Any other route simply allows the left to continue to consolidate power while you lie to yourself about what a difference you're going to make from the inside one day.
Right on. If you can stand the more recent trends in the hip hop music world and enjoy a call to action for conservatives to fight the lefty BS, give Tom MacDonald a listen on YT.
Tom MacDonald is definitely the absolute best we've got along "counterculture musician" lines and it's not close, in popularity, output, quality and balancing art with message in a way that doesn't come across as wholly pandering.
That said, I'm just not that into rap, never find myself going out of my way to listen to it. If I manage to make enough of a stir with my own industrial metal, I'd definitely ask him if he wanted to make a rap/metal collaboration though, which, when done right, is still pretty sick.
I can see why you hold the opinion you do. On the political level, it might be best to attack and be upfront against leftist pretensions however for the artist it might be safer to hide one's views. I think a useful aphorism could be that our art should not be pre-political(especially in the modern day) but rather post-political. Triumph rather than ignorance. I find the following link to be rather informative on this unique issue among the many facing the people in our sphere. The section contains screenshots from Araltes under Dissident right wing art and culture and Comparison between the dissident right and Renaissance Italy.
You're right, I wanted to limit that comment to only one aspect, but you're 100% correct that gigs anywhere and everywhere I can is the most effective way to get the music in ears. Issue is that I have a family to support so being anon is the only way I can speak as freely as I want to, which means internet only, and not even having the benefit that a face brings to marketing.
I've thought about this topic a lot. The issue with political music is that it needs to succeed as music first, and politically second. "Fortunate Son" is just a great song with a killer riff and a catchy chorus. Faith based media could never. Conservatives or rightists should therefore stay away from overtly political messaging altogether; it is simply too easy to parody or ignore.
The issue still remains, though, that in the "culture war," you need to produce culture! In fact, the propagation of cultural artifacts—film, literature, music, architecture—is the highest calling for a people. It is literally why we are here doing what we are doing—partisans and policies are merely the means by which a people creates the conditions in which cultural production can actually take place. This is where the right in the United States and elsewhere has failed spectacularly, though it may be that the deck is stacked too much against them to apportion all that much blame, I don't know. I do see flickers of hope, not in celebrations of loserism like we see in Mr. Anthony, but . . . well actually I just tell a story.
During the nadir of my belief in the American people—2021 with its vaxx insanity—I was able to go to a concert to see Paul "Big Velvet" Cauthen (of minor "Cocaine Country Dancin'" fame—an impossibly cool song). It was there that I realized that we *are* going to win. This was not partisan music. Nobody told me to vote for Trump. The lyrics aren't controversial. Rather, I came to see that there is only one camp in the United States offering an appealing vision of life, and it's not the urban city dweller with his various morbidities masquerading as a political ideology. Rather, it's the people who, despite any faults, actually hold something out that you'd wanna take a part in.
I think you can be as explicitly political as you want, as long as it's actually coming from a place of sincerity. The reason a lot of overtly political music sucks is because it's insincere. It's overtly political because it's engaging in falsity where the motive behind the politics is that the artist is being a "pick me", essentially, a flatterer.
Rage Against the Machine, while not a great example of being against the machine, is a great example of writing good political music. It would be hard to argue that the emotion behind their music is cynically trying to appeal to the commie crowd and not an errant though deeply felt belief.
Marty Robbins is great and deserves a mention. His music celebrates American history and culture, especially the Old West and our frontiers mindset but also he wasn't afraid to speak his mind and when he had to take the gloves off he wrote quite possibly the greatest right wing anthem of all time, ain't I right. It was so scathing that the left had to bury its existence and pretend like he was just a harmless cowboy singer
Indeed. Everyone knows "Big Iron" from New Vegas, but the rest of that album is even more based. Songs about crime, justice, family, and Jesus. A must have!
Conservative music doesn't have to be political at all. Conservative people just have to write music. When Cardy B. puts out trash like W.A. P maybe a conservative puts out a song about sticking w/ your wife. Lol, maybe that is lame but you see what I mean, right? Rather than bash us all on the nose with politics and outrite tell us your political stance write something that is OF your political View. CCR may not have been a Conservative band but a song like Born on the Bayou can come across as Conservative because it is an expression of love for their home Which, I think, fits well with Conservative thought.
A truly Conservative and tallented songwriter will not have to tell you directly through their art that they are Conservative and we don't need them too. Conservatives can write about the full range of the human condition because if you want Conservative artists to be successfull in the long term they, just like Liberals, need to be universal in their themes.
Kinda low hanging fruit but I'd also recommend Merle Haggard. While he has a few famous/infamous brazenly political songs, he mostly sneaks them into his catalog of otherwise fairly generic (but very high quality) "outlaw country" style music. And even his political songs tend to be less "Republican politicians are better than Democrat politicians!" and more "It sure seems like society is getting worse, doesn't it?"
This song was released in 1982 and still hits really hard 40 years later...
Love Johnny Horton. Good to see him highlighted here. I think looking back to the art that was "conservative" in the past but has been mostly forgotten is a great way for us to get the discussion going moving forward.
Hmmm, I think the Oliver song is legit good folk country bluegrass. Soulful and to the point, not overproduced, and I generally am not a big fan of popular country music. I love the resonator guitar and his voice. Maybe it's that I produce music on the side and I know all the tricks with compressors, reverb, EQ and background singers and even orchestration and layers of keyboaeds to make music sound "big" and radio ready, and I am not of a fan of that sound.
Most popular music is the product of hype and promo . . . look at the Beatles '64 for instance, or the American rip off the Monkeys or, later, pop stars like Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift. Occasionally, sometime organic sprouts up, such as south of Richmond. To have conservative music though, you need a conservative audience. Most Americans have come a long way since the home grown hit such as "Ballad of the Green Beret" or better yet the "Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCPywCCrW5Y
To an extent, the medium is the message. It will always be an uphill battle to produce conservative music through channels which are inherently not conservative.
Conservative channels are things like small communities, family, close relationships and tradition. Wanting a conservative song to spring forth from YouTube, or other mass media channels and still be relatable and playable in a decade or more is a tall order.
Muse are confused lefties that stumble into being based every once in a while on accident, and then quickly denounce it whenever someone points it out to them, lol.
@GoneAnon I’ve dwelled on your comment for a week since posting my recommendation while I slave for the big corporation. I admit to being ignorant about Muse’s activities outside of the music. You’re right, Muse is not a good recommendation for conservative music. I understand many would dislike the electro-rock la-la-la. I posted the recommendation because the based call to action content in some of the songs is what I needed a year ago when I first came across the album. It was refreshing in a way. Before it, all I have is the first RATM album. The dilemma I have, in-line with the dilemma posed by @Conundrum Cluster is a lack of music with high energy and based content.
I have so much to say about this topic I could write a series of stacks of my own about it and probably will one day. But to get the the most pertinent point:
Conservatives have no friend or foe system through which to publish music. Unless you're blisteringly unsubtle, people have no way to recognize at a glance that this music was made for them, to fight for and uphold their political leanings. If there were a reliable way to submit music to be distributed through conservative circles, that would handle that issue because the source would be recognized by the customer, but there isn't.
So most conservative musicians make music that is as subtle as a YouTube thumbnail and just as likely to be considered art in the future. You can make great music, subtle, subversive, fun, whatever, but unless it sacrifices nearly everything appealing in exchange for brick to face obvious explicitly political messaging, no-one will know it exists, because it'll fade into the background noise of people releasing music on the internet with its most unique aspect completely unseen, a drop in an ocean.
I know this because I've been doing it. My first song I thought would take off was a fun, sarcastic. grunge/nu-metal track I called Fuck Trump because I was at a concert and the singer started a song by getting the crowd to chant "FUCK TRUMP" and I thought what a great song it would be if it was a fuck Trump chant accompanied by what you're actually against if you're against Trump (jobs, world peace etc). A song sung from the perspective of someone saying "fuck trump" that satirizes them. But I'm not a conservative celebrity and thus had no way to signal that this was not your garden variety fuck trump song beyond painfully spelling it out which partially ruins the fun of the lyrics.
Other songs with titles less antagonistic (and thus potentially misunderstood) titles saw no greater success, because I've committed to making a good song first (what's the point if it isn't good?) and thus haven't made it vulgarly political or obsequious. And without a conservative friend or foe system, also known as a curator, it's just internet background noise.
Thoughts on COSMO SENEX's piece in Man's World "THE DISSIDENT ARTIST: A
CASE STUDY IN FAILURE"? It seems like he suggests doing the opposite of what you are currently doing.
Link: https://wiki.chadnet.org/files/mans-world-issue-11.pdf page 140
Thanks for linking, I hadn't read it, but just did. A few things:
The beginning about how big con (what they should be called) won't be coming to help in the "culture war" in any way was very cathartic to read. Their near-total refusal to create or promote culture for the culture war in any way that isn't 100% self-serving (and also awful) is mindsplittingly frustrating.
But I find his conclusion to be almost completely ridiculous. So I'm meant to keep my head down, not be overtly political in my speech, if I'm political in my art ensure it is sufficiently veiled, so that I can blend in with leftists (whose purity tests are growing increasingly deranged by the day), so that I can one day "change it from within" whatever that means, as if once I start changing it from within all that effort, subterfuge, and frankly, lying, won't be immediately tossed out the window by these people we know to be so ravenously purity spiraled that they constantly devour their own?
Absurd.
Are there any examples of this happening, or do we have multiple examples of people at the very top being immediately unpersoned when they stepped out of line? They keep firing warning shots at Chris Pratt for being so bold as to be Christian and like having a family. But even that is irrelevant because any single person's chances of becoming Jay Z are next to nil. So if your plan starts with "become Jay Z" then it's a bad plan. We need plans that are able to leverage middling degrees of success to make change, and that plan exists and is time tested: creating a scene for your art. Underground, sure. But in that arrangement each member artist contributes to a greater whole. In Cosmo's arrangement, no-one makes any difference until that artist is big enough to "change things" and then gets immediately kicked out as leftists use him as a cautionary tale of why you have to vet your artists better.
What's more, things are feeling like they're headed in a "line up against the wall" direction very, very fast. We don't have time for talented, convincing, charismatic and evocative people to be keeping their voices muffled while they work their way up leftist ranks. We need everyone saying everything they can, right now. Yesterday.
This political and cultural movement is less than a decade old. Convincing yourself that there's no way funding, community or promotion will arise from it is premature. At a bare minimum, I still see support from con inc to be more realistic than becoming Jay Z and magically not being removed from every lever of influence the moment I start to "change it from the inside". If you're a talented artist with something political to say, you should say it as loudly as you can to inspire others to join you. Any other route simply allows the left to continue to consolidate power while you lie to yourself about what a difference you're going to make from the inside one day.
Right on. If you can stand the more recent trends in the hip hop music world and enjoy a call to action for conservatives to fight the lefty BS, give Tom MacDonald a listen on YT.
Tom MacDonald is definitely the absolute best we've got along "counterculture musician" lines and it's not close, in popularity, output, quality and balancing art with message in a way that doesn't come across as wholly pandering.
That said, I'm just not that into rap, never find myself going out of my way to listen to it. If I manage to make enough of a stir with my own industrial metal, I'd definitely ask him if he wanted to make a rap/metal collaboration though, which, when done right, is still pretty sick.
https://youtu.be/XdJ4_cJWz8E?si=cilD_lNtJIe6PMNB
I can see why you hold the opinion you do. On the political level, it might be best to attack and be upfront against leftist pretensions however for the artist it might be safer to hide one's views. I think a useful aphorism could be that our art should not be pre-political(especially in the modern day) but rather post-political. Triumph rather than ignorance. I find the following link to be rather informative on this unique issue among the many facing the people in our sphere. The section contains screenshots from Araltes under Dissident right wing art and culture and Comparison between the dissident right and Renaissance Italy.
https://archive.ph/TxUrd#selection-831.1-831.37
https://archive.ph/TxUrd#selection-971.1-971.61
You're right, I wanted to limit that comment to only one aspect, but you're 100% correct that gigs anywhere and everywhere I can is the most effective way to get the music in ears. Issue is that I have a family to support so being anon is the only way I can speak as freely as I want to, which means internet only, and not even having the benefit that a face brings to marketing.
I've thought about this topic a lot. The issue with political music is that it needs to succeed as music first, and politically second. "Fortunate Son" is just a great song with a killer riff and a catchy chorus. Faith based media could never. Conservatives or rightists should therefore stay away from overtly political messaging altogether; it is simply too easy to parody or ignore.
The issue still remains, though, that in the "culture war," you need to produce culture! In fact, the propagation of cultural artifacts—film, literature, music, architecture—is the highest calling for a people. It is literally why we are here doing what we are doing—partisans and policies are merely the means by which a people creates the conditions in which cultural production can actually take place. This is where the right in the United States and elsewhere has failed spectacularly, though it may be that the deck is stacked too much against them to apportion all that much blame, I don't know. I do see flickers of hope, not in celebrations of loserism like we see in Mr. Anthony, but . . . well actually I just tell a story.
During the nadir of my belief in the American people—2021 with its vaxx insanity—I was able to go to a concert to see Paul "Big Velvet" Cauthen (of minor "Cocaine Country Dancin'" fame—an impossibly cool song). It was there that I realized that we *are* going to win. This was not partisan music. Nobody told me to vote for Trump. The lyrics aren't controversial. Rather, I came to see that there is only one camp in the United States offering an appealing vision of life, and it's not the urban city dweller with his various morbidities masquerading as a political ideology. Rather, it's the people who, despite any faults, actually hold something out that you'd wanna take a part in.
Needless to say, I now own a cowboy hat and a truck. Here's a cool Paul Cauthen song btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLHomq6WVV0
I think you can be as explicitly political as you want, as long as it's actually coming from a place of sincerity. The reason a lot of overtly political music sucks is because it's insincere. It's overtly political because it's engaging in falsity where the motive behind the politics is that the artist is being a "pick me", essentially, a flatterer.
Rage Against the Machine, while not a great example of being against the machine, is a great example of writing good political music. It would be hard to argue that the emotion behind their music is cynically trying to appeal to the commie crowd and not an errant though deeply felt belief.
Marty Robbins is great and deserves a mention. His music celebrates American history and culture, especially the Old West and our frontiers mindset but also he wasn't afraid to speak his mind and when he had to take the gloves off he wrote quite possibly the greatest right wing anthem of all time, ain't I right. It was so scathing that the left had to bury its existence and pretend like he was just a harmless cowboy singer
Indeed. Everyone knows "Big Iron" from New Vegas, but the rest of that album is even more based. Songs about crime, justice, family, and Jesus. A must have!
Cool Water is my favorite. :^)
Not an American song but this song is so good https://youtu.be/zG7xlNSzmgE?si=xWlrT3U6WXM25qoh
There is a whole genre of Quebecoise music that's based on traditionalism for some reason.
My kids grew up with Marty Robbins and Hank Williams
Conservative music doesn't have to be political at all. Conservative people just have to write music. When Cardy B. puts out trash like W.A. P maybe a conservative puts out a song about sticking w/ your wife. Lol, maybe that is lame but you see what I mean, right? Rather than bash us all on the nose with politics and outrite tell us your political stance write something that is OF your political View. CCR may not have been a Conservative band but a song like Born on the Bayou can come across as Conservative because it is an expression of love for their home Which, I think, fits well with Conservative thought.
A truly Conservative and tallented songwriter will not have to tell you directly through their art that they are Conservative and we don't need them too. Conservatives can write about the full range of the human condition because if you want Conservative artists to be successfull in the long term they, just like Liberals, need to be universal in their themes.
IN 1814 WE TOOK A LITTLE TRIP
This is a great post, and very important topic.
Kinda low hanging fruit but I'd also recommend Merle Haggard. While he has a few famous/infamous brazenly political songs, he mostly sneaks them into his catalog of otherwise fairly generic (but very high quality) "outlaw country" style music. And even his political songs tend to be less "Republican politicians are better than Democrat politicians!" and more "It sure seems like society is getting worse, doesn't it?"
This song was released in 1982 and still hits really hard 40 years later...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIKUkcNeZfQ
Love Johnny Horton. Good to see him highlighted here. I think looking back to the art that was "conservative" in the past but has been mostly forgotten is a great way for us to get the discussion going moving forward.
Hmmm, I think the Oliver song is legit good folk country bluegrass. Soulful and to the point, not overproduced, and I generally am not a big fan of popular country music. I love the resonator guitar and his voice. Maybe it's that I produce music on the side and I know all the tricks with compressors, reverb, EQ and background singers and even orchestration and layers of keyboaeds to make music sound "big" and radio ready, and I am not of a fan of that sound.
Most popular music is the product of hype and promo . . . look at the Beatles '64 for instance, or the American rip off the Monkeys or, later, pop stars like Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift. Occasionally, sometime organic sprouts up, such as south of Richmond. To have conservative music though, you need a conservative audience. Most Americans have come a long way since the home grown hit such as "Ballad of the Green Beret" or better yet the "Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCPywCCrW5Y
To an extent, the medium is the message. It will always be an uphill battle to produce conservative music through channels which are inherently not conservative.
Conservative channels are things like small communities, family, close relationships and tradition. Wanting a conservative song to spring forth from YouTube, or other mass media channels and still be relatable and playable in a decade or more is a tall order.
Is this a joke?
Sorry for the delay in my reply. Please see above response to @GoneAnon
Joking, right?
Muse. Will of the People album.
Muse are confused lefties that stumble into being based every once in a while on accident, and then quickly denounce it whenever someone points it out to them, lol.
@GoneAnon I’ve dwelled on your comment for a week since posting my recommendation while I slave for the big corporation. I admit to being ignorant about Muse’s activities outside of the music. You’re right, Muse is not a good recommendation for conservative music. I understand many would dislike the electro-rock la-la-la. I posted the recommendation because the based call to action content in some of the songs is what I needed a year ago when I first came across the album. It was refreshing in a way. Before it, all I have is the first RATM album. The dilemma I have, in-line with the dilemma posed by @Conundrum Cluster is a lack of music with high energy and based content.