Why does PG One's Peace and Love sound strange?

Nie Ke, Special Author of Du Nan Watch

Recently, PG One's apology on Weibo is worth pondering. "Early contact with hip-hop culture was deeply influenced by black music, and the understanding of core values was biased", "Hip-hop spirit should always be peace and love". In a few words, first of all, throw the responsibility to foreign counterparts and safeguard their peers; It is well-intentioned to label hip-hop spirit as pollution-free to wash away the dirty water I poured on the cash cow of hip-hop.

In this message by Weibo, we can also see many people who support PG One and hip-hop music, and strive to flaunt that "peace and love" are the "core values" of music in order to counter the vicious attack of public opinion on hip-hop music.

PG One's friends and studio apologized to Weibo for the keyword "positive energy".

Peace and love seem to be common expressions of pop musicians, and careful music lovers should be familiar with them. Jimi hendrix said, John Lennon said, said, even Tao? In a hurry? . Pop musicians label themselves as "peace and love", just as it is natural for patients with low back pain to put dog skin plaster on themselves.

Why does PG One also say "peace and love"? Is this just rhetoric to justify hip-hop music, or is it the essence of music? What does music have to do with "peace" and "love"?

The connection between music and concepts such as "peace" and "love" always arises in a specific social context. In the history of pop music, the most striking connection occurred in the United States in the 1960s. At that time, the United States experienced a series of fierce social unrest: Kennedy was assassinated, the US military sank deeper and deeper in the battlefield in Southeast Asia, economic development stagnated, unemployment rate soared, social contradictions, especially civil rights issues, became prominent, and young people were extremely disappointed with mainstream culture and began to establish their own anti-cultural movement.

This movement is linked with the hippie movement, the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, which has repeatedly impacted the mainstream culture of the United States. Although there are differences among various ideological trends, they all point the finger at the American government, which is mired in the quagmire of war and crisis of trust, and shout slogans of "peace" and "love".

Musicians are in the vanguard of this counterculture movement. They support and practice the concepts of "peace" and "love". John Lennon, the soul of The Beatles, once wrote a song "Love, Not War" to echo the most famous slogan in the hippie movement. Many famous nude photos taken by him and his girlfriend Yoko Ono Lennon also support this slogan.

Jimi hendrix, a revolutionary who plays rock electric guitar, said: "When the power of love exceeds the love of power, peace will come to the world." He burned his hand-painted guitar at the Monterey Music Festival, as if he were fighting against the materialistic capitalist reality with some mysterious ritual.

At Monterey Pop Music Festival, jimi hendrix burned his guitar. arban-mag.com

1969 Woodstock Music Festival in August pushed the slogans of "peace" and "love" to a climax in the name of music. 400,000 fans, hippies, civil rights fighters and supporters of various counter-cultural movements poured into this small town in New York State and enjoyed almost uninterrupted music for four days and three nights. The star-studded performance lineup and closely linked social movements have made this music festival go down in history. The comment of Max Yasgur, the owner of the festival, is very telling: "400,000 people in the same venue could have caused disaster or violence, but they just walked around peacefully to enjoy music. This is the success of peace and love. "

1On August 5th, 969, more than 400,000 young people from different cities gathered in Bessel, a small town in the southeast of new york, just to attend Woodstock Music Festival. Horton archives

Since then, music has become a common tool to express the concept of "peace and love", and music festivals have also become a common carrier to convey this slogan. International concerts supporting on-site assistance, Berlin Wall, Wall Benefit Concert and People in Poverty-stricken Areas (Live 8), as well as various public welfare evenings for disaster relief in China, all regard music as the best way to express their love and think that they are contributing to peace.

Specific to hip-hop music-although this genre of music was born after the 1960s, we can easily see its connection with "peace and love"-the pioneers of hip-hop music, such as "Afrika Bambaataa", hope that hip-hop music can attract black youth who are caught in street violence all day long and express themselves in a more "peaceful" way.

"Africa Bambata" founded the Zulu, the first hip-hop group in history, initiated and promulgated the Hip-hop Peace Declaration, and advocated a social environment of mutual love, mutual assistance and peaceful coexistence, which became the blueprint of the Peace Declaration jointly initiated by the Hip-Hop community and UNESCO 200 1. Up to now, hip-hop music has always followed the hippie phrase "peace" (and the developed "peaceful exit") as a way of greeting and farewell.

However, we also see that if we want to associate music with "peace and love", we need a specious reason. "Peace and love" in American pop music in the 1960s is an echo of the clear goal of the Vietnam War. If there were no violence and despair in the Vietnam War, "peace and love" would be impossible.

Similarly, if there were no famine in Africa, no SARS and no Wenchuan earthquake, the "peace and love" of these music would be groundless. In other words, the "peace and love" of music needs context. In addition, the creative content of musicians can't be completely confined to this unique theme.

196 1 year1month, during the "anti-Vietnam War" of American citizens, the slogan read "The war is in Vietnam, and the crisis is at home". timetoast.com

In fact, both Lennon and Hendricks have works that have nothing to do with "peace and love" or even the opposite (for example, Lennon wrote "Run for Your Life" during the Beatles' period and Hendricks' famous interpretation of "Hey Joe"), but this does not prevent them from becoming representatives of "peace and love"-provided that they are in a specific context.

More importantly, "peace and love" itself is a very vague concept, which makes the content of this slogan complicated. In the context of the anti-cultural movement, "peace and love" is not only a resistance to social reality, but also implies the resistance of the younger generation who grew up in the baby boom to the parents who brought all this and the social rules they set up.

In their view, the current social values are unworkable, leading to wars and various social problems, so these values should be completely overthrown. Under the protection of the label "peace and love", the values of the anti-cultural movement took this opportunity to go to the other extreme.

Idle wandering life, the abuse of psychedelic drugs and drugs, and promiscuity divorced from traditional love and social concepts all became part of "peace and love" at that time. This is not unreasonable: vagrancy and drug abuse are only aimed at themselves and do not cause violence and conflict; To some extent, promiscuity belittles the institutional shackles and secular morality in love and marriage, and emphasizes the love experience unrelated to reality and interests.

Hippies fly leaves at Woodstock Music Festival. panamatoday.com

"Peace and love" in American hip-hop music also appears at the same time as violence, drug abuse, money worship and objectification of women. However, some supporters of hip-hop music believe that these contents appear in music, which is a true description of the black society at the bottom, a satire and dissatisfaction with the status quo, and a criticism and protest against the social rules dominated by whites. It is in this ironic way that hip-hop singers express their hope for "peace and love". Therefore, under the background of American hip-hop music, the content of "peace and love" is also very controversial.

So the expression of "peace and love" in PG One Weibo is very strange. Due to the lack of specific context, we don't know what the specific content of "peace and love" he refers to. China's hip-hop ecology and social environment have nothing to echo with "peace", but "love" is more like the expectation that hip-hop culture will be embraced by mainstream values.

Especially ironically, PG One uses the expression "peace and love" without a clear reference. If we simply apply the specific content of "peace and love" in American hippie culture or American hip-hop culture in 1960, we can even say that the content of pornography and drugs in PG One's criticized songs is actually a concrete embodiment of "peace and love" in a sense, which obviously should not be what PG One really wants to express. So in PG One, "peace and love" has become a very problematic label, and his rhetoric seems to be just a poor imitation of pop musicians in history.

Why do pop musicians call for "peace and love"?

Apart from specific historical reasons, we should also realize that peace and love are not only advocated by pop musicians, but also what they need. The concept of peace and friendship implies the tolerance of diversity and the expectation of stabilizing the market. The work content of pop musicians determines that they not only need stable market demand to survive, but also need a tolerant social atmosphere to realize their self-worth. Therefore, peace and love are not only the labels of pop musicians, but also their food.

I wonder which singer will forget the gesture of "love". weibo.com/jasonzhangjie

But this label does not apply to all musicians, or even to all music creation. In fact, the meaning of music itself is worth discriminating. In different social contexts, even in different political contexts, the concept of music is different, and the specific sound objects they refer to are not the same.

Music can even become an offensive weapon in some cases: 1989, during the siege of Panamanian dictator manuel noriega, the US military played hard rock music day and night with high-power speakers in the opera house; In 2002, during the competition between Palestinian and Israeli armed forces for the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, it was reported that Israeli forces harassed Palestinian forces by playing heavy metal music. In modern wars, creating unbearable sound environment has even become a common means of military harassment.

Because there are different understandings of "what is music", the meaning of music itself is dominated by the social and political context. "Peace and love" is only one of the possible meanings of music, and it is not and will never be the essential feature of music.

Therefore, the "peace and love" in PG One's mouth is pale and ironic in this context. In order to whitewash hip-hop music, "peace and love" is a decent label. However, this does not mean that "peace and love" is the only label of hip-hop spirit; On the contrary, hip-hop music can find many more representative and distinctive labels to excuse itself. At this time, hip-hop music does not need to use the "peace and love" in the bullets to make passive resistance for itself; The spotlight of public opinion, whether negative or not, is the soil that breeds energy, only to see who can seize the opportunity to help hip-hop win the "peace and love" it hopes.