The Myth of "Evil" Music, Part I

I’ll be discussing the topic of music in general today, and then more specifically (including what incident caused me to write about this in the first place) in Part 2 tomorrow.

First, let me make a bold statement: There is no such thing as evil music.

Now, you can have music with evil lyrics, of course—but saying there is such a thing as ‘evil music’ implies that there’s some combination of notes, chord progressions or assorted sounds that inherently drives people to do evil things. This, I submit, is patently false (and not a little absurd, too).

Not all forms of music are palatable for every person, of course—however not liking a particular kind of music isn’t justification for condemning it as ‘bad’ or ‘evil’. I personally can’t stand bagpipe music, for example—in fact, I’d rather beat my head against the wall over and over and over and over rather than listen to a bagpipe CD for any length of time. Does my intense dislike for bagpipe music make it ‘evil’, though? What about people who really like bagpipe music, and find it soothing and relaxing?

Traditional Asian music (pentatonic scale stuff) is also an acquired taste. I doubt many Western listeners will be able to stomach a traditional Chinese opera, but again ‘dislike’ does not equal ‘evil’.

I personally happen to like--love, actually--the sound of the electric guitar, although of course there are many who do not. The electric guitar is capable of as wide a range of sounds as any other instrument out there; from lovely, pure tones to horrific and abrasive sounding ‘screeches’. (Guitarist Gary Holt of the Bay Area band Exodus has a particular guitar sound he calls “cat strangling”…and having heard it, that’s a fairly accurate description.) Still, many people like even the more dissonant electric guitar sounds, and many do not, but there’s no justification for calling the sound that an electric guitar produces ‘evil’.

Still leaving lyrical content aside for the moment, many people, while admitting instruments themselves are not inherently evil, might still condemn the more uptempo and aggressive rock and metal genres as being musically ‘unspiritual’—not the kinds of music you’d allow in sacrament meeting, for example. True, the LDS Church does not and likely never will feature rock songs in sacrament meetings (although other churches do…), but what about when we’re not in church? Is there a contextual difference between the music you might choose to listen to when you’re preparing a Sunday School lesson, or driving to the temple, and when you’re exercising, or working on a computer? In other words, does the fact that music X isn’t ‘allowed in' or 'appropriate for' a sacrament meeting mean it’s not appropriate any other time? I don’t buy this theory…but I know it happens to be accepted by many Latter-Day Saints.

Of course, you can’t divorce lyrical content from musical judgment entirely, because most forms of music have lyrics—and you can’t simply block out the lyrics in your mind while listening to the music. Many rock and metal songs have lyrical content that could not be considered ‘Church standard’ (though, of course, not all…)—but the question is, do members judge a particular song to be ‘bad’ simply because of the lyrics, or does the type of music play a part? If you took the words to “I Am A Child Of God” or any other hymn, for example, and made a rock arrangement for it, with guitars and drums, would that be ‘wrong’? (In other words, is there something inherently wrong with ‘rock music’ that would make such an arrangement inappropriate even though it is lyrically ‘pure’) I say no, but I would suspect many would say yes. (Some people, in fact, have already created rock arrangements of Church hymns, and I don’t think that’s gone over well with a certain subset of the LDS population)

To summarize: music is music—it’s not ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it’s just ‘different’. Judgments of musical quality from a ‘righteousness’ standpoint should be about the lyrics only, since ‘sound’ by definition is not ‘good’ or ‘evil’.

Continued in Part 2 tomorrow…