LENS

Can music change the world?
Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones once claimed that “music has probably had more effect on pulling down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union than all the rockets and all the politicians.”
Others might argue that there was a bit more to it than that. But music did have something to do with changing the course of history in the 1960s and early ‘70s, in the United States, and at other times in other places.
Tom Stoppard seems to agree with Mr. Richards. In his historical play “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Mr. Stoppard followed the exploits of the Plastic People of the Universe, an anarchic Czech band that flourished during the Prague Spring of 1968, then struggled for two decades against government repression.
Band members were beaten, interrogated and sentenced to jail for “organized disturbance of the peace, all just for performing. For Mr. Stoppard the band, and the freedom and promise of rock music in general, were a cornerstone of the Velvet Revolution that ended Communism. “The play perhaps could be called ‘It’s Not Only Rock’
n’ Roll,’” he told The Times’s Jon Pareles last year, “because it’s not.”
If young people inflamed by Western music did indeed drive the peaceful upheavals of years past, then what about the repressive regimes of 2008?
In “Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam,” Mark LeVine dreams of a musicfueled domino effect sweeping the Muslim world. Mr. LeVine, a Jewish professor of Middle Eastern history and a guitarist who once played with Mick Jagger, discovered nascent youth music scenes seething with rebellion in North Africa and the Middle East.
In his book, reviewed in The Times in July by Howard Hampton, he encounters Cairo metalheads, Palestinian M.C.’s, Iranian Iron Maiden fanatics, Moroccan thrash girls and Dubai Goths.
Their music is frequently branded “satanic” and some practitioners are hauled off to prison for “shaking the foundations of Islam.” Yet, in the power chords of the Middle East, Mr. Levine sees “a model for communication and cooperation.”
If Arab youth can become rapt followers of an Israeli deathmetal band called Orphaned Land, he argues, anything is possible.
The Chinese government, for one, fears the power of music to mold the mood of the populace. The state-monopolized radio, Howard French reported in the Times last year, allows nothing but the blandest pop songs, urging listeners to be happy and have fun.
Nevertheless, even in a land where the slightest dissent is met with harsh punishment, a furtive alternative music movement is emerging. Liu Sijia, the bass player for an underground Shanghai band called Three Yellow Chicken, sings about poverty and civil rights. “The greatest utility of these pop songs is that they aren’t dangerous to the system,” he told Mr. French. “If people could hear underground music, it would make them feel the problems in their lives and want to change things.”
Meanwhile, in Havana’s underground, a brash young punk rocker named Gorki Luis Aguila Carrasco is howling with rage at Cuban Communism. His expletivelaced lyrics, shouted over the primal roar of his band, Porno para Ricardo, attack the regime of Raul and Fidel Castro head on.
And as Marc Lacey reported in a Times article this month, he has landed in jail under charges of “social dangerousness.” He remains defiant.
“I am against everything that limits my personal liberty,” Mr. Gorki said.
It remains to be seen if another Velvet Revolution is on the horizon anywhere in the world. But a new generation of rappers and rockers is definitely rising, risking prison to indict the powerful, incite calls for freedom or just have fun.