This morning I heard on the radio Paint it black, of the Stones. That wonder made me reflect on how certain songs are inextricably linked in the unconscious to certain historical periods. In this case the Vietnam War.
There are dozens of masterpieces to remember that conflict, from Hey Joe by Hendrix to Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival, from For what it's worth by Buffalo Springfield to The unknown soldier by The Doors.
Surely cinema has helped this process. On the other hand, who can listen to the Ride of the Valkyries of Wagner without seeing the spectacular images of the attack of the 9 regiment of the "Cavalry of the air" of Apocalypse Now ?!
Today we are definitely globalized while during the first two world wars the songs and the motifs were more "regional", I mean that on the one hand there will have been the pieces of Glenn Miller, on another Lili Marleen and on our Youth and Black Face and before that Tapun or the Canzone del Piave up to La bella Gigogin in 1858.
I'm not a historian of the song, so I do not venture any further with examples that are easily criticized ...
But what I wonder is this: after Vietnam there are songs that are immediately associated with a conflict?
Is there a (musical) motif of the first or second Gulf War or of the intervention in Afghanistan?
Many readers have been to their time in Somalia (others are going there, if they are not already there ...). Is there a song that brings it to mind?
And which piece will the memory of these days of struggle against ISIS resurface?
Andrea Cucco
(above a frame taken from Apocalypse Now)
