Hear no evil

Music is the most censored of all art forms. Not just in the way that the Nazis banned romany and "negro" music, or Stalin conducted vicious purges against "formalist" musicians - or even how jazz was described as "this filthy product of modernity" by the BBC's first general director, Lord Reith, and banned from the station until as late as 1956. Music censorship is alive and well today: from the murder last year of the Algerian singer and political militant, Lounes Matoub, to the silencing of the Mauritanian singer, Malouma Mint Maideh, for her "erotic" songs, to the arrest of the Nigerian performer and anti-government spokesperson, Fela Kuti.

In broader terms it can be seen to be at work: in the fact that Taliban Afghanistan is now referred to as a country without music, that China's fear of "spiritual pollution" has seen even 400 year-old indigenous operas banned along with most every Western artist, that dance culture in Britain has been criminalised under the Criminal Justice Act and that rock and rap music are perpetually under attack in the US from religious fundamentalists. It's all the more remarkable when you consider the way that other art forms fight back against the threat or the realisation of censorship. Compare and contrast the reaction from the literary world when Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses was deemed "blasphemous" in certain Islamic quarters to the deafening silence from the music community when artists such as 2 Live Crew, Jello Biafra and Niggers With Attitude are charged with "blasphemy" and "obscenity".

To redress the situation somewhat, there is now a concerted effort on the part of the international community of popular music "scholars" to raise the profile of free musical expression and defend attacks on it, from whatever quarter. Late last year, the first world conference on music and censorship took place in Copenhagen (one of its topics was why Lounes Matoub's murder went virtually unreported) and now the Index on Censorship magazine, a bi-monthly publication, has devoted its current issue to instances of censorship around the world. There are also musings on why the musical community, usually the first to clamber up on stage to support Amnesty or Greenpeace, is slow to speak out in support of colleagues under threat. The Index On Censorship magazine comes complete with an 11-track CD of banned songs, ranging from The Tibetan Singing Nuns, to Fela Kuti, to Crass.

Music censorship has a long and undistinguished history; as a vehicle of "subversion" music has long been recognised as a danger by rulers, religious groups and self-appointed moralists. Plato condemned the use of specific music intervals, William Byrd risked his life by composing in secret for the Catholic Church and Verdi had to edit his libretti to avoid political disapproval. The 20th century, however, has provided the worst instances of censorship. The Nazis identified modernism, "musical bolshevism" and Semitic music as grave threats, while Alfred Rosenberg declared in 1935 that "the atonal musical movement in music is against the blood and the soul of the German people". An "Ordnance Against Negro Culture" was passed in order to rid the country of "all immoral and foreign racial elements [including jazz] in the arts".

In Stalin's USSR, modernism or "formalism" was the chief musical enemy, with the state-sponsored Composers' Union decreeing in 1934 that "the main attention of the Soviet composer must be directed towards the victorious progressive principles of reality. Socialist Realism demands an implacable struggle against folk-negating modernistic directions that are typical of the decay of contemporary bourgeois art". The best-known victim of this policy was Shostakovich, whose avant-garde opera Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District led to him being described as "a lacky and toad of the West".

In China, such is the level of concern about "hidden messages" in music, that in a move reminiscent of the cultural revolution, the long-awaited revival of a 400-year old classical opera, Mu Dan Ting, was called off last year by the Bureau of Culture in Shanghai. The Bureau said the opera, which was written during the Ming dynasty period, was "superstitious and pornographic". With regard to contemporary music, the Chinese authorities refer to "healthy" music (i.e. music which they approve of) and "spiritual pollution" (i.e. any music, mostly Western, that they don't approve of).

The ultimate form of censorship, state-sanctioned murder, has been used more in this century than any other. When Augusto Pinochet's US-backed coup overthrew the democratically-elected government of Allende in Chile, one of the new regime's first victims was the popular left-wing folk singer, Victor Jara, whose hands were cut off before he was shot dead in the Santiago stadium in 1975.

In Africa, while the most obvious example of musical censorship was in South Africa under apartheid (where even Julio Iglesias was banned) countries such as Nigeria, Ethiopia (under the Mengistu regime) and Zaire have excelled themselves in banning records and exiling musicians. In Islamic countries, music and fundamentalism regularly clash, and too often women singers bear the fiercest brunt of censorship. It's not that the West emerges with any great dignity, either. Musicians in the US felt the full force of the McCarthyite witch hunts in the 1950's, while figures such as Paul Robeson, Phil Ochs and Woody Guthrie were routinely hounded by the FBI - Robeson had his passport revoked and was hauled in front of the House Committee of UnAmerican Activities to explain his more contentious songs.

In Britain, even The Rolling Stones and The Beatles had their various skirmishes with radio stations and television programmes over the lyrical content of their songs - The Stones had to sing Let's Spend Some Time Together instead of Let's Spend The Night Together in the early 1960s, while The Beatles' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and A Day In The Life were banned for perceived references to drugs. Both The Sex Pistols and Frankie Goes To Hollywood were banned during the 1970s and 1980s, though you can now hear God Save The Queen and Relax being played back to back on BBC Radio 1.

During the Gulf War, the BBC drew up a bizarre list of songs that were to be banned for the duration of the conflict. Much to everyone's amusement, if not disbelief, the list included songs such as Abba's Waterloo, A Ha's Hunting High And Low, The Bangles' Walk Like An Egyptian and Lulu's Boom Bang A Bang. Under a similar stricture, the band Massive Attack had to be referred to as Massive.

The most all-encompassing piece of legislation against music came with the passing by the British government in 1994 of the Criminal Justice Act which defined and proposed to outlaw, when played in certain circumstances, a genre of music known as "house", which they said was "characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats". The idea behind the CJA was to criminalise "raves" or any gathering of more than two people who wanted to listen to "repetitive beat" music. Tony Blair's New Labour has yet to repeal this insidious form of censorship.

There is no such law against dance music in Ireland, but promoters and DJs regularly complain of how the media contrive direct links between listening to dance music and taking the drug Ecstasy - which simply isn't the case. In more general terms, Ireland has never treated music the same way as it has treated literature, mainly because of the special place of music in Irish culture. For the main part, we have tended to ape British censorship laws over the years and the only real point of concern these days seems to be the way Irish radio stations "censor" Irish musical acts in favour of a bland diet of FM Adult Orientated Rock.

In broader terms, the real danger now lies in how musical censorship has refined itself and become more covert in its operations. Programmers of radio and televisions stations have difficulties playing certain songs or videos that might alienate their bosses or the advertisers of the show. There was much ironic laughter when the massive Wal-Mart retail chain in the US refused to handle a song by the Prodigy called Smack My Bitch Up - the Wal-Mart chain also sells guns.

The Prodigy's song title was a deliberate bit of liberal-baiting on the part of the band, their explanation at the time being that it was an observation on the rise of "new lad" culture and how some white British men were fatuously imitating the vernacular of some black American hardcore rappers in order to appear "tough". It was perhaps no surprise when the WalMart store later refused to stock a Sheryl Crow song which featured the lyric "Watch our children kill each other with a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores".

Because Wal-Mart and other outlets are important retail points for acts to have their albums stocked in, there is now a growing amount of self-censorship among musicians who don't want to upset the record shops, or their record companies, with contentious lyrics. And with just five record companies now controlling around 80 per cent of the world's music repertoire, the new censors are coming in the guise of record company accountants.

Smashed Hits - The Book Of Banned Music is published by the Index On Censorship, price £8.99 and can be ordered by ringing 0044171 278-2313.