At the end of March 2020, after eight years of silence, Bob Dylan suddenly released a new song. In Murder Most Foul, he alternates between lyrics about the murder of John F. Kennedy and references to well-known American pop songs. ‘It’s as if he were presenting a playlist that contains songs that have the power to keep the country together in times of crisis,’ says Mehring. The song provided comfort during a period in which thousands of Americans became infected with the coronavirus. ‘By the same token, this song placed Dylan in a long tradition of music about violence.’
Nick Cave
In his contribution to the Crime and Music collection, Mehring describes how murder and violence cropped up in various American music movements from the nineteenth century onwards. Within the bluegrass music of that time, there was a great fascination with people’s darker side. These murder ballads were about outlaws who committed brutal murders, in which women were often the victims of murder. Most ballads ended with the death or imprisonment of the outlaw, which ultimately restored social order. One of the best-known ballads is Stagger Lee, a song that has been covered by many different artists, including Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It should be noted that, unlike in most murder ballads, the outlaw in the Nick Cave version appears to go unpunished.
In early blues music from the first half of the twentieth century, murder and violence were also common themes. ‘This can be seen in the music of Afro-American singers such as Victoria Spivey, Bessie Smith, Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey and Ethel Waters. They sang about issues that were part of the female African American experience, including domestic violence, murder, disease, and drug addiction.’ This music shed light on problems that many disadvantaged black women were experiencing every day. Singing about their plights also offered women a remarkable opportunity to portray themselves as powerful and independent agents. ‘Murder ballads are part of an African-American musical tradition. For example, in the song Mississippi Goddam, Nina Simone sings about the Ku Klux Klan’s bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four black girls were murdered. Many years later, the themes of murder and violence would once again return in the gangster rap genre.’
Protest songs
In the 1960s, singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan often employed the themes of murder and violence in their songs. For example, in Only a Pawn in Their Game, Dylan does not give an accurate description of a murder, but he does illustrate that murder is simply part of a system in which class struggle and racial segregation are the order of the day. According to Dylan, it’s not the shooter who’s the real criminal; it’s anyone who perpetuates the political and social environment that gives rise to murder and death. And by anyone he means anybody from the Ku Klux Klan to the sheriffs, and from the governors to the police. Thanks to these kinds of songs, Dylan was perceived as a protest singer, which was a reputation with which he would have rather not been saddled.
According to Mehring, in his recent song Murder Most Foul, Dylan once again illustrates how murder ballads not only play a central role in American popular music but also in American popular culture in general. ‘Violence, murder, torture and death are most visible in the medium of film. Take, for example, Psycho (1960) from director Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) or the more recent Marvel superhero films, in which violence is seen as an appropriate response to an evil superpower. You can also see the key role that violence plays in video games, for example, in the suggestively titled series Assassin’s Creed.’
Although violence obviously can be found in different kinds of media, Mehring believes that music is the most fascinating medium for analyze and understand the role that murder has played throughout history in American society. ‘In nineteenth-century southern America, murder ballads emerged as part of an oral tradition in which murder stories were passed on through songs.’ Today, videos add a creative layer to the music, for example in rapper Lil Nas X’s song Montero (Call Me by Your Name), in which he is stoned to death before ripping off Satan’s head. ‘Music can actively speak to our emotions, create an immediate response, often at the intersection of culture, politics, and protest.’
American identity
The fascination with murder and violence is a worldwide phenomenon, but Mehring does recognise a distinctively American tradition in the artful design of both murder and violence in films, television, graphic novels, and music videos and music. ‘In the American imagination, violence is at the heart of forging the American nation in the American War of Independence and War of 1812. Whenever Americans proudly sing their national anthem at public events, from the Super Bowl to the inauguration of a new president, you’ll hear them singing about violence and the endurance of American power. “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air / Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there”.’
Mehring emphasizes that other countries obviously have their own traditions representing violence in different media. ‘With films such as Akira Kurosawa’s Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954) and Sion Sono’s Jisatsu Sākuru (Suicide Club, 2001), Japan has been recognized as a country in which some of the most controversial films in cinematic history were created. But the way in which violence is a) intrinsically connected with the founding of the United States and b) presented as a form of self-affirmation in popular culture, it becomes clear that violence functions a fundamental element in shaping American identity.’
Photo: Bob Dylan and Joan Baez (Carlos Santana was also in the original photo). Source: Heinrich Klaffs via Flickr.