Politics and music : the Maltese experience

Abstract

The connection between music and politics, particularly political expression in song lyrics, has been realised and experimented with in many cultures. Music can express anti-establishment or protest themes, including anti-war songs, but pro-establishment ideas are also represented, for example, in national anthems, patriotic songs, and political campaigns. Classical music, folk, rock, reggae, hiphop and pop songs have all been used for political patronage or as an expression of dissent at some point in time. The overall scope of this exploratory paper is to zoom on the political and sociological implications that are rooted within different genres of music and song lyrics that seek to promote a particular cause. It is interested to analyse the connection between music and politics; a connection that has not been extensively researched in Maltese academic literature. After a general outlook towards the international scene, the discussion is then contextualised within the Maltese contemporary scenario wherein local songwriters are roped in to share their narratives about music and politics. The Maltese music scene provides an eventful and insightful backdrop to discuss the relationship between politics and music and this paper tries to address the resulting literature gap by producing both primary and secondary data. The selected extracts of Maltese lyrics are being presented in Maltese together with a nonliteral translation in English.