The “Second Commonwealth of Israel” (530 BCE- 70 CE) and Roman Empire (1st century CE) are two periods in time where cities rose to power, and in doing so, came into conflict. Israel’s city of paramount importance is Jerusalem. The Roman Empire had its foundation in Rome. At the beginning of the first millennium of the Common Era, both of these cities reached their peak of power and influence. The reality of this situation was that each of these cities was like sandpaper, and when they met each other, points of abrasiveness became apparent. Abrasiveness was generated by the differences in the cultures, like the varying viewpoints Rome and Jerusalem held on respect and ethics.
During the Roman Empire, Rome was an empirical city, which meant that its power derived from military might and conquest. Few people held power, and those who did subjected the masses to their whims. With conquest, came slaves, and it was not uncommon for a royal family of forty people to be in service of hundreds-of-thousands of slaves. Respect was not earned, but demanded. The emperor was seen as a god, thus ethics were not derived from religious convictions or philosophical thought, but from he whom wielded power.
Jerusalem, although powerful, derived its might not from conquest, but pilgrimages. The religious fervor of this city was palpable. Jerusalem functioned as a Temple City: no one man was more important than God. The spirituality that permeated this city led to a culture united in respect and ethics, under the overarching unity that Judaism provided. Today, the reality of Rome and Jerusalem, two organizational powers, can be witnessed in the abrasiveness of musical powers: the record industry and musical theater. The record industry dominates the contemporary world with its wealth, while musical theater thrives with its wealth of transcendence.
The record industry is the Roman Empire of musical powers. Its power is derived from domination and control of what reaches the masses. This industry conquers new artists, carrying their booty of royalties and platinum records up the Via Sacra, and then hunts down the next territory of marketable music. Once conquered, these artists become slaves to the record company. In one year or a four year contract, a four-member band will make the record company in excess of $700,000, while netting for themselves $4,000 each. (http://www.negativland.com/albini.html) Ethics cannot hold a candle to the unalienable importance of revenue.
The Jerusalem of musical powers is musical theater. Instead of power being vested solely in the hierarchy of industry professionals, power is derived from the theater itself. Like Jerusalem, musical theater is centered on a temple, denoted in Christian religions as a church. As Mary Visser explains in The Smiles of Rome (93):
"The closest relative of a church is theater, where people also come together to witness a scripted performance […] a trajectory of the soul. They come to be led by the performance to achieve contact with transcendence, […] to understand something they never understood before, to feel relief, to stare in amazement, or to cry."
Theaters are the soul of musical theater. To deny the power of industry politics in theater would be a lie, but that is not the point where the powers of the record industry and musical theater conflict. The intention of the institutions themselves brings about their inherent abrasiveness: respect for music.
Both industries claim that their intent is to create music, but the music that is produced reveals true intention. The record industry is kept in power through pop music. Pop music can be defined as “commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple love songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.” (www.wikipedia.com) This type of music does not make progressive developments, but continues domination through the same form of conquest. Musical theater’s secular output is known “show tunes.” Show tunes are individual songs from a musical that tell part of the story, but become independently popular. Musicals typically deal with internal, along with relational, exploration and development – striving for innovation and new interpretations. While pop music upholds the status quo, show tunes (and the musicals from which they come) look beyond.
Rome conquered Jerusalem and destroyed its Temple. But, the Jewish people still stand today. The record industry has not yet sanded away the importance of musical theater. As theaters dot the landscapes of major cities throughout the world, one must remember they are testaments, temples, churches, of the human soul. Visser explains that a theater, like “a church stands in total opposition to the narrowing and flattening of human experience, the deviation into the trivial […] The building is trying to speak; not listening to what it has to say is a form of barbarous inattention, like admiring a musical instrument while caring nothing for the music …" (95)
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