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You are here: Home / Cycle-of-Life Season / 8 Harvest and Celebration / Discontent

Discontent

Jean Dubuffet, Poiro Zanzibare (1962)

 
Jean Dubuffet, Poiro Zanzibare (1962)

  • Freedom, “that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm,” is the motivating principle of all revolutions. Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel’s mind. [Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (1951), Part Three, “Historical Rebellion”.]

Along with the desire for progress, discontent is a primary emotional force behind change. Major change is unsettling, so an unsettling emotion like discontent may be necessary to overcome inertia and resistance.

Real

True Narratives

Sophie Scholl was a young German political activist who opposed Hitler. The Reich executed her, along with her brother and a friend after they tried to distribute anti-Nazi leaflets.

  • Inge Scholl, The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943 (Wesleyan, 1983).
  • Jud Newborn and Annette Dumbach, Sophie Scholl and the White Rose (Oneworld Publications, 2007).

Other narratives:

  • Wendy Lesser, Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets (Yale University Press, 2011): “The music is marked by extravagant willfulness, but also by an excruciating sense of futility; powerful assertions collapse in submission or despair; we are not always sure when the music is serious and when it is sarcastic. Dramatic principles of unity are widely violated.”
  • Romain Gary, Promise At Dawn: A Memoir (Harper & Brothers, 1961): “Gary believed all people suffered from this need, to break their bonds asunder again and again.”
  • Tim Mohr, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Algonquin Books, 2018): seething in alienation, punk rock paved the way toward revolution, but what will survive?

Imaginary

Visual Arts

  • Joan Miró, May 1968 (1973)
  • Wassily Kandinsky, Red Spot II (1921)
  • Wassily Kandinsky, White Stroke (1920)
  • Marc Chagall, To Russia, with Asses and Others (1911)

Film and Stage

  • Sophie Scholl, chronicling the final days of a young German woman, her brother and friend, who paid with their lives for telling the truth about the futility of the Third Reich’s midadventures
  • Viridiana, Luis Buñuel’s masterful confrontation of “the piously insulated mind . . . (and) social conditions in Spain”, presented through the tale of a young and beautiful ex-nun whose uncle offers her his “charity”

 

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Bob Marley, icon of Reggae music:

  • “Legend” album
  • “Uprising” album
  • “Kaya” album
  • “Survival” album
  • “Rastaman Vibration” album
  • “Chant Down Babylon” album
  • “Exodus” album
  • “Catch a Fire” album
  • “Natty Dread” album
  • “Talkin’ Blues” album
  • “Soul Rebels” album
  • “Rebel Music” album
  • “Confrontation” album
  • “Majestic Warriors” album
  • “Soul Revolution Part II” album
  • “Concrete Jungle: The Trilogy”, disc 1
  • Concert at Harvard Stadium, 1979
  • Live at Santa Barbara, 1979
  • “The Legend” concert, 1979
  • “Live at the Roxy”, 1976
  • Live in Paris, 1980
  • Live in Oakland, CA, 1979

Other albums, in a similar vein:

  • Keith Hudson, “Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood” (1974): “This is another welcome step in Basic Replay's reconsideration of the erratic (and mostly out-of-print) discography of 'The Dark Prince of Reggae.'”

Compositions:

  • John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728): challenging conventions (performances conduted by Britten, Dalla and Rogers [on BBC, act 1, act 2, act 3])
  • Prévost, Scherzo for String Orchestra (1960)

August 26, 2010

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Next Post: Being Aware of Things as They Are »
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