fugazi and the politics of communication

I recently (finally!) watched “Instrument”, Jem Cohen’s documentary/video about seminal D.C. punk band Fugazi. While there wasn’t very much in terms of information about the band, the concert footage and bits of interviews were well worth the viewing. I had almost forgotten how simply wonderful this band is- since they haven’t been in very heavy rotation for me in a few years.
What was striking about the film, however, was how much of the band’s strategy- never to charge more than a few dollars for a show, eschewing merchandise, etc, is less about a utopian revisioning of the music industry, as they are a quite conservative attempt by artists to retain control over their relationship with listeners. What emerges is not a critique of music as a commodity per se, but the more specific desire to protect against any mitigating factor (image-making, marketing decisions) which would disrupt the ability of the band to communicate what –they- want to communicate with an audience.
This is important because it strikes at the heart of an ongoing and contentious debate among cultural/art scholars about the nature of the artist/subject/audience relationship. Can anyone ever control how people process and interpret a work of art? Probably not, but it is possible to identify some of the complicating factors in that relationship and seek to isolate or remove them. I’m not sure that a rock band can ever truly decommodify their music once it is sold in a market, and the effect of keeping prices low may not be as effective as the indie-only folks may think. However, refusing to use common marketing strategies, being careful about granting interviews and rejecting the music video-commercial complex are certainly interesting strategies. Do they work?
One thing that certainly comes out in the film, by way of interviews with concert goers, is that a given fugazi audience is full of people who do not “get it”. Regardless of the band’s attempts to frame themselves, playing loud, aggressive music, even resolutely feminist loud and aggressive music, still provides a soundtrack for adolescent masculinity.
I think about this because there are lessons here beyond cultural production- for politics and politicians. Fugazi’s “business” is to make music, and they want as little as possible to get in the way of that endeavor. If a political advocate’s business is to communicate politics, how does eschewing the typical mechanisms of reproduction help to keep the ideas pristine or unadulterated? Do you refuse to appear on television? Do you refuse to grant interviews with news outlets that you know will bring personalities, salacious details and gossip to the fore and bury real issues and concerns?
In the end, you will never be able to control how your message is interpreted, how it is translated into discussions around the water cooler or at the coffee shop counter. In a sense, good progressive politics tries to wrestle with these difficulties, while bad politics does not. There is an important difference, however, between music and politics. Fugazi is happy to sell fewer records and hope that their connection with a smaller group of fans is more real and lasting than that of their mass market counterparts. Such pretensions may be dangerous, however, if your business is realigning power and resources, and the stakes are the future of everything, everywhere. Political actors should be wary of being avante-garde.