The times they are a‐changin'

Since World War II, nothing has affected the world as deeply as the breakdown of the East‐West conflict after the collapse of Stalinist communism in Eastern Europe. What will come of this change—a more peaceful world or one even more unstable—remains to be seen. Cultural movements will play an important role in this struggle, as they have already. Rock musicians, for example, helped promote the demise of the Berlin Wall and the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989, although their role went largely unreported.

Music can convey meaning and values which—even (or perhaps particularly) if hidden within the indecipherable world of sound—can shape patterns of behavior imperceptibly over time until they become the visible background of real political activity. In this way, rock music helped erode totalitarian regimes throughout Eastern Europe long before the cracks in the system became apparent Former Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel—himself an artist—still numbers rock musicians among his closest political consultants. Ironically, in the GDR, it was precisely because the music was initially repressed that it became a medium of resistance which was impossible to control.