Please Omit Music (or Else)

Iran's top ayatollah doesn't like it—and he's not alone
By TERRY TEACHOUT

Advice to music lovers: Stay the hell out of Iran. According to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's maximum politico- spiritual leader, the promoting and teaching of music—not just Western music, but any kind whatsoever—is "not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic." He "suggests" that Iranian youth should instead "spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music." Those Iranians who prefer to do as they please run the risk of getting themselves stoned, by which I don't mean high.

If it seems to you that you've heard that song before, you're right. The Taliban of Afghanistan long ago acquired the nasty habit of blowing up music stores, and they also believe in the word of the Prophet Muhammad, who said that "on the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress." An equally tough antimusic line is now being taken by the Islamist militia that runs much of Somalia.

The Journal's Eric Felten suggested the other day that such attitudes are at bottom political. Music, Mr. Felten writes, "somehow manages to make despots nervous." Why? Because "it affects people profoundly and can't be controlled," which would explain why authoritarians of all stripes look upon it as trouble incarnate. I think there's something to what Mr. Felten says, but I also think that those of us who pride ourselves on living under democracy ought not to be too quick to make fun of the ayatollah's retrograde attitudes. For music and Western Christianity also have an equivocal relationship, one that has been fruitful over the long haul but has also seen its share of strain.

Christianity, of course, has inspired a wealth of great liturgical and faith-based music. From Palestrina's Pope Marcellus Mass of 1562 to Morten Lauridsen's "O magnum mysterium" of 1994, it's remarkable how many major classical composers (including more than a few who, like Verdi and Vaughan Williams, were atheists or agnostics) have given of their very best at the church's behest. But not all varieties of Christianity are equally receptive to their efforts. Most of the early Protestant reformers, including John Calvin and Martin Luther, opposed the use of musical instruments in worship, and Puritans have always set strict limits on what kinds of music were permissible. Many an English church organ was put to the torch in the 17th century, and to this day there are numerous sects that refuse to allow instrumental music in their services.

As for secular music, it has always been viewed with slit-eyed suspicion by Puritans past and present, usually for reasons identical to those given by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Such thinking goes all the way back to Plato, who warned in "The Republic" that music "emasculates instead of invigorating the mind, causing a relaxation of the intellectual faculties, and debasing the warrior into an effeminate slave, destitute of all nerve and energy of soul." Flash forward to 1698 and you'll find in Jeremy Collier's "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English State" a pair of sentences that would sound no less at home in the mouth of a Taliban cleric: "Music is almost as dangerous as gunpowder; and it may be requires looking after no less than the press, or the mint. 'Tis possible a public regulation might not be amiss." 'Tis possible, indeed.

What is it about music that gets true believers so hot and bothered? The British novelist Anthony Powell put his finger on it when he spoke in "A Buyer's Market" of the "sensual essence" of the fine arts. This is especially true of music, which is both incorporeal—you can't see or touch it—and fundamentally sensual in its appeal, thus making it at once mysterious and . . . well, sexy. Small wonder that pop musicians like Ray Charles, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis who blended gospel music with the secular blues got into terrible trouble for doing so—and, in Mr. Lewis's case, were wracked with guilt over having chosen to play "the devil's music."

But enough with the multicultural self-flagellation! Whatever its flaws, the West today is unashamedly pluralistic, with religion is a matter of private conviction. You may choose to attend a church where the singing is a cappella, but you can't make anybody else do so, and if you take an ax to your neighbor's Steinway in order to keep him from going to hell, you'll be thrown in jail instead of receiving a good-conduct medal from the president. Needless to say, there are plenty of things about America that need fixing, and it's conceivable that there might even be one or two things about Iran that we'd do well to emulate. I know they make pretty good movies there, and I'm told that Iranian caviar is hard to beat—but if you want to fire up your iPod without getting molten lead poured in your ears, there's no place like home.

—Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, writes "Sightings" every other Saturday. He is the author of "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong." Write to him at [email protected].