War & Music

Watching the gritty HBO series called Generation Kill about a platoon of young Marines at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, it struck me again how ambivalent music’s relationship to warfare really is.  Sure, one end of the music-as-weapon spectrum runs through the high-brow pacifism of Britten and Michael Tippet and the I ain’t a’marchin’ anymore populism of Phil Ochs.  All we are saying is give peace a chance.

But on the other end lives the beat of tribal drums and primitive rhythms; the ritualistic mix of noise and fire and spirits that sends warriors off on a blood-letting frenzy.  There’s also martial music, which is a form of canned nationalism meant to build pride and a sense of exceptionalism. In Generation Kill, the young Marines head out in their Humvees singing–in appropriate falsetto–Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You.”  A children’s chorus of young men determined to free the world of the Haj and fags and liberals and to prove to themselves and their platoon mates that they are not afraid of death.

The talented young composer David T. Little must have had something like this ambivalance in mind when he wrote Soldier Songs,  an evening-length multimedia performance piece, that will be staged Saturday at 7 pm and Sunday night at 6 pm at  Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street.   Comprised of 11 songs with an original Libretto by the composer, the work combines elements of theater, opera, concert music, rock and animation to explore the dichotomy between war and modern society through the abstract character, the Soldier.

Soldier Songs was first presented in 2006 as a song cycle by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and had its orchestral premiere as part of New York City Opera’s VOX Festival in 2008.  The current Beth Morrison Projects production is the first fully staged presentation of this dramatic work and features a splendid creative team: singer David Adam Moore, members of the ensemble Newspeak, conductor Todd Reynolds, director Yuval Sharon, set/costume designer Chisato Uno, lighting designer Lucas Krech, and animator/video designer Corey Michael Smithson.