Shut up and Sing

dir. Barbara Kopple & Cecilia Peck  (2006), USA

Popular music and politics have shared a long, often turbulent history. From Beethoven to Pussy Riot, musicians have frequently proved irksome to governments for drawing attention to the uncomfortable, albeit important issues of the day. By casting light on the savage, retaliatory nature of this highly-combustible relationship, Shut Up and Sing, Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck’s nuts-and-bolts music doc detailing the ludicrous Stateside blackballing of The Dixie Chicks, demonstrates how powerfully artists can influence public opinion, and how dramatically this can rebound upon them.

In March 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, US country rock band The Dixie Chicks played a live concert at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Between numbers, lead singer Natalie Maines told the audience “Just so you know, we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas”. The incident was reported by The Guardian, whose gig correspondent Betty Clark light-heartedly wrote: “At a time when country stars are rushing to release pro-war anthems, this is practically punk-rock”. In America, however, country radio stations were already boycotting the band’s music as a direct result of Clark’s story. Within weeks, The Dixie Chicks’ position as the biggest-selling female band in history was in serious jeopardy.

Over three-years, the film follows as the girls attempt to cope with their public’s newfound disaffection. During this time, what’s interesting to behold – perhaps the film’s most fascinating element – is the band’s inevitable process of gradual politicalisation. Despite their status as country music darlings, champions of a genre traditionally associated with staunch conservatism, The Dixie Chicks, prior to Maines’ comment, had never been overly political. Now, branded as ‘communists’, faced with placards demanding their immediate deportation and the recipients of violent threats against their lives, the group were forced to rethink their identity as artists. As Maines points out: “It’s part of who we are as a band now”. Rather than pander to former fans and those back-turning radio stations in pursuit of sales and airtime, they instead chose to take a new direction with their Rick Rubin-produced comeback album Taking the Long Way Home.

Shut Up and Sing was released in 2006. That same year, David Leaf and John Scheinfeld’s own political-music doc The US vs. John Lennon analogously detailed the lengths to which, in the 1970s, the Nixon administration went in order to silence the problematically peace-loving ex-Beatle. Set against America’s involvement in Iraq and Vietnam respectively, both documentaries tell fascinating, if sobering stories of their own particular socio-political climate. Yet, at the heart of each lies the innate question of what it means to be a patriot and, indeed, what it might mean to be unpatriotic in a country where freedom of speech is proudly held aloft as a beacon of democracy and the inalienable right of every citizen.

Ultimately, Maines’ hard-line “You’re either with us or against us” attitude belies a serious point regarding increasingly polarised values in the US and the role of the media in widening the political gulf. Nowhere is the deliberate censorship of ‘free’ dissenting voices more evident than in the radio industry, a significant majority of which actually turned against The Dixie Chicks. Shut Up and Sing demonstrates how difficult, but how important it is in the face of government or media censorship, to stick to your guns. John Lennon could have easily given up his fight for US citizenship and returned home to England, but he didn’t. The Dixie Chicks, on the other hand, didn’t have anywhere to go back to. As American as ‘Mom and apple pie’, they epitomise the country’s traditional values: hardworking taxpayers who love their land and revere their families. It would certainly have been easier for them to stand by their initial apology and toe the line, but they didn’t.

The film ends with the band’s 2006 return to the Shepherd’s Bush Empire – ‘the scene of the crime’. Here, Maines reiterates her initial statement to a packed, appreciative audience; defiantly asserting her hard-fought, closely held belief in the importance of expression and freedom of speech.

For more reviews of cult classics by Scott check out his Kollektivnye archive here