There is so much ado about music devolution in contemporary times. And I am one of those who has been utterly disappointed by the quality of music we hear nowadays. It used to be that a listener could derive meaning, joy and pleasure from listening to a song on the radio. Music then was authentic and replete with authentic vocals, live instrumentation, background singing for maximum impact and musicians who cared about their music output and its impact on society by delivering thoughtful and meaningful lyrics.
Over time, changes began to set in. Live instruments and background singers were sanitized from recordings, while synthesizers took over the jobs of real musicians. In this day and age, we grumble about AI’s supplantation of jobs. But the fact is that within the music industry, AI has been at work since the 1960s, displacing real people through the incorporation of the synthesizer into music production.
Furthermore, the quality of artists dwindled over time. Whereas, we had gifted artists grace the stage to showcase their abilities in the nascent and early years of the industry. Today, we have impostors who can barely sing a note. Many years ago, legendary artist Lauryn Hill sang a song “Superstar” (1998) and a line in the first verse goes thus “Music is supposed to inspire. How come we ain’t getting no higher”. The truth is that we were never meant to get higher. The era of positive and high vibrational music was just a phase, a coincidence and a means to an end. I conjecture that the early years of the music industry when real singers graced the stage was a salient and fundamental phase, and a facade to intentionally arrive at the current outcome.
Real artists were the pioneers and building block whose participation bequeathed the industry with credibility, structure and desirability. Their presence whetted the appetite of musically inclined onlookers, who believed they too could leverage their abilities as players within the system. The industry proprietors, on the other hand, capitalized on the willingness and naivete of these gifted artists to shape and rewrite their destinies.
Had the industry kicked off with untalented artists, many would have been uninterested in sacrificing their gifts in exchange for sour grapes. While real artists toiled and sweated, the industry executives grew fat on their talent leaving them crumbs. Displacing them with untalented acts, automated sound productions, lip syncing, etc, was a means of profit maximization without question or challenge. Afterall no impostor was going to demand for full financial commensuration as a no talent lipsyncer.
Here, I am reminded of the Milli Vanilli duo who were the face of a group and not the real singers. They did not happen by chance, but were the outcome of an intentionality within the system to downgrade the progression of real artistry which creates a moral burden when demanding its entitlement. With a make believe artist or group, the proprietors could get away with their financial abuse, while their impostor artists languished in poverty.
Furthermore, the foundation of the industry also indicates the absence of pure motives as it was founded for the purpose of propaganda. According to the Youtuber Kirby Sommers, the music industry is an organ of the CIA with a shared ownership by Australia, England, Canada, and Israel. This partnership functions as a covert operation in modern art funding artists, novelists, writers, intellectuals, historians and poets through the establishment of the Congress of cultural freedom. It began with the support of Nelson Rockefeller, who was said to be keenly interested in abstract expressionism which gained momentum as an art movement in the wake of WW2.
The music industry became a conduit for the promotion of American covert interests as a defence against Moscow during the cold war. The CIA is said to sponsor tours and exhibitions with funds channeled through foundations which serve as vehicles for money laundry. The rich are weaponized as a front for the intelligence agency who approach and make them proposals and extract a pledge of secrecy. Deductively, one could say that the staggering number of billionaires and millionaires in the world today are in bed with the intelligence agencies of the world. Consequently, their supposed money is what Nigerian singer Paul Okoye a.k.a Rude Boy would call “Audio money”. Their wealth and influence are inflated through the employment of the media which is also another intelligence operation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTuomz2HI9k (Kirby Sommers “CIA’s role in the art and music industry…Levels above Sean Diddy Combs, Jay Z and the others”)
The media functions as a tool for the promotion of manufactured artists. According to Sommers, The Beatles, Sean Combs, Jay Z, and indeed many popular groups of the 1960s, were creations of the intelligence agencies. The Ed Sullivan Show was a CIA front while the CBS belonged to them. Many manufactured artists were connected to the US political establishment and originated from military families. A commonality shared among them was lack of music talent and inability to play instruments. At this time, their objective was to actively divert mass attention from the Vietnam War which had led to civil unrest and student protests across the country, a development the government found intolerable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t87zeaWQXOQ (Kirby Sommers “The Intelligence Factory: MK-Ultra and the Manufacturing of Talent”)
Consequently, the hippie movement was inorganic and designed by the intelligence agency to deter the wave of mass protest and Los Angeles became the venue where new music would be created in relation to Charles Manson. David McGowan exposes this covert operation in Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon (2013). LSD would be introduced to disconnect the youths and general populace’s interest and engagement in the political issues of the time.
Within the black music landscape, maverick artist Jaguar Wright has noted that the CIA has been actively involved in the manipulation of music, trends and the sustainability of black success. This was her submission as a guest on Youtuber Dwann B-The Cultural Heretic’s podcast titled “The BET Awards Are Erasing Black Music” published on 29.6.26. The podcaster observed that Clive Davis who was a lawyer and CIA operative was weaponized in the pollution and destruction of black music, specifically and music in general. “It was his brainchild to move aggressively into black music” (Nelson George The Death of Rhythn and Blues, 135).
As president of CBS, Davis commissioned Harvard University Business School researchers to embark on the study of the economic architecture of black music which would be tagged The Harvard Report. The study began in the summer of 1971 and lasted for 6 months. Final submission was on May 11, 1972. Interviewees included record retailers, DJs, talent managers and programme directors at rhythm and blues stations.
The 53-paged document interrogated to name a few, the historical development of black music, the importance of soul radio stations in black music dissemination, the soulfulness of black artists repertoire which would imply their degree of black consciousness and identification was categorized (James Brown was labelled as highly soulful, Isaac Hayes and Roberta Flack were partly), the positioning and strength of competitor record companies like Motown, Atlantic, Stax, RCA, Capitol, etc, on the music market and proffered strategies for eventual market takeover.
Most of the recommendations which might have fostered black music growth were ignored by Davis because black music promotion was not his objective, but its destruction and the aftermath of the report was the disastrous clash of political economy against music integrity. CBS’ roster of black artists would explode from two in 1971 to 125 by 1980. The list included Santana, EWF, The Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye, The O’Jays, Teddy Pendergrass, Sly and the Family Stone, etc. With black artists under its wing, a full-fledged siege and hijack of black music was launched. And since all music are derivatives of black music, the adulteration would cross-pollinate with time.
This is when the music began to change. And as for the why, the music fostered positivity and unity which challenges the power structure whose strength lies in the division of the populace.
