EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC AND THE POLITICAL:

In his book For the birds, American artist John Cage (Los Angeles, 1912–New York, 1992) remembers that, during a presentation of Musicircus (1967) in Paris, a young man of the audience said to him that if ever he came back to Europe, the young man and his friends would join him in the revolution. The adjudication of a political nature to the art of a composer like John Cage might come as a surprise to many. How can an art form based on chance, silence and noise be political? What elements in the art of Cage moved this young man, along with many other members of his generation, to find in it a subversive gesture, a social commentary