Congress shall make NO LAW respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peacably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There are some problems with this, particularly in the area of free speech. First, there are some in Congress who think nothing of proposing blatantly unconstitutional laws if they play well at home. This leaves matters to the courts, an expensive process for defenders of speech and leads to the second problem. The Supreme Court of the United States has seen fit to put several categories of speech outside the protection of the First Amendment, namely obscenity and "inciteful speech" or "fighting words." Bringing back Justices Black and Douglas, the high court’s last First Amendment absolutists.

POPULAR MUSIC AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION- Docrock takes the position that all popular music is expression, and if not obscene or inciteful (see above), is presumptively protected speech. Much of popular music is created and presented by recording artists who may flirt with these areas of expression. If they are indeed "artists" then their work has "artistic value" and cannot be declared obscene under the Supreme Court’s Miller v. California opinion. If the communicative content of the music (lyrics) does not incite "imminent lawless action" it cannot run afoul of the Supreme Court’s fighting words doctrine set out n Brandenburg v. Ohio. So, most popular music is (popular) art and presumptively protected speech. We would be living in a better country if all in our society acted on this truth. (This argument is more fully developed in a column which appeared in the student newspaper at Middle Tennessee State University on March 26, 1998).

What follows is a list of sites which touch on the challenges to popular music as expression. The first one to be aware of is that of the Massachusetts Music Industry Coalition, run by Nina Crowley. She lists both friends and foes of popular music and is quite up to date with breaking stories. Another good site more broadly about First Amendment issues is the site maintained by the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center. Make the MASS. M.I.C. site yourfirst stop. The others are also good sources of information on many facets of this issue colored by their keepers. Enjoy.