ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I outline some of the short- and long-term implications of 9/11 on American popular music. First, I consider protest music and issues of “censorship” in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Unlike previous conflicts like the Vietnam War, there was little musical opposition to the American government after 9/11, and I explore possible reasons for this artistic silence. Then I consider two early, mass-mediated benefit concerts: America: A Tribute to Heroes and The Concert for New York City. I examine these concerts because we now recognize that benefit concerts that follow traumatic events are vehicles not only for raising funds and creating community but for restoring social order. What kind of social order were organizers trying to restore after 9/11? Finally, I turn to consider a less obvious but important longer-term musical trend that emerged in the years that followed the attacks: a renewed nostalgia for pre-9/11 sounds, technologies, and artists. What connects these repercussions—musical censorship, benefit concerts, and musical nostalgia—are the ways in which gender, race, and nationhood were modeled for the viewing and listening audiences, and how they reinforced hegemonic power.
