Music Heard Through Utopia

For this exhibition, we have chosen six songs from a variety of artists, to illustrate six themes from More’s ground-breaking book. From Sound and Music’s New Voices composers of 2016, to bands from the 70s, all the artists featured in some way epitomise themes including communal living, travelling, governing, making, wealth, and working.

Curated to celebrate the wealth of talent amongst the British music community, as well as the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia, this exhibition showcases artefacts from the British Music Collection, amongst others. It is part of Utopia 2016: A Year of Imagination and Possibility. A collaboration between The Courtauld Institute of Art, King’s College London and Somerset House, Utopia 2016 is four seasons of events, all of which aim to give us the opportunity to dream for a better future.

‘Democratic’, ‘free’, ‘harmony’, ‘equal’, these are all words which epitomised Nelson Mandela’s idea of a utopian society, a society for which he fought and, some would say, succeeded to make a reality. Whilst Mandela was imprisoned by the apartheid government, the British songwriter Jerry Dammers wrote and recorded this song with his two-tone ska band, in solidarity with the South African’s ideals. It is a classic example of a protest song, a song which stands up for the belief in a ‘right’ way to govern. For more protest songs, check out Ruth Ewan’s A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World in the Utopia Treasury at Somerset House.

More’s Utopia is said to be a sophisticated form of democracy. Every year Utopians elect their leaders, called syphogrants. These syphogrants then go on to elect a governor by secret ballot. Unless accused of tyranny, the governor holds his position for life. To prevent oppression of the people, all new schemes which concern the wider public have to be debated in front of the senate or the popular assembly.

During the 60s and 70s many music groups from the US and UK started to experiment with communal living arrangements, not only for financial reasons but also to cement their bond as a band and heighten their chemistry when they composed and performed. The Incredible String Band was one of these groups, a hugely popular and diversely influenced UK psychedelic group who lived communally in farmhouses all around the UK, from Glasgow to Newport. They cited their living arrangements as a huge influence on their later albums.

In More’s Utopia, each street is lined with a communal garden. Every mealtime, the families living in each street gather on a long table and share food together before socialising with music and games. No doors have locks and families are moved from house to house every decade so that no one ever fully feels ownership of their houses and possessions.

Equal wealth for all—this was the driving force behind Cornelius Cardew’s compositions. A staunch Marxist, throughout his life Cardew campaigned tirelessly for an end to international capitalism. This song is an example of one of his later works, a song composed after he rejected his avant-garde leanings, in favour of compositions he believed could rouse the working classes. Poverty, wealth, class based stratification, and private property do not exist in Utopia. When Utopians are children, they are given rubies and pearls to play with, and so when they become adults they think of jewels as childish, and laugh at those who wear them. All money is shared, and saved in the Treasury until a national emergency.

For this 2011 scratch performance, Laura Eldret brought together six tradesmen who worked in the Camden area of London, to perform a song inspired by traditional folk music, which could act as a ‘surreal advert’ for the participants’ trades. Two handymen, a builder, a labourer, electrician and a heating engineer made up the performance, which combined two different types of folk songs—the antiphon and the sea shanty.

All those who live in Thomas More’s Utopia are educated in different trade skills. These include blacksmithing, carpentry, spinning and weaving. Unless the city is in need of people with particular skills, children begin by learning the trade of their father, switching trades later if they would prefer to learn another.

Young Fathers, the alternative hip hop group made up of Massaquoi, Bankole and Hastings, all grew up in Edinburgh. Massaquoi began living there after the Red Cross helped his family move from Liberia, and Bankole splits his time between Scotland, Nigeria and the US. The group met and bonded over a love of hip hop, which was fuelled at an under-18s hip hop night in Edinburgh. Here, they saw people trying to represent US culture, which in their view “was all fake. It was all emulation”. They cite travelling and moving as influencing their shape-shifting genre-bending style, and a sense of discomfort which comes from not being fully “at home”.

Utopians on Thomas More’s island are permitted to travel freely throughout the Island but only with a passport. Those found without one or trying to leave without express permission are punished, and sometimes put into slavery. Each city shares its produce with other cities in need. Only when each citizen has enough will they sell surplus food abroad.