Renée Graham’s column (“Musicians shouldn’t be expected to just shut up and sing,” Page K7, Oct. 18) quotes Nina Simone on the artist’s “duty” to “reflect the times,” as though the stage were a witness stand rather than a temporary republic of sound. However, James Hetfield’s insistence on “love, energy, and heavy music” is itself a stance — one that prefers connection to creed and offers a couple of hours outside the febrile news cycle.
Many listeners arrive precisely to suspend the outside world they already inhabit. To insist that every set become a seminar risks converting the peculiar liberty of performance into just another contested bulletin board, a deadcatting of art by language. Sometimes the most radical thing an artist can do is refuse to speak, and simply play loud enough that, for the moment, time itself falls quiet.
David Woodard
Tampere, Finland