Recently I settled myself down to watch the PBS program Nature. This particular documentary was entitled “Lobo, The Wolf That Changed America.” Telling the story of the bounty hunter Ernest Thompson Seton and his battles with Lobo, the “King of the Currumpaw,” this episode promised to be interesting, if not a little depressing as well. Now I’m not an idiot savant. You give me a hunter armed with guns, arsenic-tainted meat and leg hold traps and I pretty much get the idea where this story is going. I might not like it, but I do know where this story is going.
 
 Everything was proceeding as I expected up to the point where Mr. Seton shoots and kills Lobo’s mate, the lovely Blanca, when suddenly this sad, sappy Celtic music started oozing from the speakers. I forced myself to sit through this musical weeping and just prayed that it wouldn’t get worse. Of course, it did. After using Blanca’s body as a lure, Mr. Seton finally traps Lobo. He hauls the wolf back to camp where the wolf dies. Again, another horrid swell of sad music. I choked back another wave of nausea and wondered if the episode’s music director was some sort of sadist. Pandering to the downright weepy, this music director claimed every opportunity to slap on the musical choke chain and all I wanted to do is crawl into the dark shadows under some heavy piece of furniture and growl.

Reading several news sites every day, I can usually find at least one interesting music-related story. Although most of the music headlines are taken up by the latest pop star sighting, marriage, divorce or arrest, I sometimes get lucky in the downright bizarre category; like the story a couple of months ago about the guy who walked out of a Lewiston, Maine music store with a Fender Stratocaster guitar stuffed down his pants. There was also the October 22nd Associated Press entry about a man arrested after he broke into a Bridgeport, Connecticut church and started playing the drums. But the wackiest story that I've been following has to be the tale of 27 year-old Kevin Cogill, also known as "Skwerl," and his considerable troubles with the law.
 
 If you're not familiar with Kevin Cogill, he's the blogger who made available for public download 9 songs off the unreleased CD Chinese Democracy by the group Guns N' Roses on his website in June. Mr. Cogill was busted and sent off to the pokey for violating federal copyright laws of this great land, but managed to squirm out of jail on $10,000 bond according to a August 27th Associated Press story. The latest update to the story is about a deal said to be in the works between the feds and Mr. Cogill's legal team, where prosecutors would reduce the charges against Mr. Cogill to a misdemeanor. So, instead of facing a 5 year sentence, Mr. Cogill would be facing a year in jail, although as a first time offender it would be more likely that he would be offered probation.

Given half a chance most musicians out there in the big, wide musical nebula would give their right arm to have one of their songs serve as a backdrop on a national and international stage. The prospect of having just thirty seconds of a song circling the globe several times over the span of a single day is staggering. And, isn't airplay what the music business is ultimately all about? The kind of airplay we're talking about, the kind that can lure thousands of fans, send CD sales through the roof, secure future record deals and turn a moderate hit into a classic, simply can't be bought. So, why have we seen so many music industry lawyers dashing off cease and desist letters recently?
 
 The answer is simple. The presidential campaigns. Now, before you sigh heavily and skulk off with a pout, let me admit to you right up front that I'm no political pundit. I have no statistics with which to bore you into submission, I'm completely out of demographics and I simply couldn't speculate on whether you live in a key battleground state or not. And, anyway, would you really listen if I did? While I think that most of our readers have earned a respite from the recent spate of politicking, I help bringing up the topic of co-opting music for political campaigns because it's essentially about the rules - the rules the rest of us are required to follow.

In late December I drew the short straw and got the unhappy task of collecting the names and biographies for the Music World Obituaries 2007 list. Sifting through the astounding achievements of lifelong careers and brief brushes with fame of those across the musical map led to a fair amount of contemplation of the life of a musician. My guess would be that most musicians when not performing live lives much like the rest of us, where work and family mesh together into a kind of mellow routine. Just because you’re a musician doesn’t mean that you can ignore that the dog needs to be walked or that the kids need to get to soccer practice. No, I suspect that they suffer along like the rest of us when they have to call for a plumber or make an appointment with the dentist.

My husband and I were in the midst of one of those lazy breakfasts listening to the radio when a story caught my attention. The story, "Drumming Up a Protest in Harlem," reported by Margot Adler on National Public Radio's Sunday Edition recounted the furor over a drumming circle that meets every Saturday in Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park and the newly planted residents who want to see the musicians banished.
 
 The drumming circle, a fluctuating hodgepodge of musicians from Africa, Cuba, Trinidad and Eastern Europe, has been gathering off and on at the same spot in the park for a good thirty years, and has been in residence at the same spot for the past ten years. Ms. Adler reported that the circle now faces a not so accommodating audience of new residents who have moved into some of the freshly available luxury apartments and renovated brownstones; these new Harlemites are bristling about the noise of the all day Saturday drumming fest.

About a month ago I made an editorial decision not to run a story. I've been kicking myself ever since. Toward the end of the 2007 Festival of Pan-African Music (Fespam) in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, news reports started leaking out that the organizers of the festival had housed pygmy musicians at the Brazzaville Zoological Park. National press organizations swooped in and zeroed in on the story as human rights activists started to circle with hackles raised and bared bloody fangs.

New York (NY), USA - On July 12th, S.O.B.'s, NYC's home of world music, presents DJ Dolores & Aparelhagem, direct from Recife, Brasil. DJ Dolores (A.K.A. Helder Aragão), innovator of Brazil’s mangue-beat, draws his inspiration from urban and rural musical styles traditionally shunned by the establishment but favored by the working classes (dance rhythms such as maracatú and song forms such as emboladas).
 
 DJ Dolores blends them with loops, breakbeats, and street sounds to create a unique musical cocktail which is culturally & politically meaningful, and irresistibly festive.

With Freemuse's global forum on censorship, Music Freedom Day 2007, right around the corner, I've been pondering over the idea of censorship. The idea of a banned musician is likely to conjure up an image of some frail songwriter holed up in a wretched apartment or hut with a battered guitar, afraid to make his or her way out onto the streets for fear of the secret police, whose mission it is to pick up and torture anyone who dares challenges the local government's prevailing idea of public good. Now, the very notion of musical freedom denied or extinguished by means of decree or execution raises our hackles here in the West, but what does our own definition of freedom mean to the rest of the world?
 
 Freedom - there's that peculiar word that pops up at almost every turn these days; the word that's used as an impermeable protective shield for any idea, point of view or military action. But what does freedom really mean when it comes to music? For most, when we talk about censorship in music we tend to think in very clear lines between right and wrong, as in the pre-invasion religious leaders in Afghanistan who banned music altogether or Senegal's attempts the past couple of years at censoring outspoken musicians.

Every once in a while, when the international, national and local news aren't quite enough to send me into a crazed frenzy, I wander over to the good folks at FreeMuse.org to get a dose of the outrages of music censorship around the world. I know that there I'll get the lowdown on the latest skirmishes between country music stations and the Dixie Chicks or updates on the American piano tuner Paul Larudee cooling his heels in a jail cell in Israel's Ben-Gurion airport for his outrageous notion of tuning Palestinian pianos in Ramallah and Jenin.

Another story caught my eye detailing the Muslim extremists in Serbia ransacking the stage, equipment and instruments before the Balkanika Orchestra could perform, exhorting audience members with, "Brothers, go home, they are working against Islam here. This is Satan's work." An orchestra part of Satan's work? Then there was the article on Osman Arabi of Lebanon, a composer and producer of Dark Ambient music, being forced to sign papers ensuring government officials that he would no longer send or receive music considered "dark," "harsh," or "weird," music seen as "satanic" and "offensive to people's morals."

According to a 2005 Harris poll regarding the importance of an arts education in American schools, 93 percent of the respondents agreed that arts programs were essential to a well-rounded education. Fifty-four percent of the respondents valued the arts a '10' in a 1-to-10 sliding scale in importance, putting the arts right up there with reading, science and math. Eighty-six percent believed studying music improved children's attitude toward school. Eighty percent of respondents to a 2003 poll about arts education felt that studying music made children smarter.