What is there to say about the role of music in human action?

Watch a cinema-full of people viewing a movie such as "The Mission" or "Titanic" or "Memphis Belle" at the critical junctures where the stirring music begins. Watch the tears flow from many eyes, and tell me the effect would have been the same if the music had not been there.

Even young people who swear off classical music are moved by the symphonic sounds in movies such as "Platoon" and "Star Wars", to use extreme examples.

Watch a crowd at a metal concert - maybe Megadeth or Slayer or Ozzy Osbourne - and tell me the music is not a driving force moving people to act in certain ways and give vent to their feelings in certain ways.

Taken in conjunction with the sound of music, the lyrics can be especially powerful. There's something about the angry angst of a Nine Inch Nails song, something in the deep depressiveness of a Nirvana lyric, something about the words of a Metallica ballad, that moves the listener to feel a certain way.

People going through tough experiences often seek out music that touches them where they happen to be at that particular time in their lives. Some choose Simon and Garfunkle or The Eagles to make them reflect; others reach for Randy Travis or Garth Brooks to help them cope with their experiences; and still others need to hear the words of Celine Dion or Billy Joel to find release from their pain.

But for some, the message that seems most authentic to them - the message that speaks to them where they are in their lives - comes from sources far, far removed from Celine Dion and Randy Travis.

Consider the diverse belief systems that form the foundations for many of the bands and musical styles of the world. Think about the belief systems at the root of reggae, of gangsta rap, of death metal, of skinhead punk, of anarchic punk, of ambient/trance raves, of pro-objectivist 2112 Rush, and on and on it goes. Just take a look at the lyrics in the context of lifestyles, interviews and sounds of the artists. It may be argued that the belief systems are so unique and all-encompassing, in many cases, that they may very well qualify (under Emile Durkheim's criteria, for example) as "religions". For many young people, these belief structures may be the only "religions" they genuinely know.

When you look to a band, not merely to play a touching melody to echo your feelings of being in or out of love, but to reflect your unique way of looking at the world - perhaps your teenage angst and alienation - then something more is going on than meets the eye.

The generation gap that's long existed between those in their teens and those at or above their parents' ages is manifest quite readily in music. Teens push the barriers in music, perhaps on purpose - and just because a parent listens to a Radiohead song or a Marilyn Manson melody (can you imagine!) and agrees it's "nice" doesn't mean the parent has any way of knowing what the music is doing for the teen. Music at the teen's level is not just something to listen to; it is an integral part of their identity, helping to define how they feel and how they see themselves in the world.

But I use the word "they" too loosely. For many teens, the experience of music at that level is also deeply personal. There is a deeply private response going on to the music at certain times. The lyrics are "mine"; they are talking to "me"; and I don't "want" you to be a part of them. You aren't capable of "understanding", and I don't want to help you "try".

Parents and society in general looking on at the Goth bands, the industrial bands, the neo-punk bands, the death metal bands, the meaner rap bands and all the other styles that flow back and forth underneath the labels, tend to lump the music all together, and they tend to look at the teens who embrace that music as being weird or troubled or misguided or in a phase or trying to be different or trying to piss them off or perhaps demonstrating that they are indeed dangerous.

In some sense, teens love to be misunderstood. There is a satisfied grin on the face of the kid heading off to a concert with visions of mosh pits dancing in his head, knowing full well that no right-thinking parents would be caught dead there.

There is a culture that's been created in recent years - perhaps since the dawn of schools - that separates people by age. There has always been a certain degree of ageism in society. Traditionally, elders looked down on kids as being objects of instruction and discipline. Nowadays, sometimes it's the teens who have the upper hand. In a day when teens set the styles that run the multi-billion-dollar music industry - in a day when teens have the looks that designers put on pedestals to sell their wares - in a day when the entertainment and information industries are so firmly youth-centered - who has the real power?

Perhaps it was Plato, some 2,500 years ago, who wrote that old men envied young men for having the advantage. That hasn't changed. But these days, the young have a kind of might that the ancient Greeks wouldn't have dreamed of. Our society is plunging ahead with breakneck speed into new media and ideas, not merely because that's the symptom of "The Information Age", but moreover because Youth - that driving force of ram-ahead speed - has taken control of our society. Youth is the foot on the accelerator as our society heads towards the cliff of 2000.

Youth is in control to such an extent - and stability has been vanquished by escalating change to such an extent - that elders and their values have become virtually irrelevant. Young people grin as they watch the elders and their institutions and their monarchs and their regimes slip into oblivion. Take the spectacle of the world mourning for Diana while at the same time expressing mockery and disgust at the institution of the monarchy. One becomes like those who are impatient for a bedridden senior to die. One watches the old guard in China, and taps his fingers impatiently. One looks at Castro and Yeltsin and Qadhafi and on and on and on, and starts counting off the minutes left. Now that the threat of wholesale apocalypse seems to have passed, the young sense that they will have the last word soon enough - and the sooner the better.

It is bad enough to be 15 and have a parent of 35 - but what if your parent is a generation older than that? Is there a point of contact between the rap'n'rave generation and the generation raised on the r'n'r of Lawrence Welk?

When you feel that you will eventually inherit the earth and yet you see the elders putting a cork in your bottle, you can't help but feel your impatience brew. You turn in disgust from their faces, and bury your ears and eyes in the sounds and sights that represent your generation.

It is generational difference that allows them to keep you down; and it is to your own generation that you look for the power that will eventually liberate you. They are the ones who imposed the generation gap by exercising their power over you based on an imperative imposed only by age; so you will respond in kind by denying them access to your own generation.

And there is so much that represents your generation alone. Your parents' generation does not have a Marilyn Manson or a KoRn or a Notorious B.I.G. or a Smashing Pumpkins. Your parents do not even begin to understand the internal coherence of a Trent Reznor or a Pearl Jam or a Tupac Shakur or a U2 or a Soundgarden. Your parents cannot stand the sounds of the Chemical Brothers or Pantera or Faith No More or White Zombie or Rancid or Corrosion of Conformity. Your parents are disgusted by the screams of Offspring and the videos of Garbage and the relentless pounding of Ministry. What do your parents have that compares with Nailbomb, Entombed, Fugazi, Fear Factory, Sepultura, Morbid Angel, Killing Joke, Type O-Negative, Tool, Deicide, Biohazard, Fudgetunnel, G.G. Allin, Rage Against The Machine, Cypress Hill, Body Count, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Public Enemy?

Everclear, 311, Prodigy, Silverchair, Foo Fighters, Live, Pure - parents just don't get it.

You have something they can never have, to coin a NIN title.

And here you are, in your own little world, apart from the parents and the elders and The System and The Program. You have turned off their advice, their warnings, their belief systems and their influence. You are on your own.

And it is here, when you are on your own, that you find you are not on your own at all. This little world of yours is huge, and it is populated by millions of people and thousands of bands and countless messages, none of which your parents have filtered or understood or perhaps even heard. You are an empty receptacle waiting for values to be poured in.

And that's where the "religious" aspect of today's music takes over. The music is your sacrament. The lyrics are your Bible. The videos are your icons. The concert halls are your churches, and your stereo is your synagogue. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pours forth from the CD player headphones.... and nothing else matters.

Lest parents think this is a warning, be warned instead that there is very little you can do about it. Society has abdicated its responsibility, in many respects, to provide its children with a religion that is meaningful for them. Nietzsche spoke of churches becoming nothing more than the sepulchres of God - tombstones of the Almighty. For many young people, God is dead because he is not alive for them. They are looking elsewhere for redemption, and they find their redemption in a baptism of sound.

The messages in many of the lyrics, and the philosophies that these lyrics imply, are very, very, VERY different from what most parents and older generations have been taught to believe. You will hear themes such as "revenge is okay", "stand up for yourself because you're on your own", "society is evil", "God is dead", "Christianity is poison", "history is all made up", "everything you know is a lie", "there is no such thing as truth", "parents are abusers", "childhood is slavery", "suicide is an acceptable exit", and "nothing really matters". You will hear them over and over again until it seems like they are your own thoughts in your own brain. You will dream those thoughts and hold fast to them as any martyr would hold fast to the Scriptures. They are not just words. They are YOUR words. They are who you ARE.

Tell me a kid who has made these thoughts his religion is not quite possibly insane by society's standards? His belief system is absolutely foreign to that of his elders. Most would be shocked to know exactly what he's been listening to and what he believes. But once people know, what then? What then?

Twenty years ago (and more), preachers and conservatives were attacking rock music and rock culture as being injurious to the youth, corrosive, corruptive, dangerous to values. They gave sermons, broadcast warnings, wrote literature and produced recordings exposing the explicit messages in the lyrics and the hidden messages embedded in the words with backwards masking. So, elders attacking music is nothing new. And ironically, some of those attacking today's music are the ones who defended Elvis and Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles from these very same kinds of attacks.

...but, of course, that was before Trent Reznor and Danzig and Marilyn Manson!

(By the way, how many decades ago was it that Frank Sinatra recorded "Witchcraft"?)

What does one do about music? If these messages speak to young people and turn their minds not just in thoughtful directions but also in dangerous directions, is it the music that is really to blame - or is it the lack of something in the individual listening? Why is the individual unable to discern right from wrong, or to apply what he hears to an internal guiding standard?

And if the young person is lacking the standard that lets him say 'No' to the suggestions he is hearing in the lyrics, is he to blame when he falters? Does hearing Marilyn Manson's "Antichrist Superstar" compel the listener to destroy all remnants of Christianity? Does listening to NIN's Downward Spiral CD - or Pink Floyd's "Good-bye Cruel World", for that matter - absolutely compel the listener to reach for the gun? Does hearing Deicide's ceaseless blasphemy of Christ absolutely and necessarily compel the listener to embrace insidious evil? Does music impose the thoughts on the listener's mind, or does it merely magnify thoughts that are already there?

Perhaps in the case of a given boy, the music didn't change his beliefs so much as he changed his music to reflect his beliefs. Perhaps he was so devoid of hope and full of anger that he gravitated towards lyrics that echoed what he was already feeling in his head. Perhaps an absence of modern music would have made no difference. Perhaps he would have embraced the classical music that Satanists recommend: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, and the more morbid Johann Sebastian Bach. And what would we be saying then? Burn your Toccata and Fugue in D minor?

If a boy is so moved after hearing Nirvana's "All Apologies" that he grabs a gun and shoots himself, don't blame the song - and don't use it as a scapegoat to avoid confronting what really underlies the action. There are no simple solutions. Music can move, but it moves you in directions that are already opened for you. Even if it is the proximate cause, it is not at the root of the action. Something else is.

...and yet...

The bottom line is this: if music aggravates underlying passions for violence, the solution is not to remove the music but to address the underlying passions directly.