When I talk to people about Liberty and Art, as I am sometimes inclined to do, one of the things we tend to argue about is whether we need more explicitly libertarian art, or whether we need more art made by people who love liberty. Now, I’m not a big fan of art that is created in order to convey a lesson, or to solve a problem. That kind of art feels flat to me. I like art for its subtle complexities. Take those away and you spoil the fun and (often) kill the art. Once you’ve noticed that the writer or painter or musician is really against war or really in favor of markets or really angry about poverty, there’s not a whole lot more to take away. And there’s not a whole lot more to bring you back to the art again later.  As Natalie Babbitt says in her masterful essay, “The Purpose of Literature” (and you should just go read the whole thing now. I’ll wait):

There have been books for adults written in direct response to pressing social problems. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one. Another is The Grapes of Wrath. But there aren’t many that have lasted. And there aren’t many that are written simply to be sympathetic. They tend to be written out of moral outrage, and they are directed at the general public, the general reader. Their object is to make a noise and bring about social change, and some have been remarkably successful at this. Then, once the problem has either been solved or has faded into unimportance, most of these books disappear.

Lasting art, in most cases, needs better meat to chew on than a transient social issue, even a very important one. All of that is a long way around saying that I’m a big fan of increasing liberty through art not by using art as a bludgeon to beat the idea of liberty into the heads of the unwilling, but by letting good art flower out of our love of liberty, our joy at its prospects, and our despair at its destruction.

With that in mind, I’m delighted to be the one who gets to say that the BHL House Band, Radar vs Wolf will be playing at ISFLC 2014, on Saturday night. Self-described as “not a libertarian band, but a band of libertarians,” the guys have posted here and at The Individualist Feminist, and if you look closely at their video, you’ll spot some BHL and anarchist flair. Their lyrics don’t recap the Hayek-Keynes debate, teach you the principles of economics, or even use the word liberty all that often, but their words and music spring from their fierce belief in self-expression, and the rights of individuals to make their own choices, combined with a desire to tell us about all that at high volume. With kickass drums.

One of the reasons I have found SFL so appealing from the beginning has been their continued insistence that liberty is not (merely) a political phenomenon. It is a cultural one. With an international conference this year that highlights comedians, musicians, and artists along with political activists and academics, they are about to be sure that message gets heard. With kickass drums. I plan to be in the front row.