In Praise of Blandness

Sufi dervishes, courtesy Metropolitan Museum, New York

It is likely that anyone who kept an eye on Irish news in August would have been aware that Coldplay, often described as the most popular band in the world, were about to stage four sold-out concerts at Dublin’s 80,000 seater Croke Park stadium. Fewer would have heard the rumour that Chris Martin, the group’s lead singer, was going to ‘busk’ in the city centre, but a packed crowd filled the upper reaches of Grafton Street as word spread, and Martin sang them a new song called ‘We Pray’, accompanied by four young musicians from different parts of the world - Little Simz, a rapper from Britain, Burna Boy, from Nigeria, Elyanna, a Palestinian/Chilean singer, and Tini from Argentina - all of whose contributions helped to create an event that was expansive, joyful, and touching. When, out of curiosity, I watched the video of the performance a week or two later I was taken aback by how much I enjoyed it, as I’ve never paid much attention to either the band or their music.

I found the spiritual message of ’We Pray’, with its call and response structure, unexpectedly evocative of Qawwali singing. Chris Martin has said that he loves the Sufi poetry of Rumi, and among his many influences is the music of Peter Gabriel, who brought Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the greatest of all modern Qawwali singers, to the WOMAD Festival in 1985 and subsequently released his records on the ‘Real World’ label, so a connection is unlikely but plausible. Qawwali music is one of the communal worship rituals of the Sufis, a mystical strand of Islam, and it is performed with the intention of bringing listeners and participants to a state of religious ecstasy, to spiritual union with God; it can be an intense and profoundly moving experience, regardless of personal faith. The ‘whirling dervishes’ of Turkey, founded by Rumi, have the same intention and can have a similar effect.

I’ve since been listening to Coldplay’s past albums and discovering something of the band’s story. The four members met and formed a group in the late 1990s, at University College, London; their early music, which emerged at the end of the ‘Britpop’ era, was self-conscious, moody, and introverted, but it soon developed into a mix of melodic ballads, soulful and emotional, and high-energy anthems, which were often inspired by forerunners such as U2 and Bruce Springsteen. Coldplay’s ‘indie’ roots have now faded away, replaced by a more contemporary ‘pop’ sensibility. Their songs, and the band themselves, have never been fashionable and have long been described as earnest, ‘nice’, and untouched by trouble, hardship, or pain; it is true that although some of their ballads are sad, they are always uplifting, and the overall tone of Coldplay music is invariably optimistic. Its hopeful view of life has drawn much scorn and derision, especially among rock critics, as though it were a sign of maudlin feelings and a lack of authenticity, but while the music can be sentimental, it is neither emotionally manipulative nor cynical. Coldplay, and especially Chris Martin, seem to know instinctively what touches people and makes them happy; although they are commercially astute, keeping a high profile and attracting younger audiences with constantly renewed styles and collaborators, their music is undoubtedly heartfelt.

Reviews of their new album, ‘Moon Music’, on which ‘We Pray’ is featured, have been mixed; some were dismissive, others tolerant or at best supportive. Mediocre notices, however, are not likely to affect the band’s enormous popularity, and they have just announced ten concerts at London’s Wembley stadium next year. As the band have suggested in recent interviews, the release of records is now only one of their main interests; playing music for live audiences is almost as important to them, and fans seem to approve of this shift in priorities . The scale and complexity of their stage productions might suggest otherwise, but in a culture that values excessive and superficial consumption, and which is riddled with anxiety and fear under its surface, Chris Martin and his friends have an important role to play. They embrace sound ethical values and try, sometimes awkwardly, to do the right thing. Almost every aspect of their activities is shaped by social and ecological concerns; the band believe in the possibility of making the world a better place, of bringing light into its darkness. Disarmingly, they’re able to say so and act accordingly with a surprising degree of modesty and conviction. They write some good tunes and deliver inspiring performances to very large numbers of people all over the world. Can one expect anything more from them - or from pop music in general?

One of the more common criticisms of Coldplay’s music is that it is vapid and shallow, but there are different ways of looking at this judgement. In his classic In Praise of Blandness, François Jullien explains how important that quality is in Chinese culture. Foremost among the characteristics most often associated with blandness in traditional China is inner detachment, but it also suggests openness and a mood of friendliness toward the other, the different, and all things strange. Blandness is similar to harmony in that it does not insist on its own presence but constantly blends together opposites and allows the undifferentiated foundation of all things to appear. Although in Western thinking blandness is often equated with lack, an undesirable absence of particular and defining attributes, it developed into a positive quality in Chinese aesthetic and ethical traditions. Blandness in China, according to Jullien, comprised the harmonious and unnameable union of all potential values, embodying a reality in which change is its essence, and which provides an opening into the full breadth and depth of human expression and taste.

There are many aspects of Coldplay and their music that understandably make their detractors uneasy. Like its more recent predecessors, and despite the fanfare and anticipation that greeted its arrival, ‘Moon Music’ is lightweight, and most of the songs are probably more effective in live stadium performances than on record; the lyrics, infused with New Age sentiments about rain, rainbows, angels, skies, and light, convey a simple message about love and resilience in difficult times that might unkindly be dismissed as banal. The music, nonetheless, can be beguiling; it could fairly be described as ‘blissed-out’, in a way that sometimes used to be associated, ironically, with California, where Chris Martin now lives. Internally, if not musically, it is reminiscent of the sad idealism of Brian Wilson’s inner universe, and of the dreamy escapism of The Beach Boys’ masterpieces ‘Pet Sounds’ and ‘Good Vibrations’. Ed Power, in a warmhearted review of ‘Moon Music’ in ‘i’, which was headlined ‘… a bonkers listen from pop’s great weirdos’, remarks that Coldplay are often portrayed as a nightmare version of what Radiohead or a similar ‘indie’ group might have been had they decided to become popular and more accessible, but twenty-four years after their breakthrough hit, ‘Yellow’, Chris Martin and Coldplay are much stranger than anyone would have expected.