Is This What We Want? is an unusual album. There's no music. No words. Instead, it's basically ... silent. That's because the 12 tracks were recorded in a bunch of empty performance spaces and studios as a protest against a recent British government proposal that would allow generative AI companies to train their models on creative works — unless artists opt out.
More than 1,000 U.K.-based musicians including Kate Bush, Imogen Heap and Blur's Damon Albarn are involved in the project, which launched last week.
"Empty studios and empty performance spaces and a negative effect on people's livelihoods is meant to symbolize what we think the result of the government's proposals would be," said composer Ed Newton-Rex, who came up with the concept for the album and also runs Fairly Trained, a nonprofit encouraging AI companies only to train their models on creative works they have permission to use.
But this album is not the first protest to use silence to make a point. Here are two notable examples:
Haydn withholds music in his "Farewell"
The 18th century Austrian composer Joseph Haydn used it in his Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor — also known as the "Farewell" Symphony — to get better working conditions for himself and his fellow musicians.
"The reason it's called the 'Farewell' Symphony is that, one by one, each musician in the orchestra stands up, blows out the candle they were using to illuminate their sheet music and walks off the stage," said University of Southern California musicologist and Switched on Pop podcast co-host Nate Sloan.
A few minutes into the fourth and final movement, the orchestra starts to look pretty thin. Eventually, the conductor walks out, leaving just two solitary violinists on stage to finish off the job.
Haydn used these theatrics to make a point: It was all about getting his patron, Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy, to stop overworking the musicians and let them go home to their families. Sloan said the prince got the message, conceding to the composer's demands.
"This was maybe the most effective way that Haydn could have asked for this — in this very public setting, through the medium of music, and by withholding sound," Sloan said.
Chorus girls fight the power with a silent, onstage sit-in
It's not just Baroque-era classical musicians who've used silence to stick it to the man.
Fast forward to the 1930s. Sebastian's Cotton Club, in Culver City, Calif., was one of the most hopping jazz venues in California. Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton performed there. But the chorus girls at the club weren't happy.
"The female singers and dancers wanted better pay. They wanted better treatment," said Sloan.
Their requests were repeatedly ignored. So one night in 1937, Sloan said, they decided to take action.
"They all sit down in the middle of the stage," Sloan said, "and they refuse to sing and they refuse to dance until the club's owner, Frank Sebastian, meets their demands."
Sloan said Sebastian quickly gave the women a raise.
He said there's a reason why these protests have been so effective over several centuries.
"I think there's something really striking about replacing sound with silence," Sloan said. "It makes you appreciate how valuable the art is when all of a sudden it's taken away."
Both the audio and digital versions of this story were edited by Jennifer Vanasco. The audio was mixed by Chloee Weiner.
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