Art and Politics

In such times as we live, times where we’re watching an emergency global existential issue developing without anything like appropriate political response; times where, as the logical corollary of distorted systems of wealth distribution is reached and vast concentrations of wealth are created amidst an increasingly precarious existence for people everywhere, is it not the responsibility of art – and pop music is art, indeed, it can have extraordinary power of communication – to respond to this, at least by referring to a situation serious enough that the word extinction becomes less extreme? Clearly, there is a disastrous disconnection between the obvious searing gravity of the situation and with politics, and this extends also to art. Is there a responsibility for artists to respond to the times they live in?