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The assumption that music the author doesn't like must be a — likely political – statement is, let's just say, revealing and itself highly political.You’re putting words in the author’s mouth. Here’s the relevant paragraph:
> The station prides itself on operating without any government funding, which in turn requires it to play music that people enjoy hearing and never the kind that some stations (and performing ensembles) play just because it’s avant-garde or purports to make some political statement.
Simply put, "We don’t play music just because it’s innovative or political."
Here’s the thing: sometimes people make a very crappy execution out of a silly idea nobody’s done before (because it’s silly), and we call that "contemporary art" in an attempt to belong to some wealthy in-group (and sometimes end up helping money laundering). Sometimes (not always of course), the "avant-garde" label is just a cover-up for unskilled crap. One way to know the difference: would it still be art if it was done by a slum boy instead of some famous dude?
And of course, political art is often sub-par, for two reasons: first, there is more art out there than just the one that support your particular cause. Smaller pool to draw from, less quality: good luck winning the Olympics if you don’t train many many gymnasts. Second, we tend to tolerate worse art when it happens to support our cause.
Not saying that innovation and politics always hurt art. Often it’s the exact opposite. Music in particular is particularly enjoyable when it contains just the right amount of surprise. Too many surprises and it might as well be random. But do something predictable, and insert here and there ideas that have never been heard before, and it can really blossom (since "surprise" here is fundamentally subjective as a matter of information theory, some music really is an acquired taste, even though it really sounds random to the uninitiated). Same thing for politics: just go see the Andor Star Wars series, it is highly political in a way that enhances it.
But if you select art just because it is innovative or political, you’ll end up with something worse than if you just selected for the good stuff. I mean is it any surprise that if you select for the wrong criteria you’ll get disappointing results?