“My Favorite Things” as Civil Disobedience: A Mingling Descant on Creativity and Contumacy

Abstract:This article, coupling music and political theory, calls for belated recognition of John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” as an exercise in civil disobedience. The article first examines the history of the piece, including controversies in music scholarship surrounding its apparently buried racial politics. Distinguishing between composition and performance, the paper proffers that improvisational performance, à la Coltrane, enacts an unwritten license to disobey, even break, prevailing rules and conventions. With a focus on Coltrane’s musical misconduct, the essay amends Hannah Arendt’s use of the term “civil disobedience” to include a wider range of acts of resistance beyond those of state law-breaking.