Does the Music Make Them Do It? Looking at Morality in Society : Culture: Popular music has always been used by teen-agers. Arresting a popular rap group is not the way to fight obscenity or solve social problems.

Popular music is always anti-Establishment. Teen-agers have long used rebellious and outrageous music to differentiate themselves from their parents. For some parents, the music’s anger and sexuality seems to be causing the turmoil of adolescence, creating personality shifts in once well-mannered children. So the music is blamed for all sorts of family problems.

These unhappy parents offer a tempting voting block to politicians--especially in parts of the country with a heavy concentration of religious groups fundamentally opposed to popular entertainment. Last week, an album by the rap group 2 Live Crew was declared obscene in southern Florida. Authorities arrested three members of the group after a performance in Ft. Lauderdale. The fight against crime continued with the arrest of a record-store owner.

The performance in question was for adults, but the rhetoric of pro-censorship activists in Florida and elsewhere focuses on the attraction music has for kids. Some activists insist that protections afforded to the printed word should not apply to song lyrics, which should require a special set of restrictions. Aside from the obvious First Amendment problems with this view, perhaps it is time to consider what exactly is the role of music in our society and in the lives of young people.

Such reflections are clearly of no interest to Gov. Bob Martinez of Florida, who proudly announced he had personally ordered the arrest of 2 Live Crew. Martinez, who called a special session of the Florida Legislature to ban abortions after the Supreme Court’s Webster decision last year--a restriction the Legislature refused to pass--is now running for reelection. In 2 Live Crew, he may feel he has found his Willie Horton.

He might be right. 2 Live Crew is a black group and their music is rap--an aggressive and increasingly popular style. In addition to the sexual content of some rap, the genre has become a primary vehicle for black political protest. Parents who have just begun to reconcile themselves to the obnoxious volume of heavy-metal rock-and-roll, now find their teen-agers listening to the rhythms of the black ghetto. Arresting a black rap artist is one way of “standing up” to young black culture.

Jack Thompson, an attorney who is the leading crusader against 2 Live Crew in Florida, has denied charges of racism in his vendetta against the group. After all, Thompson says, he was a supporter of the civil-rights movement. What’s more, he points out, the first state judge to find the 2 Live Crew album “probably obscene,” was black. However, this does not explain why, in Florida’s “Miami Vice” counties, rife with triple-X-rated videos and books, a critically acclaimed black music group, who record for a black-owned independent label, was singled out for attack for lyrics that are no more “obscene” than other available entertainment.

There is a long tradition of hysterical attacks, particularly in the South, against sexuality, particularly black sexuality, in popular music. In the more candid ‘50s, numerous Southern preachers spoke out against the “jungle rhythms” of Little Richard and Chuck Berry. In the late ‘60s, Jimi Hendrix was thrown off his first American tour--he was the opening act for the Monkees--after parents of teeny-boppers complained about his suggestive performances.

In the mid-’80s, the vivid sexuality of Prince became the No. 1 target of attacks on popular music by Tipper Gore, the wife of the Democratic senator from Tennessee, and Susan Baker, wife of the secretary of state. Gore recently wrote in, an article for the Washington Post, “Rape, Rap and Hate,” that the Central Park muggers were allegedly singing the rap song “Wild Thing” when they were arrested. The song has no violent language in its lyrics; perhaps the implication is that the mere rhythm of rap causes crime.

Whenever popular culture is attacked these days, the implication is that the content of entertainment causes the kind of behavior it is describing. Proponents of this argument cite statistics about teen-age pregnancy, suicide, violence to women and other social ills and then juxtapose raunchy song lyrics to this list.

Every study done of the effects of art and entertainment refutes this crackpot argument. In societies such as the pre- glasnost Soviet Union, Nazi Germany or fundamentalist Iran, where extensive censorship of controversial material was the norm, there was no commensurate decrease in bad behavior. The notion that repression of any kind of speech leads to a more moral society just isn’t true.

Whether it is the pumping pelvis of Elvis Presley or the sweaty undulations of “Dirty Dancing,” sexually blatant music is mysteriously transformed into wholesome nostalgia through the lens of safe adulthood. Rap music, like rock-and-roll, rhythm-and-blues and jazz before it, are uniquely American inventions--and were all originated by American blacks.

At a time when American productivity is reduced, American music is one of our few products that inspire and, not insignificantly, sell to the rest of the world. Our long tradition of freedom of expression is precisely the reason why our entertainment has flourished.

This is why artists, songwriters and others in the arts who wouldn’t be caught dead listening to a 2 Live Crew album are so outraged by the Florida arrests. Those who work with performers are aware of how fragile is the creative process. The threat of arrest for one type of lyric translates immediately to the threat of boycott by retailers of others.

Every entertainer is aware of the economic ruin brought to controversial artists in the ‘50s by the shadow of McCarthyism. It is not possible to have the vitality of Michael Jackson or Paul Simon or Willie Nelson or Bruce Springsteen in a society that imprisons 2 Live Crew. Creativity just doesn’t work that way. Neither does America.