popular music as an academic study

2013

What is it?

!  Definitions. !  Why should we study it? !  Study as part of higher education

Popular music and the masses

!   One definition is that poplar music is ‘Music of the masses’ (I.e.expanding urban middle classes).

!   Mass market for pulished music since the tin-pan alley era in the USA and Europe (1880s - 1930s).

!   Dissemination by sheet music, then also gramophone and later forms of recorded sound.

!   Exploited for commercial gain. Popular because it sold well.

!   From the 60s it has become a world-wide phenomena dominated by North American forms and styles.

History of Popular Music

!  The sound track to ordinary lives? !  Most obvious and universal part of

mass culture.

Post 1949 !   Records return with the 45 and improved

gramophones. !   The era of the phonograph ends with invention of

magnetic tape and reel to reel. Studio techniques now possible.

!   1952 brings first attempts at a chart listings. !   America with its many independent studios and radio

stations is the fulcrum for new form of popular music aimed at a new youth audience.

!   Throughout 50s sale of pop records rises though always linked to air time on radio and tv programmes.

Pop Industry

!  By late 50s pop industry as we know it is in place.

!  Based on Anglo-American commercial networks.

!  Has survived until now – but arguable in crisis and has a uncertain future.

Other reas of Mass Musical Activity pre

1960s – areas of research

!  Brass bands - for parades and street marching events.

!  Social Dancing - boom in cheap dance halls.

!  Music Halls - urban entertainment before the age of television.

!  Singing clubs, hand bells, etc.

Mass Culture Theory – the starting point

!   Concepts of Mass Culture and Mass Society based on divisions into:

!   1. High Art – not for commercial gain (supposedly). Beethoven, etc.

!   2. Folk Art- from below as an expression of the people

!   3. Mass Media/Mass Culture !   Mass culture theory holds that through `atomisation’

individuals can only relate to each other like atoms in a chemical compound. Individuals are vulnerable to exploitation by core institutions of mass media and pop culture. (example of rise of Nazism in 1930s and Orwell’s 1984)

Critique of Mass Culture Theory

!   1. The `view from below’ is quite different. Working class use elements of mass culture to strike a pose. Does not result in greater cultural uniformity. All can interpret the American myth as they wish.

!   2. Consumers are not passive. But use different elements of Americanisation and European culture to construct an authentic identity.

!   3. Pop culture is diverse because it is open to diverse uses and interpretations by different groups.

!   4. Use as a defense against middle class/upper class elitist culture.

Critique continued…. !   5. Why should the superiority of elitist values and

aesthetics be taken as valid without question? What gives them the right to pass cultural judgment?

!   6. The idea of that there was an idealised (elitist) cultural past fated to be ruined by the rise of mass culture is a myth.

!   7. Audiences and the consuming public are not passive. They may construct their identity from different elements of mass culture in a creative way.

Frankfurt School – 1923 School of Social

Research !   1. Full of leftwing Jewish intellectuals. To a backdrop

of the rise of Nazi party in 1930s. Most fled Europe for America. Then turned against America and returned to Germany.

!   2. Set terms of debate and analysis of mass culture theory. Heavily based on reaction to pre-war popular music in Germany and post-war American popular music.

!   3. Main members – Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcus, Benjamin.

Arguments against popular music as academic study

!  Waste of time for highly trained academic musicians to concern themselves with trivial music - which primarily about non-musical facets of mass culture. Image, timbre, social meaning.

!  High art is in decline - if even music students desert it who will champion it?

New Generation

!  Sociologists interested in music as part of mass culture.

!  1970s looking at ‘youth culture’. !  Simon Frith’s The Sociology of Rock’

1978 examines the consumption, production and ideology of rock.

Sociology of Rock

!  He explores rock as !   ‘leisure, as youth culture, as a force for liberation or oppression,

and a background music. He argues that rock music is mass cultural form which derives its meaning and relevance from being a mass medium. He discusses the differences in perception and use of rock between the music industry and music consumers, as well as differences within those groups: "The industry may or may not keep control of rock's use, but it will not be able to determine all its meanings - the problems of capitalist community and leisure are not so easily resolved."

Theories

!  Mass culture theory. !  Links with Sociology. !  Often placed within media studies. !   Is it really primarily concerned with

music - more about social behaviour, commsumerism and media.

1980 and 1990s

!  University departments took up popular music as a research area.

!  Undergraduate teaching. !  Specialist Centres – University of

Newcastle. John Moore’s Liverpool, Oxford Brooks

!  Work of Tagg, Middleton and Covach in 1990s

Analysis of Pop Music

!  One of the recurring themes has been to develop methods of analysis of popular music. That did not only look at the harmonic melodic content but looked at other parameters.

!  Using methods of other disciplines. Textual analysis, subject position

!  Developing modified forms of notation.

SONG FORM

l  Intro l  Hook l  Verse l  Chorus l  Pre chorus l  Middle Eight l  Instrumental l  Chorus to Fade/Outro

Examples in last session

!  All F. Moore The Beatles Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart’ Club band ‘Lucy in the Sky’ (CUP).

!   John Covach and Greame M. Boon Understanding Rock (OUP)

!  Shinny happy people.