Fight the power.

Fight the power. Music and Race.
The concept of black and white music is an important one regarding the study of music because often it can convey an idea of the social and cultural area a piece of music has derived from.
Black music and therefore White music are hard concepts to define. Western European classical music perhaps is predominantly white, and jazz and rhythm and blues black but then every derivative of rhythm and blues rock and roll even as far as today’s rock music, which would perhaps be thought of as white music, must it then be thought of as music of black origin?
The ethnicity of music I think is important as it creates a part of the cultural make up of a race, it also enables artists to take aspects of each music to create a hybrid in their own work, the Beatles for example with within you within out. The song relies heavily on Indian music for its feel and is in effect played entirely on Indian instruments, the arrangements however is typical of western music and the song written and performed by Britain’s greatest ever pop band

Are youth subcultures genuine signs of revolt or simply the manifestation of style?
When teenagers or youth in general join a social group or subculture it can be a result of a genuine sign of revolt and wanting to be different from their parents and or fit in with a crowd of peers. However, the subcultures which they may end up joining, the fixed identity of these cultures, is generally set up as a consumable commodity by bigger more corporate organisations. For example if a teenager decides in as part of a ‘rebellious’ streak to become a Goth, then the means to do it are already available neatly in on line or mail order catalogues so the youth can immediately buy into a manifestation of style provided for them. These two ideas should however be mutually exclusive and the commerciality of buying your Goth ‘uniform’ from an online shop defeats the purpose of being said Goth. I think that youth will always want to revolt but the means for them to do it have become a manifestation of style.

I do not think that the emergence of the digital download signals the end of the music industry for several reasons. Firstly, with the emergence of every new technology for the consumption of music there has been an immediate fear that this technology would lead to the end of the music industry. When the compact cassette first released for popular commercial use, it was the first official threat to the profitability of the music industry and was taken so seriously that it spurred the British Phonographic Industry into starting its first anti piracy campaign. The cassette tape did not however cause any great damage to the music industry and in fact left no lasting imprint on the music industry at all. The digital age although perhaps creating a wider market for piracy will never lead to the end of the music industry.

The concept of world music is a difficult one to explain. On the one hand it should be simple. World music is indigenous music, local to a certain group of people, each countries folk music. But Lady Smith Black Mambazo were featured on Paul Simons 1986 album Graceland. An album that reached numbers three and one in the U.S and U.K album charts respectfully. How then can music heard globally be world music? The phrase ‘world music’ is most commonly seen in shops such as HMV, which suggests that this same indigenous world music is used as a marketable product by the dominant nations. If this then is the case there is an argument, that world music is becoming Americanised and through cultural imperialism becoming less credible as an indigenous product. However I think that if the music is used as a consumable product, although perhaps becoming slightly ‘ westernised’ (in the case of Lady Smith) it can only serve to promote indigenous music on a wider scale ultimately provided a bigger market base for the artists?

To answer the question whether or not popular music is a genuine art form, firstly it must be decided what ‘popular music’ and art is. Popular music itself can have a variety of different meanings, but in this case can be taken to mean the classic idea of ‘pop music’. The manufactured commercial music of the charts. Art can be explained, at least by Wikipedia as ‘the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions’. In this raw form at least then, pop music must be art as, credible or not, it is arranged deliberately to appeal to the senses. I find problems with Adorno’s opinion in that one of his criticisms of pop music is the use of pseudo individualization, however this trait is not only found in pop music it is also a trait widely used in folk music.

To answer the question whether or not popular music is a genuine art form, firstly it must be decided what ‘popular music’ and art is. Popular music itself can have a variety of different meanings, but in this case can be taken to mean the classic idea of ‘pop music’. The manufactured commercial music of the charts. Art can be explained, at least by Wikipedia as ‘the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions’. In this raw form at least then, pop music must be art as, credible or not, it is arranged deliberately to appeal to the senses. I find problems with Adorno’s opinion in that one of his criticisms of pop music is the use of pseudo individualization, however this trait is not only found in pop music it is also a trait widely used in folk music.

How useful is Peterson’s a ‘production of culture’ perspective in explaining the birth of rock n roll music?
Richard Peterson does two things in his work regarding the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. Firstly he highlights several things that, although perhaps widely thought, did not give birth to rock ‘n’ roll breaking through. He states that the general ‘supply and demand’ explanation that is often used cannot be valid. This is because, the general idea that Rock ‘n’ Roll exploded because of the presence of similar artists in the same place at the same time is flawed because the artists, Elvis, Chuck Berry and others, simply took advantage of a set of musical circumstances. In the case of demand Rock ‘n’ Roll’s popularity cannot be explained by a post war’s baby boom craving a new music, as the baby boom themselves would only have been nine in 1955.
As valid as his criticisms are, Peterson fails in his explanation to ever actually mentions the music or the effects the electric guitar had on the music.