Music
Discuss the continuing relevance of Adorno's views on popular music as expressed in 'On Popular Music' with reference to today's popular musicIt's impossible to take away popular music from social conditions and cultural theory. One of the earliest academic writers to consider the importance of popular music was T W Adorno; he refused to draw distinction between high and popular cultures, describing them as "torn halves of integral freedom, to which they do not add up". *Writing from the nineteen forties though to the seventies, he was a member of the Frankfurt School of Marxist analysis, and with Gramsci, Althusser, Benjamin, Lukacs, Bloch and others he is often referred to as a Western Marxist. These groups have been influential in developing Marxist ideas to reflect and critique a world increasingly moulded be modern consumer capitalism - but, it must be said, often in terms that suggest that the entire planet is a homogeneous whole, and which tend to privilege understandings about the most developed societies at the expense of marginalizing or ignoring the experiences of others. Adorno moved to the USA in the late thirties to escape the Nazis, he brought a very European frame of reference to his writings and his
This is still relevant to folk music today as that style of music was passed down from generation to generation by ear and none of it was written down, this is the first form of standardization as most if not all folk songs have the same layout and all sound quite similar to each other. Adorno when writing this did not look at rock and roll, these types of songs did not challenge political or cultural theories they were really only anti-parental. However, on hindsight Adorno has been proved right by the thousands of songs that have been written using the exact same chord structure and song form, thus proving he was correct in some ways. However the argument against this is that in 1941 when there were only a few genres of music, if you compared that to the number of differing genres of music today you would question if Adorno were correct in calling all music standardized. Karl Marx was a German philosopher, who spent most of his time in Britain, Marxism is a form of Communism, and Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, although pure Marxism has never been practised, this is because the American hate it so much as it is all about political economy, in an ideal Marxist economy, the ruling class have capital, so that global economies rule even the governments have to answer to corporations, as corporations provide the employment. The same could be said for Swing music, popular music is made up of song families, so therefore you have swing families in which the chord sequence is used in many other songs, this again he called standardization. In 1941 it was only 'popular' music i. He mainly wrote artistically and creatively, his main aim was for background music, which sometimes composers did not even mean to be listened to in great detail. Around the time he wrote this article Tin Pan Alley music was very popular, in my opinion this has a lot to do with the content of his article because this kind of music was marketed for the home as it could be played on the piano in any home. In fact in this day and age we still think that higher music is better, this is a social implant that we still believe in. However, one could say that maybe these views and criticisms were relevant around the time that it was written but when comparing them to today's music it would be completely disregarded, this is because of the amount of music of differing styles that is around today. ideas seem more rooted in the experience of Europe with regards to Fascism, Stalinism, the decline of Trade Unions and democratic institutions, than those of some of his colleagues. Robert Waltzer accused Adorno of being racist saying that the only music adorno actually liked and approved of was German.
Common topics in this essay:
Robert Waltzer,
Richard Middleton,
Communist Manifesto,
Pan Alley,
Popular Music',
Western Marxist,
popular music,
,
social cement,
Trade Unions,
Simon Firth,
Marx German,
popular music',
music social,
'on popular,
'on popular music',
popular music wrote,
wrote music,
political economy,
adorno wrote,
wrote article,
music adorno,
|
Acceptance Essays
