Discuss the continuing relevance of Adorno's views on popular music as expressed in 'On Popular Music' with reference to today's popular music
             It'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 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. 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. Marxism is all based on manufacturin...