What is good about Pop Music?

[dominic]

by contrast, pop-ism is an ideology because it applies to everyone

everyone has to resist its claims -- i.e., pop-ism doesn't claim or seize you in the way that music does, but rather makes claims about how to understand the world -- i.e., pop-ism as a claim about how to understand and relate to music

and this is ideology as produced by the capitalist system -- and it works top to down

but to say that our choices as to which music scenes to join, which records we like, etc, are ideologically determined is to make a complete and utter mish-mash of the concept of ideology

again, though we've used the analogy of feudalism to explain interpellation into a music scene -- and the analogy is helpful, e.g., in feudalism the property owner is not really an owner but has "seisin," i.e, this is same etimological word as "seize" -- we shouldn't lose sight of fact that scenes are in the end about reciprocal recognition, i.e., more democratic than hierarchic

interpellation is *perhaps* a helpful concept as applied to music scenes

ideology is a mystifying concept

 

[dominic]

or maybe i need a refresher course in althusser & lacan -- or rather, need to read more

so Tim F means something as follows:

the Real = the music

ideology = the imaginary relationships of subjects both to the music and, as mediated by the music, to one another

so ideology is roughly the same as "imaginary order" = the narcissism by which the subject creates fantasy images both of himself -- e.g., i'm seized by this music, i really get this music, i belong to this scene -- and his ideal object of desire = e.g., 90/91/92 rave as most powerful music ever

is this what you mean?

so therefore all music scenes are by definition ideological, i.e., imaginary orders formed by narcissistic processes

AGAIN, not everyone here is conversant in Lacan & Althusser

i.e., resort to jargon clouds debate

i.e., please use jargon in a such a way that non-adepts can understand the argument you're making

i'm not saying not to use theory or concepts -- on the contrary -- just make the thought clear

(which is not to say that i'm always clear -- or that i don't use terms in unclear ways)

also, i recognize that you've made deeper and more rigorous arguments than i have -- therefore you get more slack for being unclear

 

[dominic]

so i guess i'd like to see some intersection of the political & psychoanalytic explanations of how music and music scenes work

i.e., the political as sense of being seized, identifying w/ some and excluding others on the basis of this sense of beign seized, and the strong convcitions we have of "good" and "bad" music -- i.e., this music is powerful therefore it is good

i.e,. the psychoanalytic as the fantasies that we form about ourselves and others in relation to the music

which is to say that i have the very strong sense that my relationship to rave music is largely my own private narcissistic fantasy -- i.e., the spatial and temporal separations b/w me and the actual rave phenomenon of early 90s england scream "fantasy" -- i.e., the fantasy aspect is undeniable

and yet i also feel claimed by it and think really good rave music best stuff ever

AND is this merely a case of me being weird & pathetic

OR is this the way that we all relate to music

 

[s_clover]

popping in again

ok now i see how ppl get sucked into debates like these coz it's yanking me too. dominic speaks of "fidelity to the event of the music." but let's break that down. the event of the music is obv. a different event in a different medium, a different setting (any valorization of say, the rave experience on the dancefloor is indeed *premised* on this), a different soundsystem, among a different circle of tastes and friends. c.f. the show on vh-1 with the ppl. caught singing in their cars to poptunes. the event of the music for them in this setting is obv. v. different than as it becomes the moment they understand it as recorded and on television. the frission generated by wrenching the "event" of music out of its context is precisely what gives the show whatever draw it has. the problem is that anyone who wants to claim any single field for "the event of the music" is stuck, coz it'll never hold up in all circumstances. e.g. ashlee simpson in 2004 may be more faithful to britney in 1999 than hearing britney from 1999 *in* 2004 is faithful to britney in 1999 (maybe). sarai before i knew she was white was, like it or not, v. difft. from sarai after i knew she was white. etc.

also, on a difft. tip, one way to understand the geezaesthetic manifesto is to compare it to the (or an) orig. f-t manifesto which said simply, as i recall, that the aim was to write about pop the way ppl. write about "serious" music and to write about "serious" music the way ppl. write about pop.

 

[k-punk]

where does the Geezaesthetics manifesto prohibit any of those things? "Criticism is conversation and we want to hear about your reactions, especially if you express yourself interestingly. Disagreeing is part of the conversation." disagreeing could certainly involve holding pop culture or the critic to account, couldn't it?

It would seem not, no. Not construing things in terms of agreement and disagreement, i.e. pub chat opinionism, is what is verboten.

Criticism in any interesting sense is not about 'conversations'. It is about logics.

 

[k-punk]

Was anyone talking about "Digital Copies" (by which I presume you mean
perfect copies"? No!

Right... so we WEREN'T talking about amen breakbeats then? How do you think they were produced and propagated? By people sitting round on the pianer, 'you hum it, I'll make a mimetic copy of it?'

 

[borderpolice]

Right... so we WEREN'T talking about amen breakbeats then? How do you think they were produced and propagated? By people sitting round on the pianer, 'you hum it, I'll make a mimetic copy of it?'

I was talking about human behaviour to music.

BTW, Amen was generally heavily compressed and sped up, chopped, and on occasion given cromatic
makeovers. so hardly perfect copies. clearly there is a lot of mimetic absorbtion of music going on.

 

[dominic]

ok now i see how ppl get sucked into debates like these coz it's yanking me too. dominic speaks of "fidelity to the event of the music." but let's break that down . . . .

errrr, no -- you miss my point -- but it's my fault

that is, having lectured tim f on the sins of jargon, i then turned around and used jargon

i have in mind badiou's notion of the event

and badiou's notion of the subject of truth

and badiou's ideas on this matter are not unlike althusser's notion of interpellation

except that badiou talks about truth and fidelity to the event

and althusser talks about ideology

AND so we could say that a "produced population," in the sense that such a population brings together disparate elements, in the sense that such a population does not simply represent existing socio-empirical realities -- that such a population consists of subjects formed by the event

of course badiou likely wouldn't think of "rave" as an event

but we vulgarians do with high theory as we please

 

[k-punk]

Once again Simon is right... all of those pro-Pop positions have been won long since....(except with teenagers, actually - you might be surprised by how many of my students would baulk at ALL of the things Simon listed) but that's partly why I would say that neither Simon nor myself are rockists, because surely a died-in-the-wool rockist would RESIST all those moves....and why the real straw man being called up here is by the position-I-would-call-Popist...Who is it that does resist those claims?

I'll happily sign up for Pro-Pop but the position-I-would-call-Popist does make a further move - the one we've identified above - the cult studs effacing of the sonic object under listener-response. I'd just be repeating myself, but it's that middle class will-to-desublimation, all the more grating for its supposed populism, that I find utterly depressing and deflating...

Once again - it's not the reduction TO the social I object to... it's the reduction OF the social to the sociable and to this mysteriously self-causing construction machine (the First Cause Deus ex machina of Cult Studs) which I reject....

 

[k-punk]

BTW, Amen was generally heavily compressed and sped up, chopped, and on occasion given cromatic
makeovers. so hardly perfect copies.

Really? Never....

All of which proves that there is absolutely no

mimetic absorbtion of music going on.

It's the same code that is being cut, pasted and effected.. how is that mimetic?

 

[borderpolice]

It's the same code that is being cut, pasted and effected.. how is that mimetic?

it's difficult to tell sometimes if you are taking the piss or not (how is one's style of
dancing or talking about music "cut and paste"?), but assuming the latter, maybe
we are simply having a terminological confusion. My use of the term is probably somewhat
informed by Adorno's use, for whom it is one of the central concepts. But the term has a heavy
tail of previous uses, so maybe you are using it in different ways? I had hoped my usage would
have clarified what I intended to convey, while being sufficently vague, as would be appropriate to
the subject.

 

[Tim F]

Mark, surely the "digital code" of the amen is different from track to track? Once the sample is immersed within the sonic field of a track it cannot again be sampled cleanly from the new track, it is always tainted by the sonic field, however precisely the sampler tries to isolate it. Of course if a producer supplied to a remixer copies of all the different sound samples they originally used then they could redeploy the "same" Amen, but in doing so the remixer is going one step backwards to the pre-track, virginal amen sample. And certainly not every jungle track samples the amen from it's original source, and that's one of the reasons why there's such a range and variety of textures to the beats (the other is whatever else the producer decides to do to i t- detune it, chop it up etc.

So you get this situation where the development of the amen's usage in jungle is a combination of deviation-by-intent (actively attempting to screw up the sample) and the inevitable near-enough-is-good-enough deviation of the imperfect copy.

 

[s_clover]

aha! badiou!

ok, i think i get it? i thought we were talking about groundedness, but we're really talking base/superstructure (the debate over which, natch, eventually went over to the debate over grounding). the question isn't "is music grounded" but "can music change the world" (i.e. produce a population). i have to confess i became a "popist" (in the crudest sense of really beginning to enjoy, listen to, and think about pop music, which at the time was significantly a greater leap than today, actually) precisely when i realized that my tastes were founded on the eminently silly notion that music *could* change the world.

to descend from theory-land back to reality-land, the proposition that consumers create more than producers -- at least more than evah generally appreciated in rockcrit discourse -- is sort of obviously verifiable. two tests leap to mind. first the degree to which an audience surprises producers (even seasoned ones, and whole recordcos & marketing depts. too) on a regular basis by what is and is not picked up on. second, the degree to which decisions on what to pursue are conditioned on what is already popular. another and more subtle element is the manner in decisions on what to pursue are conditioned on what *isn't* popular -- i.e. a sense of what's *missing*, what people are "ready" for (or in a more abstracted form what "music" is ready for).

ask a raver about fidelity to the event, and yeah it's the creation of the dj. ask a dj about fidelity to the event and it's about responding to a crowd. so yeah, in a broader sense, a dj is a medium by which crowds talk to one another. i.e. a return of the dancer's message in inverted form (c.f. "if they can't sell it back to you it was never yours to begin with)

(of course, craft, talent, brilliance, creativity, etc. are all in there too -- but as we all know, none of them suffices to make something popular!)

 

[dominic]

ok, i think i get it? i thought we were talking about groundedness, but we're really talking base/superstructure (the debate over which, natch, eventually went over to the debate over grounding). the question isn't "is music grounded" but "can music change the world" (i.e. produce a population).

there's been too many twists and turns to even say what the argument is about now

that is, roughly 100 posts ago i tried to sort out the various positions -- but that'd be too daunting a task now!

i consider myself a non-popist -- and a sort of rockist -- something along the lines of a retrospective sound fetishist or a rave nostalgist/fantastico -- so my own position is hardly unproblematic -- that is, i find blissblogger's unstinting modernism and quest for new and avant and strange sounds admirable -- but at the end it's not my own position -- i'm more like an addict -- i've got my drug and i'm quite content to keep pushing it through my veins (the nature of my quest is to get more and better samples of same drug) -- though if i had enough money, i would seek out the wicked badman psychedelic voodoo elements of grime -- but it seems to me pointless to buy unless i can buy a lot

so yeah we've got all kinds of metaphors running through these arguments as well

anyway -- the reason i keep pushing "political" notions is that such notions can account for allegiance and fidelity to certain kinds of music and scenes -- for passionate commitment -- emotional investment -- righteous conviction

that is, the popist position seems to me promiscuous -- they say they have an open ear -- i say they sleep around

my allies in this argument are blissblogger and k-punk --

they're great powers, and i'm canada

and when i say k-punk's my ally, i mean to say that he could easily be my enemy in the next war

(assuming that tim f and border police don't conquer all -- next war will likey be b/w those two as they compete for the spoils -- i.e., i still think they're winning)

k-punk attacks popism not b/c it's anti-political or promiscuous but b/c it's delibidinizing and obscures the need for rigorously logical criticism of "what is" -- i.e., the sort of criticism that does not stop (b/c delibidinized) w/ spouting one's opinion about this single or that album but is rather part and parcel of a thoroughgoing cultural-political critique -- or at least this is my facile and muddled version of k-punk's position -- i.e., i'm not really sure what his position is

and yet the popist can quite easily turn the tables and say . . . .

first, that the political relationship to music is in fact mere ideology

second, that there is no conversion experience but only the interpellation of the always already predisposed

third, that fidelity to the so-called truth of music is in fact a narcissistic fantasy and therefore cannot be opposed to promiscuity

fourth, that there is in fact no persuading going on about what is "good" and "bad" in music, no persuading about the best way to dance, etc, but only the mechanistic process of mimesis, which shifts and varies of its own accord -- what the naive take for testifying and persuading is nothing more than expressive gestures reflexively taken from other contexts that others then react to and mimic, however inexactly -- there's no logic, only the play of difference

fifth, that the popist insofar as he accepts all of the above is way more critically astute & honest than the impassioned rockist

sixth, that the portrayal of popism as shallow opinionism is an elitist prejudice

seventh, that there's no proper way to relate to music, no best or better interpretation of a work of music, but only differential experience

eighth, that music has no uniform affect on listeners but only differential affects

and so on and so forth

is this a fair summation?

i.e., fair but not exhaustive

 

[blissblogger]

a rigorous bugger, that dominic

but what exactly is a fantastico?

 

[dominic]

a person given to making ridiculously extravagant claims about the object of his fantasy

or perhaps it means something else, and i just like the sound of the word

 

[tek tonic]

k-punk's suggestion that Geezaesthetics opposes anything but opinion-based criticism sent me back to the books in an attempt to find an explanation for a positive vision of a popist critical culture. after wading through James Heartfield's 'death of the subject' stuff (not encouraging) and others, here's a thought:

reading Fredric Jameson's 'Postmodernism', he brings in the idea of cognitive mapping ("a pedagogical political culture which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the global system"), and it reminded me of Tim's description of Skykicking as an attempt to read classic/timeless emotional narratives through sonic variations (i mangled that, didn't i). tim maps his knowledge of, say, love songs (though it could be music for riotous celebration, art music, almost any 'timeless' form) onto songs from german techno, baile funk, grime and observes the difference. it acknowledges difference between individuals based on their background and individual preference - the critical logic/engagement returns by sorting out the details of the global system. it's necessarily individual, but it doesn't eliminate the possibility of smaller communities within the system.

 

[henrymiller]

there may be some sadsack indie-rock fans who still prize lyrics above all else but cmon, we don't need to bother with them!

we-ell -- this is the thing, sometimes they're hard to ignore. some people still won't accept 'slave to the rhythm'. as it goes i think sinker squared the circle in re this debate by renaming "popism" "rockism about pop".

but to engage with the interesting question of auteurism: the converse of the argument that hollywood cinema was a collective scenius (the only reasonable course) is that european cinema gave free play to auteur-geniuses like godard and antonioni, unconstrained by commercial drives -- and *this* is film-rockism, because the truth is that european cinema (quite often indirectly funded by hollywood, hence the collapse of uk cinema circa 1970 when the us studios pulled out) was just as much a matter of scenius. (not even going into the barthes/foucault anti-auteur thing, which is obliquely related.)

and so this might be the positive content of popism: its pro-scenius-ness. scenius does not negate genius, but it surely makes genius possible -- there are comparatively few 'lone genius' types who don't draw on some kind of collective culture or work on some collective creative problematic.

 

[k-punk]

Virus not mimesis

Mark, surely the "digital code" of the amen is different from track to track? Once the sample is immersed within the sonic field of a track it cannot again be sampled cleanly from the new track, it is always tainted by the sonic field, however precisely the sampler tries to isolate it. Of course if a producer supplied to a remixer copies of all the different sound samples they originally used then they could redeploy the "same" Amen, but in doing so the remixer is going one step backwards to the pre-track, virginal amen sample. And certainly not every jungle track samples the amen from it's original source, and that's one of the reasons why there's such a range and variety of textures to the beats (the other is whatever else the producer decides to do to i t- detune it, chop it up etc.

So you get this situation where the development of the amen's usage in jungle is a combination of deviation-by-intent (actively attempting to screw up the sample) and the inevitable near-enough-is-good-enough deviation of the imperfect copy.

All of that is correct, you are right, I was too hasty.... apart from this 'imperfect copy' thing... this whole model of original and copy does not seem to me appropriate to something like the amen... mimetic for me would mean 'imitation', but that is ignoring what is unique about sampling culture.. if (uttunul forbid) I was a rock guitarist, I might 'copy' a Keith Richards lick, my attempt to do so would inevitably be imperfect etc. But if an amen is an 'imperfect' copy, it is not in the same sense: it is a degraded version, not a failed reconstruction. A sample of an amen is a copy only in the sense that a photograph is a copy: i.e. it is not a MIMETIC copy at all. That is why (as Steve Hyperdub has long argued) the correct model for this kind of process is virus, not mimesis...

 

[dominic]

virus, not mimesis...

yes, but don't viruses replicate?

or does the replication of a virus follow a kind of logic?

the virus as creature of the body

whereas mimesis is external to the body and uninformed by logic -- merely image (inexactly) mirrored by image

that is, what is at stake in the virus vs mimesis distinction???

why is this point so important?

perhaps the virus metaphor can account for pathos

for why people feel the need, feel the rightness of dancing in a certain manner?

for why people feel the rightness of this sound and not that sound?

again, what is at stake here?

why are you insisting on the point?

or do you simply think mimesis an inaccurate description

or perhaps the mimesis explanation cannot account for why people don't think they're "copying" others when they dance -- i.e., reflecting empty & arbitrary forms -- as opposed to this way of dancing feels so goddamn right

i.e., mimesis explanation would have us all be surfaces who mirror what we see

i.e., the mimesis explanation is so counter-intuitive that it is in fact false

whereas the virus explanation makes it a matter of pathos -- i.e., viral movement is the dynamic principle

so the question then shifts, perhaps, to the value of different kinds of ease and disease

again, what's the upshot?

and could we even say that it is sound itself that afflicts the body?

that music is the agent of disease

that rhythm is infectious

which is an explanation that is both logical and which accords with experience

again, what is at stake in the virus vs mimesis distinction?