bassnation
the abyss
infinite thought said:
lol
Personal Character reflected in Music
- Thread starter luka
- Start date
- Status
lol
S
simon silverdollar
Guest
how can it be true that the working class are 'generally' ignorant of good music?
(just some) music that had chiefly working class origins: jungle, grime, 2-step, hardcore, hip hop, girls aloud, the sugababes and electro.
compared to the middle class wankery of britpop, grunge, libertines and IDM, who, speaking in generalizations, would you say is more ignorant of good music?
(just some) music that had chiefly working class origins: jungle, grime, 2-step, hardcore, hip hop, girls aloud, the sugababes and electro.
compared to the middle class wankery of britpop, grunge, libertines and IDM, who, speaking in generalizations, would you say is more ignorant of good music?
simon silverdollar said:
almost all forms of popular music in the 20th century comes from the ghettos. I've said this many times before.
not the point here.
for the 348th time: I'm talking about people who work minimum wage jobs 60+ hours a week, who don't have time to explore music. in order to demonstrate the effects of economics on "taste".
whereas someone like me is priviledged to have lots of time to devote to exploring music and the arts, and have disposible income to spend on obscure 60s psych records.
economics have a lot to do with EVERYTHING in our lives. including our choice of music.
why is this so hard to understand?
Last edited:
D
droid
Guest
bassnation said:
Im pretty much the same way, but Ive noticed a tendency here amongst prominent purveyors on either side to be fairly hardline of any ideas that smack of anti-rockism/popism...
Ive got no problems with any of this - but I still think this whole thing is based on a bit of a misinterpretation of Confucius' (admittedly badly phrased) contributions...
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
simon silverdollar said:
Um, surely you've moved from discussing the musical public to musical artists now....and the link between these two groups is another argument entirely.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Besides, posh people have produced some really fine music over the years, despite the time constraints imposed by elocution lessons and polo tournaments.
S
simon silverdollar
Guest
baboon2004 said:
not to drag this point out or anything, cuz it is getting boring now i admit, but all the musics i mentioned- grime, jungle, 2-step, hip hop, etc- had and have as very large proportions of their audience working class listeners, who are in no sense ignorant of the music.
viktorvaughn
Well-known member
OK, treading carefully here, but might we not term, broadly, music as an indulgence, a cultural product pleasureable to experience but ultimately economically unnecessery? I mean, people listen to music in thier liesure time (unless you are lucky enought o be a recording artist/producer etc) so doesn't that in some ways put it on a 'par' with gold?
If that sounds deliberatly over the top i guess it's supposed to. I think what im trying to say is that i think Confucious is right in a limited sense - music is and will remain a product limited and defined in part by the economic state of those who produce it. That is not to reduce it. Dickens wrote many of his early books through dire economic need - his father was in jail for massive debts, he came from a very poor working class family. Similarly, Anthony Burgess wrote a few of his books when he was misdiagnosed with a brain tumor and he beleved he was going to die in a years time. He wanted to produce them, not as a genius work of art that was spilling from his brain, but as a product with a price that would yield an economic reward for his wife after his death.
We pay for music and we consume it. If we have lots and lots of liesure time we might perhaps listen to more music, i think thats fair to claim.
This isnt supposed to lead to a concrete point, rather be a footnote to the conversation so far!!
If that sounds deliberatly over the top i guess it's supposed to. I think what im trying to say is that i think Confucious is right in a limited sense - music is and will remain a product limited and defined in part by the economic state of those who produce it. That is not to reduce it. Dickens wrote many of his early books through dire economic need - his father was in jail for massive debts, he came from a very poor working class family. Similarly, Anthony Burgess wrote a few of his books when he was misdiagnosed with a brain tumor and he beleved he was going to die in a years time. He wanted to produce them, not as a genius work of art that was spilling from his brain, but as a product with a price that would yield an economic reward for his wife after his death.
We pay for music and we consume it. If we have lots and lots of liesure time we might perhaps listen to more music, i think thats fair to claim.
This isnt supposed to lead to a concrete point, rather be a footnote to the conversation so far!!
well music obsessives like us would listen to more music if we had more time, but most people aren't that into music in the first place. when i was a teenager i used to think that people listened to music i perceived as bad because they didn't know any better so i'd try and turn people on to whatever stuff, and 99% of the time they wouldn't be interested. my best mate is a lawyer and most of his law head mates listen to shit music (manufactured pop), the same shit music that they listened to when they were students. and they're all educated and wealthy and have or had plenty of spare time. my brother who is 18 months younger than me, who had the exact same upbringing as me, buys a maximum of 5 CDs a year, i buy more than that every month.
and sure, if you picked a coldplay fan at random i reckon the probability of them being middle class would be higher than working class, but on the other hand i don't think you can make those sort of generalisations about people who have a deep interest in any style of music. i think if you're a music fan it's because you're born that way.
i'd like to see the book where marx categorises music fans.
and sure, if you picked a coldplay fan at random i reckon the probability of them being middle class would be higher than working class, but on the other hand i don't think you can make those sort of generalisations about people who have a deep interest in any style of music. i think if you're a music fan it's because you're born that way.
i'd like to see the book where marx categorises music fans.
qwerty south
no use for a witticism
can't be arsed to read the whole thread but want to state that music = fashion to many.
bassnation
the abyss
big satan said:
thats his little known later tome, das musikal. don't tell me you've never read it???
confucius said:
well, for the 349th time, it's been pretty well summarily proved a bullshit point. IT IS NOT TRUE. with 95 per cent of the best of the world's music coming from lower/working-class origins how the hell does your thesis stand up. IT DOESN'T. or is it the middle-class consumer who actually gives life to scenes like grime/jungle/2step/screw/funk carioca/bmore club/kwaito/ whatever, because their indigenous audience is too busy to give a shit or support them? of course they aren't. music has always functioned as a vital part of working class life, creating a space for discourse, conversing with its audience and just offering some vital relief from the daily grind. just look at dancehall and tell me "lower class" (your words, not mine) people have no time for good music. and as a final point, plenty of us have read a bit of marx here and luckily most of us were sensible enough to see that it really doesn't work in instances like this. anyway, you're boring me now.
Last edited:
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
A lot of middle class[1] students listen to shit music, too. Not neccessarily because they're stupid (although they did have the temerity to be born into comfortable circumstances AND seek an education) nor because they lack the time, but again because it just doesn't interest them. This isn't really a negation of Confucius' point, but it seems worth mentioning...
[1] I try to avoid using the tripartite class distinction on the grounds that society today is a rather more complex, dynamic and heterogeneous beast than it was 150 years ago, but You Know What I Mean.
[1] I try to avoid using the tripartite class distinction on the grounds that society today is a rather more complex, dynamic and heterogeneous beast than it was 150 years ago, but You Know What I Mean.
bassnation
the abyss
Slothrop said:
what, you mean a bit like the kind of society blair often talks about in speeches - The Third Way?
(ducks)
oh confucius, i'm not personally attacking anyone. i am attacking your argument because it doesn't work and actually has nothing to do with the question at hand. and you have spoken to people like they're idiots on this thread which doesn't go down too well in general (big shouty capped up rants etc). i do not think you're a snob. it's obvious you're not and are actually pretty well-meaning (albeit in a pretty confrontational way), but the points i made still stand: liking pop music isn't a bad thing; not wanting to know about the outer reaches of music of any kind isn't indicative of a stunted intellectual life, either by nature or nurture - some people just don't care and prefer to think about other stuff and this is not class-specific; the kind of reasoning you're using flies in the face of all logic given a bloody good proportion of the music discussed here, and statements like "how can they possibly have the time for art" show a fundamental flaw in your theory because a lot of people do. then again, it depends what criteria you're using for something to be "art", i guess, and i think that could be one point where we seriously differ. anyway, this is the second thread today where i've ended up in a lunatic argument for very little reason, so can we just drop it?
Last edited:
yes. yes. this has become tedius. and you are right about the broad generalizations I made or seemed to make. I am dropping it.
only none of this is even what my original post was about.
I was arguing against "personality", and for a set of concrete factors, as deterministic of one's choice of music.
everyone likes to think they are "unique" and "special", myself included, while our "uniqueness" and "individuality" is perhaps nothing more than a collection of data, of which we have no control over.
that's all. all the "poor people are stupid" stuff somehow got tacked on (the fault is all mine), and it got all messed up.
only none of this is even what my original post was about.
I was arguing against "personality", and for a set of concrete factors, as deterministic of one's choice of music.
everyone likes to think they are "unique" and "special", myself included, while our "uniqueness" and "individuality" is perhaps nothing more than a collection of data, of which we have no control over.
that's all. all the "poor people are stupid" stuff somehow got tacked on (the fault is all mine), and it got all messed up.
- Status