Check out this blog on my band - for another week or so this is the only place you can hear two tracks
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/atoz/2010/02/in_the_studio_resoldered_mp3_punk_st_louis_edwardsville_nofx_descendents.php
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
When I was 13
My family and I sat in a Captain D's the other night (a fish place, for those of you outside Saint Louis) and the background music was pretty crappy old pop. My daughter asked us what we thought the most popular songs were when we were 13 (her current age). Sandy and I really had to think about this, and offered up some pretty bad songs we thought were hits back then: All out of love by Air Supply, some Madonna, but then we hit a wall. It is so nice not to know much about pop music.
I don't listen to the radio. I usually listen to songs through my mp3 player, some of which are my own songs, and mostly I do that to study their flaws and to figure out how to write better songs. I also listen to a lot of the bands around St. Louis that are quite local and even more unsigned. B & E and the defunct Poor Man's Burden and Bitch Slap Barbie songs are good examples. I dare you to listen to B & E's song "Mighty Fine Mess" at www.myspace.com/bandelive and not find it meaningful, melodic, unusual, and very witty. Hell, buy the CD and treat yourself to many songs with the same qualities. It is well worth the ten bucks.
I know many of you listen to indie bands, and I just encourage you to do more of it. Myspace hosts tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of bands that write better songs than you'd ever hear on the radio. You can hear it all, instead of that corporate produced crap, and it's commercial free!
I don't listen to the radio. I usually listen to songs through my mp3 player, some of which are my own songs, and mostly I do that to study their flaws and to figure out how to write better songs. I also listen to a lot of the bands around St. Louis that are quite local and even more unsigned. B & E and the defunct Poor Man's Burden and Bitch Slap Barbie songs are good examples. I dare you to listen to B & E's song "Mighty Fine Mess" at www.myspace.com/bandelive and not find it meaningful, melodic, unusual, and very witty. Hell, buy the CD and treat yourself to many songs with the same qualities. It is well worth the ten bucks.
I know many of you listen to indie bands, and I just encourage you to do more of it. Myspace hosts tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of bands that write better songs than you'd ever hear on the radio. You can hear it all, instead of that corporate produced crap, and it's commercial free!
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Socialism is not un-American
If you live in the United States, you already, and have for some time, live under and likely enjoy the fruits of socialism. Police and fire protection, public schools, and most roads are paid for by the people and administered by the state. No private citizen or corporation owns these institutions or services. You pay for these things through taxes even though you may personally not use them. We do this for the greater good, which is what socialism and democracy are all about. Socialism has always been a part of the United States and most people, except the super rich, benefit from it.
These services noted above are too important to leave in the hands of private corporations who only seek to make a profit off of owning and providing them. These services are too important to simply allow people with the monetary resources to use them. These services are too critical to the overall functioning of society to leave to the invisible hand of the market.
Anyone who claims that the United States is moving in the direction of socialism is already demonstrating their lack of knowledge. The US has always had elements of socialism. The better question, it seems, is if the country is moving in that direction a bit more and whether this is a good thing. When considering this, I urge people to consider what I pointed out above: (a) is the service or institution too important to leave in the hands of profit seeking corporations and the fickle forces of the market? (b) Would the least powerful, including children, suffer the most by being denied the services?
Look, the truth in American society is that some people have it easier than others by no effort or fault of their own. They were born into families that had different levels of economic, social, and educational resources and opportunities. The myth that moving up in social class is freely available to anyone who tries hard enough is really just a myth. Some people move out of poverty, the working class, or the middle class, but most don’t. These folks are in the statistical majority. Democracy, and yes, socialism, is about serving the interests of the majority.
If you like the fact that you can drive on roads, send your kids to school, and have the cops and firefighters show up when you need them, then you like what socialist organization gives you. Yes, most people pay for these services directly or indirectly through taxes, but it is not pay per use, which is what capitalizing these services would do.
So is health care, like public education, too important to society to leave in the hands of profit-driven corporations that would make it more difficult for those not wealthy or without disposable income to enjoy what most people in the world believe to be a basic human right? Yes! The quality of US healthcare ranks well behind many other hybrid capitalist-socialist political economies in Europe that have socialized medicine. Gee, why is that?
So, don't be spreading lies by saying that something that is socialist is un-American.
These services noted above are too important to leave in the hands of private corporations who only seek to make a profit off of owning and providing them. These services are too important to simply allow people with the monetary resources to use them. These services are too critical to the overall functioning of society to leave to the invisible hand of the market.
Anyone who claims that the United States is moving in the direction of socialism is already demonstrating their lack of knowledge. The US has always had elements of socialism. The better question, it seems, is if the country is moving in that direction a bit more and whether this is a good thing. When considering this, I urge people to consider what I pointed out above: (a) is the service or institution too important to leave in the hands of profit seeking corporations and the fickle forces of the market? (b) Would the least powerful, including children, suffer the most by being denied the services?
Look, the truth in American society is that some people have it easier than others by no effort or fault of their own. They were born into families that had different levels of economic, social, and educational resources and opportunities. The myth that moving up in social class is freely available to anyone who tries hard enough is really just a myth. Some people move out of poverty, the working class, or the middle class, but most don’t. These folks are in the statistical majority. Democracy, and yes, socialism, is about serving the interests of the majority.
If you like the fact that you can drive on roads, send your kids to school, and have the cops and firefighters show up when you need them, then you like what socialist organization gives you. Yes, most people pay for these services directly or indirectly through taxes, but it is not pay per use, which is what capitalizing these services would do.
So is health care, like public education, too important to society to leave in the hands of profit-driven corporations that would make it more difficult for those not wealthy or without disposable income to enjoy what most people in the world believe to be a basic human right? Yes! The quality of US healthcare ranks well behind many other hybrid capitalist-socialist political economies in Europe that have socialized medicine. Gee, why is that?
So, don't be spreading lies by saying that something that is socialist is un-American.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Music and Knowledge (Part II of II)
I recommend that you read Part I of this blog before reading what immediately follows.
In History & Class Consciousness, Georg Lukacs wrote:
"The essence of commodity-structure has often been pointed out. Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a ‘phantom objectivity’, an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people."
In this, Part II of II of my blog on Music and Knowledge, I will draw from Lukacs and other critical theorists to further elaborate my position on music and knowledge and the resultant categories of pure, applied, and transformative (see Part I of this blog).
Following Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism, Lukacs understands that advanced capitalist societies principally function under conditions of commodification and reification. That is, everything becomes transformed into that which can be bought and sold. Music, like cars, socks, and food, is no exception to this, and this should be understood as a fundamental problematic as it relates to another Marxist concept, alienation. To Marx, workers in capitalism become profoundly disconnected with their labor, productive activity, comrades, and most importantly, genuine self and communal realization as a result of being in an economic structure which cares only about profit and growth, not human creativity and satisfaction on the most fundamental levels. This becomes exacerbated in an arena that anthropologically and sociologically has its roots in real, genuine, collective communication, music. Historically, music functioned principally the same as language in which storytelling, education, hope, and tale-telling became integral parts of socializing youth and creating solidarity in a community. Words alone can be moving. Words with music can be exceptionally moving and transformative.
Pure musicians don’t care about moving the masses. They write and perform to satisfy their unique need for self expression. While admirable on one level because it is not alienated labor, such music is not designed to be communicative and becomes rather self-absorbed and existential beyond what even Sartre might have extolled. It has no redeeming value other than the personal satisfaction to be gained by the composer. Like everything else, unless the individual connects with the social, nothing changes.
Applied musicians care about reaching people, but in many different ways and for different reasons. Some want the attention and fame, others want to sell records and mp3s and get rich, while still others simply enjoy the social aspect of music composition and performance. While some musicians can stay genuinely creative and still write songs that the well socialized masses may like, many more become trapped in standard musical composition and songwriting structures because that is what they know and that is what is likely to be more accepted and consumed in popular culture.
In today’s music “industry,” as the label suggests, there is incredible pressure on musicians interested in finding audiences for their creations to write songs for consumption, not transformation. Following Lukacs, the relation between people becomes tertiary and only valuable to the extent it produces capital. These pressures are both internal and external. Local bands need to get people to their shows. Bands that want to go national need lots of people to go to their shows. More people mean more money, which feeds exactly into what large labels and record companies need in order to survive and prosper. Radio stations, albeit local ones sometimes are open to local unsigned music, are notoriously directed toward spinning the songs (“products’) of these corporations made by musicians under contract with labels. Although the huge growth of indie labels is a positive development, just as there is a sea of bands there are oceans of indie labels and the competition is fierce to get mass media attention. So, many musicians will try to find a sound that is appealing to the masses, or to those who may be fans of a certain genre, and often have to compromise their creativity to do so. Just listen to a major radio station’s playlist for an hour. The songs are likely familiar to you: They tend to follow 4-4 time; they probably have the same old standard format of intro, verse, break, verse, chorus, solo, verse, chorus, chorus. Creative, eh? In a universe filled with possibilities, things tend to simply manifest themselves in boiler-plated molds. By the way, the songs should never be shorter than two minutes and no longer than four if one wants corporate interest. Unless freak of nature songs like Comfortably Numb or Stairway to Heaven capture the imaginations of the masses, people just don’t want to listen to something for more than a few minutes.
What I call transformative knowledge of music requires musician-songwriters to take the positive aspect of pure music – the unchained creativity – and combine it with genuine concern for reaching people (applied). It requires a delicate balance between the gravity of what is known and the mystery of what can be. It should aim to inspire collectivity and solidarity by both interrogating and envisioning an alternative discourse and epistemology – different ways of speaking and different ways of knowing.
Words are controlled by those in power. Words already laden with understood meanings, whether we talk about “welfare,” “justice,” or “peace” for example, are manipulated to serve the interests of the speaker and their agents, and who are the speakers in mass media? Scripted politicians highly refined and produced “reality” shows, and the product of those who control the most resources, corporations, who only care about expanding their client base and thus their profits. Using different words and defining and operationalizing those words into transformative narratives along with unusual and interesting patterns are one way to become a transformative musician. But it can’t be too much or people will lose interest or become confused and not have the time or inclination to learn more. It is the musician/songwriter’s responsibility to articulate an intelligible vision of a better world.
Obviously even popular music is not liked by everyone, and this is good, but it also shows that there are holes to be poked into the conventional music discourse. Alternative music, a most unfitting name for a style of music that is certainly not an alternative to anything, was once a new discourse, as was virtually every other musical genre. But, alas, they becomes refurbished, reiterated, and restated in uncreative ways and recycled into sameness rather than newness. This what Marcuse was talking about in his book One-Dimensional Man. It also corresponds to corporate interests until the well has dried up and people are ready to move on to something a little different. And, this is where the opportunity resides for transformative music, at those points in time when what is in style starts to demise and what is sameness is recognized as such and there is a palpable desire for something distinct and more meaningful. Unfortunately, with the exception of bands like Rage Against the Machine and Green Day, few bands have found themselves in the right moment to seize the opportunity to say something critical and have at least some people pay attention. Although Green Day might be famous because they used the most predictable and derivative riffs on the planet, they did say something transformative in American Idiot, but I fear many people just didn’t get it. They were too wrapped up in the corporate induced imagery and fandom to realize they were consuming – but not really listening – to a fairly radical critique of ethnocentrism and American exceptionalism.
People can be picky about music. I know there are a lot of folks who don’t like the songs of the famous, and often this is because of genre preferences. Genres have their own history, and like people, have some unique features and elements. My hope is that transformative music – that rooted in any variety of folk or intellectual traditions that challenge inequality and oppression – becomes less of the exception and more of the rule. People are listening – but what are we giving them?
In History & Class Consciousness, Georg Lukacs wrote:
"The essence of commodity-structure has often been pointed out. Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a ‘phantom objectivity’, an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people."
In this, Part II of II of my blog on Music and Knowledge, I will draw from Lukacs and other critical theorists to further elaborate my position on music and knowledge and the resultant categories of pure, applied, and transformative (see Part I of this blog).
Following Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism, Lukacs understands that advanced capitalist societies principally function under conditions of commodification and reification. That is, everything becomes transformed into that which can be bought and sold. Music, like cars, socks, and food, is no exception to this, and this should be understood as a fundamental problematic as it relates to another Marxist concept, alienation. To Marx, workers in capitalism become profoundly disconnected with their labor, productive activity, comrades, and most importantly, genuine self and communal realization as a result of being in an economic structure which cares only about profit and growth, not human creativity and satisfaction on the most fundamental levels. This becomes exacerbated in an arena that anthropologically and sociologically has its roots in real, genuine, collective communication, music. Historically, music functioned principally the same as language in which storytelling, education, hope, and tale-telling became integral parts of socializing youth and creating solidarity in a community. Words alone can be moving. Words with music can be exceptionally moving and transformative.
Pure musicians don’t care about moving the masses. They write and perform to satisfy their unique need for self expression. While admirable on one level because it is not alienated labor, such music is not designed to be communicative and becomes rather self-absorbed and existential beyond what even Sartre might have extolled. It has no redeeming value other than the personal satisfaction to be gained by the composer. Like everything else, unless the individual connects with the social, nothing changes.
Applied musicians care about reaching people, but in many different ways and for different reasons. Some want the attention and fame, others want to sell records and mp3s and get rich, while still others simply enjoy the social aspect of music composition and performance. While some musicians can stay genuinely creative and still write songs that the well socialized masses may like, many more become trapped in standard musical composition and songwriting structures because that is what they know and that is what is likely to be more accepted and consumed in popular culture.
In today’s music “industry,” as the label suggests, there is incredible pressure on musicians interested in finding audiences for their creations to write songs for consumption, not transformation. Following Lukacs, the relation between people becomes tertiary and only valuable to the extent it produces capital. These pressures are both internal and external. Local bands need to get people to their shows. Bands that want to go national need lots of people to go to their shows. More people mean more money, which feeds exactly into what large labels and record companies need in order to survive and prosper. Radio stations, albeit local ones sometimes are open to local unsigned music, are notoriously directed toward spinning the songs (“products’) of these corporations made by musicians under contract with labels. Although the huge growth of indie labels is a positive development, just as there is a sea of bands there are oceans of indie labels and the competition is fierce to get mass media attention. So, many musicians will try to find a sound that is appealing to the masses, or to those who may be fans of a certain genre, and often have to compromise their creativity to do so. Just listen to a major radio station’s playlist for an hour. The songs are likely familiar to you: They tend to follow 4-4 time; they probably have the same old standard format of intro, verse, break, verse, chorus, solo, verse, chorus, chorus. Creative, eh? In a universe filled with possibilities, things tend to simply manifest themselves in boiler-plated molds. By the way, the songs should never be shorter than two minutes and no longer than four if one wants corporate interest. Unless freak of nature songs like Comfortably Numb or Stairway to Heaven capture the imaginations of the masses, people just don’t want to listen to something for more than a few minutes.
What I call transformative knowledge of music requires musician-songwriters to take the positive aspect of pure music – the unchained creativity – and combine it with genuine concern for reaching people (applied). It requires a delicate balance between the gravity of what is known and the mystery of what can be. It should aim to inspire collectivity and solidarity by both interrogating and envisioning an alternative discourse and epistemology – different ways of speaking and different ways of knowing.
Words are controlled by those in power. Words already laden with understood meanings, whether we talk about “welfare,” “justice,” or “peace” for example, are manipulated to serve the interests of the speaker and their agents, and who are the speakers in mass media? Scripted politicians highly refined and produced “reality” shows, and the product of those who control the most resources, corporations, who only care about expanding their client base and thus their profits. Using different words and defining and operationalizing those words into transformative narratives along with unusual and interesting patterns are one way to become a transformative musician. But it can’t be too much or people will lose interest or become confused and not have the time or inclination to learn more. It is the musician/songwriter’s responsibility to articulate an intelligible vision of a better world.
Obviously even popular music is not liked by everyone, and this is good, but it also shows that there are holes to be poked into the conventional music discourse. Alternative music, a most unfitting name for a style of music that is certainly not an alternative to anything, was once a new discourse, as was virtually every other musical genre. But, alas, they becomes refurbished, reiterated, and restated in uncreative ways and recycled into sameness rather than newness. This what Marcuse was talking about in his book One-Dimensional Man. It also corresponds to corporate interests until the well has dried up and people are ready to move on to something a little different. And, this is where the opportunity resides for transformative music, at those points in time when what is in style starts to demise and what is sameness is recognized as such and there is a palpable desire for something distinct and more meaningful. Unfortunately, with the exception of bands like Rage Against the Machine and Green Day, few bands have found themselves in the right moment to seize the opportunity to say something critical and have at least some people pay attention. Although Green Day might be famous because they used the most predictable and derivative riffs on the planet, they did say something transformative in American Idiot, but I fear many people just didn’t get it. They were too wrapped up in the corporate induced imagery and fandom to realize they were consuming – but not really listening – to a fairly radical critique of ethnocentrism and American exceptionalism.
People can be picky about music. I know there are a lot of folks who don’t like the songs of the famous, and often this is because of genre preferences. Genres have their own history, and like people, have some unique features and elements. My hope is that transformative music – that rooted in any variety of folk or intellectual traditions that challenge inequality and oppression – becomes less of the exception and more of the rule. People are listening – but what are we giving them?
Monday, November 9, 2009
Music and Knowledge – Part I of II
I recently wrote a paper for an academic criminology conference on teaching about economic inequality and crime. In this paper, I made distinctions about the ultimate goals of awakening students to the injustices faced by the poor in the criminal justice system (e.g., poor people are more likely to be arrested, prosecuted, and harshly punished than the wealthy and that the gravest dangers to us all – the economic and violent crimes committed by corporate and political elites – are largely greeted with impunity). I maintained that once a person is in possession of these indisputable facts, what might we expect to happen? I further asserted that one could reasonably see three categories of outcomes: Pure knowledge, applied knowledge, and transformative consciousness. In other words, factual information can be digested only for itself (pure), it can be used to affect the real world in some way (applied), or it can be a part of a more fundamental shift in intellectual and existential consciousness. For example, one could know about the racist and classist nature of capital punishment in the United States and (a) just know it!, (b) decry and critique the practice in social contexts at work and in informal social groups, or (c) develop social movements and political campaigns aimed at eradicating the practice.
I posit that music can also be understood through the above outcome categories of pure, applied, and transformative. Knowledge is quite simply exposure, and listening to songs is no less factual than a census statistic; the reaction to the facts/knowledge is what really matters. In this essay I will focus on audience knowledge. Part II, coming next week, will approach the issue from the perspective of the musician/performer.
Pure knowledge of music, certainly the less prevalent of the bunch, includes the understanding of musicological structure (harmony, progressions, and scales), song arrangement techniques, and technical proficiency. While those in this category are likely to be academics or otherwise serious students of music, some are less formally trained musicians and perhaps some are even critics and producers. The emotive aspect of music is less important to those in this category than the underlying structure of music per se. Just like exposure to facts about social inequality, the implications of having knowledge can be an end unto itself without any other real implications.
Applied knowledge of music includes a much broader spectrum of people and is largely composed of people who say “they love music.” While they do not likely understand the structure of musical composition, they do find their knowledge of music, whether in a song, an artist, or a group, meaningful in their daily lives. The melody might be hummed at work, the lyrics mouthed in the car, or the rhythm pounded out by taps on their desk. The ubiquitous presence of music at weddings, funerals, and other important events further illustrates applied knowledge. More sociologically, applied knowledge of music is a major form of social activity whether in the collective singing and listening to songs in recreational settings, talking about and researching bands and artists, or even materialized in severe emotional reactions to the death of a famous artist, as was the case with millions upon the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson. For any number of reasons, the songs and/or the artists become a part of the person and integral to her or his social networks and moments of individual existence. Posters on bedroom walls also illustrate this point.
The third general form of knowledge and music is transformative. By this I do not mean anything other than awakening in the deepest sense of the term. If social conditions are right, music, especially the lyrics, can open up new ways of political consciousness rather than simply help a party go better or cheering someone up for the night (the applied function of music). Rather, as a tool of education, a la Freire’s hope of a “pedagogy of liberation,” music, unlike words alone, can cast powerful emotional energy. If buttressed in other contexts, it can create a sense of social consciousness.
However, even the most social justice minded musicians with explicit political material out there (the now defunct St. Louis post-punk band Softer than Yesterday comes to mind as well as current artists like Propagandhi, Anti-Flag, and Leftover Crack) are waging an uphill battle. The war is against applied music, but the resistance is fierce and often institutionally supported. It is too difficult for the conditioned masses, largely because of predatory record companies and the corporatization and commodification of music more generally, to really study, absorb, digest, and wrestle with lyrics that are not deeply personal. We have been socially conditioned to use music in only limited ways, not seeing its true potential. Some can, no doubt, have an hour discussion about the tragedy of Operation MOVE in Philadelphia after listening to that track by Leftover Crack. Further, how many people used Anti Flag’s Turncoat (a remarkably successful song for a blatantly leftist band) to demand that former President Bush be held accountable for his crimes against humanity by engaging in an illegal war? That’s just not fun, eh? It isn’t very convenient either, and that is what is wrong with music and knowledge in the postmodern era. Music is becoming, or perhaps already is, to borrow from Baudrillard’s language, a hyperreality, a sign that signifies nothing, only a prop for the ephemeral moment. Superficiality, masquerading as meaning, but in actuality divorced from the real conditions of the masses (e.g. hunger, genocide, exploitation, and oppression) acts as a temporary relief and distraction, which obviously people think they need, but which they do not really need at all. Here Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and Marx’s notion of false consciousness may be applied in full force.
Despite the trappings of music and its tendency to be reduced to individualistic or small scale social rituals, the goal of music should be transformative in nature. Music should be a part of the movement from what has been and what is to what can and should be the basis for a just, compassionate, and caring local and global community. Facts alone will not do this. Knowledge alone will not do this. As the strength of the framing of a house depends on its foundation, so should social consciousness be a foundation for music, and dialectically, music the foundation of social consciousness.
As Adorno wrote many years ago, the revolutionary potential of music is compromised by the specter of salabaility, marketability, and feeding the masses what they think they want rather than want they probably really want: A life free from oppression at work and at home along with the freedom to be creatively engaged in solidarity with others.
In Part II of this blog, I’ll apply the framework that I have developed in this essay to performers and musicians.
I recently wrote a paper for an academic criminology conference on teaching about economic inequality and crime. In this paper, I made distinctions about the ultimate goals of awakening students to the injustices faced by the poor in the criminal justice system (e.g., poor people are more likely to be arrested, prosecuted, and harshly punished than the wealthy and that the gravest dangers to us all – the economic and violent crimes committed by corporate and political elites – are largely greeted with impunity). I maintained that once a person is in possession of these indisputable facts, what might we expect to happen? I further asserted that one could reasonably see three categories of outcomes: Pure knowledge, applied knowledge, and transformative consciousness. In other words, factual information can be digested only for itself (pure), it can be used to affect the real world in some way (applied), or it can be a part of a more fundamental shift in intellectual and existential consciousness. For example, one could know about the racist and classist nature of capital punishment in the United States and (a) just know it!, (b) decry and critique the practice in social contexts at work and in informal social groups, or (c) develop social movements and political campaigns aimed at eradicating the practice.
I posit that music can also be understood through the above outcome categories of pure, applied, and transformative. Knowledge is quite simply exposure, and listening to songs is no less factual than a census statistic; the reaction to the facts/knowledge is what really matters. In this essay I will focus on audience knowledge. Part II, coming next week, will approach the issue from the perspective of the musician/performer.
Pure knowledge of music, certainly the less prevalent of the bunch, includes the understanding of musicological structure (harmony, progressions, and scales), song arrangement techniques, and technical proficiency. While those in this category are likely to be academics or otherwise serious students of music, some are less formally trained musicians and perhaps some are even critics and producers. The emotive aspect of music is less important to those in this category than the underlying structure of music per se. Just like exposure to facts about social inequality, the implications of having knowledge can be an end unto itself without any other real implications.
Applied knowledge of music includes a much broader spectrum of people and is largely composed of people who say “they love music.” While they do not likely understand the structure of musical composition, they do find their knowledge of music, whether in a song, an artist, or a group, meaningful in their daily lives. The melody might be hummed at work, the lyrics mouthed in the car, or the rhythm pounded out by taps on their desk. The ubiquitous presence of music at weddings, funerals, and other important events further illustrates applied knowledge. More sociologically, applied knowledge of music is a major form of social activity whether in the collective singing and listening to songs in recreational settings, talking about and researching bands and artists, or even materialized in severe emotional reactions to the death of a famous artist, as was the case with millions upon the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson. For any number of reasons, the songs and/or the artists become a part of the person and integral to her or his social networks and moments of individual existence. Posters on bedroom walls also illustrate this point.
The third general form of knowledge and music is transformative. By this I do not mean anything other than awakening in the deepest sense of the term. If social conditions are right, music, especially the lyrics, can open up new ways of political consciousness rather than simply help a party go better or cheering someone up for the night (the applied function of music). Rather, as a tool of education, a la Freire’s hope of a “pedagogy of liberation,” music, unlike words alone, can cast powerful emotional energy. If buttressed in other contexts, it can create a sense of social consciousness.
However, even the most social justice minded musicians with explicit political material out there (the now defunct St. Louis post-punk band Softer than Yesterday comes to mind as well as current artists like Propagandhi, Anti-Flag, and Leftover Crack) are waging an uphill battle. The war is against applied music, but the resistance is fierce and often institutionally supported. It is too difficult for the conditioned masses, largely because of predatory record companies and the corporatization and commodification of music more generally, to really study, absorb, digest, and wrestle with lyrics that are not deeply personal. We have been socially conditioned to use music in only limited ways, not seeing its true potential. Some can, no doubt, have an hour discussion about the tragedy of Operation MOVE in Philadelphia after listening to that track by Leftover Crack. Further, how many people used Anti Flag’s Turncoat (a remarkably successful song for a blatantly leftist band) to demand that former President Bush be held accountable for his crimes against humanity by engaging in an illegal war? That’s just not fun, eh? It isn’t very convenient either, and that is what is wrong with music and knowledge in the postmodern era. Music is becoming, or perhaps already is, to borrow from Baudrillard’s language, a hyperreality, a sign that signifies nothing, only a prop for the ephemeral moment. Superficiality, masquerading as meaning, but in actuality divorced from the real conditions of the masses (e.g. hunger, genocide, exploitation, and oppression) acts as a temporary relief and distraction, which obviously people think they need, but which they do not really need at all. Here Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and Marx’s notion of false consciousness may be applied in full force.
Despite the trappings of music and its tendency to be reduced to individualistic or small scale social rituals, the goal of music should be transformative in nature. Music should be a part of the movement from what has been and what is to what can and should be the basis for a just, compassionate, and caring local and global community. Facts alone will not do this. Knowledge alone will not do this. As the strength of the framing of a house depends on its foundation, so should social consciousness be a foundation for music, and dialectically, music the foundation of social consciousness.
As Adorno wrote many years ago, the revolutionary potential of music is compromised by the specter of salabaility, marketability, and feeding the masses what they think they want rather than want they probably really want: A life free from oppression at work and at home along with the freedom to be creatively engaged in solidarity with others.
In Part II of this blog, I’ll apply the framework that I have developed in this essay to performers and musicians.
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