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.