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?