MUSI 1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Bebop, Neville Marcano, Afrocentrism
MUSI 1002
Issues In Popular Music
May 31, 2018
(previous lecture)
Madonna:
• Pop, Rock, and Authenticity: Seen as coming from the pop tradition (hence,
manufactured/uncritical/inauthentic)
• Frequently presented more nuance/problematic works (Truth or Dare, 1991), “projected"
seriousness and "authenticity"
• First hit in the early 1980s (Like a Virgin), started from the pop tradition
• Reinvented herself in many different ways
• Early 2000s, returns to more dance-oriented material with "Confessions on a Dance Floor" (2005),
social message on Ray of Light (1998), Music (2000), and American Life (2003)
• Politics:
o Seem by some as transcending authenticity debates by transforming and reshaping her
image and the way her ideas are presented
o Constructs a new form of politics based upon play and the freeing and reconstitution of
identity
o There is no one Madonna, she has many personas brought out at different times that
touches on different issues
• Stuart Hall's Three Concepts of Identity
o Enlightenment: Notion that there is an essential core identity that one is born with unfolds
over a lifetime
o Sociological: a coherent identity that is shaped by social actions and changes over time
o Postode: "thought to hae o fied o essetial idetit… idetities hae eoe
dislocated", identities are continuously under negotiation with the culture that we live in
• Ou idetit is pojeted though lothig, ooks, fils, et…
• Earlier models of politics and identity
o Politics shaped by new forms of identity: those that reinforced oppression and the operation
power were replaced by those which opposed the established order
o Adorno's passive consumer is replaced with one fully aware of the way in which popular
culture/pop music "reproduces inequalities", more power and agency given to the individual
o "This sort of politics can be seen to rest on a sociological concept of identity, where the
subject can be changed, or switched over, as social conditions change"
• Led to the proliferation of subcultures
• Liberation of identities, people can construct identities for their own purposes
o Madonna embraces the nothing that there is not essential identity, rather a multiplicity, and
no "authentic way of being"
o Identity becomes a play of "masks and surfaces rather than in a search for the truth and the
underlying reality
o Madonna's many identities also serve to keep her in the public eye
• Clever move in terms of preserving her brand
• Brand can be sustained over a long period of time without changing it
• Gender and sexuality
o Complicated presentation of sexuality and gender roles
o Gender: Unlike many female artists, she controlled her image(s) throughout her career
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o Controlled her own destiny in a business dominated by men
o Sexuality: Mainstreaming "transgressive" sexual imagery, highly sexualized imagery-femme
fatale, gender stereotypes
(today's lecture)
Race and Racialization: "Black Music": Genres and Social Constructions
Defining Black Music:
• Hip Hop, Blues, Jazz, Reggae, et…
• A term frequently used in popular music but often left poorly or undefined
o Presented casually, with racist overtones, very problematic
• What may constitutes black music
• What problems/issues may arise with these characterization
• Early definitions/critical works often re-inscribed racist and biological determinist ideology (often
at the core of "scientific" racist theories)
• Phillip Tagg raise similar issues around stylistic features in music commonly associated with
"blackness or Afro-American music (an open letter on black music)
o Blue notes, altered/blue 3rd (found all over the world in Irish/renaissance music)
o Call and response techniques, often found in gospel/early blues, originated from work songs
(Scottish fabric-making songs, also commonly found in Europe, used to pass time, unity, and
coordination)
o Syncopation, shifting the natural emphasis in time signatures
o Improvisation
o All commonly found in music elsewhere as well, not exclusively 'black music'
• Tagg's position is that characterization of "black music are essentialist
• They argue (implicitly or explicitly) that intrinsic qualities are based upon the culturally
constructed concept of race shape the problematic concept of 'blackness' in music
• Tagg argues there's no essence to black music, doesn't offer replacement but suggested that the
term be discarded as being both racist and too ill-defined to be useful
• Others (Hatch and Milford) argued that is might be used but be based upon sociological/cultural
practices rather than the (ultimately, culturally constructed) biological concept race
o Possible issues: historical roots of 'black' music (slavery), intermingling of music of the
slaves/slave owners
• Music made by black people is related to their oppression in the US, and they point out that these
oppessios ae ieualities ae ofte ut aoss lass, loalit, et…
• Hatch and Milford argue for a model of popular music studies that abandons constructs of
authenticity based upon race, without diminishing the immense contributions of African American
musicians to modern popular musics
• Popular musics have always been shaped by contributions of the various communities involves
o Ex. Irish culture/ music
• Paul Oliver's social definition: 'black music' is that which is recognized and accepted as such by its
eatos, pefoes, ad heaes… eopassig the usi of those ho see theselves as black
and whose musics have unifying characteristics which justify their recognition as specific genres
o "slippery" but sociological definition
• Six major issues with "Black Music"
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
