Analysing Popular Music

Image, Sound and Text

David Machin

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781446241349
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Volkskultur in der Kunst

Popular music is far more than just songs we listen to; its meanings are also in album covers, lyrics, subcultures, voices and video soundscapes. Like language these elements can be used to communicate complex cultural ideas, values, concepts and identities.

Analysing Popular Music is a lively look at the semiotic resources found in the sounds, visuals and words that comprise the ?code book? of popular music. It explains exactly how popular music comes to mean so much. Packed with examples, exercises and a glossary, this book provides the reader with the knowledge and skills they need to carry out their own analyses of songs, soundtracks, lyrics and album covers.

Written for students with no prior musical knowledge, Analysing Popular Music is the perfect toolkit for students in sociology, media and communication studies to analyse, understand - and celebrate - popular music.

1	Discourses of Popular Music

A number of discourses dominate the way we think and talk about popular music. They shape how we assess what is good and bad music and what is meaningful and trivial music. They influence the way we think about our own musical tastes and knowledge and lead us to believe that these tell us something about ourselves and in turn that the tastes of others tell us something about them.

It is these discourses that tell us that a boy band does not produce music from the heart, whereas a blues artist does. In fact what we actually mean by such an evaluation is never clearly articulated. But nevertheless it can lead us to be less forthcoming in expressing our enjoyment of one of their songs and may even prevent us from enjoying it at all. In a discussion about music in a lecture theatre a student who confesses to liking a boy band will most likely be mocked by their classmates. I have seen it happen often. But if it is good pop music why should it matter? We are not laughed at for our tastes in food or because we prefer to take our shower really hot rather than cold. Both these are sensory experiences, as is listening to music. Nor are we evaluated for the kinds of paintings we prefer. We might consider that someone has bad taste but this is different to the way our musical preferences position us. Such notions might sound trivial, but unpicking them to clearly describe the discourses that underpin them provides a valuable resource for the analyses in subsequent chapters.

In this chapter we explore the idea that the meaning of any piece of music is not so much in the sounds themselves but in the discourses we have for understanding them. In other words, we put the meanings there. Frith (1996) has said of music that ‘to understand cultural value judgements we must look at the social contexts in which they are made, at the social reasons why some aspects of a sound or spectacle are valued over others’ (p. 22). In subsequent chapters of this book we present a set of methods for exploring how artists communicate such cultural value judgements, what we here refer to as discourses, through look, sounds, voices and lyrics. Here we start to think about what these discourses are.

Authenticity

The discourse of authenticity is at the heart of the way that we think about music and can be seen signified in the different semiotic modes through which artists communicate, through their sound, look, lyrics and what they say in interviews. This idea of authenticity can be illustrated by the different way we evaluate an indie band as compared to a boy band. We might accept that the indie band is authentic but a boy band is certainly not. What is important here is why this is the case and what underlying social values are in operation to bring this evaluation about. Authenticity is something we take for granted but seldom try to define systematically.

To help illustrate the different ways we think about these two kinds of music Cook (1998: 9) gives an example from the Muppet Show. There is a scene where one of the puppets plays the part of a classical musician who has the opportunity to play a duet with guest blues guitarist Ry Cooder. The puppet is terrified as he cannot play music without a written score. Ry Cooder gives him a lesson in playing music from the heart, ‘letting it come naturally’. In other words, natural music, the blues, is contrasted to music of artifice, classical music. When the puppet does this, letting go and playing naturally, it sounds just like the blues. So the blues is not simply music but natural sounds that come from within. Therefore it is about self-expression as opposed to the structured classical music, which is not. Classical music is part of a literate tradition where music is written down, where there are formal rules as to how it should be played, where institutions school performers as to how this should be done properly. This idea of nature versus artifice underpins much of how we assess music and there is an established range of conventions for it to be communicated. What exactly these are in terms of sounds and performance will be explained in later chapters.

Since the blues is viewed as an authentic expression of an oppressed race – music from the heart – in contrast to the formality of the classical tradition of concert music from Europe, it is considered to be the archetype of music that genuinely expresses true emotion and feeling. In the case of the boy band there is clearly an association of lack of this deeper expression of feeling. To say a boy band produced music from the soul would seem inappropriate.

This idea of authenticity has its origins partly in the Romantic tradition where it was considered that artistic creativity comes from within the soul and is somehow connected to God. Writers such as Goehr (2007), who have written extensively on the history of music and composition, show how this is connected to the emergence of the notion of individual works of art, of creativity being an individual process rather than something that emerges out of society, out of wider shared cultural practices. Authenticity suggests the opposite, that creativity is individual where there should be an absence of artifice or culture.

This view of the meaning of music emerged in the 19th century. Before this time very different views were held. In 17th-century Europe it was thought that people of certain temperaments would be affected by different kinds of music (Cook, 1998). Lang (1972) cites a theorist from the time who writes: ‘martially inclined men are partial to trumpets and drums, and they reject all delicate and pure music’ (Kircher, 0000: 544). The idea was that temperaments would respond naturally to particular musical characteristics. In this way music was seen to represent nature itself, into which human character was also tied.

By the 18th century this idea that music represented nature was altered by the idea of ‘affects’. Here, due to its connection to the soul, music could convey feelings such as anger, love and pain. This can be heard in opera. Music could speak of the torments and joys of the heart and soul in a way that words could not.

In the 19th century musicologists such as Schenker (1979) argued that music was some higher form of reality entering into our own. This was a view of music that had been around since the time of Pythagoras who had hypothesised that the universe was organised around the same structures as those found in music. The music we hear therefore is the sound of the force of the existence of the universe. Schenker thought music used genius composers as a kind of medium to communicate this higher reality with ordinary people. Music is therefore a window to a different world. During this period, as science was replacing religion as the dominant belief system, music ‘provided an alternative route to spiritual consolation’ (Cook, 1998: 38). From this lies the logical association with musicianship and ethical qualities, being true to oneself, being sincere – qualities we might group as part of authenticity.

When we assess artists this is often in terms of whether or not they produce music from the heart and whether their performance has some kind of sincerity or whether it is contrived. In the case of a boy band we perceive a look and music designed for specific markets; in other words, something that is produced, contrived, of culture rather than of the soul. We feel, therefore, that there can be no authentic expression either in sounds, looks or lyrics. This means that such acts, however catchy their tunes, however innovative they might in fact be, however finely crafted their songs, will not be taken seriously as evidence of true musical expression. In fact this is odd considering the huge amount of marketing and promotional work that goes into most acts. Frith (1996) explains that importantly authenticity is not something thought through when people use it and only relates to some kind of sincerity or commitment.

Even music that is clearly predictable can be thought of as being from the heart if it is the right genre. I have sat in blues bars where the musicians looked and sounded like a cliché of blues. Yet from the facial expressions, movements and responses of the punters it was clear that they were witnessing music from the heart and certainly nothing contrived.

One of the reasons that folk music manages to maintain its authenticity, no matter how predictable it might be in terms of sounds, looks and lyrics, is that it is associated with tradition and an older form of social organisation. It is the authentic sound of the past unpolluted by artifice. This is why it is important to play acoustic instruments or ‘traditional’ instruments. It is a music unspoiled by urban and technological contamination.

Chapman (1996) shows that the idea of folk being an authentic roots music is simply not correct. Much of what is known as ‘Celtic’ music, for example, has nothing to do with any concrete relationship to any kind of place or time. Nor, he argues, are the instruments traditionally Celtic. This is, he says, is about ‘nostalgia for (...) the traditional past, and perhaps a good deal of naivety about the nature of that past’ (p. 31). He points out that the idea of a separate Celtic music ignores the fact that if there ever were a Celtic people then they, for as long as we have records, have been involved in mainstream European events. Also the idea of ‘traditional’ Celtic instruments is equally fictitious. The three-drone bagpipe is a relatively new invention yet it is now internationally accepted as an authentic Celtic sound that speaks of ancient times and people of the land (p. 37).

The musicologist Cook (1990) was interested in the way that we have assumptions about how older forms of music should sound even though we have no recordings of original performances nor accurate transcriptions. For example, we have no idea what medieval music sounded like yet we attend a themed banquet where there are period musicians, and they sound just as we expected (p. 56). Musicologists have demonstrated that we have no real basis on which to make this assumption and that such music may have sounded completely different. Taruskin (1995: 164) states that:

absolutely no one performs pre-twentieth-century music as it would have been performed when new. This may be so easily verified that it is a wonder anyone still believes the contrary.

He gives the example of the music of Beethoven where eyewitness accounts from original performances speak of the way composers would themselves ignore and play around with embellishments and tempos when performing their own pieces or conducting. Beethoven himself wrote ‘Tempo of feeling’ on his scores; in other words, ‘play as you feel fit’. Taruskin suggests that such issues are now glossed over in performances. He believes that Mozart and Beethoven would listen to contemporary CD recordings of their music with ‘utter discomfort and bewilderment’ (p. 168). He notes that even early 20th-century recordings of classical pieces sound odd to us now such have ideas of authentic sound been merged with current requirements for how the past sounded.

Goehr (2007) points out that the way we now think about classical works is mistaken. Composers such as Mozart wrote music that they expected to be disassembled and played according to the needs and mood of settings. Often what we now know as individual works were never meant to be so.

I once heard an American colleague who had Welsh ancestors say that when they heard Celtic music, which included bagpipes, for the first time at a Welsh cultural festival they felt that somewhere deep inside they recognised the music, suggesting that the music touched them in a special way as it chimed with their own spiritual connection to the land. Of course this is not to take away the pleasure involved in such imaginings, but it reveals something of the discourses through which we understand sounds and that this influences the way that we hear them. These ‘Celtic’ sounds not only represent a former time but are literally tied in with the very mists of the ancient lands and peoples we associate with them. Of course the colleague would not have wanted to take the point this far and had made the comment flippantly in a wistful moment over a beer. And I would be the last person to want to take away the pleasure that such a feeling brought to him. But it was based on certain cultural assumptions that allowed him to put these meanings into the sounds and not on anything to be found in the sounds themselves. Cook (1998) concludes that it is the stories we tell about music that help to determine what it is. He puts it thus: ‘The values wrapped up in the idea of authenticity, for example, are not simply there in the music; they are there because the way we think about music puts them there’ (p. 14).

In subsequent chapters in this book we will be looking at way that artists are able to connote authenticity through certain sounds, looks and lyrics. Authenticity is itself a discourse that can be realised through a range of semiotic resources.

To raise one final point on authenticity, another reason that a boy band is not authentic is that they are not the creators of the music but performers. Performers do not have so much status, unless they establish a status as an original interpreter, such as Billie Holiday. This is slightly different in the case of classical music where certain virtuoso musicians are considered to be geniuses and in touch with some kind of divine force.

Taruskin (1995) suggests that classical music reveals a particular contradiction in our idea of authenticity. On the one hand, authenticity is about conviction and expression of emotion. But, on the other hand, we also like to think about authentic works. So how does a classical performer remain faithful to the original and convey authenticity through the expression of emotion? Cook (1998) explains that it is odd that such musicians are credited with providing unique interpretations of compositions yet no one ever discusses where the boundaries of interpretation and improvisation meet. Therefore, what interpretation means is never articulated. Yet it becomes a discourse for talking about music and again can be understood as a culturally based way that it has meaning for us.

Body and mind split

I was at a gig enjoying the music of one of my favourite musicians. The audience had all remained seated for most of the performance but during the encores began to leave their seats to dance in the aisles or just to stand where they were and sway and wave their arms about. I didn’t have the urge to do this and simply sat watching and listening carefully. After the gig some friends asked if I hadn’t enjoyed it, that I didn’t appear to get into the music. In fact I had been enraptured. Here we have another discourse about the meaning of music: how it relates to our body and mind and how we can use music to express ourselves. It also shows how people are convinced that there are correct and incorrect ways to express enjoyment of music. Clearly in the case of this gig I had not done so in the right way. I was too busy listening and watching.

For a time I played regular weekly slots in a jazz basement. When I was playing solos audience members would sit smoking and sipping drinks thoughtfully and then clap lightly when I had finished or maybe even just nod a few times or tap the side of their glass with their finger. Occasionally someone might exclaim ‘Yes!’ as I finished the solo. But there was certainly no raising of arms, leaping around, nor smiling. During the same period I played regular gigs in a blues band. Here people would whoop during solos, shout ‘Yeah’, would dance in a walking type of motion and occasionally shake their heads as if trying to shake water from their hair. But there would be no leaping around. Earlier in my musical career I performed in orchestras where the audience would sit completely still in silence and then applaud rapturously when they were sure the piece was finished, with of course a few minor ripples, quickly and shyly withdrawn, in some of the pauses. There were even different facial expressions commonly seen at the different performances. At the blues gig punters would screw up their faces; in the jazz basement you would tend to see furrowed brows, head slightly to one side, suggesting concentration. At the classical concert faces would be open, with the occasional smile.

There are clearly kinds of behaviour appropriate to watching and listening to different kinds of performance and for expressing our appreciation of the music. Frith (1996) has discussed the way we have developed an association of fun with the body and seriousness with the mind. This also helps to explain how what we think of as ‘African music’ or blues has become associated with the body and movement and classical music has become associated with the soul, intellect and quiet contemplation.

Frith (1996: 124) explains that these associations have their origins in Europe and the USA in the 19th century. We must be still and silent during a classical concert or a jazz session as there is something intellectual going on. Serious music needs to be contemplated carefully. But at a rock concert such behaviour is seen as silly, repressed or as missing the point. This is the difference betw...