Midterm Flashcards
Discourse
- The stuff people say, write or think about a given subject
- The distinctions between facts and the meanings we impose on them
Ideology
- A set of political ideas, a “map of reality” that helps its adherents to understand and act in the world
- Values, beliefs, and principles that are determined by societies in which they emerge and are held
Culture
People’s way of life learned and transmitted through centuries of adapting to the natural and human world
Ways communities are regulated
1) Goverment: democracy, dictatorship, monarchy
2) Laws
3) Economy
What is “industrial means of consumption”?
Distribution and consumption
What did Adorno claim about popular culture?
That it is deliberately engineered to keep us from thinking too deeply about the problems in the world in general, and in our own lives as individuals
What did Adorno have in common with Marx?
That if the general public stopped to think about wealth inequality in the world, there would be a revolution where the privileged class would be overthrown and wealth would be distributed more equally
Culture industry
The institution(s) that create cultural practices and products for sale on a mass scale
Commodification
Turning a culture practice into a thing that can be bought and sold
Standardization
In a capitalist society, popular culture is standardized, using the same formula to appeal to the masses
What does commodification lead to?
Standardization
What is standardization dependent on?
Novelty
What is the pop music contradiction?
A song must differ enough to attract attention but be familiar enough to not repel listeners
What week/topic is Simon Frith associated with?
Meaning in Music
What does Simon Frith claim?
- We need a way of interpreting music in order to respond to it
- The meanings we take from songs aren’t encoded within them
Aesthetics
- Listening to music can be an aesthetic experience when we attend to it as “art”
- Important philosophers: Adorno and Kant
Ontology
The fundamental elements that can be said to constitute a thing’s existence
Epistemology
- The ability of music to be part of culture and to acquire meaning in relation to other activities
- What we know about music and what is understand to be music in a given cultural context
Standard Western Ontology
Music is an object, a collection of elements that go into making a whole, distinct work
Sociological understanding of music
- Music is a social process
- The meaning of a “musical work” is not inherent in the text itself but is worked out through the interactions of subjects in a particular social context
Who termed “schemes of interpretation”?
Simon Frith
What are schemes of interpretation
- Our response to a musical experience is based on internalized categories and learned behaviour
- use value, rules of behaviour and modes of listening
Musical genres
- Represent social divisions
- Built on discursive conventions and notions of authenticity
Musical canons
The body of rules, principles, or standards accepted axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art
e.g. Milton Babbit vs. The Beatles
What week/topic is Keith Negus associated with?
Music and identity
What does Keith Negus say?
- The relationship between social groups and musical sounds
Identity
- The characteristic qualities attributed to and maintained by individuals and groups of people
- previously thought to be stable and innate, now more so as flexible, multi-faceted and contextual
Bi-directional
- How we want to be seen by others and how we are interpreted by others
Essentialism
The view that there are embedded properties that define what something is and without which it could not be what it is
Black music
A connection between a particular people and a specific music sound
Sociobiological essentialism
Different races have distinct physical and mental capacities that result in their music sounding a certain way
Musicological essentialism
Certain musics are characterized by intrinsic musical features
Racial coding
When particular images, words, patterns of speech, music, and dress become associated with certain marginalized groups
When does racial coding become problematic?
When people from outside the group use symbols claim to credibility or authenticity
Subject
A being that is constituted by social, political and cultural forces
Intersubjectivity
Significance of social events and cultural produced agreed upon by particular groups, things we collectively understand
Agency
The capacity of a subject to engaged with the social structure
Captial
Any resource, item, or property used in social exchange
Exeptionalism
An essential, unchanging racial self that is good at certain things
Salsa music
1) Based on Cuban musical practices
2) Expresses the lives and aspirations of working-class Puerto Ricans
3) Connects to a broader pan-latino consciousness in North America
4) A marketing term
Rubén Blades
Composed and performed songs that refer to and use the language of lower-class latin communities
Why was Rubén Blades problematic (according to Negus)?
- Not Puerto Rican
- Mixed race
- Wealthy and educated
Sex
An idea used to explain, categorize and understand our bodies (tied to biology, but given meaning through social relationships)
Gender
- A series of conventions around dress codes, public bodily behaviour and roles
- A performance open to individual manipulation and external interpretation
Sexuality
- The cultural way of living our our bodily pleasures and desires
- Fluid, changeable over time, influenced by external circumstances
Articulation in popular music
- A way of thinking about the connections between music makers and audiences
- An alternative to essentialist notions of the links between groups of people to certain musical traits
What week/topic is Allan Moore associated with?
Authenticity
Authenticity
- Undisputed origin or authorship
- “Faithful to the original”
- “Reliable, accurate representation”
Mediation
Intervening forces between the artists and the audience (e.g. record labels, radio, censorship)
Unmediated Expression
The communication of emotions directly without external influence
First person authenticity
- Can be traced back through a clean lineage to an original source
- Audience accepts that they are receiving an unmediated experience
- e.g. Bruce Springsteen, Adele, Sunday Bloody Sunday
Second person authenticity
- Relationship between the music and the listener’s sense of identity: mainstream/alternative, commercial/underground
- e.g. Beatles vs The Monkees
Third person authenticity
- An artist succeeds in conveying an “accurate representation” of the music of another person/time
- Assumption that social conditions become “embedded”
- Creates a new community of interested listeners
- e.g. Robert Johnson vs Eric Clapton
Romanticism
- Emphasis on emotion, tradition, nature, individual experience
- Distrust in modern technology as obscuring “real” emotions
- e.g. Drake, Bruce Springsteen, Oasis, Adele
Modernism
- Imagined to be progressive, committed to social change, questioning the past
- Attempt to generate new forms of expresssion that are appropriate for contemporary social life
- e.g. Kanye West, David Bowie, Blur, Lady Gaga
What week/topic is Kristen Schilt associated with?
Music and feminism
What does Kristen Schilt say?
Women are typically in the background of rock or associated with pop music, whereas men are associated with rock and authenticity
Co-option
- The process by which one group gains converts from another group by attempting to replicate the aspects that they find appealing without adopting the full program or ideals
- Using the sounds and signs of a minority music as a way to claim that one is not racist, etc.
What is an example of obvious misogyny in music?
“Used to Love Her But I Had to Kill Her” by Guns ‘n’ Roses
What is an example of less obvious misogyny in music?
“Hotline Bling” by Drake
Exscription
- Exclusion of women, either literally or through exclusive focus on male codes
- e.g. “Heading Out to the Highway” or Sister Rosetta Thrape
Overt feminism in music
- An explicit expression of a feminist ethos in performance
- Focus on claiming space for women through music and resisting patriarchal structure
- e.g. Bikini Kill
Covert feminism in music
- Focus on representation of women on stage and in the media
- Enacted through visibility more than explicit content
- e.g. Lilith Fair
Consumer feminism in music
- Through consumption habits and products
- Tends to reproduce the male gaze
- e.g. Spice Girls
Profit imperative
Being able to sell something for more money than it cost to produce
- Major labels chasing trends
- Indie labels avoid this
Historical model of capitalism
Broadcasting
Modern model of capitalism
Narrowcasting/niche marketing
