Hello, I recently submitted a paper for consideration to a peer reviewed journal, and wanted to get feedback a little faster than the process allows. The version below has been slightly modified from the one that I submitted, and I have not included the abstract nor the title for fear of this post counting as publication. I would be thankful for any input.
“Only sick music makes money today.”1
In this essay I will apply Nietzsche’s genealogical method to the topic of popular music, and seek to argue its inadmissibility as high art. I hope by this to offer a critique which may clarify the true nature of popular music, and contribute to the larger dialogue on popular culture as a whole.
I
Much as Nietzsche derived the origin of Christian morality from the ressentiment2 of the powerless, i.e. slaves, modern popular music, I propose, likewise suffers from this quality.3 It arose under conditions of bondage in the south, in the hymns and spirituals of African slaves. These in turn were the forerunners of what would become the Blues and Jazz. The Blues in particular retains this quality of ressentiment, where the celebration of self-pity becomes the key attribute of expression.
Beginning as a folk manifestation, that spoke to, and dealt solely with the concerns of a specific group, its rebellious qualities attracted the rising white middle-class youth of the early twentieth century as we know. Whereas the Blues were too pessimistic to appeal to the majority of optimistic white youth, Jazz, conceived as an expression of defiant joy in the face of oppressors, offered them a more elated alternative that served the purpose of manufactured rebellion. What I mean by this, is the quality of rebellion found in Jazz was at a remove from white experience, giving the appearance of rebellion to authority without genuinely rebelling. It is this same strain of rebellious ressentiment which Rock & Roll would inherit and amplify.
By this point in its development, popular music had become the acquisition of capital. The quality of rebellion which had first attracted white audiences, was adapted by the now established music “industry” as a marketing tool. It had become an homogenized product to be sold, rather than a product of the soul.
Capital, having abrogated this line of expression so completely, alienated its original intended audience. Seemingly in response, we see the emergence of Rap, Hip Hop, etc.4, to fill the void. These modes, having developed in a more socially tolerant atmosphere, became vehicles for black culture's repressed frustrations, and, instead of self-pity, resignation, and veiled meaning5, opened the flood-gates of grievance. After the waters cleared, the manufactured quality of Rock is revealed for what it is. The hotel room wrecking Rock star is a cliché, a manufactured construct meant to appear dangerous without being so. The gun toting rapper on the other hand, is very real. It is this seriousness which sets it apart, where an aggressive posture on stage is unflinchingly backed up with action when off. This highlights the tragedy of a minority culture's need to adopt greater and greater physical and vocal means to distinguish its self from the more dominate group.
At a certain level of consciousness, Rock's audience knows they have be “tricked” as it were, and so at a certain age many become cynical towards art as a commodity, and some drift towards the world of Independent Rock, not realizing the alternatives nor, that there is no such thing as the independent in popular music.6
II
We can see from this progression the general spirit in which modern popular music is tainted. It is, as Nietzsche would have phrased it, a descending mode of life.7 Developing from a medium of veiled ressentiment in the secret meanings of spirituals, to the defiant joy of the Jazz Age, and finally, manifested its self as the pure spirit of rebellion in Rock & Roll. At each stage the original intention was harnessed and co-opted by capital to serve a new purpose.8
It should be clear from here, if it is not already, that I am making a distinction, a distinction between what I will call high or, noble art, and its less life affirming or, descending forms. By noble I mean here that outlook which, following Nietzsche's idea of the concept in a more generalized form9, is as free as possible from the ressentiments of the past, and which seeks expression of something higher than its self. A quality of selflessness to which self-loathing is alien.
Popular music is largely bereft of these qualities, being, as Hegel10 may well have argued, both too self-aggrandizing and too self-referential to transcend its form. In contrast, noble art is, even when embodying a dominating personality, e.g. Beethoven, is personal, not self-regarding. It approaches the sublime with a humility that is almost impossible to conceive in the current culture of celebrity.
Furthermore, the need for consensus, for homogenization as a product of a music industry, is inimical to noble art, but these traits of descending life were already present in its conception, modern values and capital having merely deepened the trend.
III
Finally, I wish to examine some of the objections to my argument and responses in tandem.
First, it will be pointed out that Rap too has taken on a commercial character. This is just the tragedy I had earlier referred to. It has been lifted from its original context as a response to the dominate culture, and then appropriated by that dominate culture to serve a new purpose, obscuring, if not burying, its origin.
Second, “popular” could be interpreted as a relative term. For example, the music of Handel
was popular to both people and court alike. But this popularity should not be confused with modern democratic society. The lower classes took their cues in taste from those above and, to return to my example, when Handel fell from royal favor, so too did he with the population at large.11
Using the examples of classical composers would suggest that I hold that form of music to be noble. I do not argue that classical is the only form which may possess these qualities, only that historically it has tended to cultivate the qualities I have described more consciously.
However, I have used the word noble to create just this sort of connotation. I will here be accused of elitism and snobbery if not worse, but no aesthetic can exist if it does not assign values. It is not that I believe aristocracy to be a better mode of government, or that one class is inherently better than another, but that such a class had the leisure and perceived duty to educate and refine their sensibilities. This is what we call the process of becoming “cultured”.
There is a strain of relativism in modern public discourse that makes aesthetic judgment at best castrated, at worst instilling a sense of guilt for judgment at all. This relativism is born from a cynicism in the realization of the work of art as commodity I have dealt with above, as well as a misguided idea of fairness, but these are matters for another essay, it is enough to have outlined them here.
It will also be argued that, if one is to use this genealogical method of critique one must except as well its critique of religion, and Christian art must be jettisoned with Christian morals. It could be argued first that this is not even what Nietzsche suggests. However, accepting this interpretation I will address it.
I would posit that what is called Christian art is not truly “Christian”. What I mean is that, even when dealing explicitly with Christian themes, the lineage of noble art is obviously pre-Christian, developing within the insulated aristocratic ethos of the secular world, in relation to political and economic factors. In other words, for example, the explosion of art in the Renaissance was determined by material causes, not religious ones. As well, the Catholic church absorbed much that was pagan, building upon the earlier structure and appropriating it, much as modern capital has done to popular music.
It will then be objected that Protestant art should fail under these terms, exhibiting as it does the same qualities of rebellion and ressentiment contrary to noble art. Yet, Protestantism arose out of a confident assertion of truth against perceived error. Luther's confident assertion to truth required courage and strength of character, not concealed ressentiment, and acquiescence to servitude.12
Lastly, if my analysis is construed as racist, I should state plainly that race is not the issue. If history were to be reversed, and the dynamic of power changed, I have little doubt we should see the same results. In truth, such a similar development can be found in the genealogy of Country music, which would appear to confirm much the same conclusions.13
Endnotes:
(1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 622.)
(2. Throughout I use ressentiment in the same fashion as Nietzsche used it.)
(3. “A proper “'genealogical '” account,…would not begin by identifying the purpose and meaning of a practice at its origin before offering a narrative of its historical development. It would focus, instead, upon the systematic reinterpretation of the “‘meaning’” and “‘purpose’” of a practice according to the requirements of dominant forces…” Lee Spinks, Friedrich Nietzsche, (London [u.a.]: Routledge, 2004), 71.)
(4. Hereafter simply referred to as Rap out of simplicity, though not to deny the differences among these forms.)
(5. The belief in coded messages in African-American spirituals has been contested, but I still contend that it is a viable hypothesis. James Kelley, “Song, Story, or History: Resisting Claims of a Coded Message in the African American Spiritual Follow the Drinking Gourd,” in The Journal of Popular American Culture, 41.2 (April 2008), 262-280.)
(6. Theodor W. Adorno, and J. M. Bernstein. The culture industry: selected essays on mass culture. (Psychology Press, 2001.) At this point it should be obvious that my debt’s to Adorno are copious. However, my argument diverges on some key points. Adorno’s largely Marxist critique lays the corruption in modern music almost solely to the influence of bourgeois taste. I counter that, at least in popular music, this influence is secondary. Second, I do not discount the possibility of high art arising from such soil, merely that it is unlikely to do so.)
(7. Spinks, op cit., 6.)
(8. Perhaps it is a fitting irony that the record company producing the albums of many of the most well known acts of the later twentieth century was named Capital Records. In all seriousness, a study of its history and controversial recording practices from the standpoint of a Marxist critique might be fruitful.)
(9. Nietzsche, op cit., 391-427.)
(10. G. W. F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures On Aesthetics (London; New York: Penguin Classics, 1993), 11. XV.)
(11. William Henry Wilkins. Caroline, The Illustrious Queen-Consort of George II, and sometime Queen-Regent: a study of her life and time, (Longmans, Green, 1904), 500. The rivalry of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his founding of the Opera of the Nobility to spite his royal parents, is of great interest in this respect.)
(12. This is not a defamation of the dignity of subject peoples, nor the numerous slave revolts since antiquity, nor to an acquiescence to slavery by all African-Americans, but rather the general spirit of African-American music.)
(13. In this context I will address objections to the genetic fallacy with the following citation which I hope makes my intention’s plain: “In this respect, it really may be more accurate to say that by revealing the “‘shameful origin’” of MPS, the Genealogy simply brings “‘a feeling of diminution in value of the thing that originated thus and prepares the way to a critical mood and attitude toward it’” It prepares this way by giving evidence of the pernicious causal powers of MPS, without establishing that MPS still possesses them. Even to produce a “‘feeling of diminution’” and to “‘prepare the way’” for a critique is already to accomplish a project of some importance…Suppose an acquaintance recommends a restaurant in glowing terms…You then learn that…he is part-owner…The origin does not…refute…reasons to patronize [it]…but the discovery of this “‘shameful origin’” surely “‘prepares the way to a critical mood and attitude toward[s]’” those reasons.” Brian Leiter, Nietzsche : on morality (London: Routledge, 2002), 179.)
