Pop Goes ... MENC Edit

8/10/2019 Pop Goes ... MENC Edit

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Bowman, Pop Music, 1

Pop Goes. . .? Taking Popular Music Seriously

Wayne D. Bowman

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong.

John Dryden

You know something is happening here,

but you don't know what it is do you, Mister Jones?

Bob Dylan

The gap between on!entional musi urriula in "orth #merian shools and the

musial praties in whih most people engage in e!eryday life is enormous, and it is

growing wider at a breathtaking rate. This point is illustrated onisely and pro!oati!ely

by $aniel %a!ihi, who writes&

would think it safe to say that the steadfast shool musi rituals of singing folk

songs in unison, learning musi notation, and playing an instrument in a marhing

band are (uite remo!ed from most students) musial li!es, not only in terms of

genre and style but also in terms of defining what *musi) is supposed to be about.

f outside of shool a student)s musial life mainly onsists of trading M+ files

of obsure emo and grunge songs on his omputer or daning with friends at an

all-ages lub, then a musi lass where he studies how to play the larinet is going

to seem inredibly biarre./

This 0disonnet1 between the e2perienes that typify students) shool-based

musial ati!ities and their out-of-shool musial li!es is no minor uriosity, no idle or

passing onern. t is, if ritis like %a!ihi are to be belie!ed, part of a broader trend


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with far-reahing and profoundly troubling onse(uenes. 3ormal, institutionalied musi

studies and atual musial praties ha!e, %a!ihi asserts, 0parted ways.1

The musi eduation ommunity)s inreasing obsession with ad!oay is,

belie!e, a lear refletion of this trend, as more and more resoures 4both finanial and

imaginati!e5 beome neessary to 6ustify instrutional praties whose meaning and

rele!ane is apparent neither to those for whom they are intended nor to those who

pro!ide finanial support. #t the same time, ironially, people)s belief in the !alue of

musi is as e!ident as e!er. Musi oupies !ast amounts of people)s time and

e2pendable inome, and plays a onstituti!e role in !ast ranges of daily ati!ity. %learly,

something is amiss in the way we onei!e of and engage in musi eduation7 for where

people find meaning and !alue in what they do, there is seldom a need to on!ine them

of the importane of beoming more profiient or knowledgeable about it.

8ne strategi response to this legitimation risis is to endea!or to make shool

musi more rele!ant to students) li!es by replaing old or anahronisti musial ontent

with musi belie!ed to ha!e greater urreny. 9owe!er, this strategy is not nearly as

straightforward as it may seem. 8n the one hand, it must be weighed against the

important eduational aim of enhaning aess to the less ommon, less aessible, and

therefore less 0rele!ant.1 8n the other, it is neessary to ask whether the fators that make

for rele!ane are ompatible with or apable of sur!i!al in the onte2t of formal

shooling.

The ase of 6a is illustrati!e. The inorporation of 6a into the shool musi

urriulum was moti!ated at least in part by onerns about rele!ane and urreny. :ut

it is important to note that 6a beame *safe,) *respetable,) and *legitimate) musial


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ontent for shool study only as its ommerial !iability and popularity in the broader

soial realm waned. t is also noteworthy that the kind of 6a praties that e!entually

gained suffiient legitimay to warrant bona fide musial and eduational status beame,

in that proess, shool 6a. ts reognition of the legitimay of 6a notwithstanding,

institutionalied musi eduation was able to aommodate relati!ely few of the

di!ergent soiomusial priorities presented by 6a priorities like indi!iduality,

independene, inno!ation, nononformity, and reati!ity. :eause adding 6a to the

urriulum did little to transform the way musi eduators oneptualied musi, or

urriulum, or the nature of eduation, 6a praties paid a steep prie for admission to

the aademy.

The signifiane of these obser!ations for our interest in popular musi is

twofold. 3irst, the inertia of shool musi and the institutions it ser!es is a fore that must

not be underestimated. Seond, and as a onse(uene, popular musi annot impro!e or

re!italie the urriulum without radially reforming the way it is onei!ed. +ut

differently, the introdution of popular musi into the urriulum will hange little unless

we e2amine e2pliitly its impliations for how and why we do what we do -- unless we

take ad!antage of the opportunity to re-theorie our instrutional and eduational

praties. #n eduational program that attempts to inorporate popular musi without

addressing its powerful ultural resonanes and ontraditions -- without situating it

amidst issues of struggle, resistane, defiane, identity, power, and ontrol -- is an

eduational program that seeks to use popular musi to safe, pre-ordained ends, ignoring

the !ery things that aount for its popularity in the first plae. f our intent in adding

popular musi studies to the urriulum is to maintain 0what is,1 or to enable us simply to


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keep doing what we already do -- to simply 0add *the popular) and stir1 -- we would

probably do well to forego the effort. 8ur interest in popularity and things popular should

not re!ol!e around the maintenane of the e2isting system. ;ather, we should use it to re-

open possibilities for ritial and reati!e thought and ation, both in our students and in

oursel!es. The issues attending the inorporation of popular musi studies into the shool

urriulum are both e2tensi!e and omple2, and in!ol!e onerns at the !ery heart of

musi eduation and urriulum theory. They offer an e2eptional opportunity to open up

dialogue on the ways musi eduation might need to hange if popular musi were to

beome paramount among the things we deem worthy of teahing and learning.


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ompetenies that aommodate both musis at one.>These onerns point olleti!ely

to a need for lose interrogation and philosophial analysis of the taken-for-granted

beliefs and !alues that undergird urrent eduational pratie in musi.

Whence Popularity?

=et us begin at the beginning, beause we ought to agree what we are talking

about.


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eduation as an endea!or intended to introdue people to the less per!asi!e, the

unommon, the rare and the preious. t also fails to aknowledge that many broadly

popular things do not appeal to a homogenous mass of people for reasons they all share,

but rather ahie!e their popularity by onneting with di!erse and di!ergent subgroups

for different, e!en ontraditory reasons.

# more re!ealing way to proeed is by asking to what the term 0popular1 stands

as Oherin general usage what the term is presumed to e2lude and, onse(uently,

what we mean impliitly when we designate musi popular. The list in Table / helps

demonstrate the magnitude and omple2ity of this definition problem.

Ta!le ". De#ining the popular

The Popular is Other to . . . $n% there#oreIs& . . .

The elite, rare $own to earth

The speial, e2eptional B!eryday, mundane, ommon

The pretentious and haughty ;eal, authenti, honest

The elegant +rosaiThe lassial, 0lassy1 Cn-lassy, unouth

The aristorati, for 0the few1 $emorati, of 0the people1

The selet #essible

The omple2 Simple

The restrained, refined ndulgent, rass

The mindful Diseral

The erebral and somber Dital, fun

The respetful, polite $efiant, irre!erent, rude, unruly

The serious, profound %apriious, tri!ial, lightweight, trite

The stuffy, dull, dying or dead Dital, li!ing, energeti

The intrinsially !aluable %ommerial, of primarily e2trinsi !alue

The ob6eti!e or absolute Sub6eti!e, funtional, soial, politial

The formally autonomous Soially-determined

The intelletual 9uman, real

The hallenging, demanding :anal, pre-digested


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Bowman, Pop Music, !

The genuine, authenti 3raudulent, fake

The time-tested and -!alidated Transient, fleeting

The museum The street

The transendent


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Bowman, Pop Music, "

Most ritiism and praise of popular musi is, belie!e, impliated in one or more of

these dihotomous systems of thought systems rooted in omfortable, une2amined

assumptions that what popularity means is perfetly lear, and that its nature is (uite

different from 0the rest1 of musi 4whate!er 0the rest1 means5. The real hallenge for

musi eduation, then, lies in learning to deonstrut these binaries, in ways that breathe

life into the supposedly moribund lassis while at the same time reogniing the

eduational integrity of the popular and in the proess, showing the ontinuity and unity

of all human musial endea!or.

The most realitrant and misleading myths about popular art and musi stem

from ertain biases of philosophial idealism, biases ;ihard Shusterman aptly alls

0aseti.1IThese aseti biases beome manifest in three near-phobi a!ersions like to

designate 0plethorophobia1 4a!ersion to multipliity5, 0temporophobia1 4an2iety about

temporal transiene and hange5, and 0somatophobia1 4fear of the body5. "ot

oinidentally, musi that is popular often manifests multipliity, transiene, and

orporeality in abundane.

Thus, popular musi affords pleasures that are often onsidered heap, (uik, or

easy 4unlike the 0deferred gratifiation1/supposedly assoiated with genuinely artisti

musi5. ts gratifiations are spurious, or fraudulent the musial e(ui!alent of 6unk food

or self-gratifiation. t titillates the body rather than nourishing the mind. ts effets are

superfiial and fleeting, not durable7 sub6eti!e rather than ob6eti!e. +opular musi is

reated for passi!e onsumption and is bereft of intelletual effort and reward. t is

boringly simple, banal, and predigested, so as to relie!e the listener of any real effort or

responsibility. t aters more to sensation than to ognition. ts produts are not reati!e


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Bowman, Pop Music, #

or original, but trendy and deri!ati!e. They enter into and fall out of fashion rather than

standing the test of time. +opular musi is musi of the herd -- musi that numbs

indi!idual and ritial awareness. t all sounds the same& formulai, prediable, rhythmi,

and ob!ious. t is designed to pander to the lowest ommon denominator of human taste.

The most ogent and on!ining ad!oate of suh !iews is Theodore #dorno,

who was probably right in many aspets of his argument. 9e was wrong, howe!er, in one

of his most fundamental assumptions& that popular musi is all of one loth, hopelessly

enmeshed with a 0ulture industry1 whose influene renders it inapable of ritial

resistane, ogniti!e substane, or hallenge. Still, any attempt to mount a balaned

understanding of popular musi must proeed through #dorno)s arguments7 they annot

be bypassed.//

#gain, the hief failing of these arguments is their failure to aknowledge not all

popular musi is idential. +opular musi is not an 0it1 but a 0them1 a !ast,

multifarious, and fluid range of musial praties with remarkably different and di!ergent

intentions, !alues, potentials, and affordanes. Muh of it speaks to the body, or more

properly, the inorporated 4embodied5 mind7 but there is nothing inherently heap,

substandard, or seond-lass in that. Muh of it is aessible, and en6oyable without

ma6or intelletual effort, but there is no reason signifiane must be diffiult, nor is the

intellet the primary determinant of musial worth. Muh of it is trite, banal, and insipid,

but it is not inherently or in!ariably so. t aters to large audienes, but these are by no

means uniform. ts ommodity harater its ommerial side -- is an important part of

what it is, but that by no means e2hausts its appeal or its semioti potential.


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Bowman, Pop Music, 1$

from the one-sided !iews of musi represented in Table / are grossly distorted !iews of

musi.


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So& WhatIsPopular Music?


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disentangle what is by its !ery nature entangled, to make onrete what is fluid and

immaterial, to unify what is di!erse and ontraditory.

n opposition to essentialist !iews, Middleton takes the stane that popular musi

0an only be !iewed within the onte2t of the whole musical %ield, in whih it has an

ati!e tendeny7 and this field, together with its internal relationships, is ne!er still it is

always in mo&emen.1/


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idealist)s yearning for the eternal, e2hausti!e, and final. This does not negate the

possibility of definition, but it does render untenable the idea that popular musi and all

its assoiated !alues and pleasures an be aounted for in some simple, timeless,

monolithi way. +opular musi is, as Middleton shows, a field whose area is e2tensi!e

and whose inner struture is highly omple2.

#ll this said, it might be argued, we know what popularity means, e!en if that

meaning is fluid, !arious, and ontested.


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e2tensi!ely at fellow-pratitioners although ob!iously, this does not prelude

en6oyment and use by others, espeially those with the benefit of some kind of formal

tuition or other means of indution into the norms of the pratie.

Thus another ommon tendeny of musi we tend to regard as popular& its relati!e

in%ormaliy, and its seeming indifferene to onerns like stylisti purity or authentiity.>

+opular musi tends to be musi that is not intended to transend time, plae, and

irumstane7 it is more a musi of and for the here and now *though in today)s

mediated world 0here1 an range from the loal to the global. This is not to say that

ertain of its produts may not e!entually ahie!e the kind of ongoing ultural resonane

that transforms them into ultural ions of sorts, but their origins 4preisely like muh

musi that has subse(uently attained 0artisti1 status5 are morepra)maic, more

onerned with use than transendental status. +opular musi is used music. 4That

nonpopular or artistially ele!ated musis are also 0used1 albeit for purposes less

immediately ob!ious is both further e!idene of the need for ontingent definitions and

of the depth of the ideologial roots of these issues.5 :eause of its pragmati orientation,

stylisti modulation, mutation, and hybridity are regular features& popular musis tend to

approah the musial field as a plae forplay and e+perimenaionmore often than as the

ground for the reation of works.

#n important orollary of these tendenies is popular musi)s linkage to

embodied or corporeale2periene.>/+opular musi is not generally or primarily intended

for erebral or ontemplati!e pereption. t often emphasies rhythm, timbre, !olume,

and other attributes that align themsel!es with proess, gesture, and *feel.) ;ather than

re!ol!ing around syntatial and hierarhial strutural onerns or the ogniti!ely


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mediated antiipationsNe2petations with whih these are assoiated,>>popular musi

tends to speak to the body or to appeal to a bodily mode of engagement that demands

familiarity but not formal tuition.>

The 0definition1 ha!e been relutantly de!eloping in this setion>thus inludes

the following tendenies& 4a5 breadth of intended appeal, 4b5 mass-mediation and

ommodity harater, 45 amateur engagement, 4d5 ontinuity with e!eryday onerns, 4e5

informality, 4f5 here-and-now pragmati use and utility, 4g5 appeal to embodied

e2periene, and 4h5 proessual emphasis.

8ne final matter demands our onsideration before we mo!e on& the fat that

popular musi in today)s world seems by and large to mean youth musi. The (uestion of

whether this is funtion of 0the musi1 or of the way it is marketed and the disposable

inome of young people is a re!ealing one, beause the diffiulty in answering it points to

the ine2triable links between popularity and apitalist systems of prodution and

distribution. The popularity of musi is a funtion of the reation of onsumer demand, a

fator that has no inherent onnetion to the !alue of the musi itself. +eople like what

they know and are gi!en, rather than knowing what they like. n light of this, we would

probably do well to draw a distintion between 0pop1 musi and musi that is popular in

the more broadly demorati sense. 0+op1 is more purely ommodity musi, designed

foremost with market in mind. @


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8n loser refletion, then, theses last matters -- these after-thoughts about youth,

onsumerism, ommodity e2hange, and the industrial reation of taste -- are not

inidental 0asides1 at all. They are among the most important attributes of popular musi

as onstituted in our postmodern, late apitalisti world. #nd they bring to the fore one

more the eonomi and ideologial underpinnings of popular ulture reminding us that

popularity is ne!er straight ahead, ne!er as ob!ious as it seems, ne!er 0popular1 in the

one-dimensional sense ad!oates and detrators would ha!e us belie!e.

$espite my best efforts at definition, then, the only defensible answer to the

(uestion used to frame this setion 4Anor is it always 0youth1 musi, nor is it in!ariably

onneted to e!eryday onerns, and so on. +opular musi)s status is e!er unsettled and

ontested, and indeed, these may be its most salient harateristis. They are, at the same

time, among the greatest hallenges to those who would make it an integral part of musi

eduation.

'%ucation an% the Popular

#dding eduation to the popular musi e(uation e2pands e2ponentially the

omple2ity and ontraditions the musi eduation profession must onsider. Thus far,


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Bowman, Pop Music, 1!

we ha!e been onerned with identifying what popular musi 0is1 4or 0isn)t15, beause

suh determinations onstitute an important preliminary step in the seletion of urriular

ontent. $efinition pro!ides us with a basis for indiating what to inorporate and

e2lude. Yet in this ase, it is arguable that what we ha!e identified signifiantly

hallenges and sub!erts musi eduation itself at least as it on!entionally understood

and pratied. This leads ine2orably to politial (uestions about the desirability or

neessity of professional hange, (uestions the remainder of this essay will endea!or to

e2plore.

# serious and thoughtful ommitment to popular musi in musi eduation would

hange a great many things, urriular ontent by no means the least of them. f popular

musi)s meaning and identity are fundamentally unsettled, a musi eduation profession

that takes suh musi seriously an sarely e!ade unsettledness itself. s musi eduation

more onerned with ultural preser!ation or with ultural transformation? To what

e2tent are ultural !alues and ideologial struggles appropriately addressed within

musial eduation? Should musi eduation onern itself with what is, or is it more

properly onerned with what could be? %an eduational institutions study without

distortion musial praties that are often rebellious, oarse, !ulgar, and deliberately

offensi!e? %an musial praties in whih indi!iduality, reati!ity, and hange figure so

prominently be aommodated in shools that are on many le!els de!oted to preisely the

opposite ends? B!en if we agree to some stipulati!e definition of popularity and presume

thereby to ha!e resol!ed the urriular (uestion of what kind of musi is appropriate and

desirable for instrutional purposes, it remains for us to deide suh matters as whose


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Bowman, Pop Music, 1"

musi, for whom, and to what ends and to 6udge whether shools lend themsel!es

satisfatorily to suh things.

The fat that something ispopular pro!ides us with no lear reason for teahing

it,>Eespeially if the nature of popularity entails alters radially what instrution might

entail unless, of ourse, urrent instrutional praties are learly inade(uate and in

need of alteration. stated at the outset that popular musi might ha!e little effet on

musi eduation unless we embrae it as an opportunity to think arefully and ritially

about how and why we do what we do. f the arguments ha!e ad!aned subse(uently

ha!e merit, suh thought appears an una!oidable outome of endorsing popular musi.

=et us reflet briefly on the aims of shooling, (ualifying what we say with the

reognition that suh ends are, like the meaning of popular musi, !arious and ontested.

4n this interesting way, popular musi and eduation might be ideally ompatibleO5


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Bowman, Pop Music, 1#

eduation seems fairly lear. 4This is not to say it is persuasi!e, only that a genuinely

eduational need appears to ha!e been ad!aned.5 :ut when we turn our attention to

something that is thri!ing without eduational inter!entions, our understandings and

6ustifiations for what we are doing must hange.

Seond, eduation is onerned with de!eloping and transmitting skills,

understandings, and dispositions that are deemed important by soiety. Though ob!ious,

this annot go without saying, sine informal soialiation fails to transmit many things

that nonetheless do not warrant the alloation of sare eduational resoures. ;esoures

are alloated for the protetion or preser!ation of ma6or human aomplishments and the

transmission of indispensable soial !alues.

#lthough situating popular musi among ahie!ements deemed worthy of

eduational transmission be ontro!ersial, popular musi)s rele!ane to soial !alues is

less so again, depending upon what !alues one has in mind. #mong the soial !alues

deemed indispensable in


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historial propensity for tehnial training rather than eduation in the broad sense, and in

light of the fre(uent assumption that musi eduation)s designated urriular foi are self

e!ident and direted by !alues presumed to be intrinsi.

8n this !iew, then, popular musi studies might be 6ustified on grounds that they

de!elop the kind of ritial awareness that makes people less !ulnerable to totaliing

4uni!ersaliing, or totalitarian5 thought, to apitalism)s !oraious need for willing

onsumers, or to the potent semioti 4thought- and beha!ior-shaping5 fores at work in

the musis that now per!ade almost e!ery aspet of e!eryday life.>FI

#dorno)s sathing riti(ues of popular musi as mind-numbing indotrination

4training the unonsious for onditioned refle2es5, though not uni!ersally !alid as he

belie!ed, are persuasi!e aounts of what may indeed happen where people are not

e2tended the potential benefits of musial eduation. 3rom this perspeti!e, eduation

and shooling e2ist in part to gi!e people more ontrol o!er their li!es, and to enable

them to make true, informed hoies. The eduated person makes deisions and ats in


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light of the desirability of foreseen onse(uenes. The musially eduated person is able

to use musi to enhane and shape time, not simply to 0kill1 it.

#t least one further reason to study popular musi remains -- one that differs

substantially from, but is by no means inompatible with, what has been ad!aned abo!e.

+opular musi might be approahed as a !ital field of ation, suh that instrution seeks

to help students partiipate in and ontribute reati!ely to the field itself. This orientation

would fous on bringing students into a realm of meaningful and potentially rewarding

ation and is losely aligned with the performane emphasis of on!entional musi

eduation in "orth #meria. #lthough it is also more losely aligned with training than

with the broader sense of eduation, its ontinuity with e2isting pratie would doubtless

enhane its appeal and familiarity to musi eduators.


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ulture and the standardied and standardiing systems typial of institutionalied

instrution. n brief, what often makes popular musi popular are things like oarseness,

orporeality, asualness, and ontradition to say nothing of its polysemi nature, its

apaity to engage di!erse groups of people in simultaneously different ways on

simultaneously different le!els, not all of them refleti!e. Musial !alidity issues aside,

many of these harateristis are simply inappropriate to publi institutionalied

instrution.

:ut what of the further (uestion& an popular musi deemed otherwise appropriate

remain !iable in suh settings? #lthough none of the potential impediments are

insuperable, some do demand areful onsideration. n the first plae, the omfort of

formal institutions an be inimial to the utting edge ultural realities that are so often

the fous of popular artistry. Seondly, the tehnial standards of shooled artistry may be

at odds with the kinds of raw reati!e energies at the heart of li!ing, breathing musial

praties. Thirdly, the history of any truly reati!e tradition, as Prayk reminds us,

re!ol!es around indi!idual in!entions or ahie!ements that simply annot be predited

from their predeessors.>Therefore, instrution that seeks truly to situate students amid

0the ation1 in popular realms needs not only to allow for but also to inorporate things

like di!ergene, unpreditability, freedom, radial e2perimentation a potential worry,

one might think, in institutions that are otherwise de!oted so e2tensi!ely to

standardiation and onformity. %onser!ati!e institutional inertia, as the e2ample of 6a

shows, tends to enshrine and refine praties rather than nurturing their further e!olution.

# personal friend and de!oted 6a musiian, =es +aine, one made a passing omment to

me about the standardiing effet of formalied pedagogial systems on 6a performane


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a profound omment whose seeming simpliity makes it all the more potent. 0f you put

kethup on e!erything,1 he obser!ed, 0e!erything is going to taste like kethup.1

:y ommitting seriously to proess, one hanges almost e!erything about musi

eduation. To the alarmist response that we stand to lose more than we gain by 0hanging

e!erything,1 an only offer that am not neessarily suggesting we disard urrent

instrutional praties and urriular emphases in their entirety as if that were e!en

possible. 8ne an alter fundamental assumptions, goals, and proesses without starting

o!er from srath. Se!eral fundamental harateristis of the status (uo would almost

ertainly ha!e to be re6eted, howe!er fondness for standardiation and uniformity

foremost among these.

t is e2traordinarily diffiult to a!oid 4mis5representing any ulture as froen when

teah. 3urthermore, there fre(uently omes with institutionalied study a degree of

tehnial polish and refinement unharateristi of pra2is in the field outside. Shools are

by their !ery nature artifiial, ontrolled en!ironments.


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support for musial ati!ity that is no longer finanially !iable elsewhere. Suh

ommerial supports, as we ha!e seen, are among the distinti!e harateristis of

popular musi in the first plae.

Se!eral onsiderations warrant our attention. 3irst, the !alues of eduation and of

the ommerial sphere are often inompatible.Sine ommerial !alue is an important

part of what makes the popular 0popular,1 this should gi!e us pause. %hange the

ommerial dimension, one might say, and one has hanged what the musi is. f this is

persuasi!e, we would do well to stay open to the possibility that the deemed admissibility

of a musial pratie into the shool urriulum may indiate the preliminary onset of

0aestheti fatigue.1@

The fat that popular musis hange so fre(uently, mo!ing into and out of fashion

at sometimes breathtaking speed, poses problems of its own. #mong these is the fat that

a pratitioner who is fluent, suessful, or pedagogially astute in the popular musi of

one era is not neessarily so in another. The transformation from hip to arhai an

happen o!er night, and this has far reahing impliations for the preparation and

professional de!elopment of musi eduators at least where flueny is onsidered

essential to pedagogial ompetene, an assumption with a lengthy pedigree in the

profession.

Muh of what has 6ust been said here makes the assumption, belie!e 6ustified in

light of past and urrent pratie, that musi eduation would turn to popular musi

primarily as a mode of performane. 9owe!er, ha!e also suggested that we might well

embrae popular musi with the intent of making students more disriminating listeners

and onsumers, an end that might ater to a broader eduational 0audiene1 than those


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speifially interested in de!eloping performane skills. This is not to suggest that

performane skills are in any way inompatible with the de!elopment of disrimination.

The more likely issue is one of effiieny, or breadth of eduational ontat. f our

interest in popular musi stems from a onern for the way those we euphemistially all

0general1 students think about and respond to musi in e!eryday life a highly laudable

eduational onern, submit other issues demand our srutiny. %hief among these is a

onern raised by Prayk& the desirability of bringing self-onsiousness to an area in

whih !ast numbers of people urrently engage un-self-onsiously, without benefit of

instrution, and 0without an2iety or feelings of inferiority.1 8ne of popular musi)s

attrations, Prayk reminds us, is preisely that 0it is not regarded as *art,) something one

must work to appreiate.1AThe transformation of popular musi into a 0serious1

enterprise of the kind we ha!e enshrined for the study of the lassis and 6a is a onern

about whih eduators need to e2erise aution.

stated earlier that a ommitment to proess 0hanges e!erything.1E


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transformation.


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Bowman, Pop Music, 2!

formal or e2pressi!e features. t will help both us and our students understand musi, in

%a!ihi)s words, as an 0open *proess,) and not a losed *ob6et).1I

Taking popular musi seriously will mean aepting the ontraditory, the

parado2ial, and the ambiguous as pedagogial assets.t will fore us to see and study

musi and its meanings as soiopolitial onstruts -- bubbling, fermenting, and part of

0the ation1 at the heart of ulture -- rather than as artifats or by-produts of suh

ations.

Taking popular musi seriously will hange the role of the musi eduator, who

an hardly presume any longer to be an authoritati!e pur!eyor of fatual insights in a

field notable for its effer!esene, fluidity, polysemy, hybridity, and mutation.


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Bowman, Pop Music, 2"

Taking popular musi seriously offers to replae our notions of musi as a thing to

be appreiated, understood, and respeted for its inherent (ualities with the reognition

that all musis are ations that are use%ulin myriad ways. That musial !alue is

inseparable from (uestions of use or funtion is an insight rih with eduational and

musial impliations. 8ne of the una!oidable onse(uenes of aepting popular musi

as legitimate is the reognition that !alue is always 0!alue for.1 nherent and autonomous

!alue are inspiring, but ideologially-loaded, onstruts that are designed to pri!ilege

musi whose 0!alue for1 is institutionally hidden. ;eogniing all musial !alue as

pratial !alue re(uires us to renoune the myths perpetrated by an aonte2tual,

ahistorial antian aestheti heritage, re6eting the aloofness from e!eryday onerns that

heritage has attributed to 0aestheti1 e2periene. t has beome e2traordinarily easy in the

wake of aestheti orthodo2y to take up musi making 4and teahing5 without paying

attention to soial or politial ontraditions. To take popular musi seriously is to hange

that, deisi!ely and irre!ersibly. Prayk obser!es that 0all musi is historially grounded

in the praties of musial ommunities. ts assessment must be grounded in a

ommunity of musiians and listeners, not in a transendental *essene).1/

Taking popular musi seriously will pose diret and signifiant hallenges to our

eduational obsession with things lear and distint, and to our prediletion to train rather

than to eduate.>Training and its reliane upon narrow, tehnorati models tends to lead

people to re6et what is at first loose, messy, disturbing, or ontraditory. 8ne aim of

eduation should be to help people learn to ling to suh images or notions, not re6eting

them out of hand but working them through7 for it is preisely in suh form that original

ideas almost always first appear. nstrution preoupied with the so-alled pratial


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Bowman, Pop Music, 2#

40how-to,1 as ontrasted to ethial onerns like whether to, under what irumstanes, to

what e2tent, and so on5 is assoiated with a long history of anti-intelletualism one that

is hardly beoming of a !oation laiming profession status. Pirou2 reminds us that

within the tehnorati tradition

management issues beome more important than understanding and furthering

shools as demorati publi spheres. 9ene, the regulation, ertifiation, and

standardiation of teaher beha!ior is emphasied o!er reating the onditions for

teahers to undertake the sensiti!e politial and ethial roles they might assume as

publi intelletuals who seleti!ely produe and legitimate partiular forms of

knowledge and authority.

Taking popular musi seriously would re(uire musi eduators situate suh issues at the

enter of their eduational pra2is.

Taking popular musi seriously would plae (uestions where musi eduation

traditionally finds answers. +opular for whom? n what sense? 3rom what diretion?

There is no inherently popular musi, no musi that is of its own 0high1 or 0low.1 t is we

who make it so. #ll musi is intentionally onstruted and onstituted, and any musi has

a potentially !iable laim to artisti or popular status.


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helping make informed hoie and musial ageny onspiuous outomes of musial

instrution. n short, taking popular musi seriously should re(uire 4to lose with a

deidedly normati!e laim5 that we as musi eduators aept as part of our eduational

obligation a deliberate role in what Middleton memorably alls the 0struggle to redeem

the demorati ore of *the popular.)1

)onclusion

Many words ha!e been de!oted here to e2ploring what popular musi is, or is not,

and to the attempt to ome to grips with what it might mean for musi eduation to 0take

popular musi seriously1 as ha!e been putting it. :ut in a way, the real (uestion we

need to ask is, 9ow an we notake popular musi seriously?@


31/36


intelligently, use it in all kinds of ways, and are e2traordinarily disriminating in their

hoies. ndeed, they know a great deal of the field of musi better than we do --

powerful e!idene of our neglet. +opular musi is a powerful and influential part of the

musial world to whih we are largely and omplaently obli!ious. Suh a blind spot

seriously ompromises our understanding of the whole. n turning our baks on popular

musis and all that they entail, we depri!e students of our insights while depri!ing

oursel!es of theirs.

There will be many who feel the musi eduation profession is inapable of the

kinds of hange to whih ha!e alluded here, or at least ill-ad!ised to attempt it.


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/$aniel %a!ihi, 03rom the Pround Cp,1 incion, -riicism, and .heory %or Music /ducaion/, no.> 4>>5. #!ailable

athttp&NNmas.siue.eduN#%TNinde2.html.

>f it is indeed a 0both1 with whih we are onerned here. n due ourse, the inade(uay of this dualisti way of thinking

should beome apparent.

;ihard Middleton, 0udyin) Popular Music4+hiladelphia& 8pen Cni!ersity +ress, /II5, .

My use of the word 0unpopular1 is deliberate and appropriate in this partiular onte2t. Blsewhere in this essay, howe!er,

one might well ask whether 0nonpopular1 would be the more appropriate hoie. t seems these designations ha!e two

subtly differenes& the former attributes)eneral dislieto a musi, and the latter suggests that the musi in (uestion,

whate!er its popularity in some (uarters, does not warrant inlusion in the broad ategory 0popular.1 That is, 0unpopular1 is

a more negati!e designation than 0nonpopular.1

@;ihard Middleton alls this the 0positi!ist1 approah to defining popularity. #s Middleton obser!es, the positi!ist

approah only tells us aboutsales, notthe meaning of popularity. 0Q5 9ere must forego the temptation to argue that muh of what the "orth #merian musi

eduation profession has pursued under the banner of 0aestheti eduation1 might better be desribed as 0aseti

eduation.1 belie!e the lam an be substantiated, howe!er. Shusterman also indiates, orretly and alliterati!ely, that

suh aseti idealism is 0a powerful philosophial pre6udie with a +latoni pedigree.1 See also ;ihard Shusterman,

Pra)mais esheics i&in) Beauy, ehinin) r, 482ford& :lakwell, /II>5.

/=eonard :. Meyer,/moion and Meanin) in Music4%hiago& Cni!ersity of %hiago +ress, /I@A5.
http://mas.siue.edu/ACT/index.htmlhttp://mas.siue.edu/ACT/index.htmlhttp://mas.siue.edu/ACT/index.htmlhttp://mas.siue.edu/ACT/index.html


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// e2plore #dorno in the hapter 0Musi as Soial and +olitial 3ore,1 in my bookPhilosophical Perspeci&es on Music

4"ew York& 82ford Cni!ersity +ress, /IIF5. Prayk offers a !ery aessible riti(ue of #dorno)s 0hathet 6ob on popular

musi1 4as Prayk harateries it5, as does Middleton. See Theodore Prayk, 0#dorno, Ja, and the ;eeption of +opular

Musi,1 inhyhm and oise n esheics o% oc4$urham, "%& $uke Cni!ersity +ress, /IIA5. See ;ihard Middleton,

0t)s #ll 8!er "ow& +opular Musi and Mass %ulture #dorno)s Theory,1 in 0udyin) Popular Music.

/>;ihard Middleton, 0udyin) Popular Music, @.

/bid.

/bid., E. talis in the original.

/@bid.

/A%harles eil and Ste!en 3eld,Music 7roo&es4%hiago& Cni!ersity of %hiago +ress, /II5. This ontrast maps itself

niely onto the ontro!ersy within 6a irles o!er whether 6a is an art form with, among other things, a long history to

be preser!ed, or whether it is a fundamentally reati!e proess. The traditionalist !iew, held by


34/36

/It tends, therefore, toward a simpliity unharateristi of notated and notation-based musial praties, though one would

want hastily to add that the multidimensionality and polysemy 4multipliity of meaning5 of suh musi negate the possibility

of simpliity.

>These generaliations re(uire areful (ualifiation. Many of popular musi)s rituals are e2traordinarily elaborate and to

some e2tent formal, and there is in many popular musi irles an e2traordinary amount of onern about authentiity

most often e2pressed as onern about whether an artist has 0sold out1 to ommerial or other pressures. 8n the former

point, ha!e in mind the relati!e lak of standardiation in popular musi endea!ors& a greater latitude in the range and type

of transmission praties and range of interpreti!e orientations deployed. 8n the latter point, ha!e in mind the degree of

hybrid stylisti ross-fertiliation that is generally tolerated -- a degree enhaned by the relati!ely rapid rate at whih

popular musi omes into and passes out of fashion.

>/3or elaboration on the idea of embodiment and its potential impliations for our understandings of musi and musi

eduation, see 5. See also the essay re!iews of this book by $aniel %a!ihi 403rom the :ottom Cp15, 9ildegard

3roelih 40Takling the Seemingly 8b!ious a $aunting Task ndeed15, and John Shepherd 409ow Musi


35/36

the mmanent and the #rbitrary15 published incion, -riicism, and .heory %or Music /ducaion, / no.> 4>>5, a!ailable

at http&NNmas.siue.eduN#%TNinde2.html

>I8f ourse, this is one of the laims made for on!entional musi eduation. Cnfortunately, though, when the musial field

is fened off into mutually e2lusi!e popular and serious domains, the instrutional emphasis drifts toward the supposedly

0intramusial1 determinants of musial worth found in the latter -- a mo!e that profoundly misrepresents the unified nature

of the musial field and does little to enourage ritial awareness of the great ma6ority of musi that is onse(uently

omitted. The point is not to replae the lassis with the popular, but to approah the entire musial field inlusi!ely and in a

way that makes its ontinuity as lear as its disontinuities.

#lthough, hasten to add, killing time is one of the pragmati ends musi has always ser!ed. do not wish to denigrate

suh ati!ity, e2ept perhaps as an eduational means or as an e2lusi!e mode of musial engagement. hope it goes

without saying that the assumption that fans of popular musi do not really listen is largely erroneous.

/ trust that the basis for my impliit distintion between eduation and shooling re(uires no e2planation. # ruial

dimension of shooling that needs to be born in mind here is one that Pirou2 desribes aptly& shooling is 0a mehanism of

ulture and politis, embedded in ompeting relations of power that attempt to regulate and order how students think, at,

and li!e.1 9enry Pirou2, 0$oing %ultural Studies& Youth and the %hallenge of +edagogy,1 in;ar&ard /ducaional e&iew

4A&5 >EI.

>Prayk,hyhm and oise.

Milton :abbitt)s infamous artile 0@. $espite deep personal reser!ations about the use 4or mostly mis-use5 of the term

0aestheti1 by musi eduators, like this 6u2taposition of imagery.

APrayk,hyhm and oise, >@.

E owe this to Peorge 8dam, who e2pressed this profound insight almost in passing during our "CMB=S meeting in June,

>>.

FPeorge 8dam ommented in our "CMB=S seminar that the unease attending disussions of popular musi feels at times

like a family disussion about how to deal with a sik hildO

I%a!ihi, 03rom the Pround Cp,1 @.

take up the ogniti!e and eduational !alue of ambiguity in


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/Prayk,hyhm and oise, /E.

> pursue what it might mean to eduate musially in >5 A-F.

Pirou2, 0$oing %ultural Studies,1 >EF.

Middleton, 0udyin) Popular Music, >I. The stage on whih this struggle must be set, he ontinues , is 0the musial

mobiliation of the *new sub6et) disontinuous but tentaular, loally rooted but a world itien. . .1

@This was among the pro!oati!e and hallenging ritiisms raised by $aniel %a!ihi 4personal orrespondene5 in a

riti(ue of an earlier draft of this essay. am also indebted to ;andall #llsup, ;oger Mantie, and risten Myers for

omments and ritiisms that helped me impro!e this essay.

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