Re: Blues & Jazz (and punk!)

[Paul Gallagher <pcg@xxxxxxxxx>]

> From: dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)
>
> There seems to be some thinking that music - art - goes bad when it's
> removed from the working class. I like a lot of the Harvard indie rock. Not
> everything the bourgeoisie does sucks, and rebellious-to-revolutionary
> bourgeois can be interesting.
>
Why do say Harvard indie rock?  I don't see the connection to Harvard.
The Talking Head's Jerry Harrison went to Harvard, someone in Luna went
to Harvard, but that's all I know of.  There's a slightly stronger Columbia -
hip-hop connection (Third Bass, the Fugees).  Harvard students may listen to
indie rock (I don't know), but that's why indie rock used to be called
"college music."

I'd like to offer some thoughts, but they're very tentative and politically
undeveloped:

For my part, I'll say working class lads (the Beatles), middle-class
bohemians (the Rolling Stones, Public Enemy), even royalty (Salif Keita)
can produce vital music.  As to the musician's relationship to a mass
audience, that's a trickier question. The Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr.
approach of catering to bourgeois taste, i.e., aspiring to "good taste,"
i.e., going after the neoconservative market, is a good sign of sucky
music.  Pandering to the masses (Guns 'N' Roses, Menudo) isn't a good sign
either.  I like Robert Christgau's phrase, "the people's art is what the
people like."  I also like his thoughts about what he calls semipopular
music - "music that is popular in form but not fact - self-consciously
arty music that plays off popular or formerly popular usages but isn't
(supposedly) designed to sell."  That describes a lot of the interesting
music of the past 30 years - from Ornette Coleman to the Archers of Loaf.

Even when the music has a mass audience, we, the consumers. may have
no connection to it.  If you were going to write an essay on this subject,
Zairean soukous might be a good example.  It draws on Cuban and American
and Zairean traditions (by the way, Papa Wemba said Mobutu's "authenticity"
movement encouraging traditional culture was a source), it has a mass
audience throughout Africa, but it's increasingly music produced by exiles
in Paris and the US.  And for me, and most people in the US, when we
listen to it, it might as well be Mozart (almost).  We have no real
connection to the audience for whom it was made, we are not part of the
community that made it.  (This is sounding too Po-Mo...)

People might want to comment on the most politically conscious music
and other popular art.  It's usually not the most popular, in form or fact,
and that's not entirely the fault of the record companies keeping it down.
Occasionally, there are miracles - music that is popular, uncompromising,
beautiful and exciting and all other good things, and politically smart -
Bob Marley, Linton Kwesi Johnson, the Clash, Public Enemy would be some
of my choices - but they're rare, which is why they seem like miracles.
The UK is a good place to look for good place to look for left-leaning
bands - the Mekons, the Gang of 4 (in the early 80's), Red Crayola,
the Housemartins/the Beautiful South.  Or Zimbabwe - Thomas Mapfumo.  Or
Tanzania - Remmy Ongala.  Or Jamaica.  But it's interesting how each
is compromised politically.  Mapfumo supports the Zimbabwe government. The
Mekons are anarchists, the Housemartins are Christians, many in Jamaica
are caught up in the Rastafarianism.  Public Enemy are elitist and
support Farrakhan.  Etc.  And, of course, a lot of music is deliberately
anti-political.  Or it might be subversive of the dominant culture in other
ways.  For example: Boy George/Culture Club or RuPaul - Boy George wanted to be
loved by a mass audience, but he transgressed gender roles.  Doing this
and at the same time being loved by millions was astonishing.  On the other
hand, the subversiveness of fashion is greatly exaggerated in the classic
book on the subject, "Subculture: The Meaning of Style."  Another topic:
mystification - for example. the anger of school boys is mystified by Guns N'
Roses into hatred of "immigrants and faggots" in the notorious "One in a
Million."  On the other hand, high school metal heads like Beavis and Butthead,
who btw don't like Axl Rose, seem like the most subversive force on TV...
(Next to The Simpsons - the politically and culturally smartest network TV
show - and come to thik of it, one produced by Harvard grads - which brings
us back to the start of this thread....)

Paul




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