The culture of resentment
Spengler has some amusing reflections on pop music and the stupidity that attends the culture of resentment:
No other nation rejects the notion of a high culture with such vehemence, or celebrates the mediocre with such giddiness. Americans prefer to identify with what is like them, rather than emulate what is better than them. The epitome of its popular culture is a national contest to choose from among random entrants a new singing star, the “American Idol”.
Three or four generations ago, US popular culture shared a porous boundary with classical culture. The most successful musical comedy of the 1920s, Jerome Kern’s Showboat, contained classical elements requiring operatic voices. George Gershwin, the 1930s’ most popular tunesmith, prided himself on an opera, Porgy and Bess. Benny Goodman, the decade’s top jazz musician, recorded Mozart. The most successful singer of the 1930s, Bing Crosby, had a voice of classical quality. Never mind that what he sang was insipid; his listeners knew very well that they could not sing like Bing Crosby.
Americans of earlier generations, in short, listened to music that they admired but could not hope to imitate, because they looked up to a higher plane of culture and technique. Today Americans favor performers with whom they can identify precisely because they have no more technique or culture than the average drunk bellowing into a karaoke machine.
-CSM
September 2nd, 2006 at 6:44 pm
I am an intense lover of classical music and there is certainly a lot of contemporary music I don’t like, but nevertheless, Spengler’s comments seem to me either ignorant or ill-considered. Classical motifs are still common in pop music, and also, less directly, classically derived harmonic progressions, arrangements, etc. Sophisticated orchestral scores are familiar from movie soundtracks. R & b divas like Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey (the kind of singers some “American Idol” participants emulate) are technically brilliant and not at all easy to imitate convincingly (and such singers usually get their early training in church choirs, by the way). Hip hop and rap, though often extremely offensive (another subject) represent genuine musical and rhythmical innovations (coming from soul and “funk” in the 60s and 70s). If Spengler thinks anyone can do rap, he should try to do an Eminem song on a karaoke machine . . .
Much as I myself hate to admit it, there is in fact a vibrant and creative musical culture in evidence, and one that is often technically and artistically sophisticated. The most musically insipid pop music I have heard recently is in the “Christian Music” category.
In short, Spengler’s is a frumpy and unpersuasive “culture wars” screed, nothing more; he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There is much to object to in pop culture, but it does not seem to me that this is a persuasive way to go about it.
As only one alternative, why not consider the “sexism” that permeates the contemporary music scene. Some of my favorite woman vocalists have been Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin, Billy Holiday, Phoebe Snow, Aretha Franklin, etc. None of them would have a prayer today because they would not be sexy enough (at least not without serious work by stylists, make-up artists, workouts, personal trainers and so forth).
So, one question I might ask is, what happened to feminism? More than ever, if you want to be a female vocalist in pop music you have to be a convincing sex object. What’s that all about?
September 4th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Spengler doesn’t have the history of country music quite right. The self-pitying and resentful songs that inspired the early rock and rollers were ancient, and brought over by the Scots-Irish and English immigrants who came to Appalachia; however well those ballads of loss and pain harmonized with the economic downturns of the 1930s, most of them predated that time by centuries. This isn’t to say these songs weren’t always resentful; but we know the creative power of resentment, particularly in forms derived from lyric poetry.
September 5th, 2006 at 4:40 am
Good comments. Thanks for getting me to read the whole article rather than just the excerpt above. The article is a little cleverer than I thought, and a lot more wrong than I thought. (It would be interesting to see Camille Paglia rip into it.)
Actually, the days of the “garage band” are largely over and singers generally do have to have a voice these days, or at least women do. Singers like Celine Dior have essentially operatic voices and sing rather operatic songs, and the list could be extended. Queen’s music was definitely in the operatic tradition. Groups like Backstreet Boys (of recent memory), while not really my cup of tea, are certainly no slouches in the voice or vocal arrangement department, and ditto all the r & b girl bands. All John Williams scores I know (excepting the one for _Catch Me If You Can_– an arresting and clever soundtrack) are essentially re-presentations of the Bruckner/Mahler/Strauss school of orchestral giantism.
Buddy Holly was fantastic. Frank Sinatra was fantastic. etc. etc. I probably like Renaissance and Baroque sacred music as much as anyone does, but I’d be an idiot not to give blues and soul and country traditions their due.
I suspect he’s writing for shock effect, seeing how many people’s musical preferences he can diss in one article. A middle-brow shock jock. Unpleasant, but inevitable I suppose.
Anyway, from a GA perspective, isn’t this supposed levelling down of musical taste for mass expression supposed to be a (limited) good?