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From Music Publishing to MP3: Music and Industry in the
Twentieth Century
Author(s): Reebee Garofalo
Source: American Music, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp.
318-354
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3052666
Accessed: 12-01-2017 22:44 UTC

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REEBEE GAROFALO
From Music Publishing to MP3:
Music and Industry in the
Twentieth Century
Like any culture industry in a market economy, the role of the
music

business is fundamentally to transform its cultural products
into
financial rewards. This process, of course, has been
significantly in-
fluenced by the technological advances that have determined
the pro-
duction, dissemination, and reception of music. To understand
the
trajectory of popular music in the twentieth century from its
begin-
nings as a nation-based, mass cultural phenomenon to its
current state
as part of a global system of interactive, transnational cultural
flows,
one must trace the uneven relationship between cultural
develop-
ment, technological advancement, professional organization,
politi-
cal struggle, and economic power. Since technological
advances and
the economic power that drives them have been historically
centered
in industrialized nations (primarily Great Britain, Western
Europe,
and the United States), these countries have tended to provide
the
models for the relationship between popular music and the
industry
that produces it. Given that two world wars were fought on
Europe-
an soil, with devastating material consequences, at key points
in the
development of the mass media, the industrialization of popular
music has been defined disproportionately by the dominant and
of-
ten controversial practices of the United States. It is also the

case that
the pivotal musical moment of the twentieth century in terms of
cul-
tural redefinition and structural change in music industry-the
erup-
Reebee Garofalo is a professor at the University of
Massachusetts, Boston,
where he has taught since 1978. He has written numerous
articles on racism,
censorship, the political uses of music, and the globalization of
the music in-
dustry. His most recent book is Rockin' Out: Popular Music in
the USA (Allyn
and Bacon, 1997). For relaxation, he enjoys drumming and
singing with the
Blue Suede Boppers, a fifties rock and roll band.
American Music Fall 1999
? 2000 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
2017 22:44:58 UTC
Music and Industry in the Twentieth Century 319
tion of rock and roll-was centered in the United States in the
1950s,
and expanded to Great Britain in the 1960s. More recently,
however,
the relationship between corporate capital and musical culture
has

transcended national boundaries, as the music industry has
become
an increasingly global phenomenon.
In broad strokes, the history of the music industry can be seen
in
three phases, each dominated by a different kind of
organization:
1. Music publishing houses, which occupied the power center
of
the industry when sheet music was the primary vehicle for dis-
seminating popular music;
2. Record companies, which ascended to power as recorded mu-
sic achieved dominance; and
3. Transnational entertainment corporations, which promote
mu-
sic as an ever-expanding series of "revenue streams"--record
sales, advertising revenue, movie tie-ins, streaming audio on
the Internet-no longer tied to a particular sound carrier.
Because the centrality of record companies has predominated in
the
second half of the twentieth century, this phase of development
re-
mains the popular conception of the music industry, even
though its
structure has shifted markedly in recent years. Consequently,
the pre-
vailing view of the popular music industry is that of record
compa-
nies at the center, with radio, music videos, live concerts,
booking
agencies, management firms, indeed musicians themselves,

playing
various supporting roles. Because some of the major changes in
pop-
ular music in the twentieth century can be traced to the
technologi-
cal developments that enabled record companies to displace
publish-
ing houses as the power center of the music business, the
tendency
is to use the terms "music industry" and "recording industry"
syn-
onymously. Initially, however, they were quite separate and
there was
little contact between the two.
Throughout the early development of sound recording, sheet
mu-
sic was the main vehicle for the mass dissemination of music
and
music publishers were at the center of the music business. At
this
time, the centerpiece of middle-class home entertainment was
the pi-
ano. From the turn of the twentieth century until the end of
World
War I, the number of pianos and player pianos manufactured in
the
United States alone averaged about 300,000 annually.'
Recording start-
ed as a sideline business, initially given to spoken word
comedy, in-
strumental brass-band releases, and other novelty selections. It
is not
surprising, then, that the publishers initially regarded the
revolution

in technology that would eventually transform the production
and
consumption of popular music as little more than a supplement
to
their earnings from sheet music. They were too busy enjoying
the
2017 22:44:58 UTC
320 Garofalo
fruits of a very lucrative, centuries-old relationship with this
earlier
foirm of music software.
Music Publishing: The Origins of an Industry
When Johann Gutenberg invented movable type around 1450,
he laid
the foundation for the modern music-publishing industry. After
his
hometown of Mainz was sacked by invading armies shortly
after the
introduction of his invention, the fledgling printing industry
was dis-
persed, first to France and Italy, and then to England. This was
a pe-
riod of significant social upheaval, involving the establishment
of
merchant cities throughout Europe, the concomitant expansion
of a
new middle class, and a growing secularization of church-based

cul-
tures. In this process, according to Russell Sanjek, "[c]ontrol of
the
duplicating process had moved from the hands of the church
into
those of the entrepreneur. Literature was becoming secularized
to
meet the demands of its new audience, and music, too, would
soon
be laicized as its principal patron, the church, was replaced by
the
public consumer."2 Operating under an exclusive contract with
the
city of Venice, Ottaviano dei Petrucci prepared his first
publication,
a collection of 96 popular songs (mostly French chansons),
which
qualified him for the title, the Father of Music Publishing.3
In the new mercantile economy, the dependency of feudal
relations
and the elitism of the patronage system were gradually replaced
by
the relative democracy of the marketplace. As sites of
manufacturing
and central distribution points for merchant ships and caravans
from
distant lands, medieval cities served as host for diverse
cultures. Slow-
ly a pan-European body of literary and musical works
appeared. As
the financial interests of merchant bookseller-publishers
expanded,
they began to join forces to lobby for legal protection.
The first copyright law was enacted in Britain in 1710, when

Par-
liament passed the Statute of Anne, the basis for legal
protection of
intellectual property in the English-speaking world. While the
law
included an author's copyright and protections for consumers
(by lim-
iting the term of copyright and creating a "public domain"), it
clear-
ly favored the stationer's guild, which enjoyed royal sanctions
grant-
ing an effective monopoly on publishing in return for
cooperation in
ferreting out and suppressing seditious literary or musical
material.
In this reciprocal arrangement, booksellers fared considerably
better
than authors or composers. It wasn't until the end of the
eighteenth
century, according to Finkelstein, "that composers were able to
actu-
ally make an important part of their living from the printing
and sale
of their music."4 This coincided with the growth of a domestic
mar-
ket for pianos and the establishment of the instrument as a
cultural
status symbol throughout Europe.
2017 22:44:58 UTC

By the nineteenth century, music-publishing interests had
begun to
turn their attention toward international copyright systems
because,
as Dave Laing has pointed out, "music, more than other arts,
easily
crossed national linguistic and cultural boundaries."5 Britain
enact-
ed its first International Copyright Act in 1838 and extended its
pro-
visions to include music in 1842. In the latter half of the
nineteenth
century there ensued a number of multilateral meetings across
the
continent among members of the music trade which culminated
in
the Berne Convention of 1886. Berne was essentially a treaty
that pro-
vided for reciprocal recognition of copyright among sovereign
na-
tions. Seven of the initial nine signatories to the Berne
Convention
were European. Since 1886 the convention has been amended
six
times essentially to keep pace with the emergence of new
technolo-
gies: Berlin (1908) incorporated photography, film, and sound
record-
ing; Rome (1928) added broadcasting; Brussels (1948),
television. By
1993 there were almost 100 signatories to the Berne
Convention.6
Significantly, the United States did not sign on until 1988,
more than

100 years after the founding convention.
At the time of Berne, U.S. popular music was only just
beginning
to come into its own, primarily through blackface minstrelsy
and the
works of Stephen Foster, which became popular throughout
Europe.
In the balance of trade, the United States would still have been
show-
ing a net loss on the import/export ratio of cultural products; it
was
not yet in the interest of the United States to embrace
reciprocal ar-
rangements with foreign publishers. Within a short time,
however,
U.S. music publishers would consolidate their operations into
the
most efficient music machine the world had yet seen-Tin Pan
Alley.
At a time when European art music was considered to be
superior
to popular selections, U.S. music publishers derived their
income from
the manufacture and sale of classical scores, many of which
were in
the public domain, and, increasingly, through original popul ar
com-
positions. In the United States, sheet music retailed for about
thirty
to forty cents a copy and, for the major publishers, sales in the
hun-
dreds of thousands of copies were not unheard of. Charles K.
Har-
ris's "After the Ball," written and published in 1892, "quickly

reached
sales of $25,000 a week," and, according to Charles Hamm,
"sold more
than 2,000,000 copies in only several years, eventually
achieving a sale
of some five million."' During this period, the previously
scattered
conglomeration of U.S. publishing houses, who would
dominate
mainstream popular music until the Second World War, were
begin-
ning to converge on the area of New York City that came to be
known
as Tin Pan Alley, after the tinny output of its upright pianos.
Tin Pan
Alley anticipated many of the practices of the music business
in later
years-and therefore provides the clearest model for how
business
would be conducted.
2017 22:44:58 UTC
322 Garofalo
While it is noteworthy that in less than twenty years leading up
to
the turn of the century, Tin Pan Alley centralized control of an
indus-
try that had been spread throughout major cities across the
United
States, it is perhaps more important that Tin Pan Alley

produced only
popular songs. Unlike the older, more traditional music-
publishing
houses, which issued a broad range of material, the "song
factories"
of Tin Pan Alley promoted an overwhelmingly successful
formulaic
pop mentality that yielded "a much more homogeneous style
than
had ever before been the case in the history of song in
America."8 If
the songwriting style of Tin Pan Alley was distinctive, its
success was
due in equal measure to its aggressive marketing tactics. Tin
Pan Al-
ley publishers routinely visited popular venues, offering star
perform-
ers everything from personal favors to songwriting credits to
include
a particular song in their acts. Such an investment could be
returned
many-fold in sheet-music sales.
As was the case with publishing enterprises elsewhere, at this
stage
in its development Tin Pan Alley turned its attention toward
legal pro-
tection. While these publishers clearly saw sheet music as their
stock-
in-trade-and, as a result, never fully embraced records-they saw
no
reason why their income shouldn't be supplemented with
revenues
from record sales. Thus, at the end of the first decade of the
twentieth
century-when it was clear that records were becoming a force
to be

reckoned with-there ensued a widespread revision of existing
copy-
right laws to accommodate the new medium. In 1909, following
the
Berlin revision to the Berne Convention, Victor Herbert and
John Philip
Sousa led the charge for a revision to the U.S. copyright laws
which
mandated a royalty of two cents for each cylinder, record, or
piano
roll manufactured, in addition to revenues already derived from
live
performances. Because the U.S. Copyright Act of 1909 used the
lan-
guage of "mechanical reproduction," these new fees came to be
known
as a "mechanicals." Comparable laws were passed in Britain in
1911
and elsewhere on the continent at around the same time.
To recover their sources of revenue more efficiently, publishers
in
the industrialized world, in alliance with composers and
songwrit-
ers, began to organize themselves into professional associations
known in the trade as performing rights organizations. France
had
anticipated this development, forming the Soci6td des Auteurs,
Com-
positeurs et Editeirs de Musique (SACEM) in 1850. Italy and
Austria
followed suit before the turn of the century. Three other
industrial-
ized music-producing nations came on board before World War
I.
Publishers in Great Britain formed the Performing Rights

Society
(PRS), and in Germany, Geselleschaft fiir Musikalische
Auffihrungs
(GEMA). The Tin Pan Alley publishers established the
American So-
ciety of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1914.
In 1926
2017 22:44:58 UTC
these various national societies formed an international
confederation,
Confederation Internationale des Soci~t6s Auteurs et
Compositeurs
(CISAC), headquartered in France.
In general, in their formative stages performing rights
organizations
were exclusive societies with national monopolies on
copyrighted
music. Membership in ASCAP, for example, was skewed
toward the
more "literate" writers of show tunes and semi-serious works
such
as Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, George
Gershwin,
and Irving Berlin. Writers of more vernacular forms, such as
the blues

and country music, were excluded from ASCAP. As proprietors
of the
compositions of their members, these organizations exercised
consid-
erable power in shaping public taste.
Just as technological advances such as movable type favored
indus-
trialized nations, copyright laws kept artistic expression firmly
an-
chored to the European cultural tradition of notated music, in
that
the claim for royalties was based on the registration of
melodies and
lyrics, the aspects of music that most readily lend themselves
to no-
tation. Artists or countries with musical traditions based on
rhythm
rather than melody or those that valued improvisation over
notation
were excluded from the full benefit of copyright protection
right from
the start. Further, as an extension of literary copyright, musical
copy-
right was based on a conception of authorship, which tended to
pe-
nalize societies in which composition was conceived as a
collective
activity.
Recording Companies: The Commodification of Sound
Although it was clear before the dawn of the twentieth century
that
the future of the recording industry would be tied to music and
en-

tertainment, this was not obvious at first. When Thomas Edison
un-
veiled his legendary "talking machine" in 1877, which is
generally
considered the birth of recording, the reproduction of music
was
fourth down his list of intended uses. Edison, as well as most
of his
competitors, initially saw the phonograph, as he called it, as an
office
machine, with practical applications in stenography, books for
the
blind, and teaching elocution. How the fledgling industry
gravitated
toward music and what they chose to record speaks volumes
about
the role of the music industry in the production of music.
Edison unwittingly provided a glimpse of the future when he
chose
to introduce the phonograph by highlighting its novelty value.
In
countless public demonstrations in Great Britain and the United
States, vocalists, whistlers, and local instrumentalists from the
audi-
ence were invited to make live recordings on the spot,
anticipating
what would become the dominant use of the invention. Other
than
2017 22:44:58 UTC

324 Garofalo
the spoken word, it was found that brass reproduced best.
Because
of the poor sound quality of Edison's early tinfoil cylinders,
howev-
er, Edison himself dismissed the phonograph as "a mere toy,
which
has no commercial value"9 and put the project on the shelf, but
only
temporarily.
The next steps in the development of sound recording in the
Unit-
ed States were taken in Bell Laboratories and eventually
consolidat-
ed into the North American Phonograph Company, a national
com-
bine focused on office technology. It was Louis Glass, manager
of
North American's West Coast franchise, who pointed the way
to the
future. Beginning in 1889 Glass placed these "dictating"
machines in
the Palais Royal Saloon in San Francisco where patrons could
listen
to a prerecorded "entertainment" cylinder for a nickel. Within a
year,
these "nickel in the slot" machines were bringing in as much as
$1,200
annually. The enterprise earned Glass a place in music history
as the
Father of the Jukebox.

The Columbia Phonograph Company, North American's District
of
Columbia franchise, quickly distinguished itself as the leading
pro-
ducer of quality entertainment cylinders. Among those that
caught
on with the mainstream listening audience were spoken-word
comic
Irish tales, "coon" songs, which exploited negative stereotypes
of Af-
rican Americans, and brass bands. By 1892 Columbia had
issued about
100 recordings of the United States Marine Band, which
included
Sousa marches and Strauss waltzes, among other favorites.
It was German American immigrant Emile Berliner who first
en-
visaged the contours of the modern music industry full-blown.
Ber-
liner had developed a recording process based on a flat disc for
a
machine he called the gramophone. At its very first
demonstration
in 1888, Berliner prophesied the ability to make an unlimited
num-
ber of copies from a single master, the development of a mass -
scale
home-entertainment market for recorded music, and a system of
roy-
alty payments to artists derived from the sale of discs.10
During this same time frame, similar developments were being
undertaken elsewhere in the industrialized world. The work of
Charles and Emile Path6 in Paris paralleled the development of

the
Edison phonograph. Opening their first phonograph factory in
the
Paris suburb of Chatou in 1894, Path6 Frbres became a full -
fledged
recording company in 1897. That same year William Barry
Owen left
his position as head of Berliner's National Gramophone
Company in
New York and established the Gramophone Company in
London to
exploit the Berliner European gramophone patents. Deutsche
Gram-
mophon, another related company, was set up by Joseph
Berliner in
Hanover, Germany. Then, in 1901, Emile Berliner founded the
Victor
Talking Machine Company in the United States.
2017 22:44:58 UTC
Even though these companies knew that they were headed for
en-
tertainment-not dictation-the fledgling industry faced a number
of
serious roadblocks-technical, legal, and financial. Because of
their
limited sound quality, early recordings tended to favor spoken-
word
and instrumental selections; writers and publishers were not yet

en-
titled to receive royalties from the sale or use of recorded
music; and,
because cylinders couldn't yet be mass produced,
manufacturing
couldn't compete with the consumer demand that already
existed for
sheet music. In addition, a series of patent wars prevented the
indus-
try from progressing smoothly. After the turn of the century,
howev-
er, the major recording companies determined that pooling
their pat-
ents would advance the technology, as well as their economic
self-interest, far more rapidly and, in the process, provide them
with
a form of oligopolistic control of the industry.
Emile Berliner delivered on his first prophecy when he made
neg-
ative discs called "stampers," which evolved into the shellac -
based,
78-rpm pressings that went on to become the industry standard
un-
til the late 1940s. He then contracted with an enterprising
machinist
named Eldridge R. Johnson, who developed a competitive
twenty-
five-dollar machine, creating the possibility of a home-
entertainment
market for records. To realize his second prophecy, Berliner
judged
correctly that he would need someone with more musical
ability than
himself to coordinate talent and recording. A single
demonstration of

the "beautiful round tones" of Berliner's disc was enough to
lure
Columbia's Fred Gaisberg-in effect, the first a&r (artist and
reper-
toire) man/producer-to Victor.
If Berliner was the industrial visionary, Gaisberg provided the
cul-
tural input. Because recording artists weren't yet paid royalties
and
received no credit on records or in catalogues, Gaisberg had
relative-
ly little trouble persuading popular Columbia artists to record
for Vic-
tor. Neither was he limited to performers in the United States.
Gais-
berg had already set up the first recording studio in London in
1898
before he moved from Columbia to Victor. Then in the early
1900s Vic-
tor acquired 50 percent ownership of the British Gramophone
Com-
pany.1 Through the efforts of William Barry Owen, Gaisberg
was soon
recording in every music capital in Europe and Russia.
Because of an elitist bias toward high culture, European
classical
music was considered to be the hallmark of good taste and
opera sing-
ers occupied the highest rung on the entertainment ladder.
Accord-
ingly, the British Gramophone Company catalogue included
songs
and arias in every European language and many Asian
languages as

well. Gaisberg also made recordings at the Imperial Opera in
Russia.
In 1902 Italian tenor Enrico Caruso recorded ten arias in a
hotel room
in Milan for Gramophone, helping to establish the company as
a se-
2017 22:44:58 UTC
326 Garofalo
rious outlet for classical as well as popular music. Eldridge
Johnson
imported these higher priced "Red Seal" recordings for sale in
the
United States and then began a domestic Red Label series of
his own,
which featured the stars of the Metropolitan Opera in New
York.12
Producer C. G. Childs placed a jewel in the crown of the new
series
when he signed Caruso to an exclusive Victor contract by
offering him
the unprecedented provision of a royalty on records sold,
thereby
fulfilling the last of Berliner's 1888 prophecies.
In the 1910s the recording industry extended its tentacles into
the
most lucrative markets of the world, through pressing plants in
the
most important areas and through a network of subsidiaries

else-
where. The two largest and most powerful companies, U.S.
Victor and
British Gramophone, furthered their mutual interests by
dividing
portions of the globe cooperatively. Victor had the Americas,
North
and South, and what they called the Far East; Gramophone
operated
factories in Europe, Russia, and India. After the outbreak of
World
War I the assets of Deutsche Grammophon were confiscated by
the
German government as enemy property, forcing a split between
the
British and German companies. By this time, however,
Germany's
Lindstr6m company had become an international player and
Path6
was not far behind.13
By this time, it was clear that records would become a powerful
cultural force. In 1909, the United States alone manufactured
more
than 27 million discs and cylinders, with a wholesale value of
nearly
$12 million.14 Comparable figures from around the world were
equally
impressive. One observer estimated German record production
at 18
million copies (including exports) in 1907, Russian sales at 20
million
copies in 1915, and the British and French markets at 10
million units
each in the same time frame.15 It was figures such as these

which
caused the publishers to stand up and take notice.
While the economic vision of the major record companies was
noth-
ing short of world domination, their cultural strategy at this
time was
seemingly more democratic. All of the major companies not
only ex-
ported their own domestic products internationally, they also
record-
ed and distributed local artists in the countries where they
operated,
"so that by the early 1910s, Icelandic, Estonian, Welsh and
Breton
record buyers, the ethnic minorities of the Russian Empire, the
twenty
largest immigrant groups in the United States, and the most
impor-
tant groups of the Indian subcontinent were all suppli ed by
record-
ings of their own musical traditions."16 Given the history of
Europe-
an colonialism and patterns of racism in the United States,
however,
it is likely that this broad range of cultural products resulted
more
from considerations of cost effectiveness than a commitment to
cul-
tural diversity.
2017 22:44:58 UTC

It is also the case that there were (and are) pronounced biases
in
the way that the music industry conceived of itself and its
world. Af-
rica (with the occasional exception of South Africa) and certain
other
locales are conspicuously absent in much of the writing about
the
early internationalization of the music industry. Even within
the in-
dustrialized world, there was internal class and race
stratification.
Record companies were slow to learn the cultural lesson that
while
the European classics brought prestige to their labels, the
steady in-
come-indeed, the future of the recording industry-was tied
more
to popular appetites. Victor's prestigious Red Seal series never
ac-
counted for more than 20 percent of the sales of the popular
black-
label recordings."17 While the record companies grappled with
the ten-
sion between an elite conception of culture and the financial
realities
of popular taste, many rich sources of musical culture went
beneath
their notice, particularly within regions that were insufficien tly
pen-
etrated by capital and/or populations that were too poor to be
thought of as consumers.

Significant cultural blind spots notwithstanding, by the 1910s
the
recording industry was clearly in an ascending phase, one
which, with
numerous fits and starts, would continue. The addition of a
mechan-
ical royalty to the copyright laws in the early twentieth century
was
timely in that it opened the door for collaborations between
publish-
ers and recording companies which had not existed previously.
Com-
panies in Great Britain and the United States were particularly
well
served, as a lucrative market for musical theater albums was
discov-
ered among American soldiers and native Britons during World
War
I when Gramophone issued a recording of the songs from
Business as
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al
Rhythm: Race, Sex, and t

Great variety and quick transi-
tions from one measure or
tone to another are contrary to
the genius of the beautiful in
music. Such transitions often
excite mirth, or other sudden
and tumultuous passions; but
not that sinking, that melting,
that languor, which is the
characteristical effect of the
beautiful, as it regards every
sense.
Edmund Burke
The Red Hot Chil! Peppers are putting
the three most important letters back
into FUNK, taking the piss out of the
idiots who forgot what it was for in the
first place and are being censored left,

right and centre because of it.
"From our viewpoint it's impossible to
ignore the correlation between music
and sex because, being so incredibly
rhythmic as it is. It's very deeply corre-
lated to sex and the rhythm of sex, and
the rhythm of your heart pounding and
intercourse motions and just the way it
makes you feel when you hear it. We try
to make our music give you an erection."
Melody Maker
Everyone seems agreed, the music's lovers and leathers alike,
that
rock and roll means sex; everyone assumes that this meaning
comes with the
beat. I don't, and in.this chapter I suggest mat if rock does
sometimes mean
sex it is for sociological, not musicological reasons. (And
besides, as the Red
Hot Chili Peppers' casual male chauvinism makes clear, in this
context sex is
an essentially sociological sort of thing, anyway.) Deliberately
misreading the
Chili's point, then, I will start this chapter with the concept of
fun.

"Fun" can only be defined against something else, in contrast to
the
"serious" and the "respectable," and in musical discourses the
opposition of
"serious" and "fun" sounds (the aesthetic versus the hedonistic)
involves both
a moral-cum-artistic judgment and a distinction between a
mental and a
physical response. In classical music criticism, "fun" thus
describes concerts
which are not the real thing—benefit or charity shows, the Last
Night of the
Proms; the critical tone is a kind of forced, condescending
bonhomie: "it was
just a bit of fun!" In pop criticism "art" and "fun" define each
other in a
running dialectic—if 1970s progressive rockers dismissed first
Motown and
then disco as "only" entertainment, 1980s progressive popsters
saw off rock's
pretensions with the tee-shirt slogan "Fuck Art, Let's Dance!"3
As I noted in Chapter 2, the equation of the serious with the
mind and
fun with the body was an aspect of the way in which high
culture was
established in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth
century. John
Kassan quotes Mark Twain's description of the audience "at the
shrine of St.
Wagner" in Bayreuth: ,

Absolute attention and petrified retention to the end of an act of
the
attitude assumed at the beginning of it. You detect no movement
in
the solid mass of heads and shoulders. You seem to sit with the
dead
in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they are being stirred to
their
profoundest depths; that there are times when they want to rise
and
wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and times
when
tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief to
free
their pent, emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not one
utter-
ance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have
slowly faded out and died.4
Twain then watched the audience burst into "thunderous
applause"
Other observers, more ideologically correct Wagnerians,
claimed that even
after the performance there was just intense silence. Such
complete physical
' control—or mental transportation?—did not become a classical
concert con-
vention (orchestras would be dismayed to get no applause at the
end of a
show), but the denial of any bodily response while the music
plays is now
taken for granted. A good classical performance is therefore
measured by the
stillness it commands, by the intensity of the audience's mental
concentration,

by the lack of any physical distraction, any coughs or shuffles.
And it is equally
important, as we have seen, to disguise the physical effort that
goes into
classical music-making—-Wagner kept the orchestra hidden at
Bayreuth, and
"from early in his career ridiculed those who enjoyed 'looking at
the music
instead of listening to it,"'5
A good rock concert, by contrast, is measured by the audience's
physical
response, by how quickly people get out of their seats, onto the
dance floor,
by how loudly they shout and scream. And rock performers are
expected to
revel in their own physicality too, to strain and sweat and
collapse with
tiredness. Rock stage clothes (like sports clothes) are designed
to show the
musician's body as instrumental (as well as sexual), and not for
nothing does
a performer like Bruce Springsteen end a show huddled with his
band, as if
he'd just won the Super Bowl. Rock acts conceal not the
physical but the
technological sources of their sounds; rock audiences remain
uneasy about
musical instruments that appear to require no effort to be
played.
The key point here, though, is that the musical mind/body split
does not
just mark off classical from rock concert conventions; it also
operates within

the popular music domain. When rock (or jazz) acts move into
seated concert
halls, for example, it is often to register that the music is now
"serious," should
now be appreciated quietly. (I sometimes suspect that it is at
such sit-down
shows—for Leonard Cohen, say, or the Cure, or P. J. Harvey—
that one best
gets a sense of what the mid-nineteenth century battles over
classical concert
behavior were like, as the listening and the dancing sections of
the crowd get
equally annoyed with each other, and as the attendants struggle
to keep
everyone seated.) The underlying contrast here between
listening with the
mind and listening with the body is well captured by
photography: the
classical audience rapt, the rock audience abandoned; both sorts
of listener
oblivious to their neighbors, both with eyes shut and bodies
open, but the
classical listener obviously quite still, the rock listener held in
the throes of
movement.6
The question that interests me in this chapter, then, is how the
musical
mind/body split works. Why is some music heard as physical
(fun), other
music as cerebral (serious)? Is there nothing of the mind in the
former?
Nothing of the body in the latter? And in approaching these
questions the
first point to make is that just as "sin" is defined by the virtuous
(or would-be

virtuous), so fun (or music-for-the-body) is, in ideological
practice, defined
in contrast to serious music, music-for-the-mind. The Red Hot
Chili Peppers'
crude equation of musical pleasure, rhythm, and sex derives, in
short, from
a high cultural argument.
The musical equation "of aesthetic/mind and hedonistic/ body is
one
, effect of the mental/manual division of labor built into the
Industrial Revo-
lution, and into the consequent organization of education.7 In
the mid-
nineteenth century this was mapped onto the original Romantic
dichotomy
between feeling and reason: feelings were now taken (as at
Bayreuth) to be
best expressed spiritually and mentally, in silent contemplation
of great art
or great music. Bodily responses became, by definition, mind-
less. ."The
.brain," wrote Frank Howes in the British Journal of Aesthetics
in 1962, is
associated with art music; "brainlessness" with pop. Popular
music, agreed
Peter Stadler, is music requiring "a minimum of brain
activity."8
For Stadler, this isn't necessarily to devalue popular music,
which (thanks
to its rhythms) may well be sexy and humorous; jazz, in
particular, he
suggests, gives us direct access to bodily sensation; it is not a

music that has
to be interpreted, it is not a music that has to be thought about.9
A decade
later Raymond Durgnat celebrated rock in much the same way,
as a music
which in its use of rhythm was immediately, gloriously,
sensual.10
The meaning of-popular music is being explained here by
intellectuals
who value (or abhor) it because it offers them a different
experience from
art music. A telling example of such a celebration of otherness
carj be found
in Guy Scarpetta's description of going with friends from the
French art and
music magazine Art-Press to see Johnny Halliday, the rock 'n'
roll singer,
perform in Nice. For these self-conscious intellectuals, the
"flagrant" pleasure
of the show began with the opportunity to slough off their class
distinction,
to identify with their generation, but what most struck these
young men
about this particular experience of "encanaillement" (or
slumming) was the
corporal presence of the music. Scarpetta heard in rock "une
intensite or-
ganique, une force pulsionelle," saw in Halliday "une
fantasmatique directe-
ment sexuelle." This was not something on offer from the
essentially
"conceptuel" Parisian avant-garde of the time—Halliday's
performance was
"fun," in short, because it stressed the physical pleasure of

music in ways
repressed elsewhere; for Scarpetta and his friends it articulated
something
otherwise forbidden.11
Two points emerge from this passage. First, it describes a
musical expe-
rience which can only be understood in high cultural terms (it
tells us nothing
of what Halliday's low-class fans made of his music). The
organization of
high culture in terms of bourgeois respectability has meant,
inevitably, the
identification of low culture with the unrespectable (and
obviously, in insti-
tutional terms, while high art took its nineteenth-century place
in the secular
temples of gallery, museum, and concert hall, low music
continued to be
associated with the bodily pleasures of the bar and the
brothel).12 By the
beginning of this century, in other words, low music was both a
real and a
fantasy site for casting off bourgeois inhibitions.
The second point here concerns race. In 1922, forty years before
Johnny
Halliday's Nice concert, another French avant-garde
intellectual, Darius Mil-
haud, was taken by a friend to a Harlem "which had not yet
been discovered
by the snobs and the aesthetes." As Bernard Gendron explains,
"in a club in
which 'they were the only white folks' he encountered a music

that was
'absolutely different from anything [he] had ever heard before.'"
This surprising experience moved him from an exclusively
formalist
and experimentalist preoccupation with jazz to one tempered by
a
strong interest in its lyricism and primitivism. Such "authentic
mu-
sic," he was sure, had "its roots in the darkest corner of negro
soul,
the vestigial traces of Africa." It is in this "primitive African
side,"
this "savage" "African character," "still profoundly anchored" in
black
North American music, "that we find the source of this
formidable
rhythmic, as well as of such expressive melodies, which are
endowed
with a lyricism which only oppressed races can produce."
Milhaud starkly contrasted the archaic lyricism of negro blues
with
the hyper-modernity, worldliness (la mondanite), and
mechanical-
ness, of white jazz.13
There is, indeed, a long history in Romanticism of defining
black culture,
specifically African culture, as the body, the other of the
bourgeois mind.

Such a contrast is derived from the Romantic opposition of
nature and
culture: the primitive or pre-civilized can thus be held up
against thf sophis-
ticated or over-civilized—one strand of the Romantic argument
was that
primitive people were innocent people, uncorrupted by culture,
still close to
a human "essence."14
It's important to understand how this argument works, because
it lies at
the heart of claims about rock, rhythm, and sex. The logic here
is not that
African music (and African-derived musics) are more
"physical," more "di-
rectly" sexual than European and European-derived musics.
Rather, the ar-
gument is that because "the African" is more primitive, more
"natural" than
the European, then African music must be more directly in
touch with the
body, with unsymbolized and unmediated sensual states and
expectations.
And given that African musics are most obviously different
from European
musics in their uses of rhythm, then rhythm must be how the
primitive, the
sexual, is expressed. The cultural ideology produces the way of
hearing the
music, in short; it is not the music which gives rise to the
ideology. Or, as
Marianna Torgovnick puts it, "within Western culture, the idiom
'going
primitive' is in fact congruent in many ways with the idiom

'getting physi-
cal.'"15
I can best illustrate this argument by quotation: the histories of
both jazz
and rock 'n' roll are littered with such racist readings. The
Bloomsbury art
critic Clive Bell, for example, complained in the New Republic
in 1921 about
the people "who sat drinking their cocktails and listening to
nigger b a n d s . . .
Niggers can be admired artists without any gift more singular
than high
spirits: so why drag in the intellect?" For Bell, as D. L.
LeMahieu notes, jazz
represented a rebellion not only of "the lower instincts," but of
"an inferior
race" against European "civilization."16
In France after World War I, wrote the ethnographer Michel
Leiris, a
newly adult generation ("the generation that made Josephine
Baker a star")
colluded in "an abandonment to the animal joy of experiencing
the influence
of a modern rhythm . . . In jazz, too, came the first public
appearances of
Negroes, the manifestation and the myth of black Edens which
were to lead
me to Africa and, beyond Africa, to ethnography."17 In the
United States, as
Lawrence Levine writes, "jazz was seen by many

contemporaries as a cultural
form independent of a number of the basic central beliefs of
bourgeois
society, free of its repressions, in rebellion against many of its
grosser stereo-
types. Jazz became associated with what [Aaron] Esman has
called the Vital
libidinal impulses . . . precisely the id drives that the surperego
of the bour-
geois culture sought to repress.'" Young white musicians were
attracted by
jazz because it seemed to promise cultural as well as musical
freedom; it gave
them live opportunity "to be and express themselves, the sense
of being
natural"™ '
Ted Gioia has shown how these strands of white thought about
black
music—as instinctive, as free—became entangled in jazz
criticism. The
French intellectual ideology of the primitive, the myth of the
noble savage,
meant that jazz was heard as a "music charged with emotion but
largely
devoid of intellectual content," while the jazz musician was
taken to be an
"inarticulate and unsophisticated practitioner of an art which he
himself
scarcely understands." (As late as 1938 Winthrop Sergeant
could write that
"those who create [jazz] are the ones who know the least about
its abstract
structure. The Negro, like all folk musicians, expresses himself
intuitively.")
At the same time, young white musicians (and fans) had their

own reasons
for asserting that jazz was quite different from art music:
"cerebral" became
a term of jazz critical abuse ("energy" the contrasting term of
praise). Robert
O'Meally notes that John Hammond, for example, objected to
Billie Holiday's
work after "Strange Fruif'.as "too arty." Holiday herself "felt
that she had
finally begun to discover herself as a singer."19
Gioia notes that the underlying body/mind split here—the
supposed
opposition of "inspired spontaneous creativity" and "cold
inlellectualism"—
makes no sense of what jazz musicians do at all. All music-
making is about
the inind-in-the-body; the "immediacy" of improvisation no
more makes
unscd'red music "mindless" than the immediacy of talking
makes unscripted
speech somehow without thought. Whatever the differences
between African-
and European-derived musics, they cannot be explained in terms
of African
(or African-American) musicians' lack of formal training, their
ignorance of
technical issues, their simple "intuition" (any more than what
European
musicians do can really be described as non-physical).
The matrix of race, rhythm, and sex through which white critics
and fans
made ideological sense of jazz was just as important for the
interpretation of
rock 'n' roll. As Charles Shaar Murray writes in his illuminating

study of Jimi
Hendrix:
-" The "cultural dowry" Jimi Hendrix brought with him into the
pop
market-place included not only his immense talent and the years
of
experience acquired in a particularly hard school of show
business,
but the accumulated weight of the fantasies and mythologies
con-
structed around black music and black people by whites,
hipsters
and reactionaries alike. Both shared one common article of
faith:
that black people represent the personification of the
untrammelled
id—intrinsically wild, sensual, dangerous, "untamed" in every
sense
of the word.20
And Linda Martin and Kerry Seagrove's study of "the opposition
to rock 'n'
roll" shows how appalled 1950s observers automatically equated
the rhythm
of rock 'n' roll with savagery of various sorts, whether they
were moralists
like the Bishop of Woolwich ("the hypnotic rhythm and wild
gestures in [Rock
Around the Clock] had a maddening effect on a rhythm-loving
age group"),
high musicians like Sir Malcolm Sergeant ("nothing more than
an exhibition
of primitive tom-tom thumping ... rock 'n' roll has been played
in the jungle
for centuries") or Herbert von Karajan ("strange things happen

in the blood-
stream when a musical resonance coincides with the beat of the
human
pulse"), or psychologists like Dr. Francis J. Braceland, director
of the Institute
of Living, who explained that rock 'n' roll was both
"cannibalistic and tribal-
istic." The various strands of the argument were brought
together in an
editorial in the academic Music Journal in February 1958.
Adolescents were,
it seemed, "definitely influenced in their lawlessness by this
throwback to
jungle rhythms. Either it actually stirs them to orgies of sex and
violence (as
its model did for the savages themselves), or they use it as an
excuse for the
removal of all inhibitions and the complete disregard of the
conventions of
decency."21
The academic witnesses who lined up against rock 'n' roll
(historians and
anthropologists, psychologists and music analysts) conflated a
number of
different arguments about rhythm and the primitive. "Experts
Propose Study
of 'Craze,'" ran a rock 'n' roll headline in the New York Times
on February
23, 1957, "Liken It to Medieval Lunacy, 'Contagious Dance
Furies' and Bite
of Tarantula." A Dr. Joost A. M. Meerlo, Associate in
Psychiatry at Columbia
University, explained that, as in the late fourteenth century,
there was now a
"contagious epidemic of dance fury." He himself had observed

young people
moved by a juke box to dance themselves "more and more into a
prehistoric
rhythmic trance until it had gone far beyond all the accepted
versions of
human dancing."
Why are rhythmical sounds and motions so especially
contagious? A
rhythmical call to the crowd easily foments mass ecstasy:
"Duce!
Ducel Duce!" The call repeats itself into the infinite and
liberates the
mind of all reasonable inhibitions . . . as in drug addiction, a
thou-
sand years of civilization fall away in a moment . . . Rock 'n'
roll is
a sign'pf depersonalization of the individual, of ecstatic
veneration
of mental decline and passivity. If we cannot stem the tide with
its
waves of rhythmic narcosis . . . we are preparing our own
downfall
in the midst of pandemic funeral dances. The dance craze is the
infantile rage and outlet of our actual world.22
The primitive in music (rhythm), the primitive in social
evolution (the
medieval, the African), and the primitive in human development
(the infan-
tile) are thus reflections of each other. In the words of the
psychoanalyst
Heinz Kohut, "the rocking of disturbed children and of
schizophrenics, and
the ecstatic rites of primitive tribes" are thus equally examples

of the "regres-
sive" function of rhythm. From a psychoanalytic perspective,
people's pleasure
in music is clearly "a catharsis of primitive sexual tension under
cover." Under
cover, that is to say, of melody and harmony. "The weaker the
aesthetic
disguise of such rhythmic experiences," the less "artistic" the
music.23
Eric Lott suggests that in the United States, at least, what may
be at issue
here in terms of racial ideology is not so much the infantile as
"the state of
arrested adolescence . . . to which dominant codes of
masculinity aspire . . .
These common white associations of black maleness with the
onset of pu-
bescent sexuality indicate that the assumptio n of dominant
codes of mascu-
linity in the United States was (and still is) partly negotiated
through an
imaginary black interlocutor."24
And if "black culture in the guise of an attractive masculinity"
was "the
stock in trade of the exchange so central to minstrelsy," it was
equally essential
for the use value of rock 'n' roll. As Bernard Gendron has
argued, "the claim
that rock and roll brought real sexuality to popular music is
usually under-
stood to be related to the claim that it brought real blackness,"
and from this
perspective it certainly does seem "reasonable to place [Jerry
Lee] Lewis's

'Whole Lotta Shakin' in the tradition of black-faced minstrelsy."
"If 'Whole
Lotta Shakin' was to succeed in advertising itself as white-boy-
wildly-sings-
black, it had to do so quickly and simply. The result had to be a
coarsely
outlined cartoon of what it means to sing black. That is, the
result had to be
a caricature."25
The racism endemic to rock 'n' roll, in other words, was not that
white
musicians stole from black culture but that they burlesqued it.
The issue is
not how "raw" and "earthy" and "authentic" African-American
sounds were
"diluted" or "whitened" for mass consumption, but the opposite
process: how
gospel and r&b and doo-wop were blacked-up. Thanks to rock
'n' roll, black
performers now reached a white audience, but only if they met
"the tests of
'blackness'—that they embody sensuality, spontaneity, and
gritty soulful-
ness." 26 As Gendron writes:
The black pioneers of rock and roll were also driven to produce
caricatures of singing-black. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and
Ray
Charles . . . quite radically changed their styles as their
audience
shifted from predominantly black to largely white. Though all
three
began their careers by singing the blues in a rather sedate
manner

(at least by rock and roll standards), they later accelerated their
singing speed, resorted to raspy-voiced shrieks and cries, and
dressed
up their stage acts with manic piano-pounding or guitar
acrobatics.
According to rock and roll mythology, they went from singing
less
black (like Nat King Cole or the Mills Brothers) to singing more
black. In my judgement it would be better to say that they
adopted
a more caricaturized version of singing black wildly, thus
paving the
way for soul music and the British invasion.27
The problem of rock and roll arguments about rhythm and sex
(the
arguments still made by bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers)
is not just
their racist starting point, but also their confusion about what's
meant by
rhythm, by musical rhythm in particular. The assumption that a
musical
"beat" is equivalent to a bodily beat (the heartbeat, the .pulse)
doesn't stand
up to much examination (why isn't musical regularity compared
to mechani-
cal repetition—neither metronomes nor clocks are thought to
rouse their
listeners to a frenzy).
There is equally little evidence that Western readings of African
rhythmic
patterns as "sexual" have anything at all to do with their actual
use, musical
or otherwise. As John Miller Chernoff points out, "African
music and dance

are not performed as an unrestrained emotional expression."
They are, rather,
ways of realizing aesthetic and ethical structures. "Ecstatic" is,
in fact, the most
inappropriate adjective to apply to African music: "The feelings
the music
brings may be exhilarating but not overpowering, intense but
not frenzied.
Ecstasy as we see it would imply for most Africans a separation
from all that
is good and beautiful, and generally, in fact, any such loss of
control is viewed
by them as tasteless, ridiculous, or even sinful."28
In her study of African oral poetry, Ruth Finnegan notes
similarly that
"cultural factors help to determine what is appreciated as
'rhythmic' in any
given group or period: it is not purely physical." If some oral
poetry is bound
up with a regular physical action (as in a work song),
nevertheless "the
rhythmic movements are accepted by current convention rather
than dictated
by universal physiological or material requirements." As
Maurice Halbwachs
once put it, "Rhythm does not exist in nature; it, too, is a result
of living in
society."29 -

The point here seems so obvious that it's surprising that it still
has to be
made: musical rhythm is as much a mental as a physical matter;
deciding
when to play a note is as much a matter of thought as deciding
what note to
play (and, in practice, such decisions are anyway not
separable).30 In analyzing
the differences between African and European musics, then, we
can't start
from a distinction between body and mind; that distinction,
while now an
important aspect of musical meaning, is ideological, not
musicological.
What are the alternatives? One common analytic strategy is to
rework
the nature/culture metaphor in terms of the simple and the
complex: African
music is simple, European music is complex. There is an
obvious evolutionary
claim here: European music, it is implied, was once simple
too—that's what
we mean by "folk music." Tims, although this argument may not
be biologi-
cally racist (blacks as "naturally" more rhythmic than whites), it
remains
historically racist: African cultures, it seems, haven't yet
"advanced" to the
European level. In short, the association of the rhythmic with
the primitive

is retained: simple music is music driven by rhythmic rules;
music becomes
"complex" when it is concerned with melodic and harmonic
structure.
Lawrence Levine notes a particularly lucid statement of the
combined
musical and social assumptions of this attitude in a 1918 issue
of the New
Orleans Times-Picayune. There were, the paper suggested,
"many mansions
in the houses of the muses." There was the "great assembly hall
of melody,"
where "most of us take our seats." There were the "inner
sanctums of
harmony" where a lesser number enjoyed "truly great music."
Finally, there
was, "down in the basement, a kind of servants' hall of rhythm.
It is there we
hear the hum of the Indian dance, the throb of the Oriental
tambourines and ,
kettledrums, the clatter of the clogs, the click of Slavic heels,
the thumpty-
tumpty of the negro banjo, and, in fact, the native dances of the
world."31
The different pleasures offered by the musically "simple" and
the musi-
cally "complex" are, then, still being related to differences
between body and
mind. Leonard Meyer suggests that "the differentia between art
music and ;

primitive music lies in speed of tendency gratification. The
primitive seeks
almost immediate gratification for his tendencies whether these
be biological
or musical." Meyer's definition of "primitive" here refers to
music that is "dull
syntactically" rather than to music "produced by non-literate
peoples," but it
is difficult not to read the familiar equation of musical, social,
psychological,
and racial infantility into an assertion like the following:
One aspect of maturity both of the individual and of the culture
within which a style arises consists then in the willingness to
forego
immediate, and perhaps lesser gratification. Understood
generally,
not with reference to any specific musical work, self-imposed
ten-
dency-inhibition and the willingness to bear uncertainty are
indica-
tions of maturity. They are signs, that is, that the animal is
becoming
a man. And this, I take it, is not without relevance to
considerations
of value.32
Musicologists themselves have criticized the simple/complex,
African/
European distinction in two ways. Some accept Meyer's broad
descriptive

terms but reverse his evaluative conclusions—the spontaneous,
human ex-
pression of African communities contrasts positively with the
alienated ra-
tionalism of the European …
273
274
275
276
277
278
03/31/2020

Music and Popular Culture
Ethnomusicology- “Music in Culture”/”Music as Culture”
Themes
● Globalization
○ The birth of popular music
○ Genera overlap and extended through the United States
● Politics of Identity intercept (Race, Class, Gender, etc)
● Appropriation
● Technology (Recording, instrumentation, electronic media,
etc)
What is Popular Music? (the most broadly define)
● Music that is commercially produced for profit
● The album of that band that only you’ve heard of
● Music that is mainstream and not underground
● Music that is underground
● Pop music
Critical Media Literacy
● One of the key goal of this course
● To better to have the tools to think critically on media
Miley Cyrus - We Can’t Stop
● Originally: kids celebrity actress/ country music
star(performer)
● Fashioning persona, examining persona

● Sexuality is really the key aspect of expressing this change
Stefan Anderson - We Can’t Stop (Professor’s old roommate)
● How does instrumentation and vocal change?
● How does gender change how we interpret? Is sexuality
presented the same way?
● Changes his vocal to fit his own characters
04/02/2020
Tin Pan Alley
● The name of an industry, a sheet music production industry
from the late 1800s to the
early 1900s
● A place, like Hollywood
● The product of the industrial age and embodies the ethos of
capitalism as well
Modernization and Industrialization
● Popular culture (and music) originates with mass production
○ Because the mass production, the product become cheaper so
that the middle
class could afford them
● Create more space for leisure time
● Get more money to consume stuff

Creation of Tin Pan Alley
● Philosophy - music as industry
● Arrange pre-existing songs
● Write music as well
● All written for sale as sheet music
● Personal expression is not the point, the main purpose is to
sale for money
● The song writer’s name was virtually nameless
● A member of Tin Pan Alley wrote: “To those who believed
that songs were inspired by
their writers’ real experiences, ‘this is just not so’. ‘The public
thinks there is a romance in
songwriting, but there isn’t.’ Rather than following some inner
muse, songwriters’
creations were simply reactive, derived from and bound to the
tastes and moods of
consumers.”
Charles Harris “After the Ball”
● He condenses the verse of the song
● Reducing the verses
● Really emphasize, sometimes slows down a little bit and have
a pause
Irving Berlin’s 9(8) Rules for Writing a Successful Popular
Song
What were these songwriters trying to do in order to make
popular music for Tin Pan Alley
1. The melody must musically be within the range of the

average voice of the average
public singer
2. The title, which must be simple and easily remembered, must
be “planted” effectively
into the song
3. The ideas and the wording must be appropriate for either a
male or a female singer …
so that both sexes will want to sing it
a. Narrowing down your market, wanted to sale to every gender
4. The song should contain “heart interest” even if it is a comic
song
5. The song must be original … success is not achieved by
trying to imitate the general
idea of the great song hit of the moment
6. Your lyric must have to do with ideas, emotions, or objects
known to everyone
7. Your song must be perfectly simple
8. The songwriter must look upon his work as a business
(financially successful)
Song Qualities
● Emphasis on simplicity and universality
● Marketed to middle class, men and women
● Minimized verses
● Emphasis on catchy chorus
● Catchy, memorable song title

Advertising
● Traveling around and play music everywhere
● Plugging: when you play songs in public spaces and make
people hear it
● Pluggers play music to potential customers
Jewish and African American Songwriters
● Uneven power and control
● Jewish
○ expansion of opportunity for economic advancement
○ Tin Pan Alley is a way for Jewish to show very largely
antisymmetric to American
society
● African American
○ a way for them to assert humanity
○ downside: they wrote songs to reinforce racist stereotypes
○ Tin Pan Alley does not want them to write songs to reflect
their inner thoughts
and feelings
Irving Berlin, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911)
● Very easy to remember, like a earworm cannot get rid off
● Calling you to participate with it
Advent of Performerless Music
● Player Piano

○ Mechanism piano: more like furniture rather than an
instrument
● Phonograph留声机
○ Access to High Art for Middle Class
Sound Recordings as a Commodity
● Live versus Mediated Performance
○ Media: record, video, photograph
● New ways in which to experience music
Lady Gaga
● Applause
● Media:
○ big LED screens in the back for those people who cannot see
here
○ Vocals are dub, pre-recorded
● Live:
○ Live and Media mix together
04/07/2020
The Blues
● Delta Bule: developed in the early 1900s
● Classic Bule (Bessie Smith): become popular in the 1920s

● Urban Blue / electric Blue: in the 40s and the 50s
● The Blues as this kind of antithesis to Tin Pan Alley in a lot
of ways, like
anti-main streams
● Blues can express oneself freely ,and sexuality and romantic
relationship
Movie: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
● A Blues musician Tommy Jonston
● Sale the soul
Song: Cream Crossroads
● Rock music and blue and Jazz
● AAB format: 12 bar blues
Historical Context
● Emancipation 1865
○ free of the African American from the Southern states
● Northern Migration
○ Large working class segregation
● Work after Slavery
○ Same agricultural actions during and after the slavery
○ Roads construction, timber
○ A new legal form of slavery

Emergence of the Blues (early 1900s)
● Emerging in places in the South
● Female blues
Fascination with the “Other”
● Academic fascination by the white scholars
Delta Blues
● Huddie “Leadbelly” Leadbetter, “Where Did You Sleep Last
Night” (1944)
○ Not only trying to control the woman who does not love him
but also a
dark response of lack of control
○ The difficulties of relationship and the darkness of human
nature
● “The principal theme of the country blues, and probably all
blues, is the sexual
relationship. Almost all other themes, leaving town, train rides,
work trouble,
general dissatisfaction sooner or later reverts to the central
concern. Most
frequently the core of the relationship is seen as inherently
unstable, transient,
but with infinite scope for pleasure and exultation in success, or
pain and torment
in failure. This gives the blues its tension and ambiguity,

dealing simultaneously
with togetherness and loneliness, communion and isolation,
physical joy and
emotional anguish(Oakley 1972, 55)
● Relationships
● Sexuality
● Work
● Transience
Delta Blue Musical Features
● Solo Performer
● Guitar
● Gendered (Male)
● AAB Lyric Structure
● 12 Bar Chord Structure
Classic Blues
● Bessie Smith, “I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama” (1928)
● Strong female performance in the classic blue
Classic Blues as the Anti-Mainstream
● Deviated from white/mainstream subject matter
● Complicates notions of love/relationships such as domestic
abuse, extramarital
relationships
● Female Empowerment
● Expression of Female Sexuality
● Women portrayed as strong and independent

Music Differences
● Classic blue is more gendered as female
● Delta blue is more gendered as male
● More Instrumentation (horns, pianos, etc.)
● Gendered (Female)
Urban Blues
Historical Context
● Urban Migration
● Venues: Rent Parties and Clubs
Muddy Waters, “Hoochie Coochie Man” (1954)
Musical Differences
● Instrumentation changes: use of slide guitar, harmonica, and
piano
● Amplification
04/09/2020
Folk (and Protest) - 1930s
Story telling

Political genre because it represents the people
1930’s and 40’s - Popularization of Folk
● Scholarly interest
● Alan Lomax
● The Seeger Family
● Heritage/Nationalism
Searching for “Authentic” Folk
● Authorless
● Aurally transmitted
● Uncommodifies
● It was “evaluated according to concepts of unchanging
musical truth”
● Implied a static concept of folk music
● The music was simple
Greenwich Village, NYC
● Co-opting folk by the middle class
● Woodie Guthrie
● Pete Seeger
Politically Motivated
● Peace
● Socialism
● Protests about class and capitalism
● Workers Union
● Anti-Racism

Woodie Guthrie, “So Long It’s Been Good to Know You”
(1935)
● Protest song
● Dust Ball: over farming, depression, no food, no money,
looking for work
● Trying to humanize the spirit, showing the result of
capitalism, and the suffer of
people
● Instead of sounds angry, he shows the sad atmosphere in his
song
Changing Notions of “Authenticity”
● Differences:
○ Sung by middle class artist
○ Writing original music
○ Emphasized politics rather than American heritage
● Similarities
○ Anti-Commercial
○ Music of the People
○ Orally Learned
The 60’s Folk Revival
● The first time of commercial boom
● Popularity in the 50s and 60s
● Putting on the radio and get new attractions

The Kingston Trio, “Tom Dooley” (1958)
● Get inspiration from the folk music on the radio
● Folk musician started to repackaging themself
● Highly professionalized vocal, repackaging the old song to a
new one
● More commercial
Revival Beginning - non-political
● Groups were clean cut/middle class
● Often artists came from urban areas
● Political messages removed
● Based off of folk tunes/styles
● (as a result), Commercially successful
Re-incorporation of Protest in Folk Genre (Civil Rights)
● In the mid 60s
Bob Dylan, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” (1965)
● Used of storytelling
● “Holds you tears, now is not the time for your tears”
● Feel the political position and perspective
● What is music different than essay
Negotiating Folk to also be Popular
● “The new urban audiences attracted to folk music may not
have been as nuanced in

their tastes as the early collectors or as purist performers would
have them be, but
their numbers and their enthusiasm took the music world by
surprise, catapulting
Joan Baez with guitar and bare feet to the cover of Time in
November 1962. Bob
Dylan was ‘the voice of his generation’. This success was
paradoxical; could a folk
singer become a star? - Dunaway and Beer
● The new folk musics were more commercially made rather
than the old musics that
were expressing oneself on political problems
60’s - Changing Notions of “Authentic” Folk
● Political Orientation / Protest
● Sincerity Factor, but not coming from direct experience
● Complex relationship with folk/fame
● Altered/Cleaner sound (less gritty)
● Added instrumentation (drums, bass)
○ Higher quality and professionalization
Modern Folk Revival - 2000s, mid 2000s
The Decemberists, “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” (2005)
● Not the same political orientation as before that were lie on
civil rights

04/14/2020
Country Music (1920’s to 1960’s)
● Country music is coded as a white genre, but in fact it is very
a product of the
African American fluence
● Contradiction of country behavior
● Authentic, centiment, real life
The Blues Brother, “Stand By Your Man”
● How they portraying people from the South
● Throwing bottles to show their likes - uncivilized and wild
Tammy Wynette, “Stand By Your Man” (1968)

Origins of Country - Old Time or “Hillbilly” Music
● Forces that “whitewash” the tradition
○ Hillbilly category is racialized as white by recording
industry“ (Not only
white but also poor, to reflect the backwater culture)
○ America’s fiddle tradition is being Anglicized
○ Appropriation of Banjo by Whites, the Banjo was originally
played by the
African American
Bluegrass VS. Country & Western
● The subtitle of Hillbilly is Country & Western and Bluegrass
● Bluegrass: trying to make this genre different from Hillbilly
making people to
respect Bluegrass more than the Hillbilly music
The Beverly Hillbillies Opening and Closing Theme 1962 -
1971
Historical Backdrop
● Shifting population and settlement due to the dust ball
● Depression and agriculture issue from the dust ball causing
the migration
● People moving towards a more industrial area
● A lot of rural people come to the city, people from the city
starting seeing different
on those who just move to the city
● Stereotype and stigma

● Make a shared culture through migrate
● 1940s: Hillbillies became from region styles to national styles
● Country music become the umbrella genre instead of Hillbilly
Hank Williams, “Move it On Over” (1947), “I’m So Lonesome I
Could Cry” (1949)
● A big shift of style here
● A confluence of style
● Issues of racism
● He is in fact the 12 Bar blues that influenced by the African
American to Country
music
By the 1940’s - Development of Country Style and Ideology
● Changing Musical Style (slide guitar, double stops on fiddle)
● Content is highly personal, showing the imperfection of the
individual's playing
● Sheds the Hillbilly image
● African American influence on the development of country
music but it is only
associate with the white working class
● Affiliated with the White working class
Outsider Perceptions of Country by the (usually) Northern
Middle Class
● To Middle Class and Northerners, Country music represented

a rural and
backward past during a time in which modernity and progress
were valued
○ Reject Rock N Roll
● Scholarly interest in folk music fades
○ Country music started to change into an American music
● Proponents of Country Music argue for its value as national
heritage
The Louvin Brothers, “My Baby’s Gone” (1959)
50’s into the 60’s - The Nashville Sound
● Smoother Sound (ex: the Louvin Brothers)
● Backing Vocals
● String Arrangements (increasing string arrangements)
● Polished Singing
● -> moving towards a “pop” aesthetic
Complicating Stereotypes
● Rural -> Attracting urban followers
● Conservative -> Performers often unable to live up to the
content of their music
● Poor -> Audience is very often blue collar-middle class
● White - > Heavy African American influence within AND
performance of country
music

Ray Charles, “I Can’t Stop Loving You” (1962)
● It really doesn't fall in a particular genre of music
● Blues and Jazz influences
● Pain from loss
● “You take country music, you take black music, you got the
same goddamn thing
exactly.” - Ray Charles
● … “The boundaries (between country and black music) were
vast borderlands of
shared traditions rather than clearly demarcated lines - Diane
Pecknold

04/16/2020
Rock N Roll
● Developed out of the Blues
● Explosion of popularity
(political and social climate) 1950’s: Postwar Context
● Upsides vs. Downsides
○ Upsides
○ Downsides
● Cultural shifts, expanding the whites moving from rural to
urban
● “Leave It To Beaver”
Pre-Rock n Roll → Rhythm and Blues
● Primary characteristics of Rhythm and Blues
○ Strong rhythm section
○ Utilizes the blues style (not just the chord structure)
○ Composed of Jazz ensemble instrumentation (drum, bass,
piano)

The change of Blues to Rock n Roll
Muddy Waters, “Got My Mojo Workin’”
Chuck Berry, “Maybellene” (1955)
● Aggressive, loud guitar work
● Physical movement
Chuck Berry’s Influence
● Guitar becomes central instrument
● Guitar technique is characterized by descending pentatonic
double stops
● Berry adopts vocal technique from the R&B “shouters”
Rock n Roll’s Content
● Influenced by rhythm and blues
● COntent moves away from pop’s emphasis on “universal”
emotions
● Adopted a more realist perspective → grittier
● Women presented as the object of desire
● As a result,Rock is a predominantly masculine genre
Emergence of Rockabilly as a Subgenre of Rock N Roll
Bill Haley and his Comets, “Rock Around the Clock” (1955)
● White washed

● Transform the music accessible for whites
White Rockers into the Mainstream
Elvis Presley, “Ready Teddy” (1956)
● Use a lot of African American aspect into this song
Constructing the Elvis Persona
● Made him into a “bad boy” (lower class, the bad side of the
town)
● Sexualization of physical performance
● Lower Class, from “other side of the tracks”
● Created into a pop culture icon (popularity extends past the
music and into
movies, tv, etc)
● Embodiment of the American Dream narrative
Analyzing the Adult Backlash Against Rock N Roll
● Reflects rift in values between youths and the generation of
their parents
● Discomfort with Rock’s connection to Southern and African
American roots
● Challenges conservative notions of respectability
● Negative association of Rock with the body → “primitive
粗糙的” and inducing bad
(sexual) behavior

04/21/2020
Teen Idols, Doo Wop, and Girl Groups
● Extremely santise
Pat Boone Tutti Frutti -- Little Richard
The “Death of Rock n Roll”
● Music desexualized
● Cleaned up lyrics
● Return to traditional white, middle-class values
Ricky Nelson, “Young World“ （1962）
Dick Clark and American Bandstand
● On Civil Rights:
○ Integrationist?

■ Includes African American artists
■ Excludes African American “extras”
Silhouettes -- Get A Jobs
Women in the 60’s: Doo Wop and Girl Groups
● Marketed for teenagers
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “Shop Around” (1960)
● Gender is talked about the Pat Boone
● Presents a similar ethos
Doo Wop
● Performed by African American
● Characterized by Gospel influences, quartet vocal harmonies,
and scat
● Marketed for teens
● Denotes the flexibility and agency that men had to meet and
discard women
The Shirelles, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” (1961)
Negotiating Gender
Girl Groups
● Followed Doo Wop groups in style
● Attempted to ‘assimilate’ into mainstream popular American
culture

● Offer a conservative appearance and middle-class background
● Relatable topics to a bi-racial audience (young love, parents,
etc)
● Dealing with narrow spectrum respectability
● Males: romantic mobility, proactive
● Females: have a voice to express their situation, BUT reflects
passivity, lack of
agency
Phil Spector (and the Ronettes)
● Phil Spector - produced the Ronettes’ albums
● Developed the “Wall of Sound”
● The singer is perceived as a “worker” not as an “artist”
04/23/2020
Soul
● The ways soul changes its way in the early 50s to the late 70s
● Black power movement
● Black power became mainstream
Integration (1955-1965)
Stevie Wonder, “Fingertips” (1963)
Berry Gordy and Motown
● The Motown Method:
○ Standardized Songwriting

○ Funk Brother Rhythm Section (in-house band)
○ Quality Control
○ Selective Promotion
○ Family Atmosphere
The Motown Sound
An upbeat, often pop-influenced style of rhythm and blues
associated with the city of
Detroit and with numerous black vocalists and vocal groups
since the 1950s and
characterized by compact, danceable arrangements.
● Upbeat and danceable rhythms
● Harmonies derived from Gospel
● Horn Section
● Conservative and Non-Threatening Values
Sam Cook, “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1963)
Characteristics of Soul During Integration
● Music: upbeat, unintimidating, conservative lyrical content
● Often played down the stark differences in Blck/White
socioeconomic
circumstances
● The goal was to appeal to White tastes while maintaining an
African American
style
Black Power (1965 - 1971)
● Voting riots

● Watts Rights - African American / drunk driving
● Civil rights
Syl Johson, “Is It Because I’m Balck” (1970)
● Pain and depression
● Anger and frustration is not hidden but foregrounded
Aretha Franklin, “Think” (1968)
● Strong female presentation
Characteristics of Black Power Soul
● Topically more assertive
● Grittier, rawer sound
● Often dealing explicitly with issues of race and inequality
● Strong female roles and agency
Return to Normalcy (1971-79)
Al Green, “Let’s Stay Together” (1972)
Return to Normalcy (Early 1970’s )
● Civil Rights themes on decline
● Music produced in Philadelphia
● Much softer sound

● Different expressive style of masculinity
● Themes revolving around love, relationships, and sexuality
04/28/2020
The British Invasion
● The Beatles and Rolling Stones
● Similar to Elvis, similar to rock and blues
England: Mods and Rockers
● Early 60s
● Rockers: take a lot of inspiration from Rock and Roll in the
United States so they
bear a lot of physical stylish stuff (the outfits and motorcycles)
● Mods: think themselves more stylish, buying expensive
clothes
● Both: seen as deviates kids to the public’s fear in England
● Two groups have conflicts with each other
● While race is sort of a dominant trend of discourse that is the
theme in the United
States; class in winds of being a more dominant theme of
discourse in the United
Kingdom, England.
Pre-America
● Doing African American Music, they were interested the
music from the United

States
● Influenced by Motown and Watter
The Beatles, “Roll Over Beethoven” (1963)
● Throwing Rock style and more on the Mods style (Hair and
clothes style)
● One of the first boy band that each one have their own
characteristic
Marketing the Beatles
● Discovered by Brian Epstein, who becomes Beatles’ manager
● Presented as whole some, middle-class entertainment
● Emphasis on wittiness and working class origins
● Promotions emphasized the differing personalities of each
band member
● Changed their look from Rocker to Mod
● Capturing American’s interest on music
Explaining Beatle Mania
● Teens needed to have a good time as a relief from the
anxieties of Cold War
tensions (mortal fear)
○ The Beatles help to relieve tension
● Growing affluence of teenagers in a consumer society
○ By the 60s there is a little bit more leisure time for teenagers,

they have a
little more extra to spend so they bought music
● Ritual in which alternate behavior is allowed
● Another rebellion of youth against their elders
● Success of the Beatles relieves the national depression caused
by the
assassination of JFK
● Beatles shattered the “stale, empty” pop formulas that were
there before (girl
groups, teen idols)
Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil” (1968)
● They are marketing for a whole different image
● Taking shirt off
Differing Songwriting Approach
● Believed they could not rely on covers of American tunes as
the Beatles did
○ Had to write their own music
● Closer tied to the blues and r&b than the Beatles were
● Much mure explicitly secxual in content
● Don’t look like mods, but the content spoke to what the mode
culture was all
about (marginalization / unhappiness)
Different Image
● No suits, or fancy haircuts

● Went to University / Art School
● Marketed specifically counter to the Beatles
○ “Bad boys”
The Who, “My Generation” (1965)
● Dadaism: nothing mean anything, does not care the meanings
● Breaking instruments
Deviating from the Beatles
● Inserted “mod” ideologies
● Violence / Aggression in performance
● Music built around expression of identity and self-exploration
● Music leans toward performance
04/30/2020
Psychedelic Counterculture
(Northern California)
● Background:
○ Mid 60s
○ Civil rights movement
○ Baby boomer
Politics of the Counterculture
● Anti-war

● Anti-racism
● Protest oriented
● Critical of the Government
● Increasingly liberal-minded (interested in Enlightenment)
● Sexual freedom
Country Joe and the Fish, “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag”
(1965)
● Lyrics: singing from the characteristics of blindly nationalist
who support the war
and people who even want to go to war
● Blindly enthusiastic supporting the United States at their own
expense, they don’t
even know why they do this
San Francisco: The Center of the Counterculture
● In the 60s cheap rent and safe neighborhood make it a nice
place to be the
center
● Hippy: drugs, LSD, marywanna / these drugs will help to
increase the creativity
and Enlightenment
The Psychedelic Experience, Timothy Leary
● The personal journey that is associated with LSD
Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit” (1967)

● Smokey mood
● Visual image
Acid Rock
● Influenced by drug culture of San Fran
● Free Form - not “hit single” format
● Blues and Folk Influence
● Heavy guitar distortion
● Long solos
● Lyrics are often more socially relevant
Janis Joplin and the Holding Company, “Ball and Chain” (1967)
● Heavy blues in the music
Importance of Festivals
● Bring together musically / politically like-minded individuals
● (Often white, middle-class)
● Festival acts as ritual, reinforcing collective identity
● Inversion of everyday societal rules
Woodstock (1969)
Jimi Hendrix, “The Star Spangled Banner” (1969)
Significance of Woodstock

● Symbolic culmination of the hippie counterculture
● Reinforced strong collective bonds
● Defined by potentiality (belief that they could change the
current social / political
climate)
● Provided a model for music industry to capitalize …
Final Paper Instruction
This is an opportunity for you to take a critical look at the latest
artists, music genres, or club scenes that excite your interests.
Your essay research may include fieldwork, interviews with
musicians and their fans, or draw from current periodical
literature such as Billboard, Rolling Stone, and many others.
In this essay you are writing a research paper within the context
of the history and the issues that we have covered in this
course. Those issues include appropriation, politics of identity
(race, class, gender, age, etc.), globalization, and technology.
Therefore, a significant portion of your research will be the
course readings, lectures, sections and listening assignments.
You must cite at least one source from the course reading
and two additional outside academic sources. I also encourage
you to use additional online media such as YouTube, Rolling
Stone, and any other source of popular culture you can think of.
You may cite information presented in lectures and discussion
sections if you find it pertinent to your paper. In total, you
should cite at least six sources.You must include a References
Cited list (bibliography) at the end of your essay.
Your paper must have a clear topic and thesis statement. Your
paper must contain descriptive, cultural, historical detail. Your
paper must also contain cogent, thoughtful analysis. If you
choose to write about music or musicians that are covered
specifically in the lectures, readings or sections, you must be

sure to go beyond the details presented in the course.
Some questions you might address include: Does this music or
artist(s) repeat any trend(s) we have covered in this course?
What issues addressed in this course apply to this music or
artist(s) in some way and how? What does it have in common
with other genres of music we have studied—Tin Pan Alley,
minstrelsy, rhythm & blues, rock ‘n’ roll, protest music,
subculture or subcultural scenes, heavy metal, etc.?
Make sure to give your essay a sensible title, keep your writing
focused, support yourself with examples, and communicate your
ideas clearly and effectively. Writing essentials like spelling,
grammar, organization and style are of utmost importance.
Length: 1200 words (not including the title or the References
Cited list), double spaced.

183184185186187188

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