Philosophy Of Popular Music - Part I
This article is the first of a series in which I will try to relate the human condition to
popular culture and in particular modern music. Music can be one of the most important things in
a person's life, generally below sex and love. Music is ideal to document changes and movements
in society, and is so powerful that sometimes society changes because of a musical uprising.
Society however consists of individuals, and each person has a unique musical taste applicable
to them and them only. Why is music so interesting to us? Why is music so important to us? I
believe that it is because it has the ability to explain who we are and why we are here.
Music can be the soundtrack to one's life, heightening and focussing our feelings at the
time. We try to pretend that life has meaning by engrossing ourselves in our frankly mundane and
shallow lives, confusing genetic reflexes with emotion. The love of your life has dumped you:
how awful! You feel sick to the stomach, you can't breathe properly, how can you go on without
him/her! Rats! Fiddlesticks! You now have nothing to help you perpetuate your genetic template
and therefore you will fade to obscurity for evermore. Your life is even more meaningless than
it was already.
We drink, we take drugs, we have fun, all to stop us thinking; why am I here? Who am I?
What the fuck is going on? We have been cursed with self-reflexivity and the only cure is music,
sweet soul music.
I believe my purpose on earth is to listen to Higher Than The Sun, Brown Paper
Bag, Gold Soundz and Dark + Long.
Certain bands, certain tracks, certain chord changes and the discovery of something new and
exquisite enable us to go on living and finding meaning where there should be nothing but
monotony and silence.
This dependence on music to legitimize one's life should lead the more introspective of us
to ask why music does this to us.
Music is a beautifully vague thing and difficult to describe. Easiest to understand is the
description that it is not non-music. Non-music we think is traffic noise, a person talking,
fingernails on a blackboard, kettles boiling and so on. There are of course grey areas, for
example John Cage's use of silence, sound collages, Lou Reed's feedback and intentional atonal
musics.
In traditionally defined music there are, I suppose, a succession of notes which are
pleasing to the ear. These key changes could be seen to be rooted in natural music (as opposed
to artificial man made music) such as birdsong and the rustling of leaves. It could be said that
we are identifying these natural noises when we hear music, subconsciously reminding us of our
primevial state. Others, for example those who believe in the expressionist theory of art, think
that `beauty in music depends upon the accurate representation of the emotions of the creator'.
This means that great music is an expression of the composer's soul, which therefore allows the
listener to empathize. As well as feeling what the composer feels, this music allows us to feel
our own emotions, even though they may differ from the creator's. This is due to the ambiguity
of music and the way it is perceived through ears and brains which have been exposed to
different experiences.
However, anti-expressionists such as Hanslick and Gurney believe that music `reproduces the
dynamic motions associated with the corresponding mental states'. In effect, a certain piece of
music sounds like an emotion. Buzzy guitars, lively drumming and swooping vocals equates to
happiness. Slow languishing single string plucks, no drums and a mumbling vocal equates to
sadness, and so on.
In contrary to everybody else, Igor Stravinsky believed that music expresses nothing at all.
Come to think of it, I've only ever heard of one person who didn't like music in entirety. For
whatever reason, music speaks to our souls in an overwhelming way.
We all know the music that keeps us alive, and we all know BAD MUSIC. Generally there are
those who like good music and dislike bad music, and those who like bad music and dislike good
music. The reason why there is bad music and people who like bad music I believe is laziness,
and is my first topic on the human condition and modern music.
by Ben Bailey.