Who knew liberal do-gooding race man Sasha Frere-Jones would have a secret BFF in New York Times conservative goof David Brooks? In an op-ed fretting over the “segmented society,” Brooks references both SFJ’s infamous New Yorker “indie rock ain’t African-American enough” tract from last month and critic Carl Wilson’s class-focused rebuttal, as he points out popular music’s heretofore unnoticed contribution to average folks being “anxious about fragmentation and longing for cohesion,” which is the “driving fear behind the inequality and immigration debates, behind worries of polarization and behind the entire Obama candidacy.” Crap, we were pretty chill when the shocking revelation was that the overeducated indie rock leisure class wasn’t funky enough, but dividing us as Americans and failing to groove? Only Professor Stevie Van Zandt can save us now.
Technology drives some of the fragmentation. Computers allow musicians to produce a broader range of sounds. Top 40 radio no longer serves as the gateway for the listening public. Music industry executives can use market research to divide consumers into narrower and narrower slices.
But other causes flow from the temper of the times. It’s considered inappropriate or even immoral for white musicians to appropriate African-American styles. And there’s the rise of the mass educated class.
People who have built up cultural capital and pride themselves on their superior discernment are naturally going to cultivate ever more obscure musical tastes. I’m not sure they enjoy music more than the throngs who sat around listening to Led Zeppelin, but they can certainly feel more individualistic and special.
I knew there was a reason music sucked these days that we hadn’t happened upon yet, and of course, it’s because people are too smart! Plus they can listen to whatever they want rather than being stuck with the top-down playlists of media conglomerates. Brooks’ solution? The heretical teachings of Bruce Springsteen’s guitarist.
[Steven] Van Zandt has a way to counter all this, at least where music is concerned. He’s drawn up a high school music curriculum that tells American history through music. It would introduce students to Muddy Waters, the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers. He’s trying to use music to motivate and engage students, but most of all, he is trying to establish a canon, a common tradition that reminds students that they are inheritors of a long conversation.
Establish a canon?
The Segmented Society [New York Times]
I think by “establish a canon” Little Steven’s probably just going to bitch and moan about how more people listen to disco than doo-wop nowadays.
It’s considered inappropriate or even immoral for white musicians to appropriate African-American styles.
Um, what? Try telling that to, I dunno, Justin Timberlake, or Beck, or even Blake Friggin’ Lewis.
Good luck gettings schools to accept the radical idea that creative arts are a part of history.
Really, unironically… good luck and godspeed, Little Stevie.
“Top 40 radio no longer serves as the gateway for the listening public.”
Believe me, Top 40′s still pretty indicative of what people listen to in places like Appleton, WI and Atco, NJ.
Establish a canon
Just give give all the little children some Time-Life oldies collections. That oughta learn ‘em what they should be listening to.
[www.timelife.com]
oh and!
…and a lack of vehicles for all-purpose rock is a bad thing? :P Also, you can’t tell me, for instance, that the festival tours aren’t just that — vehicles for all-purpose rock.
I hate these chicken little “OH NOES! the end of homogenous culture will be the end of us all!!1111!11″ pieces. Then again, it’s always a good indicator of when a cultural commentator has completely lost all touch with reality and has absolutely nothing interesting to say anymore about modern culture, other than to complain that it’s not the same as it used to be back in the day, and isn’t that so terrible?
To a certain extent, Brooks is right, though — fragmented culture DOES feed the us vs. them/other mentality. Unfortunately, this piece proves that he’s uh, part of the problem.
@goldsounds: Agreed, but if Top 40 radio offered more diversity in its programming, then those constituencies might have a broader range of taste.
@therichgirlsareweeping: I agree. It seems the writer laments the lack of a powerful and pervasive mass media that affects/dictates popular culture.
Brooks takes all the buzz nuggets of our times (long tail, media fragmentation, top 40 loss of influence, etc.) and basically ends up saying the same shit your crazy uncle says: “there hasn’t been any good music out since 1976.” Brooks comes off just a bit more articulate but equally wrong.
As for this continued allegation of “whitey indie rock” narrative…WTF. As if today’s rock racial demographic is any different than the rock of 1964, 1972, 1984, 1992, 2000….
It sure is convenient to imply soul, funk, doo-wop, and gospel groups of the past fell under the “Rock” umbrella and then decide to do the opposite by omitting contemporary R&B and Hip-Hop – which ironically is exactly the giant pop juggernaut stuff he is apparently missing. Sure, its not stadium worthy and longevity is a question, but far more people know about Rihanna than they do Arcade Fire.
In other words, in terms of the racial points Brooks brought up, he likes his African Americans doing the rock thing and not the hip-hop thing. Anyone else deduce backhanded racism like I did?
i thought it was a great essay, personally. i didnt think his tone was as alarmist as RICHGIRLS made him out to be — he objectively framed the fragmentation of society within the context of music, without ever explicitly stating that we are culturally doomed as a result.
the Long Tail Theory is incredibly interesting and i have seen it manifestiing itself in pretty much every aspect of consumer culture. iPods and OnDemand technology are the most obvious examples of technology that is fueling the trend and creating more fragmentation. and although i dont want to say that this fragmentation is “the end of us all”, i am certainly hesitant to say that it is a good thing or at the least a non-event. the homegenous culture that is evaporating before our eyes seemed to create a common thread among the people (at least that’s what i gather — my life experience has only been a part of this fragmented culture).
todays world of hyper-personalization teaches us to value our own interests over anything else, but i guess this IS the natural result of capitalism…
@Swankster: Yes, total backhanded racism. But that’s pretty endemic of a lot of cultural commentators.
Because there’s tons of revisionist history going on here too. Motown and any pre-rap black music=good, hop-hop=bad. But you can’t make me believe that EVERY bougie mcwhiteypants music critic was a rebel secretly listening to black music back in the day.
Also, I’d like to point out that there are PLENTY of pop stars today who are acutely aware of the shared cultural history of popular music. But more often than not, they’re interested in taking influence from what’s not in the canon. Which, of course, should be shocking to no one. :P
Brooks made a few valid points – our “pop” culture and especially music tastes have definitely been fragmenting for the past two decades, for good and ill. It’s difficult to look back at the 00′s and think of any pop music that “defines” our decade. However, I say that I prefer the fragmentation since it’s a sign that people are creating their own art and culture regardless of the corporate tastemakers. As for Van Zandt, his arguments are short-sighted – musicians are generally performers, not historians, record geeks or anthropologists. If a musician is a historian, etc., great, but most listeners don’t attend concerts or buy records to figure out what obscure or “seminal” artist is being cleverly referenced in the songs. Many listeners tend to be ahistorical, they just want to enjoy the music.
Quick rant (quick because the commenters above have done a good job of picking this apart already):
I’m with gmort in agreeing with Brooks, to a point. I am a not-so-secret lover of the pre-’90s monoculture and mourn its passing. My whole obsession with the charts was born out of an obsession with monoculture — the idea that “the No. 1 single in the USA” might actually represent a consensus of taste in the USA.
The problem with most of my fellow monoculture-mourners — including Brooks and, adorable as he is, Little Steven — is that unlike me, their wish for monoculture disguises a longing to do away with some form of post-’60s music (usually black-invented) they don’t like. In Little Steven’s case, it’s disco; for Brooks and his peers, hip-hop. These monoculture-lovers cover their asses by crying I’m-not-a-racist and pointing to the black-derived music they do love, but it rings hollow against their thinly veiled hatred of some form of post-Reagan music they think Spoiled Everything.
So basically, I’m a lover of disco and hip-hop (and twee indie-rock) and a lover of music progress in general who still wishes we had a monoculture to hold things together.
Who do I blame for this state of affairs? The middle-aged whites who abandoned the monoculture after disco and rap. Not the kids making that music, or the kids who love it. I wish Brooks were nuanced enough to note this distinction more clearly.
@dennisobell: Sorry, I shoulda said “post-Nixon” to encompass disco. But you get the idea.
@dennisobell: Hear, hear.
@therichgirlsareweeping: Oh, but! You do realize that “the No. 1 single in the USA” never did (and never will) actually represent a consensus of taste in the USA? That didn’t just fall apart with the advent of disco (because that seems to be when most people point to the decline of rock…) or hip-hop (what everyone else points to as an indicator of the decline of rock…), you know.
Obviously, technology-facilitated fragmentation makes this all the more obvious — but it was always a sham! I don’t mean to take you to task, but don’t nostalgize something that never really was.
@dennisobell: please expand on these points in the next (or a future) 100 & Single
@therichgirlsareweeping: A consensus of a majority of the USA? No, you’re right, that never was.
But a larger consensus than the one we see nowadays, where the leading single is singable (or rappable, or YouTube-danceable) by less than 5% of the population? Definitely.
The fact is, up until sometime in the ’80s, there really were Top 40 radio stations that played most of the songs actually in the Top 40 (even the R&B songs and the country songs), and these stations often led their markets in audience cume. And on the direct-to-consumer side of the equation, there were No. 1 singles that sold millions of copies nationwide (yes, actual sales — RIAA certs might be inflated, but even pre-SoundScan it’s safe to assume “Billie Jean” went platinum because a couple million people really did pay money for it).
I understand your reaction in the sense that “the good old days” often came burdened with a lot of stuff we’re happy to see gone: not just falsified sales and shady deejay bribes, but more insidious stuff like institutionalized racism (e.g., rapacious label contracts for black artists, etc.). I don’t want my comment above to be read as some kind of nostalgic sunshine-and-rainbows about blacks and whites living in harmony on the radio in some bygone time.
But there’s no getting around it: “choice” is great, and the technology to facilitate it is inevitable. But something is lost (and the charts reflect it) when entertainment is super-served to your gender/age/socioeconomic group and allows you to ignore the rest.
At 23, Hootie and the Blowfish is the closest thing I have to a fond memory of the monoculture. Anything that becomes popular is now just that, something that became popular. I hate the idea that Soulja Boy or Top 40 indicates something about me any more than George W. Bush does. Radio only wants your money anyways, fuck around and find something that deserves your love instead.
As for Van Zandt’s idea, fuck him. We don’t need another generation of American musicians coming up as blues derivative hacks, striving after some impossible-to-recreate 60′s ideal that probably left way more bodies in its wake than anyone acknowledges anyhow. At the very least, having a curriculum for music determined by a living cartoon like Van Zandt seems ridiculous (I somehow doubt that hardcore(for instance) is more than a sidebar in his version of things. That’s to say nothing of the tentacles of the modern lunatic fringe that would sureley be ignored, the indians to Van Zandt’s big rock cowboy if you will.)
Make your own history, work your way through things sideways and backwards as your curiosity dictates. Cannons are the enemy now that information is (for practical purposes) infinite. Great music is made by people willing to dig for electricity and play with open cuts, not people stroking their chins and suffering mullet cheese so they can have historical perspective.
Read Brooks’ defense last week of Ronald “not a bigot” Reagan. Of course racial and economic division of America has nothing to do with the Southern Strategy, racial code words, Reganomics, media consolidation, de-industrialization, globalization, tax breaks for the wealthy, etc.
It was all the fault of disco and rap and iPods. And let’s throw in that indie rock, lest anybody accuse us of racism.
@SuperUnison:
Well put. I imagine the same type of things come up in art school. “Do we stick to the masters? How much of the curriculum should we devote to the avante garde, etc. Interesting stuff though completely irrelevant to this flawed and utterly absurd idea of justifying music education because contemporary artists suck.
Justify music education because of the other million reasons why its a good idea.
David Brooks recently wrote a piece defending Ronald Reagan’s “states rights” speech in Mississippi, and now after defending that ugly race-bating effort he turns around and expresses a desire for musical integration (as long as it doesn’t include hiphop or r’n'b). Who’s he kidding. As for the monoculture, I don’t think James Brown was getting that much pop airplay or mainstream media attention in 1964 while the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. Saying that commercial hits radio was less fragmented in the past then it is now is not saying too much–even if accurate. There’s been fragmentation for a long time. Also, as expressed above, Brooks ignores white artists who are utilizing current African-American originated musical elements–Timberlake, LCD Soundsystem, various white rappers and even a jam band like Galactic are not afraid for political correctness reasons of going where they want musically.
Regarding Dennis O’bell’s idolator posts about how the charts and radio once looked, I see that someone on an ILX thread about that David Brooks article, looked at the Billboard top 5s for 1969 and found little overlap between pop, r’n'b, and country.
Am I the only one who couldn’t isolate a coherent argument from the article? It seemed like he was just blowing off on a bunch of vaguely related topics.
I don’t know how it was back in the day, but as a young man in my prime the music world is about as well set up as it could be, not so much commercially but at least in terms of the actual music that’s there for consumption.
Then again, how can the youth of today respond to such zingers as “there are almost no new groups with [...] the longevity of the Rolling Stones”?