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Matthew C. Saunders Review of
Analyzing Popular Music, Allan F. Moore, ed. As appeared in Music
Educators Journal 91, September 2004 All Rights Reserved Analyzing
Popular Music is a collection of eleven essays by British, American and Canadian
academics which expounds and examines a postmodern view of music as a whole
and popular music in particular. Works
examined in this volume range from well-known to obscure and include examples
of a variety of styles from the last forty years. The eleven authors support their ideas with
works ranging from television and film scores, rap, new-wave rock and heavy
metal, to less well-known styles such as house and Arabesk. Noticeably absent is any discussion of
jazz, which is held to be outside the purview of popular music studies. A highlight of this volume is
Robert Walser’s essay, “Popular music analysis: ten apothegms and four
instances,” which calls on popular music scholars to retain a music-oriented
approach to popular music analysis in the face of criticism from poststructuralist
social theorists. Several of the more
technical topics addressed in this volume spring directly from the field of
cultural studies and social theory – specifically, Adam Krims’ call to move
beyond the influence of Theodor Adorno in Marxist music analysis and Martin
Stokes’ critique of ethnomusicology as a valid approach to popular
music. Despite an academic tone, the
overall message of the book is clear – if one will dig deeply into popular
music, there is much to be learned about the human heart, about how music
creates meaning and about how that meaning is transformed by the mere act of
listening and the circumstances in which this act takes place. Regardless of which specific
examples are set forth, the “text” in question when we study music is not, as
most musicians are trained to assume, the written or recorded version of the
music. Rather, the text of a musical
work is continually redefined by the perceptions and experiences of
listeners. In our postmodern society,
the academic view of music is more outdated than ever. Consumers are at once free to choose any
music they like, yet are bombarded with music chosen by other people; artists
can produce music more cheaply than ever, yet being heard by more than a few
people is nearly impossible. Music
education must adapt to the reality of our musical world: life has become a continuous listening
experience and our students must be prepared to deal not with a fixed canon
of works by “great composers,” but with the personal canons built and revised
as individuals encounter (or re-encounter) music. We can reinvigorate our work only by
abandoning our nineteenth-century conceptions of “canon” and “great
composer.” This book is useful less for
its ability to shed light on musical works than for the kernels of ideas and
approaches contained within. Each
contributor to this collection brings a unique analytical approach which blends
text and context in varying amounts, always pointing toward musical meaning,
and there lies the usefulness of this volume. |
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