Writers should beware of couching the contemporary music scene in the unwelcoming language of their old classrooms.
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Science Fiction writer and frequent Hawkwind collabo- rator Michael Moorcock once said of the band’s pio- neering use of electronics, “I was proud that we were the only people who didn’t say that we were influenced by Stockhausen”. It’s a deliberately perverse statement on the prog-rock era, reflecting what the band thought of as being “truly experimental” compared with other acts. The music of prog giants like Yes and ELP seemed designed to give rock music a greater intellectual re- spectability, as if one too many arguments over the fam- ily hi-fi had convinced them that it was time to bring out the cerebral side of this popular “noise”. Given that a large number of prog’s leading lights had emerged from the British public school system, it’s unsurprising that for many this involved the incorporation of motifs and techniques from the classical world, and it doesn’t always go as wrong as listening to ELP’s cover of “Je- rusalem” might lead you to believe. For King Crimson, it culminated in their early 80s incarnation, a conscious attempt to marry Steve Reich’s phasing techniques with the emergent new wave aesthetic, resulting in some of
their best and arguably their most accessible material. In Germany, krautrock pioneers like Can paid close at- tention to Stockhausen’s work in particular (two mem- bers of Can actually studied with him), seeing in it an opportunity to start afresh, creating a modern cultural identity for Germany post-World War Two. Moorcock, however, was clearly drawn to Hawkwind’s anarchic im- age as a band trying to break free from musical tradi- tions and hierarchies, an aesthetic enthusiastically taken up by the punks that eventually usurped prog. They saw the desire of some bands to be taken seriously as a stuffy attitude that endorsed the traditional distinction between highbrow and popular art, thus representing the real enemy of radical or experimental music – con- servatism in the guise of progress.
With some crying “pretentious!” and others responding “progressive!”, it seems unlikely that the tug of war over the desirability of one’s music being seen as “clever” will draw to a close any time soon. The impulse to back up rock music’s academic credentials is still strong, no more so than in the oft-derided but ever popular indie go-to
pitchfork.com, especially when reviewing a big gun like Tyondai Braxton: “Braxton has a conservatory background and, maybe more importantly, a well-thumbed copy of The Rest
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Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. Indeed, echoes of that book-- a suggestive survey of modern classical music by storied New Yorker critic Alex Ross-- linger in scores that evoke the studiousness and sonic spread of composers like Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Mes- siaen, György Ligeti, and many others who addressed both the state of the world and the very idea of “music” at its semiotic core.”
It would be strange to think that the son of a jazz leg- end, with years of conservatory education behind him, would need a bestselling book to inform him of devel- opments in classical music over the past century. It’s a crude name drop, and since half the album featured a nineteen-piece orchestra, it certainly isn’t necessary to facilitate understandable comparisons with the compos- ers named. It is there to support the perception of “stu- diousness” that runs through the review. Both producer and listener are being presented as well-read, creating an aura of sophistication around the music that extends to the reader by association. In this way it seems remi-
It was an attitude I was entirely familiar with from my own school days. It’s a common assumption that pop music is simple, superficial and therefore unsuitable for study, an attitude that only entrenches teenagers’ tribal ideas of “us” and “them” music, and thus does much to damage open-minded listening by pupils. There are, of course, a great number of inspirational and support- ive music teachers who are keen to harness teenagers’ natural enthusiasm for music, but it remains one of the few subjects where a student’s personal interest can commonly be ignored. Indie has often been the refuge of music dorks who, proud of their specialist knowledge and esoteric mixes, find in it a space outside the class- room where an analytical obsession with music can be indulged without hindrance. In an environment crowded with self-proclaimed ex- perts it’s perhaps inevitable that they shift focus onto the more quantifiable elements of music, such as theo- retical complexity, conceptual depth or technical skill, to bolster the perceived validity of their opinions, and thus their authority on the subject. However, this gives
Music remains one of the few subjects where a student’s personal interest can common- ly be ignored.
niscent of people’s identification with “Intelligent Dance Music”, but the shift in emphasis from intelligence to studiousness is a dubious one. IDM was always a rather queasy, smug title, but implicit in this review’s bookish tone is the idea that enjoyment of certain types of mu- sic necessarily involves perception of the piece’s formal characteristics; in other words it would seem to require not just intelligence, but what we traditionally think of as a good education. In my first school job, I worked with a Head of Music who was very dismissive of any music beyond the clas- sical canon. Particularly frustrating was her ill-informed sobriquet for jazz music, “bubble and squeak”, as if she remained stubbornly unaware of music theory’s ap- plications beyond the narrow remit of her own tastes.
the awkward impression to newcomers that a lot of in- formation is needed to “get it” – good art of any stripe should be able to survive without crib notes and authori- tative readings to fall back on, and the listener should feel permitted to do so. In attempting to create an at- mosphere of exclusivity critics can instead produce an environment uncondusive to genuine appraisal; the al- legory of the Emperor’s New Clothes has lost none of its potency over the years. For one thing, it easily leaves the listener in a cycle of ever more inaccessible work, the kind of masochistic oneupmanship that tends to burn out quickly, one hopes – for what music fan could truly subsist on such a diet? This isn’t just a question of permitting “guilty pleasures”; where would art-rock favourites The Velvet Underground be without their love of sugary pop and droning, cathartic noise?
Nicholas Hunt
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