Douglas Wolk, clearheaded, on rockism

This is exactly what happens when singer/songwriter/producer/arranger/instrumentalists such as Todd Rundgren or Stevie Wonder make music.

I just don't believe this!! I'm pretty sure that assuming most of the population of the planet is somehow closed-minded and dumb is a) closed-minded and dumb, b) not true and c) as close to 'rockism' in my definition as anything I've seen on this thread. I often think it's a good thing that "most of the population" doesn't write about music (they criticise it in much more productive ways, like living to it) since writing about music turns people into dicks really fucking fast.

is there such a thing as a rockist as opposed to rockist arguments?

This is a great question too, because I think it relates to Douglas' concern about people getting defensive as soon as they hear the term.

"(they criticise it in much more productive ways, like living to it)"

i don't even know what this means. they live to it? who doesn't?

I do kind of like Rush, Queensryche, Dream Theater and The Mars Volta. That is, there are things about their music that I love and there are things about their music that I strongly dislike. The latter consists of 1. screaming vocals 2. slightly too blues oriented melodies 3. too many loud guitars 4. not enough keyboards and not enough mellow parts.

Considering these four things are the "metal" elements of the styles of these four bands, I have a reason to be sceptical towards prog that has obvious metal elements.

Well, if you don't accept anything that you can't dance too, then you don't accept 90 per cent of all Western music.'

If I am in doubt, there is always Soulseek.

Regarding Opeth and similar, I am not even in doubt. I know a lot of today's metal has prog elements, which is nice. I also know most of today's metal has extremely loud guitars, annoying grinding or screaming vocals, and basically not a lot of good tunes. Which is not quite as nice.

I find this a little irksome actually, Scott. Are people supposed to just do this arbitrarily? If not, then how should they go about it?

If someone sends me something in the mail, I'll listen to it at least a little bit. I also make some attempts to keep up with things I might not be optimistic about so that I don't miss out on things that interest me. Mainly, though, through the years, I have followed the trajectory of my own interests. I don't feel that this is a narrow "comfort zone." And it takes enough of my time that I don't really have the additional time to IMMERSE MYSELF in a bunch of other stuff "in order to learn more about music or even learn more about why I do like what I like." Maybe it's because I studied music in school and had a decent amount of discipline outside of my areas of interest there. But I also feel that I have learned lots about music by following the trajectory of my own interests.

But I still think the comfort-zone argument sucks, A) because I just don't think it's true, who are these people? and B) because it takes an art-music argument about proper aesthetic-critical experiences and generalises it to everyday life (itself part of the trajectory of the aesthetic-critical argument, so perhaps reasonable in its terms, but terms i"m not totally happy with) but also to music that simply doesn't demand or expect that kind of response. (In fact, to a large extent doesn't demand a 'proper' response at all: pop music simply says live with me, take me into your life on your own terms, or don't. This is why it can't be 'damaged' by mechanical reproduction whereas the argument that a symphony designed to be heard in a concert hall is not being 'heard' properly over the radio does have some value). It looks to me like a way of hanging on to the pretensions of the art-tradition (i.e. pretending to have something other than an instrumental / consumerist relationship to music) without asking whether this idea of art was ever / is still possible / as desirable as it claimed to be. That is pretty much my definition of rockism, as I may have mentioned :-)

sure, why not? whenever you feel like it.

As someone who's background is Funk/Disco/Hip-Hop, followed by Jazz/Race Records/non-Dylan:Stones Oldies, I've spent my life defending agsinst rockists, and then having them embrace me and my music on their terms only.

Hearing a panel of critics come around to embracing Public Enemy, but then tell me about how avant-garde it is or how similar to musique concrete it is just tells me that they're still waaaaay off base. It's mostly fucking James Brown loops. The only siren on PE's break through was used in the opening intro record live at a concert that predated production on It Tkaes a Nation of Millions. Yet, the "sirens" always get pointed to. Context is overlooked, and instead, they apply their history to something that already has its own history.

I have spent too long with my constant knee-jerk response of "get over your rock-as-art perspective on ALL music." I'd like to think that eventually my perspective on my own music becomes validated by the people who control the platform.

Thanks Doug!

oh and like half of ITaNoM is built on "The Grunt"?

(likely source of move: attali's NOISE and pe's BRING THE NOISE hit the english-speakin world abt 18 months apart)

(rock and rap are strong rival co-opters of their various pre-histories though: they have both structured their histories via serial ruptures, and have both used the device of looking back towards unspoiled mythical pasts as means to drive off into new terrain)

As I said upthread, the imperative to be open-minded about music is not a moral imperative, but a pragmatic imperative in the service of good, interesting criticism - I don't care what people think about music unless and until they start talking to me about it or fill up space on an online messageboard or newspaper or whatever which I happen to read.

And as you point out Tim we have to be careful not to equate being open-minded with simply listening to lots of different types of music (although I think that can be helpful insofar as it tends to place stress on the more obviously inflexible listening prejudices) - one can listen to a single style of music (or, hell, even a single piece of music) and hear something new and interesting in it each time.

One possible way to think about rockism is that it operates by dint of the "structural exclusion of thought": a discourse wherein certain ways of thinking, certain realisations, are simply not possible, because the entire critical approach to music is structured in such a way that these thoughts are necessarily excluded. And depending on the strength and subtlety and hegemony of the discourse, simply attempting to disprove its tenants by showing evidence to the contrary (ie. exposing the discourse's exponents to music from other styles so they can see how it actually functions and is effective) will not necessarily overcome that, because this evidence is still "read" by a structure of thought and feeling.

A good example of this is the debate re pop stars writing their own lyrics, insofar as rockism has an answer for any real life factual permutation of the issue:
a) if popstar doesn't write his or her own lyrics, he/she is a manufactured robot
b) if popstar does write his or her own lyrics and the lyrics suck, he/she demonstrates that manufactured robots can't be trusted to make art on their own
c) if popstar does write his or her own lyrics and they don't suck, he/she is no longer a manufactured robot, but like Pinnochio has transcended that category and is now a real boy, er, sorry, artist.

Where the strawman rockist falls down here is not so much in their dismissal of pop music - indeed, as long as they apply the rules above there is an entire canon of non-manufactured chart pop the rockist can construct. Rather, it is the insistence that any piece of music will fall into one of the three categories above, this subordination of the music's potential for affectivity to a rather simple set of schematics whose conclusions are at once foregone and banal, which seems to undermine the rockist's claim to being a critic as such.

Rockist pan-genre eclecticism is of course a widespread phenomenon - there is always the "correct" hip hop, dance music, metal, reggae, chart pop etc etc to which the discourse can grant legislative approval.

My favourite model for explaining this is a solar system (and I apologise to anyone who is now thoroughly bored of my use of this metaphor): the sun is "rock", not real actual rock but an imaginary of rock, a set of values which rock should espouse. Around this sun orbit other genres (not real actual other genres but the imaginary of etc. you surely get the picture by now). For the purpose of rockist discourse, these other genres are valuable/visible to the extent that their face is turned to the sun, to receive and reflect back the values which it shoots out into space. These planets rotate on their axes very slowly, such that there are whole sections whose faces are turned away from the imaginary of rock for long stretches, and are thus effectively invisible and/or lifeless (usually not permanently though: see the creeping rockist acceptance of early dancehall).

The added bonus of the solar system model is it also reflects rockism's capacity to establish a heirarchy of genres: each planet receives the sun's light, but some are closer to the sun than others.

The challenge for critics trying to escape rockism is not necessarily to visit each planet, but rather to conceptualise the dark hemisphere, to shed light upon that which the prevailing discourse (in this case rockism) passes by untouched. Chuck's tactic of judging [x] genre in the terms of [y] genre is one way to do this, because it offers perspectives of proximity and visibility quite different from rockist heliocentrism. You can even practice anti-rockism from the perspective of rock's terms of references itself: the "truth" beneath this solar model is that outside of this hegemonising discourse the imaginary of rock is itself merely another planet, with its own dark hemisphere to be investigated. Of course this is what rockism seeks to deny or ignore most vehemently.

Tim: nice way of putting it.

I am SO loving this thread.

Actually, we have it pretty good out here in readership land. We don't need all of you to be generalists; when want to learn about metal, we can read the metal guys, and see through their eyes. Same with any other genre. (Though admittedly it is interesting to get a metal guy's take on something that's not metal, etc.)

Be careful though, young dudes, when you criticize old-school writers for dismissing genres you like. The tendency is for you to return the favor and dismiss out-of-hand the music *they* like (as too genteel, too lyric-oriented, not, well, rockin' enough, too reflective of some perceived canon). You're missing lots of good stuff, just as they are.

Let me add to that. (Part of my reason for not really getting into the meat of this more is my shying away from theoretical language, not because I think it isn't applicable -- it's INCREDIBLY applicable -- but it gives me ghost-of-grad-school hives to use, so I'd rather read it. :-) )

Actually I think there's a distinction between the writing and thinking to possibly be made, but then there's that whole logocentrism question again to be sure.

*thinks how to word this*

I suspect -- I have a *hunch,* let me phrase this carefully -- that there is a potential assumption that much older writing (rockist if you want to use the term) can be seen as dealing in tropes that from a distance come across as too macho, too biased, etc. for Our Lovely Modern World. In otherwards, that it has to be...screened, filtered even. I'm probably grasping at straws here and/or this has been discussed much more clearly above.

But I really like MBV! *hides*

Ha! But I don't miss a trick. And I dig deeper! Ah, but I'm not that young anymore. You'll find out when I finally get off my butt and send you that tape that I promised. But wait, I'm thinking of older stuff.I'm not a big fan of Aimee Mann or Wilco, but my mind can be changed. I haven't shut my door to them. Yet. (those are the only two people i could think of that old-school rockist critics like. i could be wrong though. I'm not always so sure who the rockists are. i think of rolling stone when i see the word.)