Douglas Wolk, clearheaded, on rockism

It's funny... I'm reading Joe Carducci's legendary Rock and the Pop Narcotic at the moment, which is generally held up as a sort of Rockist ur-text as far as I can tell. The thing is, what a lot of people far upthread (and long ago) seem to be describing as Rockism is precisely what Carducci is arguing *against*... For instance, this:

Anti-Rockist criticism might be expressed as a kind of Formalism which seeks to describe a musical event as music. Or critics might then go beyond "mere" Formalism to analyse the assumptions that are made about the presence of value or meaning in the music. From "what does it sound like" to "how does how the way it sounds and is performed attempt to create a meaning, and how is that meaning undermined by the way it's performed and the way it sounds?"
Or write as subjectively and temporally as possible about the experience of listening/seeing as it happened.

― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, May 6, 2005 5:48 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Carducci is striving to describe what makes rock music work in music terms, in terms of the interaction of the players, the way they navigate musical space together. The extraneous stuff is, to him, bullshit, and he actually vociferously lambasts critics for focusing on the "worthiness" of a Springsteen or a Stipe.

How many of you guys who regularly participate in discussions using the terms "Rockist" and "Rockism" have actually read that book? What did you think of it? Is it a good example of Rockism or is it its own singular thing?

I've also sort of always been uncomfortable with one of the underlying semi-consensuses of ILM thought: the idea that talking about "feel" is bad and not helpful. I guess I don't hate the idea that this concept is hard to define/discuss--I mean, it's really freaking hard to do that--but some folks I think have taken it a step further and stretched this observation to mean "feel" doesn't actually exist, that people who talk about "feel" are just bullshitting. In other words, they've made a discursive observation (that it doesn't help to talk about "feel") into an observation about what's actually there (or not there) in the music. I'll try to find some examples of this, but hopefully you know what I mean.

I do think "feel" is an important notion, but I also acknowledge that it's hard to discuss. I don't think that matters very much, however, unless you care about criticism more than the music itself. I don't mean to expand/distort the discussion here too much, it's just something that's been on my mind a lot as I've been working through Carducci.

i've read it, and carducci's other music book - enter naomi: sst and all that. they are favorites of mine...(minus the reagan worship in r&pn)...but yeah carducci's not going to easily fit into any neat category IMO...his blog, the new vulgate publishes some great stuff....

i'm a rockist in some important ways. but i try to be open minded to things and not let it overwhelm me hearing things that are pop that are good.

This is how I'd describe myself, too, I think. Rock and the Pop Narcotic is such a deeply flawed book (he ends up railing against a constantly shifting hydra of a strawman so much of the timme), but I find it amazingly compelling.

I think I'm also feeling the influence of my drift, as of the past year or so, pretty heavily into metal. I'm realizing how much sheer joy I get out of hearing guitars, basses, and drums played together in ways that excite me, and discovering all this stuff, old and new, where that's the basic framework has really underlined that for me. I do also love techno, but I think my tastes in techno are pretty Rockist in some ways as well.

I'm also extremely, vehemently rockist about wine (my line of work), and I think I'm uncomfortable with the notion of entirely abandoning that way of thinking when it comes to music. I think good wines, meaningful wines, come from relatively small farmers who grow the grapes themselves, practice a great deal of difficult manual labor in the vineyards (limiting the use of machines), and do as little in the cellar as possible with regard to technology (i.e., they don't "sculpt" the wines). The parallels with rockism are pretty apparent.

Clarke the main problem with the wine analogy is that thinking about music as being like food/drink is one of the most reliably misleading groups of analogies for how music "works" that remain widely used.

Firstly, the production of wine is necessarily technical in a formalist, circumscribed way that doesn't apply to music per se - there aren't any particular processes and ingredients that need to be involved for music to be music.

So immediately a key distinction between wine and music is that you're trying to conflate appreciation of something which needs to conform to particular rules in order to be recognisable as that thing with appreciation of something that doesn't. This immediately changes the legitimacy and operation of rule-based appreciation. Whereas wine appreciation is much more comparable to appreciation of a particular sport (music genre appreciation is also comparable to sports fandom - however both wine appreciation and music genre appreciation are much more like sports fandom than they are like each other).

The more general problem with food/drink analogies is that the relationships between substance/process and taste are much more predictable in the case of food/drink than in music - with much less variations in how the product is experienced - while preferences obviously differ the actual experience of taste of food substances doesn't differ to nearly the same extent as it does with music.

Imagine your wine appreciation being transposed to much more appropriate (though still problematic) analogies for music - writing and art:

"I think good art, meaningful art, come from relatively modest artists who mix the paint themselves, practice a great deal of difficult manual labor in their studio (limiting the use of mechanical aids), and do as little as possible with post-production technology."

"I think good books, meaningful books, come from relatively unknown writers who type up the manuscript on a typewriter without the continual self-editing efficiencies of a word processor, and whose works are not edited following the completion of the first draft manuscript."

Obviously these would be fairly meaningless and bizarre standards of judgement!

The more general problem with food/drink analogies is that the relationships between substance/process and taste are much more predictable in the case of food/drink than in music - with much less variations in how the product is experienced - while preferences obviously differ the actual experience of taste of food substances doesn't differ to nearly the same extent as it does with music.

I think we're getting into somewhat murky waters here... One critic can taste a really technique-driven, ornately composed, "creative" dish (this is the chef-as-auteur tradition) and be stunned by the complexity of flavors and textures involved, and full of praise for the chef's vision or what have you. Whereas another critic can taste the same dish and be put off by the stench of striving-to-impress, the fussiness and overcrowdedness of it. This critic may well prize a simple, straightforward, ingredient-driven approach to cooking that downplays the chef's role and highlights the quality of what's involved and the elegance of a relatively unadorned presentation.

I guess I don't know exactly what you mean by "the actual experiences of taste of food substances"... If you're talking about our biological ability to discern flavors, etc, then sure--but then with music as the analogue that's about as useful as saying that we all have eardrums and brains that process music, thus we all "hear" basically the same thing when we listen to a piece of music. It all comes down to what particular standards of judgment we bring to the table when the food passes our lips or the music buzzes our eardrums, right?

I like what mrjosh way upthread was getting at, and I think I agree:

TV sorta continued: In poststructuralist critical circles there was a great term that popped up: "out-left," as in "I have been out-lefted" or "I can out-left you!" And this referred to the degree to which a hegemonic ideological commitment could be unearthed by a skilled deconstructor in almost any position or statement.
Right now, the rockists have been out-lefted by everyone. Now, all the anti-rockists are starting to out-left each other. This will continue until everyone is exhausted and recognizes that their own positions are all beholden to certain underlying aesthetic / political / ideological positions. At that point things will settle down and everyone will feel free to appreciate the music they like, etc.

Douglas / Tom: Sure, rockism is ingrained in language just like misogyny is arguably ingrained in language, I agree. But I *don't* think people are willing to admit that their anti-rockism positions are just as normative, capitalist, or what have you as rockist positions, which is what they are. Example: the "white guys with guitars" thread.

― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, May 6, 2005 6:17 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i hope that douglas wolk introduces himself these days by saying: "Douglas Wolk, clearheaded, on Rockism."
I'm re-reading that Carducci book too, and yeah, in a lot of ways he *is* an anti rockist in that he really doesn't care about the kinda primal, (non-musical) myths of rock music that became firmly entrenched thanks to rolling stone and its writers in the 70s. he really cares about rock MUSIC as opposed to the rock EXPERIENCE. if that makes sense.

It all comes down to what particular standards of judgment we bring to the table when the food passes our lips or the music buzzes our eardrums, right?

Yes I would grant that. Hence my caveat about preferences re food, which I should have fleshed out. Obviously all experience is mediated and subject to individual aesthetic judgement.

The difference (which is relative rather than categorical) is that the technique to product to "flavour" relationships are much more predictable* with food - the amount you heat a piece of meat will affect whether it tastes raw or well-done, and this distinction is at least partly meaningful without knowing anything about social trends in cooking.

Obviously we then apply preferences and standards of judgement on top of that (from the simple "I prefer my steaks medium rare" to the more involved "this particular style of meat historically has been served blue and I think to get the authentic experience of this dish it shouldn't be cooked any more than that").

* That is not to say they're objective or universal, just predictable. If you asked two random people to describe what a dish of food tastes like, they're much more likely to offer similar descriptions than if you ask them what a particular song sounds like. At root is the fact that whether something tastes good or not - while not predetermined or universal - is related to biological imperatives that simply doesn't apply to music. While we're all biologically capable of hearing particular qualities in music, the experience of those qualities serves no particular biological purpose.

If you think of paintings, there are paintings that look "wrong" to a large amount of people. This is in part a physical experience: the experience of absorbing the art through vision. But the idea of rightness of wrongness is, in that case, an entirely social construction.

Also:

Right now, the rockists have been out-lefted by everyone. Now, all the anti-rockists are starting to out-left each other. This will continue until everyone is exhausted and recognizes that their own positions are all beholden to certain underlying aesthetic / political / ideological positions. At that point things will settle down and everyone will feel free to appreciate the music they like, etc.

Douglas / Tom: Sure, rockism is ingrained in language just like misogyny is arguably ingrained in language, I agree. But I *don't* think people are willing to admit that their anti-rockism positions are just as normative, capitalist, or what have you as rockist positions, which is what they are. Example: the "white guys with guitars" thread.

― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, May 6, 2005 6:17 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This misses the point somewhat: "anti-rockism" is/was about trying to get to the point where "everyone is exhausted and recognizes that their own positions are all beholden to certain underlying aesthetic / political / ideological positions." Its usefulness as a critical intervention is inversely proportionate to the extent to which such positions are recognised as such.

It also doesn't claim that being rockist is more capitalist than not being rockist - only more hegemonic, within certain social contexts. And of course it flies in the face of common sense to say that all positions are equally hegemonic in any given social context. However, what is or is not hegemonic in any particular context is of course a historical fact which is subject to change.

Incidentally, in similar vein, the phenomenon of out-lefting was not actually about claiming an absence of ideological commitment, but mostly about claiming that the ideological commitment of the out-lefted was more hegemonic (and, for real rhetorical force, oppressive) than that of the out-lefter.

My niece who just turned 1 has this toy keyboard that has a round yellow button that plays about five songs. She always hones in on that yellow button to the exclusion of the keys and the instrument buttons. I was there when the toy was introduced to her and I don't think I've seen anyone show her how the toy is supposed to be used or encourage the preference for the yellow button. This is just anecdotal - it's not evidence - but do you think her preference for music over the tones she makes with the other buttons, which themselves could be construed as musical, is coincidental or something inherent to her biology? That is, just because music doesn't serve any biological imperative, does that mean that taste FOR music, if not taste IN music, has no biological foundation?

Yes, I disagree with the argument that there is no biological element to aesthetic preference, even if it not considered an "imperative" in the same sense as food.

If you asked two random people to describe what a dish of food tastes like, they're much more likely to offer similar descriptions than if you ask them what a particular song sounds like.

Part of the problem with the comparison is that people have a different range of things they might be considering in either case. Asking people if they hear higher or lower pitches or dissonant or consonant intervals would be comparable with asking them whether they experience something sweet or savory with food.

I guess maybe I shouldn't have said I am rockist

I barely understand this thread...It's just I like Neil Young so much I figure I must be.

This misses the point somewhat: "anti-rockism" is/was about trying to get to the point where "everyone is exhausted and recognizes that their own positions are all beholden to certain underlying aesthetic / political / ideological positions." Its usefulness as a critical intervention is inversely proportionate to the extent to which such positions are recognised as such.

This makes a lot of sense, Tim... It feels much like what Wittgenstein was trying to accomplish in his later writings, which have been described as "therapeutic" (your use of the word "intervention" is great)--offering a freedom from the at-the-time hegemonic notion of meaning in language (which, ironically, his influential early stuff helped establish!) not through "solving" existing problems but through shedding light on the underlying assumptions of the dominant framework from which those problems were approached, thereby, well, "dissolving" rather than solving them. I really like thinking about "anti-rockism" not as position in itself but as a therapy that allows one to get rid of hang-ups. (That feels a bit like stating the obvious, but I do think it's important to try and avoid anti-rockism hardening into just another dogma, when its purpose should really be to liberate us as individuals into a more direct, intuitive, and non-ethically-mediated relationship with music.)

Yes, I disagree with the argument that there is no biological element to aesthetic preference, even if it not considered an "imperative" in the same sense as food.

the non-imperative nature of it is where I think the differences stem from, though: it results in an experience where the degree of variability introduced by social construction is substantially increased.

Part of the problem with the comparison is that people have a different range of things they might be considering in either case. Asking people if they hear higher or lower pitches or dissonant or consonant intervals would be comparable with asking them whether they experience something sweet or savory with food.

yes, and these aren't the kinds of distinction of taste that we generally mean when we refer to people's taste in music.

Our relationship to food typically is grounded in much more basic properties than is the case with music.

So it's not that taste in food is fundamentally different, but that the discourse around taste in food is structured very differently.

Well there's only one logical thing I can post at this point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM_8vOG-3CY

I really like thinking about "anti-rockism" not as position in itself but as a therapy that allows one to get rid of hang-ups. (That feels a bit like stating the obvious, but I do think it's important to try and avoid anti-rockism hardening into just another dogma, when its purpose should really be to liberate us as individuals into a more direct, intuitive, and non-ethically-mediated relationship with music.)

I would say this is anti-rockism's only purpose, really.

And of course if the environment you operated in was was one in which it was assumed that an artist's intrinsic worth could be measured by the extent to which they were backed by corporate investment (this isn't so bizarre a hypothetical: see how similar ideas inform, say, the legitimacy afforded to governments' economic policies), then the nature of the necessary intervention would be very different.

(though I'm not sure it's a question of removing ethical mediation. The so-called ethics of rockism are so heavily aetheticised in any event: in some ways I think someone saying that they will only buy music released on wholly independent labels or self-released through non-exploitative internet distribution platforms is taking a much more defensible position than someone who is less rigid but searches for some kind of vaguely defined and held quality of "independent spirit" in the music they listen to)

Part of the problem with the comparison is that people have a different range of things they might be considering in either case. Asking people if they hear higher or lower pitches or dissonant or consonant intervals would be comparable with asking them whether they experience something sweet or savory with food.

― timellison, Wednesday, July 25, 2012 11:14 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I meant to address this, too; I agree with this as being problematic. If you're talking about pure description, most people would be as similar in their pointing out of "distorted electric guitar" or "fast drumming" as they would "strongly earthy flavors" or "citrusy elements"... But for the kind of criticism we're talking about these are the least salient characteristics of the music/food; we want to talk about what makes the stuff "work", what makes it delicious or makes it, well, rock (?).

x-post to Tim: the best food writing, however, ignores as much as possible the biological imperative of needing to eat and approaches food as an aesthetic object worthy of value judgments--which I don't think are necessarily as uniform across individuals as you're portraying them.

x-post to Tim: the best food writing, however, ignores as much as possible the biological imperative of needing to eat and approaches food as an aesthetic object worthy of value judgments--which I don't think are necessarily as uniform across individuals as you're portraying them.

to be clear, i'm not saying that food does not merit highly individualised aesthetic value judgments.

I'm mainly saying it's hardly surprising that food, the experience of which is tied to biological imperatives, should be a case where questions of the material substances and the substantive processes that are applied to those substantes - at what temperature was the food cooked, how fresh were the ingredients - are widely acknowledged to be very important, and there is a relatively greater degree of consensus about a lot of the answers to those questions (e.g. fresh is best, by and large).

Some of the problems with proceeding to apply such analogies to music are best seen in their most typical manifestation, being the comparison of "manufactured" fast-food to "manufactured" pop: even leaving aside the particularly dubious notion of musical "nutrition", these are tempting comparisons because they wrap together very neatly ideas about the aesthetic consequences of widely marketing and distributing products while ignoring how these consequences play out differently as between music and food, with different related factors.

Most obviously, if you manufacture and sell fast food, you can't get away from the fact that you actually have to prepare physical items of food for each customer. Hence this results in decision-making about the way in which food is sourced and developed which reflects the pragmatic question of how to sell so much of it.

Accordingly, a lot of ideas about food which from a wide-angle lens might appear "rockist" - the slow food movement, buying from local farmers markets - need to be understood as operating in a context where despite variable aesthetic preferences the fact that the substance and processes of food are tied to a biological imperative function as an irreducible core.

This is different from contemporary music where there is no necessary reason (other than aesthetic) that manufactured pop and other music would sound substantially different to one another.

To the extent that food criticism starts to get really outre and unpredictable about what it values, it's actually starting to resemble anti-rockist (or post anti-rockist) criticism more than rockist criticism.

the non-imperative nature of it is where I think the differences stem from, though: it results in an experience where the degree of variability introduced by social construction is substantially increased.

But social construction is mediated by physiological factors in the first place.

I agree that the degree of variability does seem to be larger with music than with food, but still disagree with this argument:

At root is the fact that whether something tastes good or not - while not predetermined or universal - is related to biological imperatives that simply doesn't apply to music. While we're all biologically capable of hearing particular qualities in music, the experience of those qualities serves no particular biological purpose.

Replace "purpose" with "function," anyway, and I disagree with it.

(i.e., "purpose" being associated with survival as opposed to "function," which could be used to discuss physiological factors not associated with survival)

I think whatever function you could say it serves is too devoid of specific content to distinguish it from "mere" aesthetic enjoyment.

i.e. saying "music serves the biological function of provoking aesthetic enjoyment" is effectively the same as saying "music serves no biological function other than provoking aesthetic enjoyment".

But social construction is mediated by physiological factors in the first place.

Of course. Again, I'm talking about a difference in degree.

I agree that the degree of variability does seem to be larger with music than with food

Assuming I'm wrong as to the reason, how would you explain this?

I agree that you can't make a map of our aesthetic enjoyment of music the way you can make certain predictions about what we like to eat and how that relates to nutrition, but it's not insignificant to say that there's some biological tendency to enjoy music. You obviously can't tell where the biological tendency ends and the social construction of music enjoyment begins, and I'd say the relationship between the two is probably like the relationship between our biological tendency to make language and our actual inheritance of language.

I agree that you can't make a map of our aesthetic enjoyment of music the way you can make certain predictions about what we like to eat and how that relates to nutrition, but it's not insignificant to say that there's some biological tendency to enjoy music. You obviously can't tell where the biological tendency ends and the social construction of music enjoyment begins, and I'd say the relationship between the two is probably like the relationship between our biological tendency to make language and our actual inheritance of language.

I would agree with that.

I'm just not sure how it could be considered to support rockism.

I think variability with music is simply explained by a wider variety of choices, but identification with particular choices is not just a result of social constructs; it's also explained by physiology.

I think whatever function you could say it serves is too devoid of specific content to distinguish it from "mere" aesthetic enjoyment.

i.e. saying "music serves the biological function of provoking aesthetic enjoyment" is effectively the same as saying "music serves no biological function other than provoking aesthetic enjoyment".

But that biological function is significant, in my opinion.

In short, I think music taste is tied in with identity, and identity has a lot to do with physiology.

Like music evokes some sort of space and you see your body fitting into that space. Or the fact that music is created by human beings and you relate your own physiology to the physiological aspect of the artist creating that music.

i.e. saying "music serves the biological function of provoking aesthetic enjoyment" is effectively the same as saying "music serves no biological function other than provoking aesthetic enjoyment".

But that biological function is significant, in my opinion.

In short, I think music taste is tied in with identity, and identity has a lot to do with physiology.

I don't see how we are disagreeing at this point...

I would absolutely agree that music taste is tied in with identity and that has a lot to do with physiology, but this really just works against notions of objectivity or universalities in music, for largely the same reason that identity politics works against notions of objectivity or universality in political philosophy.

you relate your own physiology to the physiological aspect of the artist creating that music

i'm not quite sure what you mean here tim? there's something problematic for me about the idea that listening to music points beyond the experience of the music to an implied or imagined author - sometimes i'm sure this is the case but far from always, and that imaginary author feels much more like a social construct than a physiological drive. but maybe i'm misunderstanding?

With a lot of music, it's not an implied or imagined author, though. We know who it was that created the music, we see their pictures, hear their voices, and hear them playing instruments. I'm just arguing that part of our appreciation of music has to do with these physical aspects and that our own bodies can provide the explanation for these affinities.

it's valid to point out the differences between the food appreciation and music appreciation, but this doesn't do much to undermine the fact that the two have a great deal in common.

food, like music, is regional & cultural. your taste in both in likely a product of where you are and have been and what groups you identify with as much as something you were born with. both food and music change in predictable ways in response to changes in preparation. cook it more and this happens, play it faster and that happens, etc. both are areas in which "the good" and "the bad" will often seem self-evident and even universal from a given individual's perspective (comforting casseroles and classical euphony are good, hot peppers and shrieking noise are bad), leading to xenophobic dismissal of that which violates the rules.

people can be "foodist" just as they can be rockist, privileging a narrative that attaches superior worth to expensive ingredients and preparations, a certain kind of creativity and/or fealty to tradition, a classist elevation of the "sophisticated", the discernment of supposedly refined palates, and so on. i don't suppose this is so terribly different from rockism in its hegemonic implications.

it's valid to point out the differences between the food appreciation and music appreciation, but this doesn't do much to undermine the fact that the two have a great deal in common.

really only in the way that every single aspect of cultural life has "a great deal in common" with every other aspect, e.g. you could argue for the rockism of fly fishing, S&M, forensic economics, calligraphy, sudoku, model train collections.

With a lot of music, it's not an implied or imagined author, though. We know who it was that created the music, we see their pictures, hear their voices, and hear them playing instruments. I'm just arguing that part of our appreciation of music has to do with these physical aspects and that our own bodies can provide the explanation for these affinities.

― timellison, Thursday, 26 July 2012 7:56 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't see how this is really true for anything other than live music, which is the only context in which I can physiologically relate to the music's creator(s) in a manner that is not mediated through imaginary suppositions e.g. a conceptual linking of name to voice to picture afforded by a CD booklet or etc.

By rockism at this point we just mean conservatism, don't we? My brother only likes 3-minute power punk pop and yorkshire pudding; I like electronic pop jazz and green pork chilli.

xpost; if that were true, Tim, there'd be no market for music magazines (oh...) with photos of bands / artists, or music videos, etc etc etc. No one would ever want to know what a band looked like.

photos belong to the realm of the imaginary tho

I think I addressed this:

physiologically relate to the music's creator(s) in a manner that is not mediated through imaginary suppositions

R'ship between the physiological experience of a live performance and imagining the physiology of the performer via CD plus CD booklet, magazines etc. is vaguely analogous to that between sex and visual erotica.

By rockism at this point we just mean conservatism, don't we? My brother only likes 3-minute power punk pop and yorkshire pudding; I like electronic pop jazz and green pork chilli.

It's not about what you like.

Sorry, in my post above "imagining the physiology" should be "imagining the physiological presence".

this is shifting scales too, the photo is a real representation and the performer in the flesh is still an object to be gazed at and fantasized around, the performer even when present isn't the irreducible core of yr experience of the performance

really only in the way that every single aspect of cultural life has "a great deal in common" with every other aspect, e.g. you could argue for the rockism of fly fishing, S&M, forensic economics, calligraphy, sudoku, model train collections.

― Tim F, Thursday, July 26, 2012 1:25 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

but none of those things have the centrality in the cultural discourse that food and music appreciation do. we could lump them both together under "art appreciation", so long as you're willing to extend the definition of "art" to include utilitarian stuff like food preparation, clothing design, architecture, etc. but yes, common critical stances that subtly or overtly reenforce hegemonic structures are everywhere in our cultural life, no less in the way we approach food than the way we approach music and film. rockism was very specific in its values and has been defined even more clearly by its detractors, but i don't see any reason to treat it as an entirely isolated instance. its sins must be just as troubling when we find them in other corners of cultural life, right.

all this just to say that clarke b's point about food and wine rockism makes sense to me, with certain caveats. if someone were to insist that only conservatory trained and intrinsically gifted artisans working in the classical tradition and using instruments of the highest available caliber are capable of producing "truly great music", i'd say that they were making an argument quite similar to clarke's about wine. neither is "rockism" per se, but i'd say that they all belong to the same philosophical family.

supposed to be a "?" after that "right"

Right - although not all hegemonic reinforcement necessarily has the same consequences i.e. if there is a rockism of sudoku, this is only problematic insofar as it suppresses some other, more free or diverse form of sudoku-play. Which I doubt. Generally speaking the more a cultural practice is explicitly defined by rules in order to derive its meaning/existence at the outset, then the more insisting on those rules being observed makes sense.

I think the reason people leap on food as an analogy so much is precisely because they want to imply the "nourishment" / "good for you" angle which is food's primary distinguishing feature - so as to make arguments to the effect that e.g. the problems with a Carly Rae Jepsen song are analogous to problems with a McDonald's hamburger.

To be fair this doesn't apply in the case of Clarke's wine analogy but it's the root cause of why I'm so suspicious of consumables as a reference point generally.

term "rockism" pretty weird at this point - hegemonic discourse always a phenomenon worth investigating but for the term "rockism" to be the way of describing that makes as much current historical sense as calling it "Boscoism"

Which is why it's small c conservativism.

Yeah, I don't see why seeing a photo or video necessarily creates more of an "imaginary supposition" than a live performance does. And I'm not sure of the relevance, anyway. I'm still relating to some concept of the physicality of the music even if my suppositions are distorted through the media in which I'm receiving them.

term "rockism" pretty weird at this point - hegemonic discourse always a phenomenon worth investigating but for the term "rockism" to be the way of describing that makes as much current historical sense as calling it "Boscoism"

― tallarico dreams (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:47 AM (6 hours ago)

yeah, i've been thinking about that for a while. rockism is a relative of other -isms, of what we might call "jazzism" and "classicalism". the rock critics of the late 60s and the 70s seem to have borrowed many of their notions of artistic virtue from blues and jazz culture and criticism, and thus their views arguably had non-hegemonic power in relation to the pre and early 20th century arts culture they succeeded, a culture that elevated the european classical (and subsequent avant-garde) tradition over all others. at the same time, their tastes were much more open to pop and the merits of entertainment products with no explicit claim to art status than the increasingly serious and insular jazz culture of the 50s-70s. by another name, what we now disparage as rockism was radical and valuable in its time. subsequent generations identified critical flaws in that critical culture's legacy, but rockism's persistence as a generic pejorative descriptor for values that aren't exclusive to it does seem a little strange.

"non-hegemonic" probably should have been "anti-hegemonic"...

to get back to the topic that started the revive, i do think it's an interesting issue in contemporary electronic music. it's more common than ever to make music at home on (primarily) a computer, but no one makes money on recordings so everyone is trying to figure out a way to present their original music live. and a lot of these ways are, if not boring, overly safe and inflexible (ie lacking opportunities to mess up or improvise, all the hard work has been done ahead of time, etc.).

so even though electronic music is an old thing, the current 'rockism' conversation feels like it has a new urgency or at least a slightly fresh angle. where does the skill/art/craft come into play - is it enough to 'press play' on a set that's been painstakingly produced & selected at home, or to what extant is it incumbent on the performer to actually perform (or reconstruct/reimagine) their music?