Douglas Wolk, clearheaded, on rockism

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?

that topic needs a thread all to itself

would read

Tim, Tim, contenderizer: thanks for your thoughtful posts (this is a hell of a thread). Jordan, I think about that a lot and will give my take separately... I first wanted to pick up with what Tim and I were going back on forth about, how the nature of food/wine and the nature of music necessarily result in a difference in the potential usefulness/validity of a rockist approach. In my previous thinking on the topic, I've come to grips with my wine rockism (forgive the stretching of the term if it irks you here) by thinking about the notion of finitude.

We value "responsible", ethical, thoughtful, artisanal approaches to farming (wine and other stuff) because they're finite; there's only so much earth-surface we have to work with to grow these things. (Tim, you got at that above with your point that all fast food is still at the end of the day prepared for each person that eats it using finite resources.) Why would you choose to drink something made using tons of chemicals (which are likely harmful to our health, although that's a separate--yet related--issue here), that's mass-produced, whose cost is tied into tons of big advertising, etc, when you can have something more evocative of the place where the grapes are grown, that speaks to a tradition of viticulture, and that directly benefits a farmer working his land responsibly and exactingly?

I used to think music distinguished itself from food/wine by virtue of it not being subject to this notion of finitude. It doesn't really deplete anything to listen to music the way it does to drink wine made from a plot of land given over to big corporate farming, or to eat something from a huge chemical-spraying profit-machine of a mechanized farm. However, upon further reflection, it strikes me that rockists could easily apply the notion of finitude to music--both in terms of production (Why are labels spending big money to churn out pop trash? Why are radio stations devoting their resources to the propagation of such soul-suckingly empty programming?) and perhaps more acutely in terms of consumption (There are only so many hours a day in your finite life, so why would you spend them listening to pop trash?).

Sure, music is "just music" and is not tied to our biology and our survival the way food is, but the fact remains that a lot of people are continuing to reap great amounts of wealth making the stuff, a lot of people are spending a great deal of their money and time consuming the stuff, we only have so many hours a day to listen, etc. I'm not saying that I think we should be overly moralistic about our consumption about music, but I guess don't think the argument that one shouldn't be is entirely specious or ridiculous when you look at it in these terms.

Sure, music is "just music" and is not tied to our biology and our survival the way food is

it's more tied to our biology than any other art form or entertainment though -- humans have the ability to sing...birds can sing...we take it for granted but it's amazing to think about, for instance, an acapella group or choir...like how complex that is from a biological standpoint, what goes into that, all with no instruments or anything outside of the human body

would read

― Dunn O)))))))) (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, July 26, 2012 6:08 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I tried, years ago, but things have changed considerably since then

live electronic music and the laptop

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?

― 40oz of tears (Jordan), Thursday, July 26, 2012 10:43 AM (1 hour ago)

i'm not sure anything's really required of a live show. if people are happy seeing somebody press play and jump around, then i don't see what's wrong with that. then again, i can see why someone like a-trak, who's spent years acquiring skills and considers DJing a craft might disparage such a thing.

personally, i go to live shows to see people make music together. i'm attached to the hard rock model: physical bodies working hard in a small space with and against machines and one another and time to make punishingly loud noise. i like that experience, though i wouldn't say it's necessarily superior to any other approach.

personally, i go to live shows to see people make music together. i'm attached to the hard rock model: physical bodies working hard in a small space with and against machines and one another and time to make punishingly loud noise. i like that experience, though i wouldn't say it's necessarily superior to any other approach.

― contenderizer, Thursday, July 26, 2012 3:28 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with this. DJ-ing is not something that lends itself to people staring at unless you trump it up with all sorts of forced-feeling spectacle. Not that spectacle doesn't exist in the sweaty-rock paradigm, far from it, but it doesn't necessarily have to in order to make it feel like it's worthwhile to be watching the players creating their music in real-time. Why would a DJ feel the need to seek validation in a rock-crowd setting anyway?

Sidenote: lulz about "rockism of sudoku" because there is totally a rockism of crosswords. Some puzzle constructors are strictly pen-and-paper and work in their heads; others use computer spell-check to suggest alternative possibilities for a given space. I know one of each. The one who uses a computer said he is totally unashamed about so-called "cheating," because as he said the artistry is in clever clue construction, not your ability to call to mind the names for e.g. extinct Guatemalan tree frogs or whatever. So I guess he's an anti-rockist crosswordist.

that's just it, there is a weird line these days between a 'live performance' and a 'dj set'. sometimes the only difference seems to be whether you play all-original material via Ableton (live performance) or other people's music to (dj set). it seems like there are lots of musicians out there who start out making original music via electronic means, and then end up going out on the road doing dj sets (maybe because it's expected, or goes over better, or because it's more economically viable than traveling with a bunch of gear or other musicians).

there are lots of electronic musicians trying make their sets feel more live or physical in different ways, some of which are really effective and some of which feel obligatory or bullshitty. there are lots who don't. it just seems to be an increasingly common question/issue these days.

I used to think music distinguished itself from food/wine by virtue of it not being subject to this notion of finitude. It doesn't really deplete anything to listen to music the way it does to drink wine made from a plot of land given over to big corporate farming, or to eat something from a huge chemical-spraying profit-machine of a mechanized farm. However, upon further reflection, it strikes me that rockists could easily apply the notion of finitude to music--both in terms of production (Why are labels spending big money to churn out pop trash? Why are radio stations devoting their resources to the propagation of such soul-suckingly empty programming?) and perhaps more acutely in terms of consumption (There are only so many hours a day in your finite life, so why would you spend them listening to pop trash?).

Rockists already make this argument. But it presupposes that the music in question is pop "trash". It's circular logic: "this thing is categorically awful, so it's a waste of time to listen to it, so it's categorically awful." Once you remove the self-evidence of the connection of pop to "trash", it becomes meaninglessly universal in its applicable: "there are only so many hours a day in your finite life, why would you waste resources hunting down more obscure music?" Arguably being into more obscure music is analogous to burning wood in your fireplace.

But it's ultimately a largely empty rhetorical gesture, because unlike with food, the outcomes of music consumption are largely only meaningful in the context of the rules we make about music and the contexts in which music continues to be made (which is why I think only buying independent music is an ethically defensible position,if done for sociopolitical reasons rather than aesthetic reasons).

This is why I think in some ways sports fandom offers better analogies - people can feel very strongly about the way baseball should be played but this is really a conversation internal to the rules and history of baseball.

The problematic difference with sport is that the objectives (what constitutes a win vs a loss or coming second place) are usually much more clearly defined.

In general these analogies are useful but a lot of people are too quick to elide over where they fall apart.

aesthetics and politics tend to melt together though, no? (c.f. guess political affiliation of beautiful people)

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?

there are lots of electronic musicians trying make their sets feel more live or physical in different ways, some of which are really effective and some of which feel obligatory or bullshitty. there are lots who don't. it just seems to be an increasingly common question/issue these days.

This has been a question for a very long time. I actually made a (pretty bland) mini student film about it 8 years ago. There is def. a divide between electronic musicians who see their only responsibility as making sure good music comes out of the speakers vs. ones who do crossfades with their whole body like arena rockers and turn knobs like they were on fire.

Some puzzle constructors are strictly pen-and-paper and work in their heads; others use computer spell-check to suggest alternative possibilities for a given space. I know one of each.

Oh, you're friends with Merl Reagle?

But it's ultimately a largely empty rhetorical gesture, because unlike with food, the outcomes of music consumption are largely only meaningful in the context of the rules we make about music and the contexts in which music continues to be made (which is why I think only buying independent music is an ethically defensible position,if done for sociopolitical reasons rather than aesthetic reasons).

some people consider certain food products to be "worthless" or "trashy" because they're mass-produced, bland, artless, devoid of nutritional value and/or made from low-quality ingredients. some of these are statements of fact, some are unsupported opinion (empty rhetorical gesture), some are a combination of the two.

same sort of thing applies to music. some people consider certain musical products to be worthless/trashy because they're commercial sops, bland, artless, made without instrumental skill, morally questionable, non-nourishing, etc. these tend more to be matters of opinion, and of course, with music, there isn't the objective risk that you'll get sick from consuming the wrong stuff. that aside, though, as far as taste alone is concerned, i still don't see much difference between these two sorts of appreciation.

the cliche compares pop to "a mcdonald's hamburger" in an attempt to make the pop fan seem like an unthinking garbage feeder. but it could be argued that the mcdonald's hamburger is perfectly and perhaps even brilliantly engineered to appeal. beyond our quite reasonable objections to its unhealthiness and environmental impact, on the level of taste alone, there isn't anything really objectively wrong with its flavor, packaging, market positioning, cultural associations, etc.

would you say the nuge is the chick-fil-a of rockers?

was this ref'd in the nytimes thread? i feel like it might be somewhat relevant to 'rockism' (which like 'mise en scene', is something i can't really get my head around no matter how many references try to explain it)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

it makes sense that a generation geared towards starting and selling things would have less of a moral aversion to pop either aesthetically or politically. taking existing products and repackaging/branding them are fairly honorable practices in entrepreneurship, etc...

Contenderizer, can't you see that the analogy derives it's rhetorical force precisely from the fact that in the case of manufactured food it's not all "a matter of opinion"? That you literally will get sick if you subsist on a diet of nothing but McDonald's? That is a pretty big difference IMO.

"Why would a DJ feel the need to seek validation in a rock-crowd setting anyway?"

fyi, the spaceship takes off at 2:30 in this vid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgLoAja498Q

One man's Whole Foods hot bar is another man's McDonald's

Contenderizer, can't you see that the analogy derives it's rhetorical force precisely from the fact that in the case of manufactured food it's not all "a matter of opinion"? That you literally will get sick if you subsist on a diet of nothing but McDonald's? That is a pretty big difference IMO.

― Tim F, Thursday, July 26, 2012 3:15 PM (5 hours ago)

yeah, i agree with that. i'm trying to separate the aspects that can be sensibly compared from those that can't. i do this not to disparage pop music, but to (sneakily) ask in a more general sense what we think about about mass marketing and popular taste.

Turntablism has always had its rockist side, but things like this started popping up on Facebook last year to remind us that rockism is still the normative popular critical mode despite the general embrace of techno and pop and vocoders and tracks etc.

http://djseanray.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/560580_363141163748516_2081401316_n.jpg

followed by lots of "amen, son" and other brOTM type comments.

Contenderizer, can't you see that the analogy derives it's rhetorical force precisely from the fact that in the case of manufactured food it's not all "a matter of opinion"? That you literally will get sick if you subsist on a diet of nothing but McDonald's? That is a pretty big difference IMO.

― Tim F, Thursday, July 26, 2012 3:15 PM (5 hours ago)

yeah, i agree with that. i'm trying to separate the aspects that can be sensibly compared from those that can't. i do this not to disparage pop music, but to (sneakily) ask in a more general sense what we think about about mass marketing and popular taste.

― contenderizer, Thursday, July 26, 2012 11:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What if you believe in a sort of spiritual sickness?

In other words, rejection of the food/music analogy on the grounds of relative severity of our biological response to said product relies a bit more heavily on the ol' mind/body split than some might be necessarily comfortable with.

the hardest part of playing live music is having good, knowledgeable taste, knowing how to "feel" the crowd, and the ability to create an experience using music. that's personally what i want out of djs. it's like master thrash guitarist who makes terrible music v. laptop dude who composes great tunes.

Turntablism has always had its rockist side, but things like this started popping up on Facebook last year to remind us that rockism is still the normative popular critical mode despite the general embrace of techno and pop and vocoders and tracks etc.

― Spencer Chow, Friday, July 27, 2012 12:34 AM (12 hours ago)

i don't mean to be a prick, but this is exactly what i was talking about yesterday. it's foolish to call this "rockism". the special respect we accord "talented musicians" predates rock, predates pop, predates the 20th century. we (speaking for humanity in general here) like to see people exercise technical skills in a musical context. it's part of the reason we'd rather see a person sing well than badly. sure, singing well sounds better, but it's also an impressive, inspiring affirmation of human potential. there's something otherworldly about prodigious displays of technical skill in any context.

i'm probably alone among my cohort in thinking joey chestnut and kobayashi downing inhuman amounts of hot dogs is a cool thing, though. i hate guitar solos though.

i hate vinyls. stop saying vinyls please. uh meme gif dj person.

sorry.

xxpost

I would only say that exercising technical skills in a musical context has more to do with sports than music. In fact, I would say it is entirely extra-musical. The special respect accorded "talented musicians" is always rockist regardless of the era-specific terminology. That of course is the point of the thread-revival.

I understand bemoaning "special respect," but what if it was "particular respect" instead? Like I might have a particular respect for Steve Howe that has something to do with his technique.

Putting an -ism on something suggests bias.

i like that experience, though i wouldn't say it's necessarily superior to any other approach.

I think that many people feel this way consciously now which is a big pop cultural shift and does show some actual progression. That said, even as the culture evolves to accept electric guitars, then synthesizers, then samplers and so on, there will still be this (logocentric, as we discussed long ago) impulse to chain the value of music to the presence and skill of LIVE performers.

Why would a DJ feel the need to seek validation in a rock-crowd setting anyway?

Because the culture still values the things signified in this mode of presentation/to get laid.

The special respect accorded "talented musicians" is always rockist regardless of the era-specific terminology.

That's not quite true historically. I think the end result is all that should matter, but of course there was a time when virtuoso musicianship was required in order to achieve a particular end result.

xxpost "particular" respect is fine, but the often "exclusive" respect (and the dismissing of music created/presented outside of this) is the problem of rockism.

xpost, I think it holds true as long as there has been recorded music (including notation), but perhaps it wasn't as obvious until actual sound recording.