Douglas Wolk, clearheaded, on rockism

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.

But I'm compromising my statements by conflating virtuosity with general live performance a bit.

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.

What if humans naturally get a feeling of excitement when they hear rapid flurries of notes, possibly for some kind of biological reason? There were player pianos since the 1800s and other mechanical instruments before that, but for the most part, until Les Paul started messing around with half-speed recording in the late '40s, the only way to accomplish that live or on record was for somebody to actually play it. If you wanted to hear music that sounded like Charlie Parker, you needed to hear Charlie Parker or one of his imitators playing like that. So the ability to "cheat" and create musical illusions that don't require an actual human performance is relatively new. So I don't think it's fair to say that special respect for musical talent has always been rockist, since it's probably been embedded in human culture for hundreds or thousands of years for good reason. The real problem is when people apply those standards of music as a performing art to the medium of recorded music, which is free to move beyond the constraints of a purely performing art and is something more like a plastic art.

I agree to a point but it's a bit chicken and egg - was music that required virtuosity popular because of the virtuosity required to present it? Or is it because, like you say, there was an innate and particular response to complex music.

I would guess that the performance of the author of the composition was always privileged over any interpretation.

I think the bigger challenge to my argument is the musical value of improvisation - where presence and virtuosity combine to create original music.

However, it's still rockist to privilege improvised music.

Hoping the move to use "rockist" to mean practically anything succeeds.

still think it's foolish (a kind word) to use the term "rockism" to describe values that are in no way specific to rock music and/or rock criticism, and which aren't objectionable in any sense.

the privileging of obvious technical skill in music is much like the privileging of such skill in other art forms: painting, dance, whatever. it's old-fashioned, but not necessarily reactionary. if we wish, we can draw a line between "pure music" (something consisting only of sound) and the various non-musical qualities with which we associate it (authorship, performance, culture, history, etc.), but to do so denies the variety and complexity of music appreciation.

at this point, i don't believe that any "hegemonic" prejudice marginalizes music that isn't performed physically and/or with sufficient technical expertise. not, at least, in the largely digital landscape of contemporary western pop.

Please lets all stop pursuing this strawman notion that anti-rockism is coming to take away your guitar records and turntablist event posters and charlie parker box sets.

The prevailing music crit impulse is actually inconsistent on virtuosity anyway, as quick to dismiss "musical masturbation" as it is to demand virtuoso displays of technical skills.

What if you believe in a sort of spiritual sickness?

― Clarke B., Friday, July 27, 2012 1:32 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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.

― Clarke B., Friday, July 27, 2012 1:45 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Clarke I really hope you're just saying this to be devil's advocate.

seriously contenderizer you are currently brutally kicking to death a strawman.

No genre of communication arises without an accompanying debate over what constitutes proficiency in the genre or, more basically, who is really good at it and who isn't.

Do you seriously think people are arguing against that fact?

No, I don't think anybody was arguing against this. Which is funny because expanding "rockism" to mean the privileging of such a wide variety of skills would seem to constitute some kind of objection.

was music that required virtuosity popular because of the virtuosity required to present it? Or is it because, like you say, there was an innate and particular response to complex music.

I feel like there's probably an innate human interest in complexity and patterns but I don't know the science behind it, so I could be way off. But there's also an interest in feats of dexterity and physical skill throughout the performing arts: juggling, magic, dance, physical comedy, etc. It doesn't make any sense to judge recorded music by those standards, but what each individual values in a live performance is much more of a grey area.

So to me it's rockist to criticize a lip-syncing pop star who puts on a genuinely entertaining theatrical experience, simply because they aren't "playing real instruments". But it might be valid to criticize an electronic musician or DJ for example that offers no entertaining performance aspect. At a certain point if the performer is standing still, while prerecorded music plays, and they're not offering up any recognizable element of a performing art, then criticizing that is not necessarily rockist, is it?

"Rockism" remains a meaningful term only so long as there is a secret or not so secret ('rock') at the beginning of 'music crit discourse' - that is, so long as rock music and its appreciation remains the dominant component and rulemaker in 'popular music criticism'. That doesn't mean that the appreciation of rock music is the original or sole source of many of these tendencies.

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 Finney (Tim Finney), Sunday, May 8, 2005 11:53 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I probably wouldn't put things in such strong terms 7 years on (e.g. "vehemently").

seriously contenderizer you are currently brutally kicking to death a strawman.

― Tim F, Friday, July 27, 2012 4:45 PM (9 minutes ago)

well, i showed up to ILX in what seemed to be the wake of the Great Rockism Debates, and the word had become something of a ILX in-joke. you couldn't really talk about it, except to mock the idea that anyone would want to talk about it. despite this, it was invoked in passing with a tired sort of knee-jerk regularity. since the ideas involved were new and interesting to me, i found this situation rather frustrating. what i get for showing up late, i suppose...

anyway, that's why i may seem a little overeager to administer my kicks.