Douglas Wolk, clearheaded, on rockism

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.)

"That Kanye West album has no COUNTERPOINT! It's not even music!"

There are two many notes in music with counterpoint. You have these guys, Bach and Handel, who are extremely derivative and insist on recycling the past, but everybody else knows that the future of music lies in the considerably simpler approach that Bach's sons, and people like Salieri, represent.

But to take one thing, the statement:

So, for instance, it's a rockist opinion that pre-stereo-era blues and country are interesting less in their own right than because they anticipated rock

is interesting, because it is the reverse of the truth. "Rockist" critics don't write that Eric Clapton validates Robert Johnson, they write that Robert Johnson validates Eric Clapton. Of course one suspects many, if not most, of them actually listened to Eric Clapton more frequently and with more enjoyment than they listened to Robert Johnson, but that isn't what they wrote. By missing the essential point, that "rockist" critics were imposing values derived from earlier art forms onto rock (and *not* imposing values derived from rock onto earlier art forms) Wolk shows that he misunderstands what he is writing about too completely to have anything very perceptive to say about it.

This also explains my musique-concrete note from above.

And I probably shouldn't address Gier's note as it seemed dissmisive, but my point is, I don't feel the need to "judge" rock music. I am a black music fan that found rock later in life, and at times, I struggle to understand it.

There's plenty of rock I enjoy, and when a rockist tells me it's crap, I just concede that I'm enjoying some crap.

"This Strokes album is fun; good melodies."

"The Strokes are fake."

[still listens to Strokes, alongside The Fall, etc.]

But when a rockist tells me my Disco (et al) is crap, I know they're wrong...but they are in the majority.

This is why I applaud Douglas's attempt.

(I went to the first meeting of a class about recordings & cultural ghosts a couple of years ago; its syllabus talked about Johnson being "one of the earliest Delta bluesmen." Um, no; he'd be more useful for myth-making purposes if he were, but no.)

From Dylan Hicks, as quoted here: http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1265/article13016.asp?page=3

Of course the great black artists have a somewhat easier time getting played on the Current, if by "great" you mean the dead ones. They play Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday, Howlin' Wolf, Leadbelly, Aretha Franklin (technically living)--all brilliant, and all exemplars of the worst kind of tokenism on a station that routinely ignores contemporary African American artists. Often the black ancients will set up a tune by a later white artist who was profoundly influenced by black styles--so Louis Armstrong might lead into Tom Waits, or Howlin' Wolf might give way to Nick Cave. All of this jibes with two tenets held dear, if rarely spoken, by hip white people: One, black music died at some point in the mid-'70s, but the old stuff sure is fun to dance or make out to. Two, black music's main contribution is to generate ideas that more "cerebral" and arty white performers can then pilfer.

The discussion re: rockism could head in this direction; identifying strains of rockist thought that cause the canon to be formed the way it is (beatles on top, london calling is the best album of the late 70s, etc.)

Then: from http://cantstopwontstop.blogspot.com/2004/12/robert-johnson-rockism-and-hip-hop.html
Where Jeff C. quotes Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta

The neo-ethnic movement was nourished by a spate of LP reissues that for the first time made it possible to find hillbilly and country blues recordings in white, middle-class, urban stores. The bible was Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music...Smith was specifically interested in the oldest and most-rural sounding styles, and set a pattern for any future folk-blues reissue projects by intentionally avoiding any artist who seemed consciously modern or commercial...

Far from balancing this taste, the other record collectors tended to be even more conservative. Much as they loved the music, they were driven by the same mania for rarity that drives collectors of old stamps or coins, and many turned up their noses at Jefferson or the Carters, since those records were common. (Ed. note: Like Rick James, bitch!) To such men, the perfect blues artist was someone like Son House or Skip James, an unrecognized genius whose 78s had sold so badly that at most one or two copies survived. Since the collectors were the only people with access to the original records or any broad knowledge of the field, they functioned to a great extent as gatekeepers of the past and had a profound influence on what the broader audience heard. (Ed. note: Like Freestyle Fellowship or Bun B, bitch!) By emphasizing obscurity as a virtue unto itself, they essentially turned the hierarchy of blues-stardom upside-down: The more records an artist had sold in 1928, the less he or she was valued in 1958.

I firmly believe that in the same way record collectors affected the way we think of "the blues," critics affect the way we think about music history. And this is why I think anti-rockism is so neccessary.

I agree with this except that it's not quite the same thing as I'm saying. Which is that the critical values generally assumed in a discussion of Clapton in the 60s/70s did not come into being with rock music. They were a pretty seamless continuation of a long tradition of how, for want of a better term, "folk-art" had been discussed since the nineteenth century. You can include pretty much anything with any of the characteristics of folk-art, from Robert Frost to Woody Guthrie to Charles Mingus, in that category.

To understand this you can't lose sight of what these critics, consciously or otherwise, were struggling against: the establishment view that pop/rock was meaningless froth and to treat is as if it were serious art was risible. It was a fight for critical respectability and they used the tools that would do the job. No point in pretending that The Rolling Stones could compete with Prokofiev in terms of formal complexity or musical sophistication. So you focus on authenticity of feeling, (alleged) lack of artifice, a tradition fed by the folk-art of the alienated and dispossessed, the need for an art that ariculated of the feelings of the politically disaffected and so on. Of course I agree that the particular folk-artists chosen for sanctification as part of the tradition were selected because they were a good sonic fit with rock; yes, people who listened Muddy Waters because they'd heard he was an influence on The Rolling Stones heard proto-rock music; but that isn't the same thing as saying critical values derived in the 60's and 70's were being used to judge art from the past. At the level of "what we like" it was a two-way street between the present and the past. At the level of "how we justify what we like" it was pretty much one-way.

Which is a bad thing because pop deserves to be treated as just as much serious art as classical music is.
-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...), May 10th, 2005.

Um, 'unpick' doesn't mean 'abolish', and nor does 'undermine the (existing or previous) alliance between pop and serious art/critical respectability' mean 'never treat pop seriously as art'. The recent thread about pop music on Dissensus also seemed to make this assumption about anti-rockism/popism - that it's about being anti-critical, and in the end always resorts to "who cares, it's fun, it gives me pleasure" as a way of bailing out of arguments. This strikes me as demonstrably untrue, there's a huge body of writing that indicates that what popism if often about is thinking ever more critically about pop - in the process, taking to pieces some very entrenched assumptions about the criteria which is used to assess it.

And I think at this late date "folk art" is a really vexed concept, in this day and age after the efforts of someone like my pal Steve Calt, who wrote strenuously to take apart the assumptions of a guy like David Evans, who was looking always for some illusory "tradition" of blues in the delta. If it were truly a "tradition," then why was it that by the '60s there weren't any black musicians down there who even remembered that Patton played blues? Surely that whole attitude has a lot to do with rockism, since the only way to make that old music supposedly "palatable" to modern ears was to connect it to what was happening then?

xpost Geir, I listen to lots and lots of music that isn't "danceable," I listen to tons of late-19th century composers, Ravel, Debussy...and to Bartok, Stravinsky...and Webern, Berg, both of whom I'm into these days. It's great to be an American and be able to do both, you know, and it makes me proud just like Lee Greenwood to realize that someone like Miles Davis could so fruitfully combine "danceable" with the innovations of serious European composers...

In this same lineage of thought, there's a new generation out there that treats old-school Hip-Hop as that which fed modern day electronic dance music, rather than it's own artform.

I lost interest in Clapton when I was about 16, but Robert Johnson, Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Charley Patton, Skip James, etc. remain fresh to my ears.

I think this idea of a "point of entry" is an important one that shouldn't be dismissed -- it's almost always been the tool by which I've overcome my musical boundaries.

For example, I liked James Brown. Someone told me once that Fela Kuti is "The African James Brown." So I listen to it to hear some funky grooves. But I gradually realize that it's something different, that he's not "The African James Brown," but that characterization has forced me to give it enough of a listen to realize what's unique and different about Fela.