The New Music Industries by Diane Hughes

Author:Diane Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The Crafting of Songs

Popular music and creativity in general have historically been understood in the Western world as an undertaking that involves the creator artistically expressing a unique persona or perspective through song or other creative media. In popular culture, this results in a tendency to position creative figures as individual artists, who produce their works following some kind of ‘mystical’ inspiration, as Sternberg terms it (1999, p. 5). This is despite the concept that many popular singers are the public face of top-tier songwriting processes.

The prevailing individualistic view of creativity has been criticised, most notably by Csikzentmihalyi (2014). Reminiscent of elements of Bourdieu’s cultural theory (Bourdieu, 1993), in a collection of his works Csikzentmihalyi (2014) proposes that creativity arises from the interaction of three forces (domain, field and the individual), an interaction that recognises that multiple factors are needed in order for creativity to take place (p. 47). The domain consists of skills or knowledge relevant to an area (Csikzenmihalyi, 2014, p. 47); for popular music songwriting, this may include instrumental ability, musical theory, awareness of genre and style, and various technical skills. Field describes the actors that consume and assess creative works, including other artists, audiences, and institutional figures (Csikzenmihalyi, 2014, p. 47). The individual negotiates and responds to the field and domain in order to produce creative works (Csikzenmihalyi, 2014, p. 47). Similarly, Hennessey and Amabile (2010) noted that creativity is defined on a variety of levels, from the microscopic neurological level, to the individual level, to the holistic systems level proposed by Csikzentmihalyi (2014). However, this more nuanced depiction of creativity does not negate the existence of musical creativity as process and songwriting as a typically highly personal pursuit. The following quote by Jenny Biddle (singer-songwriter) highlights the interpersonal and audience-focused elements of performance and artistic creative practice:I don’t want to write a song for the sake of a hit song; I want to feel and connect with people, I want to entertain. I really love those gigs where there might be 60 people in a room and you can look at each and every one of them and pull faces and they laugh, and they cry, and they tell stories. I love those gigs.

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