Listening to Popular Music, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Led Zeppelin by Theodore Gracyk

Author:Theodore Gracyk
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Popular Music - Philosophy and Aesthetics, Popular Music, Philosophy and Aesthetics, ISBN-13: 9780472069835, University of Michigan Press, General, Appreciation, Instruction & Study, Music
ISBN: 9780472069835
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2007-05-01T22:00:00+00:00

Functionality and Value

My second general point about evaluation and appreciation is that the aesthetic dimension of any given piece of popular music does not exhaust everything relevant in evaluating it. I have suggested that the transition from appreciation to instrumental evaluation requires a decision about which criteria are most important for comparing one case to another.46 These criteria operate as general standards that should prevent us from valuing music improperly by regarding it too highly (“Janis Joplin’s performance of ‘Ball and Chain’ is the greatest blues singing ever!”) or dismissing it too quickly (“All rap music is just a load of noise”).

At this point, I might be expected to say that comparisons can only be made between two things in the same category, sharing a common function, and that the primary function of Armed Forces is to be an object of appreciation. So, generalizing from that case, we should evaluate popular music in terms of that function. Unfortunately, that sounds suspiciously like an endorsement of the traditional criterion employed to endorse music as art, which is just what I do not want to assume.47

Instead, suppose that we return to the core idea of “everyday” aesthetics. Every experience is a candidate for aesthetic value. Music does not become aesthetic by moving it from functional situations to art settings—that merely changes the parameters of the experience that might be aesthetically valued. Suppose I sit still in a chair for twelve minutes while I listen intently to Sinead O’Connor’s 2002 recording of the ballad “Lord Baker.” Attending closely to the subtleties of her singing as she relates the redemptive story of love lost and regained, I am deeply moved. I appreciate the intense experience it offers. Suppose that I leave the compact disc in the changer and play it again while preparing dinner with my wife, who likes to sing along to this album. On nights when making dinner feels like a chore, the right music lightens the task. Although this second experience of O’Connor’s music is not as focused on the music, the music interacts with other elements of the experience, infusing the environment with rhythms and expressive textures that it would otherwise lack.48 Circumstances might come together in a way that, when I reflect on the experience, I find that the confluence of music, chore, and my wife’s company is, experientially, the highlight of my day and of value for its own sake.

Once we give up the old idea that aesthetic value cannot be combined with other sorts of value, many social situations can be recognized as aesthetically valuable. Music frequently contributes to such value. Our aesthetic manipulations of our lived environments don’t end with our visual decorating.49 Either way, as foreground or background, music is often chosen for its expected contribution to an environment. If that experience is aesthetically valued, then the music has instrumental value for that context.

When Marcus claims that Rubber Soul is the best Beatles album, his comparison presupposes that Beatles albums share commensurable values, that is, each can be judged according to the degree that it possesses the same specifiable features.

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