Interluding...

by Sylvie Shaw
What music grabs you, draws you into its lyrics and sounds so you unconsciously hum and sing along with it all day as it accompanies your own conscious thoughts?Music has a way of doing that - from a single voice and bilma (clapsticks) or the sound of the heartbeat drum, to the moving symphonies of Mahler or the delicious whine of Kurt Cobain.

I was brought up on a diet of classical music (parents), musical comedy (neighbours) and rock (radio). Some songs stand out in my memory as turning points in my music listening as I shifted from rockn'roll to cool jazz through the high school years.

These were the sixties when the Beatles and Rolling Stones were high on the pop agenda. But alongside the pop scene, and for some artists within it, came the protest songs and the folk genre through anti(Vietnam) war and peace movement messages from Bob Dylan and a range of (largely) American songsters. Their songs posed questions, challenged one's thinking, and did not wallow in teen angst and romantic illusion.

Pop evoloved and changed in the margins but mainline radio and TV continued (and continues) to play what Adorno and Horkheimer (2002), in their Dialectic of Enlightenment, would refer to as repetitive, standardized, culture products designed to provide a soporific to the working masses. Their view was that:

'Entertainment ... is sought by those who want to escape the mechanized labor process so that they can cope with it again. At the same time, however, mechanization has such power over leisure and its happiness, determines so thoroughly the fabrication of entertainment commodities, that the off-duty worker can experience nothing but after-images of the work process itself.' (109)

Referring to 'the culture industry', Adorno and Horkheimer developed a hard-hitting critique of the way entertainment acts to sap the autonomy of indidivuals providing instead a model of 'freedom to be the same.' (136). While genres and artists evolve over time, their products remain a testament to capitalist society's desire for profit and accumulation of cultural (and thus ideological) goods.

Have things changed since Adorno and Horkheimer's 1940s critique? Perhaps the answer is yes and no. Perhaps the spread of globalization, communications, and self-published music via social media, allows the promotion of myriad styles of music to effect prominence in certain circles and subcultures - but dominance at the mainstream?

When I first heard Coldplay's Yellow and watched Chris Martin's rain-swept beach walk, I was touched by its simplicity and beauty. When I saw The Killers' Human, and caught Brandon Flowers' religion in the lyrics, I was moved by the message that ressonated with thoughts of Adorno and Horkheimer, 'Are we human or are we dancer?'

But two songs leap out as part of my musical evolution - the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK, and Grand Master Flash's Don't push me ...cos I'm close to the edge.

Such songs don't come out of a vaccuum. They are enveloped within a socio-political and psycho-spiritual zeitgeist which aimed to change the direction of the culture industry - but became absorbed in it. How both music genres came into being have very different trajectories but they allowed a chink in the culture industry until it drew these styles into its profiteering bosom.

There are still patches of political challenge and environmental messaging within the contemporary pop scene, where the margins are embraced at the centre and songs rocket to the top of the charts - but this seems rare. A good example is Coldplay's whimsical yet poignant Paradise which address environmental devastation and the horrors of war, while the accompanying music clip depicts Martin, dressed as a disconsolate elephant, escaping the zoo's clutches and journeying to Africa where, riding a unicycle, he finally locates his elephant clan and leaps with joy at his homecoming.

When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But it flew away from her reach
And the bullets catch in her teeth

Life goes on, it gets so heavy
The wheel breaks the butterfly
Every tear a waterfall, in the night the stormy night
She closed her eyes
In the night the stormy night, away she'd fly...
(Berryman, Martin, Champion & Buckland 2011)

Where the change is taking place, though, is in religious and spiritual rituals and services. While the music styles remain pop, rock, hiphop and even heavy metal, the genres overflow with religious symbolism and the love of God. Sacred music is transformed by and in the culture industry's mantle. The profane of the past (when rockn'roll was criticized as the work of the devil) is now a major driver for meaning making.

Sylvie Shaw, 2012

Questions
- Do you agree with the critique of Adorno and Horkheimer about popular music?
- Is the audience passive or active - watching shows like Pop Asia or MTV or viewing/listening via social media?
- How re yout tastes in music defined?
- How have perspectives to sacred music changed,  from what to what, and what is your definition of a new genre of sacred music? 

References
Adorno, T.W. and M. Horkheimer. 2002. Dialectic of enlightenment: philosophical fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Berryman, G. C. Martin, W. Champion, J. Buckland. 2011. Paradise. EMI Records Ltda

Image Source: http://pixabay.com/en/elephant-plasticine-model-animal-20071/