Folkwrongica

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I got absorbed enough in this Guardian piece to miss my tube stop:

http://music.guardian.co.uk/folk/story/0,,2071468,00.html

A lot of its anecdotal material is good and I can't much disagree with the central argument (tho as they admit Tosches summarises it more neatly) but I didn't like the conclusion - even as a staunch poptimist "the inherent democracy of pop junk" is a MASSIVE handwave.

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

The 'democracy' thing is meaningless -- they are assuming that 'democratic' = against the idea of 'purity' which is a modern academic cliche. (n postcolonial studies everything is described as 'hybrid' (to avoid being called an essentialist), unless it happens to be white English writing in which case it is not of interest, or unless you happen to be a rigorous thinker in which case absolutely everything is hybrid, but you're then left to find something interesting to say since your argument has become so general as to be meaningless. So the idea of pop here just means 'music', but the writers say 'pop' instead to try and associate themselves with some kind of populist democratic impulse (combined with 'and aren't racists awful, we must therefore be nice people. Which does not necessarily follow).

But other than that this is interesting for its details, if old news conceptually -- this problem goes back to the C18th ballad collectors, for sure, although their conceptions of folk could not have been racialised in the same way since 'race' didn't exist as a category then as it did by the late C19th.

The attack on the idea of 'folk' or even 'pop' as ethnographic categories (i.e. the idea that there is an 'authentic' popular culture to oppose to commercial or high cultures) has been going on for a wild in cultural studies I think. There was a manifesto type book from Blackwell a couple of years ago on The Invention of Popular Culture or some such title.

The comments on the idealisation of the folk which goes back to the bros Grimm wash over the really interesting problem which would be: what were these ideas, how and why did they change over time, why is there a continuing demand for authenticity / purity i.e. we cannot simply dismiss it as 'ideology' or false-consciousness because it is clearly real to people, even if not from the writers' point of view.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i get the feeling from the amazon review that yr last point might be exactly what they explore.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

they seem to be saying quest for authenticity is forlorn, and yet the quest is the quest (sorry, Tom) and that informs the development of popular music all the same.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

That seems quite sensible! I thought the book looked interesting, even if it will be guaranteed to irritate me for some reason, but that's just because I'm irritable!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Also they will not analyse the problem in Hegelian terms.

(If they want to sell any books!)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Also I don't know if the story can make any sense if it JUST looks at music -- this problem is as old as ? well that would be the question. Hence we need a DDR not just some music geeks!

[koganbot]

The Dance Dance Revolution is not just for music geeks!