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poptimists2007-10-04 05:12 pm
freakytigger.livejournal.com) wrote in poptimists2007-10-04 05:12 pm
Context and Anticontext
Quite unformed thorts based on Frank K's latest column and discussion of same - see here: http://koganbot.livejournal.com/26897.html
Music has a social context, obv - who else is listening to stuff you encounter, both people you know and people you don't but you assume things (good or bad) about.
It also has an anticontext (erm this is just another part of the context rly but I wanted a snappy name for it) - people who AREN'T listening to it, because they don't like it or because they don't know about it.
But not everyone who doesn't listen to something matters in terms of the anticontext - my reaction to Keane, say, is affected by my imagining Mums listening to Keane, and NME readers mostly not listening to Keane, but isn't significantly affected by Amazon tribesmen not listening to Keane, or by my Great Aunt Betty not listening to Keane. The Amazon tribesmen and Great Aunt Betty are not part of the anticontext here: the NME readers are.
Context and especially anticontext are obviously hugely important in enclosed social spheres, like school or University, and then maybe the anticontext fades from importance a bit later in life.
Here's my theory - the anticontext has shrunk, steadily, since the 1960s. The sense that a random guy on the street, or someone of a different agegroup, or someone not dressing the same as you, is part of the anticontext, has diminished (with occasional seismic flare-ups). And also, MAYBE, the size of the potential context is directly related to the size of the anticontext (since just as not every non-listener is in the anticontext, not every listener is in the context).
Music has a social context, obv - who else is listening to stuff you encounter, both people you know and people you don't but you assume things (good or bad) about.
It also has an anticontext (erm this is just another part of the context rly but I wanted a snappy name for it) - people who AREN'T listening to it, because they don't like it or because they don't know about it.
But not everyone who doesn't listen to something matters in terms of the anticontext - my reaction to Keane, say, is affected by my imagining Mums listening to Keane, and NME readers mostly not listening to Keane, but isn't significantly affected by Amazon tribesmen not listening to Keane, or by my Great Aunt Betty not listening to Keane. The Amazon tribesmen and Great Aunt Betty are not part of the anticontext here: the NME readers are.
Context and especially anticontext are obviously hugely important in enclosed social spheres, like school or University, and then maybe the anticontext fades from importance a bit later in life.
Here's my theory - the anticontext has shrunk, steadily, since the 1960s. The sense that a random guy on the street, or someone of a different agegroup, or someone not dressing the same as you, is part of the anticontext, has diminished (with occasional seismic flare-ups). And also, MAYBE, the size of the potential context is directly related to the size of the anticontext (since just as not every non-listener is in the anticontext, not every listener is in the context).
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:(
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And also I think maybe there's a shift in terms of "what happens when you find you're in someone's anticontext" - attack their context, try to join it, go and join an amazon tribe....
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Except, in a high school, jock isn't one context and burnout another, but rather jock vs. burnout is the context. A college musical context might be rock vs. dance vs. pop vs. indie (not to mention subcontexts and suboppositions, and maybe country is in there somewhere), except "versus" to some degree will be "and" (and vice versa)(and vice versus).
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But I don't know. You could say that Why Music Sucks and Radio On and Swellsville were anti-anticontexts, if indie-alternative is your basic anticontext, except that many readers and writers for WMS (incl. me) were indie-alternative musicians and distributors themselves, and many of the Radio On writers such as Rob Sheffield (who also wrote for WMS) were fans of a good deal of indie. So the way that it was an anticontext wasn't its being anti-indie but that it didn't take indie vs. mainstream as its dominant attitude, rather it argued the issues, just as ilX and
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Think it is only in pop that the anti-context has got smaller for e.g. Thai tribesmen have now heard of Britney. But for other genres, particularly where obscurity is actively valued by fans, the reverse is probably true - there are more people making music now than in 1966, simply because they can (affordable equipment etc) and thus it's harder to keep track of everything, even if you would probably like a band were you aware of them.
Why People Don't Listen (revisited)
(1) I assume most of my classmates aren't listening to Ashlee Simpson. (However, I think they should; they tend to think I should not, or at least that it's odd that I do.)
(2) I do not listen to smooth jazz.
(3) In case (1), not listening tends to be a detriment. They take my logic for (2) (I listen to OTHER jazz and can hear the difference; I know that it's catered to "easy listening" listeners, meaning it's intended to recede into the background and I prefer to listen actively (this is why I don't particularly care if I hear it in an elevator but wouldn't listen to it in my stereo) and then apply my logic inappropriately to Ashlee. I know this because I've listened -- but the only context most people have for Ashlee is "easy listening," as "Pieces of Me" is for the most part a contemporary "soft rock" ballad (because what's interesting in it requires context and isn't just happening in the music itself).
Tha birth a da smoove
I listen to the smooth jazz station once a month, when my friend Phil's boyfriend Jim gives the two of us a ride to the writer's group we're part of. A couple of month's ago the smooth jazz station was playing "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone." Shelton, the husband of Sue, a woman in the writer's group, leads a blues-r&b band, and they play "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone," too, though they don't signify as "smooth."
I'd expect cat mysteries to be too too precious. (Btw, I've now posted my brother's analysis of Lillian Jackson Braun.)
Re: Tha birth a da smoove
Re: Tha birth a da smoove
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So perhaps the change has occured in the greater use of pre-existing music for telly/film/ads/hold music/ringtones rather than commissioning someone to write music especially (interestingly this type of music has never been of much interest to the pop music fan other than as a novelty hit, but Great Aunt Betty will probably have a copy of Greatest Bond Themes in her dresser).
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Re: Tha birth a da smoove
This is a really good post and anticontext is def a v important point - usually it manifests itself as sneering at stereotypical fans - but I am too frazzled to contribute anything more! bah.
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eg. "Something is happening but you don't know what it is, do you Mr Jones" - this is less powerful if Mr Jones doesn't know what it is because Mr Jones is a 60-year old woman in Ulan Bator.
and: "Of course the real fans aren't buying it" and "Lady if you have to ask you'll never know" - some of the most powerful, resonant mythic rock stances rely on the invocation of the anticontext.
So "not getting" is usually more important than "not knowing about" in the anticontext. But what I'm asking is - was this true in the 60s, or during punk, or acid house, or any other surge moment in which the average man in the street was shifted into the anticontext simply because knowing what was happening felt so significant?
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However there is still, in my experience, a very large bedrock of anti-context amongst the man in the street (and I do mean man, largely) in terms of general rockist attitudes to pop in particular.
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Background: I am, or was, the only person born in the US in my office. There are a few people who lived there or in Canada maybe 5 or more years as a adults, and the majority of them are life-long Russians. That is, until recently, when we hired a young American to work as an English-language editor.
The story: This morning "Sodajerk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNrb2jrZvv0)" by Buffalo Tom shuffled up on the iPod, and I suddenly realized one reason (or aspect, perhaps) of why I kind of resent the arrival of this new person. Until now, "Sodajerk" was completely mine - chances are next to nil that anyone else I know (IRL) would have even heard it, let alone have a context to place it in. Suddenly I have this person who, it's entirely likely, might hear the song and immediately mentally note "Oh yes that was that song from My So-Called Life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGm_rbQvyU8) (or whatever context he might have - "another crappy 90s alt-college rock band"). And that kind of robs me of *my* meaning of the song - i.e. to me it may have been red but suddently there's this drop of yellow in it, and i've got to negotiate with orange.
Not sure that gets anyone anywhere, just what I was thinking. Occasionally I think to myself that this is kind of a strange community for me to be participating in, because of a lot of music is for me an intensely personal, and therefore private, experience, and the last thing I want to do is *share* it with anyone.
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Angela! Wait! Don't Forget The Geometry Review!
No, wait, a quick google shows that "Sodajerk" is in a different episode, in fact a different couple of episodes, actually, most notably the one where Jordan finally is willing to hold Angela's hand in public (except the Buffalo Tom song that accompanies this is "Late At Night").
Well, now I've probably ruined your private meaning of "Sodajerk" forever.
Re: Tha birth a da smoove
[*Incredible episodes three and four (S01E03 and S01E04) of the Ashlee Simpson Show, if you haven't seen them.]
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Rap and country
Several performers have created major anticontexts for themselves recently: E.g., Eminem in 2000 and Paris Hilton in 2006. As a genre, hip-hop still seems as if it has the biggest anticontext. And what about country? In '99 Kevin John entitled his fanzine "The magazine of rap and country" because he'd read some alternative-leaning magazine that declared, "We like everything except for rap and country."
Re: Rap and country
(And actually is the becoming-aware-of-ones-anticontext a defining moment in childhood - the awareness that there are a bunch of people who think what I like is lame (or who like lame stuff I hate) and the reaction to that.)