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Country/Rap Song on Race Relations

April 10, 2013 by

Brad Paisley and LL Cool J on the same track? That’s equally as strange as the Tim McGraw and Nelly duet in 2004′s “Over and Over”. Unlike that smooth song about heartbreak, however, Paisley and LL’s song has a much different topic. The new song is titled “Accidental Racist” and is causing quite a stir.

The song is supposed to be interpreted as a song about overcoming racial tensions caused by past events in American history. However, as is everything that exists, its message is subject to interpretation. Race relations has never been an easy topic to discuss and many are calling the song an epic fail. The duo calls the song “a conversation starter.”

While the two may have had good intentions in writing this song, to get a better picture of race relations and how they are evolving, check out some of these PUP books.

Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America by Jennifer L. Hochschild, Vesla M. Weaver & Traci R. Burch

The American racial order–the beliefs, institutions, and practices that organize relationships among the nation’s races and ethnicities–is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look at the reasons behind this dramatic change, and considers how different groups of Americans are being affected. Through revealing narrative and striking research, the authors show that the personal and political choices of Americans will be critical to how, and how much, racial hierarchy is redefined in decades to come.

The authors outline the components that make up a racial order and examine the specific mechanisms influencing group dynamics in the United States: immigration, multiracialism, genomic science, and generational change. Cumulatively, these mechanisms increase heterogeneity within each racial or ethnic group, and decrease the distance separating groups from each other. The authors show that individuals are moving across group boundaries, that genomic science is challenging the whole concept of race, and that economic variation within groups is increasing. Above all, young adults understand and practice race differently from their elders: their formative memories are 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Obama’s election–not civil rights marches, riots, or the early stages of immigration. Blockages could stymie or distort these changes, however, so the authors point to essential policy and political choices.

Portraying a vision, not of a postracial America, but of a different racial America, Creating a New Racial Order examines how the structures of race and ethnicity are altering a nation.

Jennifer L. Hochschild is the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government, professor of African and African American studies, and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. Vesla M. Weaver is an assistant professor in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Traci R. Burch is assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University and research professor at the American Bar Foundation.

What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans by Kenneth Prewitt

America is preoccupied with race statistics–perhaps more than any other nation. Do these statistics illuminate social reality and produce coherent social policy, or cloud that reality and confuse social policy? Does America still have a color line? Who is on which side? Does it have a different “race” line–the nativity line–separating the native born from the foreign born? You might expect to answer these and similar questions with the government’s “statistical races.” Not likely, observes Kenneth Prewitt, who shows why the way we count by race is flawed.

Prewitt calls for radical change. The nation needs to move beyond a race classification whose origins are in discredited eighteenth-century race-is-biology science, a classification that once defined Japanese and Chinese as separate races, but now combines them as a statistical “Asian race.” One that once tried to divide the “white race” into “good whites” and “bad whites,” and that today cannot distinguish descendants of Africans brought in chains four hundred years ago from children of Ethiopian parents who eagerly immigrated twenty years ago. Contrary to common sense, the classification says there are only two ethnicities in America–Hispanics and non-Hispanics. But if the old classification is cast aside, is there something better?

What Is Your Race? clearly lays out the steps that can take the nation from where it is to where it needs to be. It’s not an overnight task–particularly the explosive step of dropping today’s race question from the census–but Prewitt argues persuasively that radical change is technically and politically achievable, and morally necessary.

Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. His books include The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization. He served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001.

Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race by Thomas J. Sugrue

Barack Obama, in his acclaimed campaign speech discussing the troubling complexities of race in America today, quoted William Faulkner’s famous remark “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” In Not Even Past, award-winning historian Thomas Sugrue examines the paradox of race in Obama’s America and how President Obama intends to deal with it.

Obama’s journey to the White House undoubtedly marks a watershed in the history of race in America. Yet even in what is being hailed as the post-civil rights era, racial divisions–particularly between blacks and whites–remain deeply entrenched in American life. Sugrue traces Obama’s evolving understanding of race and racial inequality throughout his career, from his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, to his time as an attorney and scholar, to his spectacular rise to power as a charismatic and savvy politician, to his dramatic presidential campaign. Sugrue looks at Obama’s place in the contested history of the civil rights struggle; his views about the root causes of black poverty in America; and the incredible challenges confronting his historic presidency.

Does Obama’s presidency signal the end of race in American life? In Not Even Past, a leading historian of civil rights, race, and urban America offers a revealing and unflinchingly honest assessment of the culture and politics of race in the age of Obama, and of our prospects for a postracial America.

Thomas J. Sugrue is the David Boies Professor of History and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North and The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton).

Filed Under: Cultural Studies, In the News, Music, Sociology, Twitter

Jennifer Lena Interview about book Banding Together

January 25, 2013 by

Banding Together coverWhat makes country music so popular in the South? Why does heavy metal only gain traction in certain communities? Why are tweeny bop tunes the go-to music for the middle school girl population? By examining the common economic, organizational, ideological, and aesthetic traits among contemporary genres, Jennifer Lena’s book Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century American popular music.

Sudhir Venkatesh interviewed Lena about the book and her work. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

Q. You are interested in factors that determine whether particular musical styles, genres, etc., will gain mass appeal — or remain circumscribed to a small niche. Have you discovered something about the process of “influence” or “contagion” that the social network scholars have ignored or underemphasized? What does your work tell us about the role of networks in shaping popular tastes?

A. The most common way for music to blow up from a small scene into global pop is for a controversy to erupt. Music history is littered with examples of “moral panics”: be-bop jazz was blamed for white-on-black race riots in the mid-1940s, just as rap music was blamed when riots erupted in Los Angeles following the Rodney King trial. In both cases, sensationalized news reports and especially a focus on the “dangerous” elements in the music attracted young people in droves. Moral panics, like magnets, repel and attract. This is also true when disputes involve dueling scenes, like the fights between “mods” and “rockers” in the U.K. in the early 1960s or the battles between fans of heavy metal and punk that played out on the pages of Creem magazine in the early 1980s. It is equally true when outsiders attack: the Parents’ Music Resource Center’s efforts to ban heavy metal and rap music resulted in those Parental Advisory stickers. When rock fans staged the infamous Disco Demolition at Comiskey Park they may have kept disco in the limelight for an extra year.

In my book, I try to understand popular tastes, but also niche communities. By looking at how the communities that support music grow and change (or wither and die), I realized that people’s tastes depend as much on the characteristics of the community as the music being played. Some people are into local music scenes because they like to interact with the musicians and other fans on a regular basis. They like that ticket prices are low and that the music is relatively unknown outside of their core group. They’re so invested in this kind of relationship with music that they’re open to different styles.

In contrast, the global pop music experience is almost totally mediated by screens—blogs and music videos, for example—and most Pop fans have no unmediated interaction with the performers. Even concerts rely on screens to make the performance visible. In other words, the fan who prefers local, “underground,” or “independent” rap music has different tastes than the fan of pop rap, and that difference doesn’t reside only in the songs.

On the face of it, this is counter-intuitive. We tend to think about taste as being all about aesthetic style, but ask someone what kind of music they like and they are likely to say, “Oh, I like a little of everything.” Of course, we don’t actually like all music, indiscriminately. Instead we choose what bluegrass we like, or what kind of rock appeals to us based on our preference for one kind of music community over another.

Check out the full interview here.

Filed Under: Music, Sociology, Twitter

A Mix-tape for Our President

November 7, 2012 by

An Election wrap-up from Jennifer Lena, author of Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music


“A wise man once said, “never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment.”” Frank Zappa interview with Grace Slick on Rockplace (11 February 1984)

In celebration of the end of a long election season, I created this mixtape for our returning President, Barack Obama. For those who have never heard of a mixtape, they are compilations of songs designed for a particular purpose (e.g., as a romantic gesture, to celebrate an accomplishment). The term derives from the 1980s when cassette tapes were the medium in use, although music fans now create mixtapes on CDs and on social media platforms like Spotify.  The thematic link between the songs listed below are the issues our new (and returning) President is likely to consider during his next term in office. The list isn’t exhaustive, and I’ve balanced the thematic relevance of each song with its aesthetic quality and my desire to highlight examples of excellent pop music. Where possible, I’ve included a recording of the song, but readers should note that some songs include profanity and should listen to them before playing the songs around children.

 

1. “Letter to my countrymen,” Brother Ali (Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color, 2012).

 

“I used to think I hated this place/Couldn’t wait to tell the president straight to his face.” Brother Ali, and many other Americans, enter Obama’s second term feeling as if the American Dream has slipped through their fingers in recent years, or never thought it was their dream to have. Ali’s song is a hopeful and mature response to the disappointments of life in America—eight lines in, he admits: “I wanna make this country what it says it is.” He’s concerned about the corrosive effects of two myths: that of American exceptionalism, and of meritocracy and individual achievement. In the lingering wake of the Occupy movement, and while we are still in what some call America’s “Second Gilded Age,” the President need to lead us in a conversation about privilege—whether it comes from the color of your skin or the class of your parents, and criticize this still-popular notion that we get up on our own.

 

2. “Reagan,” Killer Mike (R.A.P. Music, 2012).

 

Obama faces a crisis of legitimacy in some parts of our country. You might argue this is a problem that Nixon created, but this particular president continues to face challenges from Birthers, those who doubt his Christian faith, despair from his handling of the economy (and from a rogue’s gallery of conspiracy theorists with some truly odd ideas).  Rapper Killer Mike lost his faith in the presidency in the 1980s, a transformation he describes in a song titled “Reagan.” Using two audio samples from Regan’s denial and later acceptance of his administration’s exchange of arms-for-hostages, the song’s lyrics chart the political development of a young man watching the Iran-Contra affair and then the war on drugs, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…and at each step, his distrust of, and anger against, the government grow stronger. The lyrics speak to a number of issues the new president must consider, but it’s strongest and longest attack is reserved for the culture of incarceration: “thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits/Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics.” America leads the world in incarcerating its citizens. According to one estimate, we had 5% of the world’s population in 2008, but a full quarter of its prisoners.  One in 100 American adults is in prison, and that number jumps to about 5 of every 100 adult African-American men (and 9 of every 100 black men between 25-40).   The incarceration of citizens affects not only the criminal and his family, but also taxpayers: the costs of incarcerating so many Americans are enormous. By one estimate, California spent $4 billion more on prisons than on the state college systems in 2011. It costs that state less than $10,000 a year to educate a student, while housing, policing, and (hopefully) reforming a prisoner costs over $45,000 per inmate.

 

3. “Watching the Detectives,” Elvis Costello and the Attractions (My Aim is True, 1977)*.

 

Privacy laws have arguably not kept up with technology, and the post-9/11 era has been one in which politicians must balance citizens’ civil liberties against the value of new police technologies designed to keep us safe.  In recent months, the ACLU is among those organizations and citizen’s groups that have appeared before government panels to take a stand against these threats, including warrantless wiretapping, domestic drones, and face recognition technology. The new President should consider these issues while listening to Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1977 hit song “Watching the Detectives.”

 

*“Watching the Detectives” was released as a UK single in October 1977, but wasn’t on the album; in the U.S. version of the album, it was the last track on the A-side.

 

4. “Price Tag,” Jesse J (Who You Are, 2011); “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” Bob Dylan (Bringing It All Back Home, 1965).

 

One of the more controversial legal decisions in recent years was “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.” The new president will consider campaign finance reform and challenges to the notion of corporate “personhood” from those who think money is not speech. For a soundtrack to this discussion, I recommend Jesse J’s huge hit song “Price Tag:” “Seems like everybody’s got a price/ I wonder how they sleep at night/ When the sale comes first and the truth comes second.” Or, if he’s in a more mellow mood, Bob Dylan’s just the thing to remind him that “money doesn’t talk, it swears.”

 

5. “The City Consumes Us,” The Delgados (Universal Audio, 2004)

According to the U.S. Census, eight out of every 10 people lived in a metropolitan area in 2010, and more than one in 10 lived in either New York or Los Angeles.  We might think America’s culture is defined by its heartland, it’s “breadbaskets,” or its “prairies,” but most of us live in concrete jungles. “Watch how the city consumes us,” sing the Delgados, “Watch how the city destroys us,” and yet, it is a “cost I am happy to pay.” The list of great songs about cities is too long to share, but here are some of my runners-up: (1) the live version of Mano Negra’s “Guayakill City,” (2) Brazilian Girls, “Internacional,” (3) “Chocolate City,” Parliament, (4) almost the entire Jay Z catalog including “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love),” and, of course, “Empire State of Mind,” (5) “Living for the City” (Stevie Wonder), (6) “Every Ghetto, Every City,” Lauryn Hill, (7) “Detroit Rock City” (Kiss), and (8) “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns n’ Roses, perhaps the best song ever written about Los Angeles.

 

6. “Disparate Youth,” Santigold (Master of My Make-Believe, 2012)

 

Although Santigold’s 2012 single “Disparate Youth” is not a commentary on climate change, it is one of the changes she despairs in this tremendously good song. “Don’t look ahead, there’s stormy weather/ Another roadblock in our way/But if we go, we go together/Our hands are tied here if we stay.” According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, we can expect temperature rises, more frequent heavy rainfall events, more serious summer-drying and drought, less snow and sea-ice, and the retreat of glaciers and ice-caps.  Our hands are tied if we stay.

 

7. “All Falls Down,” Kanye West (The College Dropout, 2004)

 

Remember when George Bush told us that the best response to 9/11 was to fly and go on vacations? Now that millions of Americans have found themselves unable to afford their mortgages, the time is right to have a national discussion about consumer spending and debt. America’s consumer debt rose to $13 trillion in the second quarter of 2012, just $2 trillion shy of our country’s total yearly economic output.  Kanye West has a message for our new president, in his 2004 song “All Falls Down:” “It seems we living the American dream/But the people highest up got the lowest self esteem/The prettiest people do the ugliest things/For the road to riches and diamond rings/We shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade us/We trying to buy back our 40 acres/And for that paper, look how low we a’stoop”

 

8. “Fire Fire,” M.I.A. (Arular, 2005)

 

The U.S. Census Bureau set the official poverty rate in America at 15.1% in 2010, with over 46 million of our nation’s citizens falling below that threshold. Our president might heed the concerns of British-Sri Lankan-American pop artist M.I.A., who has developed a reputation as a voice of the poor and oppressed. Any one of the songs from her chart-topping 2005 album Arular, 2007’s effort Kala or 2010’s Maya would provide our new president with a frank examination of poverty and its consequences on political activity, daily life, gender relations, and family. “Fire Fire” is one song that warns of the dark side of poverty: the militarization of the poor—a theme that reflects M.I.A.’s concern about the persecution of her native Tamil people, and echoes themes in contemporary Americans’ concern about Islamic fundamentalism: “You shoulda been good to me,” M.I.A. sings, in the persona of a young rebel, “Then I wouldn’t get so rowdy rowdy/ You shoulda kept ya eye on me/ Then I wouldn’t get so baddy baddy.”

 

9. “Once in a Lifetime,” Talking Heads (Remain in the Light, 1981)

 

The Baby Boomer generation is aging, and the Census estimates the dependency ratio (the number of people 65 and older to every 100 people under 65) will climb rapidly in these two decades (from 22 to 35).  By 2030, one in five Americans will be over 65. David Byrne fronts the Talking Heads in their classic song about change, and time, and getting older: “Time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us/Time isn’t holding us, time doesn’t hold you back.” If you prefer something with more…jazz fingers…try Tom Lehrer’s “When You Are Old and Grey.” The president will, of course, consider the impact of our rapidly aging baby boom generation on health care policy, and for this, I suggest Loudon Wainwright III’s “My Meds.”

 

I’ve considered adding a song to speak to the issues faced by Hispanic-Americans; only Mexico (112 million) has a larger Hispanic population than the United States (50.5 million in 2010) and that population is expected to grow to over 130 million by July 2050.  Of course, our education system is perennially the subject of public discussion, along with our financial and immigration systems, and the problem of bullying and self-inflicted harm in the LGBTQ community (especially among the young), to name a few of many issues.

 

Our second term President faces an extraordinary number of challenges, which I’ve only started to address in the above. I need at least another five songs to finish my playlist—what should they be?

 

This post was inspired by Dorian Warren and includes suggestions from R. L’Heureux Lewis, and Daniel Radosh.

Filed Under: American History, Election 101, Music, Sociology, Twitter

A Fresh Look at a French Composer and Virtuoso – Camille Saint-Saëns

August 14, 2012 by

The Bard Music Festival’s second weekend featuring Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) starts on August 17th.  The concerts, lectures, and panel discussions of the festival are complemented by a book of related articles, essays, and letters edited by a prominent music scholar.  Princeton University Press is pleased to announce:

Camille Saint-Saëns and His World
Edited by Jann Pasler

Camille Saint-Saëns–perhaps the foremost French musical figure of the late nineteenth century and a composer who wrote in nearly every musical genre, from opera and the symphony to film music–is now being rediscovered after a century of modernism overshadowed his earlier importance. In a wide-ranging and trenchant series of essays, articles, and documents, Camille Saint-Saëns and His World deconstructs the multiple realities behind the man and his music. Topics range from intimate glimpses of the private and playful Saint-Saëns, to the composer’s interest in astronomy and republican politics, his performances of Mozart and Rameau over eight decades, and his extensive travels around the world. This collection also analyzes the role he played in various musical societies and his complicated relationship with such composers as Liszt, Massenet, Wagner, and Ravel. Featuring the best contemporary scholarship on this crucial, formative period in French music, Camille Saint-Saëns and His World restores the composer to his vital role as innovator and curator of Western music.

 

You can find more information about the Bard Music Festival and activities this weekend at:
http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2012/

For more information on the Bard Music Festival Book Series, check out:
http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/bfs.html

Filed Under: Music, Twitter Tagged With: ,

BOOK FACT FRIDAY

July 20, 2012 by

FACT: “The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of telecom law since 1934. Most of the Telecom Act is about promoting competition between cable and phone companies in the markets for voice communications, television entertainment, and broadband Internet service. In a provision that was little noted at the time, the act also eliminated the cap of 20 AM and 20 FM stations at the national level and considerably relaxed ownership caps at the local level.”

Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation
by Gabriel Rossman

Despite the growth of digital media, traditional FM radio airplay still remains the essential way for musicians to achieve commercial success. Climbing the Charts examines how songs rise, or fail to rise, up the radio airplay charts. Looking at the relationships between record labels, tastemakers, and the public, Gabriel Rossman develops a clear picture of the roles of key players and the gatekeeping mechanisms in the commercial music industry. Along the way, he explores its massive inequalities, debunks many popular misconceptions about radio stations’ abilities to dictate hits, and shows how a song diffuses throughout the nation to become a massive success.

Climbing the Charts provides a fresh take on the music industry and a model for understanding the diffusion of innovation.

“Climbing the Charts gives an eye-opening view of the front and back of radio broadcasting. It shows that the music industry has even more influence on radio airplay than we might imagine, but broadcasters and listeners also matter. Surprisingly, the greatest role of broadcasters is in their choice of radio formats, which structure the market for the music industry and the listeners. The important topic, careful analysis, and clear writing make this book broadly appealing.”—Henrich Greve, INSEAD

We invite you to read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9740.pdf

Filed Under: Book Fact Friday, Music, Sociology

BOOK FACT FRIDAY

July 6, 2012 by

FACT: “Frédéric Chopin was a freelance artist throughout his career. After being provided an excellent musical education by his upper middle-class Warsaw family, he presented a series of freelance concert performances in Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Munich, and Stuttgart between 1828 and 1831. Continuing on to Paris, he achieved only limited financial success performing his compositions at public concerts. But his introduction by a Warsaw acquaintance into the salons of wealthy Parisians provided a network of contacts, through which he became the most sought-after and best-paid independent piano teacher in Paris. His earnings were augmented through honoraria from music publishers. When his health deteriorated, he could no longer continue his strenuous teaching schedule. A concert trip to England failed to solve his financial problems, and he died in poverty at age thirty-nine.”

Quarter Notes and Bank Notes: The Economics of Music Composition in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
by F. M. Scherer

In 1700, most composers were employees of noble courts or the church. But by the nineteenth century, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Verdi, and many others functioned as freelance artists teaching, performing, and selling their compositions in the private marketplace. While some believe that Mozart’s career marks a clean break between these two periods, this book tells the story of a more complex and interesting transition.

F. M. Scherer first examines the political, intellectual, and economic roots of the shift from patronage to a freelance market. He describes the eighteenth-century cultural “arms race” among noble courts, the spread of private concert halls and opera houses, the increasing attendance of middle-class music lovers, and the founding of conservatories. He analyzes changing trends in how composers acquired their skills and earned their living, examining such impacts as demographic developments and new modes of transportation. The book offers insight into the diversity of composers’ economic aspirations, the strategies through which they pursued success, the burgeoning music publishing industry, and the emergence of copyright protection. Scherer concludes by drawing some parallels to the economic state of music composition in our own times.

Written by a leading economist with an unusually broad knowledge of music, this fascinating account is directed toward individuals intrigued by the world of classical composers as well as those interested in economic history or the role of money in art.

“In a bold interdisciplinary foray, Dr. Scherer has used his highly regarded economist’s skills to explore how leading European composers managed to support themselves during the 18th and 19th centuries. The result is an absorbing study of how creative artists adapted to the vast economic and social changes that occurred around them during the greatest era of musical composition.”—Derek Bok, Harvard University

We invite you to read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7612.pdf

Filed Under: Book Fact Friday, Economics, Music

The Ancient Problem of Unruly Music–more from Jenn Lena on music and the election

June 22, 2012 by

This week, sociologist Jennifer Lena was kind enough to provide Election 101 with a third and final installment to her series of posts on music in presidential campaigns. Check out her new book, Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music and her conversation with the philosopher and expert on both music and law, Jonathan Neufeld, on why the relationship between musicians and politicians is so fraught with difficulty:

 

The Ancient Problem of Unruly Music

Jennifer Lena

 

In my last two posts, I’ve detailed the ways in which politicians (and campaign staff) secure music for use on the campaign trail, and some of the controversies that have resulted when they did not secure permission to use those songs. Along the way, I’ve illuminated two other pathways for the match of politicians and musicians. First, political parties could make greater efforts to include musicians as active participants and contributors. It should particularly be the case that political actors working outside the mainstream—in small districts, in local politics, in radical or third party politics—should share many things in common with local musicians, including a point of view. Second, I’ve suggested that politicians engage in smarter strategic action around issues of intellectual property, by seeking approval for using copyrighted works, and finding fair use opportunities (like Obama’s Spotify playlist) to employ the power of music in their campaigns. In this final post, I sought out a colleague whom I thought might be able to shed some light on why the relationship between musicians and politicians is so fraught with difficulty.

 

Jonathan A. Neufeld is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at College of Charleston and an expert in both music and law. In his forthcoming book, Music in Public: How Performances Shape Democracy (Oxford UP), Neufeld tackles the connections between musical and political deliberation. Here is an excerpt from our conversation about politics and music:

 

JL: Are the questions I’m asking at all relevant to philosophers of aesthetics?

 

JN: Yes, your posts touch on an ancient problem. “[T]he modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions,” Plato writes in the Republic. Aristotle devotes a hefty chunk of his Politics to a discussion of music education; the conflict about what music is appropriately played in church was a hot topic of debate and political maneuvering in the Catholic church stretching back to Augustine. It is easy to multiply examples of music and politics colliding, and philosophers trying to find some way of making sense of it. In most of these cases, philosophers end up focusing on the emotional and sensuous potential of music–we are moved by music. You would think this would be good news for politics! “We are in the business of moving people, too!” But toward what exactly, does music move us? In the ancient controversies, a lot of ink was spilled over the untrustworthiness of music and musicians. Music can make us do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do (dance like idiots, sing lyrics joyously that we might completely disagree with, etc.), and musicians seem to revel in this. Artists were seen to be without a moral core, rudderless.

 

JL: This seems to differ from how we think about artists in contemporary society: I can think of a number of examples when we revere musical artists as the most principled people. In sociology, we often describe these artists as “disinterested” or “autonomous,” meaning that they do not allow other people (politicians, audiences, producers) to dictate the art (or music) they create.

 

JN: That’s right. We often characterize artists as being interested in art for art’s sake. Insofar as they focus on particular political messages, they are often accused of doing something other than art. The thought that a consistent message would dictate artistic expression (Plato’s dream!) sits uncomfortably with a modern picture of artistic creativity.  The political demand to stay on message, then, seems to be a violation of the artistic autonomy at the heart of the art for art’s sake norm. Staying on political message is to allow a preset message to dictate what goes into the work. Moreover, when it comes to a campaign, it is to allow the campaign’s message to dictate the work. [And] even if the artist shaped the message, the demand to stay on message seems to be an imposition on the artist’s autonomous creativity. That the artist imposes it on herself doesn’t matter. What matters is the imposition of the wrong kind of norm–an extra-artistic norm–on artistic creativity.

 

JL: So, do you see an inevitable conflict between the logic of music (the value placed on autonomy) and the logic of democracy?

 

JN: No. The opposition is not between democracy and music, or even between music with messages and music without. Take Woody Guthrie, the Asian Dub Foundation, or Public Enemy, for example. Here we have artists whose songs are shaped by a message. But is this what it is to be on message in a way that would be compatible with the branding of a campaign? It seems to me not. There is an unruliness at the heart of artistic creation (or, if you prefer, there is a systematic expectation that artistic creation be unruly) that would make any disciplined campaigner nervous.  So the problem for artists is not the politics or the democracy, it’s the on-message requirement of contemporary campaigns. While obeying this requirement might not be an in-principle problem for contemporary politicians, I wonder if it shouldn’t be. Democratic discourse just is unruly–this was Plato’s deep worry about it. I wonder if the artist’s unruly resistance to staying on message could be seen as democratic impulse we might wish contemporary candidates shared.

 

I really like Jonathan’s last point—that the “unruliness” of musicians might be a better model for democracy than the slavish fidelity to a brand message. It was Benjamin Disraeli who claimed that “The world is wearied of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.” Let me add more to the arsenal of reasons that politicians and musicians should take long-term collaborations more seriously:

 

1.Given the enormously large number of un- and under-employed artists in America, and rallying cries for job-creators on both sides of the aisle, why don’t presidential campaigns hire or contract with more artists? A recent survey by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (full disclosure: I am a Research Fellow on the project) reveals that 51% of art school graduates who intended to become an artist did not do so because work was not available.

 

2. Furthermore, given the enormous need for paid work, why aren’t more musicians approaching campaigns to write original material? Billboard Magazine reports that Obama’s 10-second performance of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” sent sales of the singer’s album through the roof (a 490% weekly sales increase). Logic dictates that many struggling artists would benefit from the national attention garnered through association with a candidate, so why isn’t it more common?

 

3. Democrats and Republicans rely on an extremely small set of performers to provide campaign songs. What would presidential candidates do without Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty? Why aren’t we seeing more pandering to the large and growing Hispanic vote, or to women? And most shocking of all: why are Republican candidates overlooking the massive market power of contemporary Christian rock? According to Neilsen, Christian/Gospel accounted for 9.5 million album sales in 2011, a nearly 7% increase from the year before. The Republican base, particularly the younger generation, consumes a lot of Christian rock, and the songs are on-issue for most of the GOP candidates.

 

I hope I’ve convinced you that long-term collaborations between musicians and politicians are possible, potentially mutually beneficial and could potentially spark a more vibrant and diverse set of arguments in the public sphere.

 

Jennifer C. Lena is visiting assistant professor of sociology at Barnard College.

Filed Under: Election 101, Election 101 - Campaigns, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Twitter

Campaign Songs and Campaign Wrongs

May 1, 2012 by

Sociologist Jennifer Lena was kind enough to provide Election 101 with another fascinating installment to what will ultimately be a  three part series of posts on music in presidential campaigns. Check out her new book, Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music and her post on the uses and abuses of music by politicians after the jump:

 

 

Campaign Songs and Campaign Wrongs

Jennifer Lena

 

In my previous post on presidential campaigns and music, I discussed the ways in which candidates obtain songs for use during their campaign, including commissioning songs and licensing them for adaptation or use of the original. Seemingly in spite of themselves, campaign staffers keep neglecting to obtain licenses for the songs they use, and so recent campaign history is punctuated by controversies over the unauthorized use of pop music in these races. I previously mentioned one case in which Bob Dole used an unauthorized parody of Sam and Dave’s hit song “Soul Man,” and the song’s copyright holders threatened to sue. The song’s use was not only unauthorized, but unwelcome by its owners. In an interview with the New York Daily News, Isaac Hayes (one of the song’s authors) explained, “Nobody gave any permission here” and, “As a U.S. Senator, he ought to know that you can’t do that.  It also bothers me because people may get the impression that David [Porter] and I endorse Bob Dole, which we don’t.”

Perhaps the best-known case where unauthorized music was used by a campaign was Ronald Reagan’s 1984 use of Bruce Springsteen’s single “Born in the U.S.A.” Although the song’s lyrics clearly focus on the deleterious effects of the Vietnam War on Americans, Conservative columnist George Will heard a nationalistic cry in the song, and dubbed the singer “A Yankee Doodle Springsteen.” Will got word to Reagan advisor Michael Deavers, who had his staffers seek an endorsement from Springsteen, which he immediately declined. Nevertheless, on September 19, 1984, Reagan mentioned the rocker favorably in a New Jersey stump speech, and Springsteen countered by invoking Reagan’s name right before playing “Johnny 99” (a song about an unemployed steelworker) at a concert in Philadelphia. The entire episode was covered closely by the media, and proved to be an embarrassment to the Reagan campaign, although patriotic interpretations of the song’s lyrics are still commonplace.

Four presidential cycles later, another Republican candidate made a similar error with similar consequences. George W. Bush used Tom Petty’s anthem “I Won’t Back Down” on the 2000 campaign trail until Petty threatened to sue. Bush pulled the song (and added “We the People” by Billy Ray Cyrus and “Right Now” by Van Halen). In a bittersweet turn, Petty is said to have played his song at the Gore’s house minutes after he conceded the election.

Several Republicans in the current race have received cease and desist letters for using music on the campaign trail without permission. Michele Bachman allegedly got one letter from Tom Petty’s music publisher for her use of “American Girl.” Katrina and the Waves also asked Bachman to stop using their single, “Walking on Sunshine.” Newt Gingrich was asked to stop using “How Do You Like Me Now?” by Third Side Music, the publisher that owns the right to this 2009 song by rock group the Heavy.

This is really the tip of the iceberg. In recent years, John Mellencamp and the Foo Fighters both asked John McCain to stop using their music during his 2008 campaign, and McCain settled out of court with Jackson Browne after the unauthorized use of his hit single “Running on Empty.” When Charlie Crist ran for a senate seat in Florida last year, he used “Road to Nowhere,” a song by rock group The Talking Heads, in one of his ads without seeking authorization from the group. Frontman David Byrne slapped him with a $1 million lawsuit, which was settled out of court; Crist also issued this apology via YouTube:

 

It could be, as  FoxNews claims in this report, that GOP candidates are less likely to get permission to use music during their campaigns. The news service attributes responsibility to the liberal bias of the entertainment industry, and preferential treatment of Democrats by musicians (and “Hollywood” donors). In recent memory, the only high-profile Dem to be hit with a cease and desist letter was Barack Obama, who used Sam & Dave’s hit single “Hold On, I’m Comin’” without permission.

Fox News may be right that entertainers are more likely to be liberal, and thus more likely to give Democrats access to their music catalogue. It could also be that Republican candidates are more likely to use music without first seeking permission or licensing the work. In either case, the surprising thing is that campaign staffers don’t secure celebrity endorsements, and tend to mis-manage them when they arrive uninvited.

Consider, for example, Kelly Clarkson’s recent statement of support for Ron Paul’s campaign, and almost immediate retraction. Clarkson, a past winner of American Idol and chart-topping country-pop artist, posted a tweet claiming that she would vote for Ron Paul if he won the nomination for the Republican ticket—a statement many interpreted as an endorsement of his campaign. But as news spread of the racist and homophobic content in Ron Paul newsletters, critics declaimed her support for the candidate as an endorsement of hate speech. In December, Clarkson released an apology in a tweet, voicing support for “white/black/purple/orange rights” and stepping back from the controversy by claiming she wasn’t a “hardcore Republican” and disclosing that she voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

Perhaps it isn’t a huge surprise that Paul’s campaign mis-managed Clarkson’s statement of support, failing to rush to her side and help her type on-brand messages into her smart phone. After all, Ron Paul often takes the campaign stage to the tune of “The Imperial March,” Darth Vader’s theme song from Star Wars, a song that conjures up both space aliens and fascism.

Rick Santorum also had the uniquely strange problem of receiving a statement of support from heavy metal guitarist Dave Mustaine, only to have him claim it wasn’t an endorsement. Mustaine said in an interview with Music Radar that he hopes “if it does come down to it, we’ll see a Republican in the White House… and that it’s Rick Santorum,” but then released a statement to the press disputing the characterization of his remarks as an “official endorsement.”

How can we make sense out of the evergreen problem GOP candidates have securing endorsements from musicians? Strangely enough, the answer might lie in a satirical column at on-line gossip magazine Gawker.com, inspired by Mustaine’s support for Santorum. The column, titled, “Big Running List of 2012 Metal Endorsements,”  is updated as Gawker staffers contact and secure political platform statements from former and current members of major metal groups. Next to Mustaine’s name, Santorum’s appears, followed by a question mark. Other presidential office-seekers appear on the list, and there are also a number of write-in candidates including Gwar’s Oderus Urungus, who votes for “Murdering every presidential candidate on a gigantic wheel of over-sized knives.”

The conceit behind the list, and Gwar’s “vote,” is that musical communities have their own political platforms, not unlike parties, candidates, and social movements. These are the genre ideals of a group; they reflect the community’s sensitivity to some problem or goal (sometimes strictly musical, and sometimes social), and a developed consensus about both its causes and how it should be addressed. One example I give in the book is Seattle’s grunge rock community, within which members shared an anti-macho and anti-mainstream genre ideal; this was a reaction against both “fluffy” pop (both Madonna and Paula Abdul were popular at the time) and against the big hair and “beef cake posturing” of hair metal groups like Motley Crue, Poison and Bon Jovi. As Gwar’s “vote” for President illuminates, metal’s genre ideal—antimainstream, dystopian—abjures the values you’d find in almost every candidate running for a national office in the U.S. No surprise that we don’t see natural alliances developing there.

But it does seem that one means by which candidates could prevent controversy over their use of music (other than securing permission in advance, of course) would be to encourage musicians to get involved in their campaigns, and to remain invested over longer periods of time. This shouldn’t be too difficult, particularly if these alliances begin at the local level, in small communities, where politicians and local artists are likely to share interests and dispositions. Politicians have resources that could benefit artists—access to audiences, performance opportunities, and the press prime among them—and musicians, as I have been at pains to argue, offer resources that are important to politicians.

Jennifer C. Lena is visiting assistant professor of sociology at Barnard College.

 

Filed Under: Election 101, Election 101 - Campaigns, Music, Sociology, Twitter

Political (Dis)chord? Jennifer Lena talks political branding through song

April 11, 2012 by

Who can forget Sarah Palin joining John McCain on the RNC stage to the thrumming guitar chords of Heart’s 1977 hit song “Barracuda?” Equally well remembered was the group’s request that she stop using the song on the campaign trail. When did the trend of using popular music for the sake of political branding start? Recently I asked sociologist Jennifer Lena, author of Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music to offer her thoughts on how music is used in in political campaigns. Read her Election 101 post here:

 

 

Political (Dis)chord?

Jennifer Lena

 

There’s a long history of political music, including both highs (“We Shall Overcome” issued from the Highlander School), and lows (from National Socialist Black Metal to the stridently ethnocentrist turbofolk popular in Serbia). Given the synergies between music and politics we should find it perplexing that American politicians are so atrociously bad at picking good music for their campaigns. I won’t be able to answer this puzzle in one blog post, but I can begin with a brief history of the campaign song, organized around a discussion of how candidates and tunes are matched. I have picked illustrative examples of each type from the 2012 Republican race to highlight the chasm that separates political and musical communities in the United States, at least in these national contests.

Presidential campaign staffers often commission a jingle, either novel compositions or simply new lyrics written to accompany an existing tune. The practice of commissioning songs has a long history in American politics, which includes the famous “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” (for candidate William Henry Harrison), a song that celebrated the triumph of Harrison’s Indiana militia against Native Americans. You might also remember the songs that Irving Berlin wrote to support candidate Dwight Eisenhower, including “They Like Ike,” then “I Still Like Ike,” and finally “Ike For Four More Years.”

Here’s a performance of “I Like Ike” by The Promenade Band:

 

 

Campaign songs are sometimes manufactured from existing songs, with only the lyrics changed to include campaign-specific content. The practice of adapting songs for campaigns stretches back to the birth of our nation, when “God Save the King” was transformed to substitute Washington’s name for the monarch’s. In more recent memory, JFK’s 1960 campaign was buoyed by Frank Sinatra’s performance of an altered “High Hopes:”

 

Everyone is voting for Jack

Cause he’s got what all the rest lack

Everyone wants to back, Jack

Jack is on the right track.

‘Cause he’s got high hopes

He’s got high hopes.

 

When song lyrics are adapted, or when songs are used as they were originally written and recorded, intellectual property law requires that candidates obtain permission to use the song. This is true even when the lyrics are altered from the original. For example, Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign received a “cease and desist” letter from the copyright holders for Sam & Moore’s 1967 hit song “Soul Man,” which they had altered to “Dole Man.” Rondor Music (one of the copyright owners) threatened to sue the campaign $100,000 each time the song was played because it was an “unauthorized derivative work.” The practice of licensing existing music for presidential campaign use may have started with FDR’s 1932 contest against Herbert Hoover, for which he licensed the use of “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

What has the 2012 Republican primary race contributed to this storied history of campaign songs? Among the jingles written expressly for candidates, we find a few spectacularly odd tunes. Early in the race, when Herman Cain was still running, we all saw the ad featuring his Chief of Staff Mark Block, who endorsed his boss, while smoking and accompanied by an 80s-style pop-synth song (“I Am America” by Krista Branch).

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhm-22Q0PuM

 

A few months later, Santorum supporters First Love released “Game On,”:

 

Here is the chorus, transcribed by Slate:

Oh, there is Hope for our Nation again
Maybe the First time Since we Had Ronald Reagan
There will be Justice for the Unborn
Factories back on our Shores
Where the Constitution rules our land
Yes, I Believe… Rick Santorum is our Man!

 

The Ron Paul campaign devotes a whole page on their website to citizen-generated original songs and videos. Some of these are adapted from known works, like the following (novel lyrics sung over The Teddy Bear’s Picnic by Bratton and Kennedy):

 

2012 GOP candidates mostly rely on licensed works; for example, Mitt Romney is using Kid Rock’s single “Born Free” on the campaign trail; Rock has even appeared at several events to perform the song, including a well-timed February rally outside Detroit, Michigan.

Whether campaigns commission jingles or license existing songs, the relationships between musicians and presidential hopefuls seems to be limited to these intermittent, strategic negotiations over a single song. Why don’t campaigners and parties seem to have long-term strategies to create synergies between themselves and sympathetic artists? As I’ve shown in my work on music genres, communities that create and consume music resemble communities that create and participate in social movements. In fact, they are often the very same group, as I illustrate in my discussions of early Chinese rock, Chilean nueva cancion, and Nigerian afrobeat. Our American history is replete with moments when social movements reach within themselves to harness the musical talents of members who are also artists—as I mentioned above, the Civil Rights Movement’s soundtrack included songs written by staff and students at the Highlander School. There is really no sociological reason that politicians shouldn’t cultivate musicians (or the reverse) over long periods of time, only to “cash in” (if you’ll forgive the phrase) when it comes time to pick campaign songs.

I’ll leave this as a puzzle for us to discuss. If you’re tempted to attribute this disjuncture between musicians and politicians on the specific characteristics of one or another party and its politics, you should tune in to my next post, where I explore the power of that explanation.

One final note on an emerging means by which politicians might use music in their campaigns. This year, Barack Obama has released a Spotify playlist for his campaign. His list includes 28 songs chosen both by the President and staffers, including those by alt country band Wilco, Bruce Springsteen, and an instrumental tune, “Green Onions” by Booker T & The MGs. Using this free music service, Obama can select a potentially huge number of songs and group them under his name without needing to seek approval or permission from any of the copyright holders. A curated list of songs may provide politicians with an opportunity to craft a multi-dimensional identity for public consideration, and to reach out to multiple constituencies in a way that can be difficult when limited to only one or two campaign songs. The danger, of course, is that the more songs a candidate selects, the more interpretive complexity they invite, and a poorly selected song could quickly lead a campaign off-message.

Jennifer C. Lena is visiting assistant professor of sociology at Barnard College.

* Helpful suggestions on this and the other posts in this series provided by the following: Kieran Healy, Jonathan Neufeld, Shamus Khan, Dustin Tittle, Molly Foran Yurchak, Betsy Wissinger.

Filed Under: Election 101, Election 101 - Campaigns, Music, Political Science, Sociology, Twitter

This Week’s Book Giveaway

January 30, 2012 by

Banding Together:
How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music
by Jennifer C. Lena

Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? Banding Together explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century American popular music. Drawing on a vast array of examples from sixty musical styles—ranging from rap and bluegrass to death metal and South Texas polka, and including several created outside the United States—Jennifer Lena uncovers the shared grammar that allows us to understand the cultural language and evolution of popular music.

What are the common economic, organizational, ideological, and aesthetic traits among contemporary genres? Do genres follow patterns in their development? Lena discovers four dominant forms—Avant-garde, Scene-based, Industry-based, and Traditionalist—and two dominant trajectories that describe how American pop music genres develop. Outside the United States there exists a fifth form: the Government-purposed genre, which she examines in the music of China, Serbia, Nigeria, and Chile. Offering a rare analysis of how music communities operate, she looks at the shared obstacles and opportunities creative people face and reveals the ways in which people collaborate around ideas, artworks, individuals, and organizations that support their work.

“Jennifer Lena’s Banding Together unleashes a fierce and exacting take on the scattered and freewheeling territory of music, offering a soothing order to the wild scufflings of performers and fans alike, and inspiring a smarter, more forthright think on a crazy untrammeled scene. In other words, it has a beat and you can dance to it.”—Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket and accordionist with The Magnetic Fields

We invite you to read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9617.pdf

The random draw for this book with be Friday 2/3 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to “Like” us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Book Giveaway, Music, Sociology

So, what kind of music do you like?

January 23, 2012 by

It’s the question teenagers have been asking each other for decades to size up each others’ style, philosophy, and  even politics. There’s no doubt about it, music communities matter. But how much credit should we give to musical geniuses like George Clinton, or James Brown? Which musical failures should we blame on greedy record labels, or jealous spouses? And how much did spectacular events change musical history? What about Dylan going electric in Newport, or Hendrix playing Woodstock? In Banding Together, Jennifer Lena argues no genius, no accident, and no event matters as much to American popular musics as the everyday activities of the communities that support them. But Jenn not only offers a sociological explanation for the growth of 20th century American popular music, she also made us a mix tape! She was kind enough to share with me a “Spotify playlist for Banding Together”, along with some thoughts on her choices, which range from “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” to “Me so Horny.” You can check out her playlist here:

The Banding Together Spotify playlist

Anyone that wants to hear the playlist needs to join Spotify (by creating a login ID and password), and downloading the free software. Then you can find the playlist for “Banding Together” by typing “spotify:user:lenajc” into the search box, or clicking on the link, above. Read on for some great music trivia after the jump:

I love that my friend Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) claims that my book “has a beat and you can dance to it,” but it just isn’t true. I begged Princeton University Press to make the world’s first musical book—I imagined something like those greeting cards—but it wasn’t to be. Thank goodness for Spotify. This free service will allow you access to an amazing repository of recorded music (including the stuff in your existing digital library). You can create playlists, share them with others, and even collaborate in their creation! It really is a terrific resource.

The playlist I created for the book (“Banding Together: The Spotify Playlist for the Book”) clocks in around 3 hours, and I’m still looking for more music to add. Each of the songs I chose is either specifically mentioned in my book, or stands as a representative of a musical style that I discuss in Banding Together. Here are a few of my favorites:

 

  • “Funky Butt” by Mississippi John Hurt. The Library of Congress did us a magnificent favor by funding the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress, which now contains over 3 million artifacts including recordings like this one. “Funky Butt” is King Buddy Bolden’s “signature tune” (and on page 79 I describe its link to other “funky” things), but I love Hurt’s version—a beautiful guitar tone, a strong and sweet vocal, and hilarious lyrics.
  • “Livery Stable Blues” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. I included this song for two reasons: the first is that I discuss the politics around the crediting of this white band as “original Dixieland” in Chapter 3 (starting on page 98). The second is that Chicago Judge George A. Carpenter argued (while presiding over a copyright dispute) that “no living human being could listen to that result on the phonograph and discover anything musical on it” (see page 101). I wonder what you think about Carpenter’s taste?
  • “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” by Mahalia Jackson. If you’ve never heard black gospel, this is a great place to start. The song was penned by the “inventor” of gospel, the Reverend Thomas A. Dorsey, and later became a million-record seller for Elvis Presley (see pages 104 onward, and his version is in the playlist, too!). Here, one of Dorsey’s “discoveries,” the great Mahalia Jackson, shows incredible vocal control and spiritual inspiration. Jackson toured the “gospel highway” for five long years, but her hard labor was rewarded with a feature in Time Magazine, and the honor of performing at JFK’s 1961 inauguration and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral.
  • “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” by Bill Monroe. Monroe, the “father of bluegrass,” performs this country and bluegrass standard, the lyrics of which are etched on the wall of the Country Music Hall of Fame, in Nashville, TN. Originally a hymn, adapted into country song, and performed by scores of musicians ranging from Johnny Cash to Moby, it is a true American original.
  • “Night in the City” by Judy Collins and “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby, Still and Nash. These two songs, plus singles by Janis Joplin (also with Big Brother and the Holding Company), The Doors, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and Leonard Cohen (singing one of my all-time favorite songs, about his brief romance with Joplin), represent the wild and wonderful years of the “Laurel Canyon” group on Ridpath Lane. Stephen Stills plays guitar on the Collins song, and his bandmate Graham Nash wrote and named the second tune after Judy. You can read more about their bohemian grove in Chapter 3.
  • “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke. Quite simply, one of the very best pop tunes ever written, but one of those nearly lost to history. Cooke originally recorded the tune while working under the name “Dale Cook.” After the weak sales of his first single, “Lovable,” Specialty Records released him from the contract leaving the rest of the session, including this song, on the cutting room floor. Thankfully, his producer kept the tape and it later was a hit for the singer recording under his own name.
  • “Chocolate City” by Parliament. The wild ways of George Clinton’s twin groups Parliament and Funkadelic are carefully detailed in Chapter 3 of Banding Together. The lyrics of this song figure in the text. Which of today’s black entertainers do you think Clinton would hire for cabinet posts?
  • “Me So Horny” by 2 Live Crew. This song topped the charts at the very height of moral panics around the dysfunction wrought by popular music (in 1989). The song samples dialogue from two movies—do you know which they are?
  • “On & On” by Jesse Saunders. Alleged to be the first House music single, this song attracted attention at the 1986 New Music Seminar in New York, and led a generation of DJs to be signed by British record labels—a brain drain that arguably led to the end of “original” House music in Chicago.
  • “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. This song represents the rapid rise and fall of Seattle’s Grunge music. This song’s chart success in 1991 propelled the rock group Nirvana to the top of the charts, although the band was said to quickly tire of its infamy. It is often cited as the greatest rock song ever recorded.
  • “Nothing to Lose” by Cui Jian. I was so glad to see this classic of Chinese rock included in the Spotify library. The title is a mistranslation of the song I refer to in the book as “I Have Nothing.” While we watched from afar, Jian’s music was the soundtrack to China’s Tiananmen Square revolution.
  • “La carta” by Violeta Parra. This is easily my favorite song to emerge from Chile’s nueva cancion movement of the 1970s. The title references a letter that brings Parra’s protagonist news of her brother’s imprisonment. She laments: “A letter comes to tell me/ There is no justice in my country/…/Luckily I have a guitar/ With which to lament my pain.” Heartbreaking.
  • “Water Get No Enemy” by Fela Kuti. Fela was and still is the king of African music (in as much as Elvis is American music’s king). I won’t spoil his amazing life story (see Chapter 4 in Banding Together!), but it is the only one in the book to include a defenestration.
  • “39.2” by Ceca. The wedding video of Serbian turbo-folk star Svetlana “Ceca” Veličković to paramilitary commander Željko Ražnatović Arkan was played outdoors for days, a technique designed to antagonize and terrorize the Croatian residents of Mostar during the terrible Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Her songs are a testament to the destructive power music can have when it falls into the wrong hands.

 

This Banding Together Spotify playlist demonstrates the varied influences, instruments, and personality of several musical idioms, while the book emphasizes the things they share in common. Within each genre, fans, club owners, journalists, merchandizers, musicians, and other community members must band together to make music, and the book is a study of how and when that happens. You will only hear traces of those communities in these songs: in the featured performers, borrowed lines, and references to people and places in the lyrics. I hope you’ll read Banding Together to learn more about how genres create communities in popular music, and I hope you’ll have fun with my musical book, even if you can’t dance to it (without Spotify).

 

Jennifer C. Lena is visiting assistant professor of sociology at Barnard College.

Filed Under: Cultural Studies, Music, Sociology, Twitter

New Perspectives on the Greatest Finnish Composer of All Time

August 15, 2011 by

The Bard Music Festival is featuring composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) this year.  Perhaps no twentieth-century composer has provoked a more varied reaction among the music-loving public than Jean Sibelius. Originally hailed as a new Beethoven by much of the Anglo-Saxon world, he was also widely disparaged by critics more receptive to newer trends in music.

The concerts, lectures, and panel discussions of the festival are complemented by a book of related articles, essays, and letters edited by a prominent music scholar.  Princeton University Press is pleased to announce:

Jean Sibelius and His World
Edited by Daniel M. Grimley
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9592.html

You can find more information about the Bard Music Festival and activities this weekend at:
http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2011/

Filed Under: Music, Twitter
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