Sociomusicology: Prejudice Against Popular Music

4/29/08

Prejudice Against Popular Music

[Updated 03/31/09 for improved international video access:]

Why are so many academics and classical musicians prejudiced against popular music?

Ask, and you may discover that many cannot identify a single popular music performer from recent years that they would consider to have artistic merit.

Does wholesale dismissal of contemporary popular music as trivial and worthless represent an informed or a naïve position? Many academics in the field of music (and performers in classical and jazz styles) have never tried songwriting nor performing in popular music genres on appropriate instruments, so their opinions are actually based on assumptions rather than experience or research.

Those who understand popular music genres realize that it takes genuine artistry to establish such tight and intense grooves as can be found in some recently popular songs, such as Radiohead’s “Jigsaw,” Lenny Kravitz’s “Rock and Roll is Dead,” Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition,” or Incubus’ “Dig.”

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Radiohead: Jigsaw

Lenny Kravitz: Rock and Roll is Dead

Stevie Wonder: Superstition

Incubus: Dig

It also takes creative artistry to produce the compelling melodies, insightful lyrics, and unique song forms encountered in much of the music of Keane, Coldplay, Sting, Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones, and others.

Keane: This is the Last Time

Here is a website for more of Keane:

http://www.myspace.com/keane

Coldplay: See You Soon

Coldplay: Trouble

Coldplay: Shiver

Sting – a rock musician – singing a great jazz standard

Sarah McLachlan: Possession

Norah Jones: Don't Know Why

Suzanne Vega: Caramel

Finally, Nordic musician Bjork seems to be among the most creative and daring artists in popular music today.

Bjork: Human Behaviour (live on BBC)

More Bjork:

Bjork on musical snobbery:

While much of popular music is mass produced with maximum profits as the aim, some performers successfully manage to combine both artistry and popularity, even today.

Here is a link for resources in popular music studies:

http://www.iaspm.net/journals.htm

Here is a link to a young organization that specializes in scholarly analysis of popular music: http://www.unc.edu/music/pop-analysis/conferences.html

I have recently completed the chapter on “Jazz and Rock Music” for the third edition of Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (Rowman Littlefield/MENC).

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Welcome to Sociomusicology

For over 15 years (since 2007), this website has offered musings on contemporary society and its music by David G. Hebert, PhD. He is a sociomusicologist specializing in global music education who has held academic positions with universities on five continents. Dr. Hebert is now a tenured full Professor with Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen. There he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group and manages the multinational government-funded Nordic Network for Music Education, which organizes annual intensive Master courses and exchange of teachers and students across eight countries. He is also an Affiliated Professor with University of the Faroe Islands and an Honorary Professor in China with the Education University of Hong Kong.

Professor Hebert's research applies an international-comparative perspective to issues of pluralism, identity, and cultural relevance in music education, as well as processes by which new music traditions emerge and change - both sonically and socially - as they are adopted into institutions. Born in the 1970s, he is among the most widely-published and globally-active music scholars of his generation (h-index:20; i10-index:30), with professional activities in an average of 8 countries per year across the past decade (2008-2020).