Art, Who Needs It Anyway
Part Three
Parts One and Two are below

WHAT HAPPENED TO POPULAR MUSIC?

Meanwhile, the field of popular music has also undergone radical changes. Throughout most of history, the basic format of classical and popular music was the same. A sentimental ballad sung by Frank Sinatra would run a close parallel to a song by Schubert: vocal melody with accompaniment, poetic text, and basic song form. The difference being that the Schubert song would probably be more adventurous harmonically, have a more complex accompaniment (for piano), have a melody that might take unexpected turns, and be set to a poem of artistic merit. Nevertheless, the listener to the Sinatra song would have no problem engaging with the Schubert, if he or she so chose. What has happened over the past 40 or so years is that popular and classical music have taken widely divergent paths, and as these paths diverged, the public followed the pop music path and forgot about the classical or high art path.

In many ways, popular music has remained more traditional—relentlessly so, with its simple harmonies, repetitious rhythms, and rudimentary forms. The ubiquitous electric guitar has placed it inexorable stamp on virtually all popular music. Like television and the movies, popular music has become simpler and simpler, usually electronically engineered to sound like nothing that could happen in acoustic reality. Early Rap, with its street-smart, in-your-face vitality, soon morphed commercially (mostly by white guys) into a sullen pseudo-rebellious “product” so popular with boom-car drivers relying on dirty words for effect. A similar process transformed Rock ‘n’ Roll from its vigorous black-ghetto beginnings into the nice-English-white-boys style of the Beatles. For more on this, I recommend “How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Elijah Wald (Oxford, 2009). What with sexually charged techno pop, glam rock, and teen and “tween” performers, popular music is now almost entirely the purview of the young and reflects the lack of sophistication, life experience, and technical expertise of maturity. Our young people are now immersed in a hyper sexualized, over glamorized, anti-intellectual milieu, their brains addled by drugs, cell phones, IPods, and social networking. YouTube sites popular with kids, including the very young, have titles like “Do I look like a slut?”, “Too drunk to fuck” and “Stick it in”.

Do we imagine that a symphony concert or an exhibition of cubist painting could possibly compete with the supercharged glitz and glamour of a Lady Gaga? Could I leave my Facebook page alone long enough to sit through an opera or a play? As someone once said, how can people who have grown up with the three-minute popular song comprehend a twenty-minute symphony, let alone a four-hour opera?

Along with this has come a widespread disdain for the output of the mature and intellectually developed adult. Classical music, literature, poetry, and art are dismissed as boring. Even politicians must now be careful not to betray any intellectual prowess or achievement. Better to be “just folks.” Remember how Stephane Dion was ridiculed, in the 2008 election, for being “the professor”? Notice how Michael Ignatieff adopts a “folksy way … when trying to be a man of the people, ‘What the heck are the facts?’” (Ron Graham in The Walrus, January/February 2010) Used to be that people looked up to leaders who were articulate, well-read, idealistic, and thoughtful. Louis St. Laurent, whose government founded the Canada Council, while known as a man of the people made no apologies for being a respected lawyer, a professor of law (Laval University), a humanitarian, and an articulate speaker.

When did artists start losing the public? My piano teacher used to refer to certain pieces of music as “musicians’ music”, in other words, music that only musicians could understand. In his 1948 essay “The Dehumanization of Art” José Ortega y Gasset cites “art for artists” as a reason why the public does not favour “the new art.” New art, in this case, being cubism, abstract expressionism, and performance art. As if that weren’t enough, the public was further alienated by the musical creations of composers like Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Igor Stravinsky, and, later, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez et al. In the theatre, people were confused by plays by Luigi Pirandello, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and others. Arts and artists were breaking new ground, and the public was left in the dust.

I am not suggesting for a moment that artists should not be breaking new ground. This is the very nature of art. But at the same time that the above-mentioned ground was being broken, the public was being lured by new sources of entertainment: radio, movies, and, television. As soon as the television moguls discovered polls and ratings, the downward spiral began. After all, the more popular your show, the more advertising you can sell. Classical music, visual and plastic arts are now entombed in museums and concert halls where people behave and dress in ways that are foreign and off-putting to everyday people. Again, popular television, blockbuster movies, and rock concert producers, like McDonald’s restaurants, know what people want, and they deliver—entertainment (or food) that is fast, immediately recognizable, and easy to grasp—no surprises for the generally passive and uncritical consumer.