Theodor Adorno and Simon Frith on popular music identity

¶ … Popular Music and Identity

Sound Clash-Popular Music and American Culture

Identifying through music is fantastic and creates social movements. People find music to be liberating, relaxing, and calming. Identifying oneself through music a person is able to have direct experiences in their body. This allows a person to place them self in an imaginary cultural narrative. Popular music has been analyzed as though it is a classical composition, which makes the analysts neglect the improvisational and performative aspects of popular music. Analyzing how audiences respond to popular music and how they identify with this kind of music is vital. This would allow people to better understand how different people identify with certain popular songs. Theodor Adorno viewed popular music as a culture industry, which is designed to appeal to society by creating a false need for entertainment. Simon Frith views popular music as a complex world where that values and attitudes constitute a symbolic system. They both discuss popular music, but have differing perspectives. Theodor is more inclined towards classical compositions, while Simon focuses on pop music. Understanding the impact of popular music is beneficial as it allows people to understand how people will identify themselves with certain music. Theodor Adorno and Simon Frith have some similarities and differences in their writings, and in this paper a discussion will be formulated based on these similarities and differences.

Theodor Adorno's argument

Theodor argues for standardization of both popular and classical music. The writer does not view popular music as serious music. This is because he uses the same measures for measuring the worth of classical music in measuring popular music. This is a big problem because classical music is very different from popular music and they both need different measures for evaluating their worth. Popular music he continues to say is used to influence people culturally, which distracts them from the exploitative nature of capitalism. Based on his works David Reisman identified two distinct categories of listener's majority and minority. Majority listeners only consume the popular music as a product and their source for light hearted fun. Minority listeners develop over elaborate standards for listening to this music.

The writer argues that popular music is manipulated by the promoters and inherent nature of the music. This is why people are able to identify more easily with popular music than classical music. Classical music is composed and requires the listener to understand each tone and line, but popular music has no such requirement. A classical song like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony shown in the musical example 1, cannot be listened to from the second stanza, one will need to start from the top in order to grasp and understand the song Adorno and Simpson ()

. Popular music has no such requirement, a person can listen from the second stanza and the listener will understand the song. Theodor states that this is why popular music is easy to identify with and has a cult following. The desire for people to identify with popular music is based on the publicity given towards the songs. Promoters have created influential ways of making people believe in the music, which they use in pushing for popular music. Playing on the need for people to be entertained, the promoters and producers have synthesized music production, and they exploit this human nature.

Simon Frith's Argument

Simon Frith is the writer with a better argument and this is the writer I agree with more. Frith ()

argues that identity rests on two premises namely mobile and self-in-process. Mobile identity is a process not a thing, and self-in-process can be summed up as a person's experience of music. There have been many assumptions before based on how people identify with music. Simon argues that it is not just African-American's who listen to African-American music. Simon looks at popular music in terms of how it creates an experience and how it produces them. He does not only concentrate on how popular music reflects the people. Popular music is easy to identify with as it has no barriers and it is applicable to a majority of people. African music has gained root in European countries, and no one can explain the exact reason, but since the music is popular and the beats are easily understood many people identify with such songs. People listen and identify with music that sounds right. Popular music has that feel good feeling that people seek from music. Popular music then creates social groupings through cultural activities. Critics have pointed out that certain songs like Spoonin Rap and Love Rap by Spoonie Gee are great songs, but the artist does not know what he is doing. The rapper is able to appeal to people's emotions because he is not trying hard to please people, but to express his own emotions.

Simon too notes that most measurements of music are based on academic qualities. This is because music was categorized as a performing art like theatre and dance. The academics were mainly concerned with what could be taught and stored, and that is why popular music is not considered serious music. Since popular music cannot be taught like classical music, majority of scholars have had a hard time in describing its influence on identity. Simon called this an idealistic attempt of grasping an experience, which could not be possible. An experience is something that a person will feel, and it is very different for two people.

Conclusion

Musical experiences cannot be easily described as they differ between two people, but two different people can both identify with a specific song in different ways. This is why popular music is easy to identify with, and it speaks to ones emotions. The writers have tried to justify their different points in regards to music and identity, but Simon Frith has a more compelling argument as he looks at how different music is able to influence people. Having an analysis of popular music has allowed him to determine that music is special because it defines a space that has no boundaries. Popular music can cross borders and be appreciated by different cultures and social groups. This allows different people to identify with the music, and have different experiences based on the music. Simon has demonstrated that sounds do not have to represent or reflect people as it had been assumed. There is a wide spectrum of difference in popular music. Popular music has the potential to allow people to easily identify with it as it is easy to understand and the beats are appealing to majority of people.