Sound Philosophy: Recent Episodes
Chadwick Jenkins
This is a special short episode for my wife's third grade class. It addresses "Cross Domain Application" (taking something you learned in one area and applying it to another). That may sound heady for the third grade, but it is all about learning to appreciate learning.
Eric Taxier and I continue our discussion of the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle by interpreting Book 3, Chapters 2-3. This portion of the treatise (Book 3, Chapters 1-5) is a fascinating investigation of human choice and the voluntary. These two chapters deal with choice and deliberation, respectively.
This is a very special short episode designed for a third grade class my wife teaches. It features a short exploration of what it takes to be kind to and care for others by examining the differences between sympathy and empathy. Listen for the shoutouts to the various members of the class!!
Eric Taxier and I explore Chapter 1 of Book 3 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Forrest Gump comes in for some rough treatment--in service of the greater cause of understanding moral agency.
Eric Taxier and I finish discussing Book 2 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. We revisit the "key passage" concerning the Doctrine of the Mean (from chapter 6) then discuss the arrangement and choice of virtues and Aristotle's advice for self-improvement.
Eric Taxier and I discuss chapters 5 and 6 of Book 2 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. These books truly introduce and start to define the Doctrine of the Mean but immediately demonstrate that the concept is much more complex than summaries of Aristotle often allow.
Eric Taxier and I discuss Book 2, Chapters 3-4 of Aristotle's celebrated Nicomachean Ethics. We explore how one enters the circle of learning, the monkeys typing Shakespeare thought experiment, consequentialism, and more.
Eric Taxier and I explore the opening two chapters to Book 2 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. We discuss the two types of virtue (virtues of character and virtues of mind) and spend some real time on the learning paradox--if you learn to build by building, how do you get started if you don't know already how to build?
Eric Taxier and I discuss Chapters 10-11 of Book 1 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. These chapters ask the rather odd question of whether we can truly say someone is happy before they are dead.
I'm joined by Eric Taxier to continue our discussion of Book 1 of Aristotle's celebrated Nicomachean Ethics. This episode covers chapters 8-9 of Book 1.
Eric Taxier and I discuss chapter 7 of Book 1 of Aristotle's celebrated Nicomachean Ethics. This is arguably the central chapter to the first book and provides the initial "outline" of Aristotle's take on happiness and the human good.
Eric Taxier and I discuss Chapters 5-6 of Book I of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. We discuss various candidates for happiness and what they are lacking and then examine Aristotle's critique of Plato's Form of the Good.
Eric Taxier and I discuss chapters 3 and 4 of Book 1 of Aristotle's celebrated treatise, Nicomachean Ethics. We discuss the differences between two forms of attaining or justifying knowledge (demonstration and dialectic), the nature of proof and whether ethical thought can be proven or demonstrated (and to what extent), and many other things.
I'm joined by Eric Taxier in the first of several episodes exploring Aristotle's celebrated treatise, the Nicomachean Ethics. This episode carefully examines chapters 1 and 2 of Book 1.
This episode examines the relationship between ambiguity and ambivalence and looks at two indie rock songs: "Oh Comely" by Neutral Milk Hotel and "Mississippi Swells" by Nana Grizol.
This episode looks at the issue of ambiguity in art and then examines "William, It Was Really Nothing," by the Smiths, looking at the ambiguous nature of the lyrics and the music.
This episode looks at the materiality of language, particularly in the use of rhyme and examines MF DOOM's idiosyncratic approach to rhyme and what is sometimes termed holorime.
This episode continues to explore the narcocorrido, now focusing on Chalino Sanchez and the theme of agency striving against fate.
This episode looks at the border genre of the narcocorrido (a Mexican folk music genre based on drug trafficking) in relation to the rhetorical nature of borders, the law, and the self.
This episode explores the role of suffering and self-developed narrative in the forming of a self in the music of Edith Piaf.
This episode explores the nature of the subject position in popular music (the implicit or explicit "I" in a song). It posits that most songs ask us to identify (or disidentify) with the subject but that some songs, including Björk's "Bachelorette" question the very notion of what it means to be a subject in the world.
This episode examines Tom Waits's debts to Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and the notion of melancholy. It examines "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "Invitation to the Blues."
This episode looks at Randy Newman's vision of the American as essentially out of balance. I examine songs including "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," "Sail Away," and "Rednecks."
This episode looks at Cole Porter and the comic list song as exemplified by "Let's Do It."
This episode uses Aristotle's Rhetoric to examine the use of wit in the music and lyrics of Cole Porter. I begin by considering general characteristics and functions of wit. Then I turn to Aristotle's three elements of rhetoric and his notion that rhetoric is central to human experience. Finally, I analyze the verse of Porter's "Just One of Those Things" in light of my discussion of Aristotle and wit.
This episode continues my discussion of lyrics, now by paying attention to the lyrics in their materiality (rather than semantics), focusing on rhyme, repetition, and the notion of the lyrics as museme (that is, as a musical element--not a linguistic center of gravity).
This episode begins to explore how we might think about lyrics beyond considering them as a "key" to the meaning of a song.
A continuation of my conversation with Eric Taxier on Seneca's On the Shortness of Life.
This is the first of two episodes in which I'm joined by Eric Taxier to discuss the Stoic philosopher Seneca's letter On the Shortness of Life. In this episode, Eric and I discuss some themes of the letter and introduce the larger context of Stoic philosophy and Seneca's place within that tradition.
I'm joined by Ade Fielder to discuss video game music. We look at different approaches to understanding video game music, ranging from "narrative transportation theory" to film theory to theories of interaction. We also consider games in which music plays a more featured role, including Zelda, Guitar Hero, and Grand Theft Auto.
I'm joined by Laura Nunez to discuss BTS's Maps of the Soul releases and how the group adapted ideas espoused by Carl Jung to suit their ongoing pursuit of questions of identity, belonging, and self-love. The first segment explores BTS's concerns with self-love; the second examines Jung's ideas as adopted by BTS, particularly in the song "Intro: Persona," and the third segment looks at "Interlude: Shadow" and "Outro: Ego." We explore issues of memory, hope, self-doubt, and the ways we can hold ourselves back or encourage ourselves to move forward.
For this episode, I'm joined by Christopher Vogt to discuss the experimental hip hop group Death Grips and how they might relate to the philosophical/political views described as Accelerationism. The first segment discusses the early career of Death Grips and focuses on the notion of the post-human, using "Full Moon (Death Classic)" as the main example. The second segment dives into accelerationism and dissects the music and video for "Guillotine." The final segment looks at the album No Love Deep Web and the notion of a post-internet art while also offering a materialist reading of "Get Got" from The Money Store.
This episode looks at the early career of the Beatles and their emphasis on both fun and artistry. I employ a perhaps unorthodox reading of Kant to buttress the idea that fun is a gently subversive intrusion of an unknowable Outside into the acceptable "inside" of society. Then I look at the use of Girl Group music in the early output of the Beatles to suggest that this participates in their sense of the artistry of fun.
I am joined by my stepdaughter Iris Smith to discuss Taylor Swift's re-recording project, its origins, the problems it seeks to solve, as well as its aesthetic and ethical implications.
This episode examines Taylor Swift's battle with Spotify and asks why that battle and why then? What did that fight have to do with Swift's career at that moment and what she was attempting with her transition from country to pop music?
Starting by reviewing some basic concerns about capitalism and the need to emphasize desired values rather than focus on direct personal harm, this episode then examines the anti-capitalist work of hip hop artists including the Coup, dead prez, Immortal Technique, Lowkey, and Bambu.
This episode explores certain 90s hip hop groups and artists who embrace and glorify capitalism. The first segment discusses Strain Theory, the idea that the American Dream encourages its realization even through criminal enterprise. The second segment discusses the Mafioso Rap of Kool G Rap, Raekwon, Jay-Z, and Big Pun; while the last segment looks at Puff Daddy and particularly at "It's All About the Benjamins."
This episode explores four understandings of the relationship between the soul and the body (from Descartes, Marx, Merleau-Ponty, and Fanon) and applies that thinking to readings of songs and videos by India.Arie, Jill Scott, Maxwell, D'Angelo, and Erykah Badu.
Starting with a review of Marx's ideas concerning temporality in capitalism, this episode then explores how the notion of genre involves a temporal understanding--particularly the genre of 90s neo-soul, a term coined by producer Kedar Massenburg. Finally, I apply thinking about temporality to the musical and visual elements of neo-soul in songs and videos by Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, D'Angelo, and others.
This episode opens with a thought experiment: just what might have Ronald Reagan have understood (all-too-well) in Chapter 2 of The Communist Manifesto. In particular, I examine Reagan's and neoliberalism's take on class struggle--and what class deserves to prevail. Then I turn to Reagan's policies (particularly his economics, foreign policy, and alignment with the Christian Right) and how those policies were viewed by punks. Finally, I look at Rock Against Reagan, bratcore, and some explicitly anti-Reagan punk songs to examine how Reagan served as the "Evil Father" to the hardcore punk generation.
This episode examines the political side of hardcore punk. Starting with a discussion of the distinction between the first generation of punks and the new generation of hardcore punks and their differing relationship to style and politics, the episode then considers the implicit politics of moshing, the influence of Marxism on bands like the Dils, anarchism on bands like Crass, and the politics of the straightedge movement.
This episode applies Marx's thinking in Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto regarding the corporate nature of the evils of Modern Industry to the situation of the Rastafarians in Jamaica. The episode then considers reggae's move from a local to international culture/genre and how that impacted the proliferation of Rastafarian ideas.
After discussing the ambiguities of the Marxist position on violence, I discuss subjective versus objective violence and the linkages between the two. I then proceed to an examination of the fraught political and economic landscape of Jamaica, concentrating on the 1960s and the era of independence. Finally, I explore the notion of violence in the sound system culture, ska, and rocksteady--the genres leading to reggae.
Using Karl Marx's notion of surplus value, I ask: what is the felt surplus in Golden-Age Gospel music (Thomas Dorsey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Mahalia Jackson)? I suggest various ways in which it may emerge.
Starting with some of Karl Marx's thoughts on religion, we turn to the rise of Pentacostalism, the emphasis on entire sanctification and speaking in tongues as well as the ecstatic nature of "getting happy," and then examine the recordings in the mid-20s by blind singer and pianist Arizona Dranes.
This episode uses Marx's notion of the "commodity fetish" to explore how music developed as a commodity in its own right during the late 1920s into the Depression era.
This episode looks at changes in the record industry in the 1930s and, using the Marxian concept of base-superstructure, examines how the music of the era reflected the underlying economic infrastructure of the late 20s and 30s.
This episode proposes an expansion of Adam Krims's notion of a Hip Hop Sublime (as discussed in episode 46) beyond its application to gangsta rap and involving something other than terror. This is what I term the "numbing or immersive sublime" and it describes that feeling of oneness with infinity (rather than fear of infinity) and is linked positively to Freud's concept of sublimation. The second segment applies the "numbing sublime" to the work of DJ Screw and the third segment considers Cloud Rap and, in particular, the Clams Casino production "I'm God."
The episode art is a picture of Clams Casino by Sir Daniel Forte. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Clams_Casino.jpg
This episode explores Gangsta Rap and the set of production techniques that musicologist Adam Krims described as the "Hip Hop Sublime." The first segment discusses the rise to prominence of gangsta rap and its social, political, and aesthetic place in the 1990s. The second segment examines the notion of the sublime as illustrated in the writings of Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-François Lyotard. The third segment examines the notion of the "Hip Hop Sublime" and the manner in which gangsta rap plays on the tension between the mediated and the immediate.
The photograph used for the episode art is by Premeditated: Premeditated, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This episode looks at Willie Nelson's concept album of 1975, Red Headed Stranger. The first segment explores the interest in murder as a topic within country music--particularly examining the tradition of the murder ballad. The second segment examines the 1870 court case of McFarland vs. Richardson, concerning McFarland's murder of his ex-wife's new fiancee. This segment addresses the "unwritten law" that exonerated husbands killing their wives' seducers, the temporary insanity plea, and the changing position of the woman with respect to independence at the end of the 19th century. The third segment turns to Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger as the quintessential country concept album, his role as creator on an album that mostly consists of covers, and the way in which murder is depicted and justified within it.
This episode examines the Outlaw Country genre of the 1970s with respect to freedom: both in the sense of the artistic freedom that figures like Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings sought within the Nashville system and in the sense of freedom as a topic within the songs themselves. The second segment comes to grips with Kant's ideas about freedom and all the potential ambiguities it presents. Then I turn to the issue of US rugged individualism and its impact on Outlaw Country.
This is the third in a series where I'm joined by Eric Taxier to discuss Kant's First Critique, the Critique of Pure Reason. In this episode we discuss the Introduction to the Critique. The first segment discusses Kant's conception of the collaboration between the object and our faculties for comprehending that object as well as the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori. The second segment turn to the Kantian distinction between the analytic and the synthetic and examines the notion of the analytic as involving containment. The third segment zeroes in on the synthetic and the manner in which we are a necessary component of the act of synthesis. We also examine the troubling (for many) notion that math exemplifies the synthetic rather than the analytic.
This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
This episode examines the issue of play. What is at stake in play? How do "rules of the game" relate to the freedom of play? The second segment turns to the notion that aesthetic pleasure arises for Immanuel Kant from the "free play" of the Imagination and Understanding that exhibits "lawfulness without a law." I suggest that in both play and this notion of aesthetic judgment the "law" or the "rules" are emergent--they emerge out of the act of playing, they are in play. The last segment looks at bebop as a form of play and confronts the Kantian paradox that some limited civil unfreedom leads to greater artistic and intellectual freedom.
This episode begins by examining historiographical accounts of the rise of bebop and places bebop within the context of Harlem and 52nd Street. The second segment discusses the famous essay "What Is Enlightenment?" by Immanuel Kant and unpacks his concept of autonomy as presented there. Michel Foucault's critical take on Kant's essay introduces the idea of autonomy involving working at the edges of one's being. The final segment presents Harlem and 52nd street as two zones of autonomy for bebop--one involving relatively safe experimentation within isolation and the other offering social change at the risk of assimilation into tradition.
Eric Taxier and Chad Jenkins discuss the two prefaces of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. We address the different goals and strategies of the two quite different prefaces: the 1781 original and the new preface for the 1787 revision. We discuss the way in which Kant describes Reason as insisting on going beyond what it can directly experience (and the trouble it causes itself in so doing), the notion of a critique, the things metaphysics can learn from other sciences, the importance of being in some way "rule-bound," and the question of one's grasp of the noumenal (or lack thereof).
This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
This is the first in a series of episodes in which Chad Jenkins and Eric Taxier discuss the Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. This episode covers some background information including the conflict between Rationalism and Empiricism, Kant's pre-critical writings, and the authors that led him to the critical impasse: Leibniz, Hume, and Rousseau.
This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
This episode explores the notion of genius and Immanuel Kant's concept of the aesthetic idea. The aesthetic idea is shown to be the distinguishing element that differentiates natural beauty from art beauty. Progressive Rock is then discussed as a genre that self-consciously courts the label of genius and takes seriously the espousal of ideas (aesthetic and otherwise). "Pantagruel's Nativity" and "Black Cat" by Gentle Giant are discussed along with a brief overview of "Supper's Ready" by Genesis.
The episode art is a photo of Genesis at the Verizon Center taken by Andrew Bossi, CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
This episode examines form in popular music and especially Progressive Rock by first investigating the distinction between extensional and intensional form (as presented by Andrew Chester) and glossing that as the distinction between "trekking" and "dwelling." The second segment targets some specific issues in Immanuel Kant's understanding of aesthetic form. The third segment turns to the adaptation of classical music by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and what that reveals about Prog Rock's approach to form.
The picture of Keith Emerson is by Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons See the original here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Emerson_Lake_and_Palmer_two.jpg
This episode examines Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic to reveal some of the strange properties of space and time. It then turns to the nada Brahma of Hindustani philosophical tradition and the writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan to discuss the creation of space and time from the unstruck sound and how that makes music a special conduit to the truth. The last segment turns to Hindustani music and how its formal and performative elements enact a path of transcendence beyond space and time (and our entrapment in the cycle of birth and death) in order to connect with the nada Brahma.
This episode begins by examining the relationship between music and nature. It then explores the Chandogya Upanishad and Hindustani Classical Music for insights into nature, humankind, and music. The final segment turns to the U.S. reception of the music of Ravi Shankar and discusses how that reception over the course of the 50s and 60s reflected a growing concern with spirituality and the search for a shortcut to transcendence.
This episode investigates the move from the communitarian spirit of the 1960s to the "Me Decade" of the 1970s. I explore some historical and cultural reasons for this shift, employing ideas from Tom Wolfe and Immanuel Kant. I then look at the dialectic between an intentionally inauthentic notion of the self (personae) and an authentic self as it unfolded in the music of the 1970s, particularly among the singer-songwriters. The last segment addresses the style of that music--caught between folk music (and its implicit authenticity, speaking with the voice of the authentic We) and light-jazz/lounge music (and its implicit inauthenticity).
This is a companion episode to the previous discussion of Kant's Three Syntheses. Here I use the three syntheses as a means for exploring some intriguing elements of the nature of music. Music, I suggest, has a very special relationship to space and time; that is, music produces an Imaginary (in Kant's sense) of space and time (the first synthesis). Music also presents fascinating problems in coming to grips with our ability to forge continuity among representations (the second synthesis); this relates to Aristoxenus's theory of melody. Finally, music is a relatively strange object. It features quantitative relationships (intervals) that reveal themselves as qualitative; it is a quality of another object that becomes substantive; it depends upon but also establishes relations; it both exists and is fictive. This illustrates the four basic concepts of the third synthesis: quantity, quality, relation, and modality.
This episode explores the three syntheses Immanuel Kant describes in his Critique of Pure Reason. The first synthesis designates locations within time and space; the second finds associations to draw perceptions together in order; the third applies concepts to percepts. The four basic concepts are number (the whole and its parts), quality (the features of an object), modality (its mode of existence--whether real or fictional and many other states in between), and relation (how the object fits in the world). These are the concepts in general, the bare minimum for something to register as a thing. I then apply that way of thinking to music. First, I consider musical space and time as idealizations, then the issue of association, then the concepts in general as they apply to music. Finally, all of this is brought to bear on the conception of the album (starting around 1945) as a unitary thing that is, in some ways, superordinate to the various songs contained within it.
In this episode, I am joined by Matt Carter and Eric Taxier to discuss "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang, which historian Jeff Chang refers to as the "first death of hip hop." I begin by outlining the inevitability of narrative and interpretation to history--that there is no "just the facts" approach to history, no matter how hard we try. I then suggest that Jeff Chang tells a story of death and resurrection (and a shift from authenticity to increased inauthenticity) while someone like Dan Charnas tells a story of expansion and innovation (in business as much as art). Then Eric and Matt join me to discuss various elements of that "first" rap recording: the shift away from the DJ toward the MC, the use of a backing band and the continuation of a remix culture, the citing of names as tags, and other issues.
This episode begins by asking the deceptively difficult question: what is the middle class? Moreover, what is the middle class's relationship to music? In the second segment, I discuss the rise of the middle class in Brazil alongside the increasing popularity of the samba, along with middle-class criticisms of the Afro-Brazilian genre and Brazilian representation abroad as embodied by Carmen Miranda. In the third segment, I delve into the musical characteristics of Bossa Nova and the manner in which they encourage, reflect, and model a middle-class sensibility. Might its success in this account for its relatively short lifespan as a truly popular genre?
The photograph of the Palacio do Planalto used for the episode art comes courtesy of Ministério da Cultura (Creative Commons license) and can be found HERE: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homologação_do_tombamento_de_obras_do_Niemeyer_(35035168191).jpg.
In this episode, I am joined by Matt Carter and Eric Taxier to discuss DJ Kool Herc, his park parties, and his Merry-Go-Round technique--a method of extending the break of a song and linking it to other breaks. We discuss the issues of liveness (just what is "live" at a hip hop party using pre-recorded materials?), the art of DJing seen from the perspective of Jacques Derrida's deconstruction (that is, DJing as a series of reversals), and the break as a kind of synecdoche (a part that stands in for the whole and yet separates itself from that whole). For a quick example of the Merry-Go-Round Technique, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw4H2FZjfpo
The image art for this episode comes courtesy of Mika Väisänen.
mika-photography.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; The file can be found at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dj_Kool_Herc.jpg
This episode examines the Congressional hearings on payola at the end of 1959 and 1960. I explore the history of payola briefly as a major part of the radio broadcast landscape. I then compare payola to common promotional practices in the advertisement and marketing of other types of commercial products and ask why it is that people might feel that things are different when it comes to music. Is this a confusion of the parameters of music’s status as a mass art?
This episode explores the commodity structure of music as it has evolved from the beginning of the sheet music industry to today’s streaming environment. The second segment employs ideas from Nietzsche and Raymond Williams to articulate the way in which we feel our way in relation to the world and suggests that music contributes to our affective standing. The last segment looks at Guy Debord’s notion of the Society of the Spectacle and examines how we have moved from being to having to appearing. I then suggest ways in which streaming contributes to a new structure of feeling.
This episode examines how the digitalization of music has changed the mode of being (the ontology) of music. We examine the shift in music from something performed to something recorded and then to digitalization. We then examine some lawsuits concerning digital sampling and their implications and then some opportunities artists have exploited in the digital album.
In this episode I am joined by Matt Carter to discuss the aesthetics and civics of graffiti art, or writing. We begin with the important transition in the 1960s from older forms of graffiti to modern graffiti art, examine the integral nature of transgression to the aesthetics of the art, consider the importance of writing and the signature, and conclude by discussing the question of the ownership of public space. Episode art comes from: By derivative work: Jemandanderes (talk)Seen_bode_ny.jpg: https://www.flickr.com/people/sweet_child_of_mine/ - Seen_bode_ny.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5578651
This episode delves into a passage from Nietzsche's Gay Science on giving style to one's life to demonstrate that his view of style is not superficial but rather substantive. This giving of style creates an orbit of several of Nietzsche's most important conceptions: the need for an Ultimate (the Death of God), the dialectic between Apollo and Dionysus, the need for distance or abstraction, the importance of aesthetics, becoming what you are, and the eternal recurrence. To further examine the issue of distance, I turn to Graham Harman's view of the withdrawal of the real object and the tension he labels "allure." The last segment then applies this view of abstraction/distance and the constellation of other concepts discussed to some elements of the conscious rap of A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Digable Planets.
This episode looks at how early country music, particularly that of the Carter Family, dealt with the position of the South after the Civil War into the early decades of the 20th century. I discuss the ideologies of the New South and the Lost Cause and how that relates to country music's concern with tradition. I then turn to a reading of Nietzsche's notion of the "death of God" to reveal that Nietzsche's primary concern wasn't with atheism but rather with the loss of an "ultimate" value that created a vibrant hierarchy of values--a loss that resonates with the South's position as portrayed in the writing of William Faulkner and the lyrics of country music. The last segment offers a close reading of "Can the Circle Be Unbroken" employing these themes.
In this episode, I explore the business innovations of Ralph Peer: his ability to profit from the mechanical right guaranteed by the 1909 Copyright Act, his exploitation of under-explored markets, and his innovations in marketing country musicians as pop stars. This leads to a discussion of the famous Bristol Sessions and the music of Jimmie Rodgers and, especially, the Carter Family.
This episodes examines country music as a popular (mass culture) entertainment prior to the Bristol Sessions of 1927. I investigate three contributing streams into the country music scene: Appalachian music, disaster songs, and the fiddling music of the string bands. I tease out certain contradictions in each in order to demonstrate that country music is an "invented tradition" that relies upon the past but reinvents that past into an image useful to its own concern with creation.
In this episode I discuss phenomenon of the crossover, employing an eccentric reading of Nietzsche to elucidate one element of the success of Motown and the Supremes. We begin by discussing the way Billboard created its charts, the ways in which those charts changed over time, the crossover phenomenon of the Rock n' Roll era, and the suspension of the R&B chart during 1964 and its impact on Black music. The second segment discusses Nietzsche's concept of the overman and the role he sees suffering playing in one's affirmation of life. The final segment applies some of this thinking to Motown and the resistances it overcame with the Supremes as the primary vehicle to the mainstream.
In this episode I discuss the business model Berry Gordy employed for Motown records, including the influences of Booker T. Washington and the Fordist model. What are the advantages and disadvantages to applying these business models to the creation of music?
This episode discusses the image of the crossroads as a central metaphor not only for the blues but for the Black condition at the turn of the 20th century. I then discuss the musical roots of the blues, the relationship of the blues to the ideals of Booker T. Washington, and the manner in which the blues navigates the liminal space between the religious and the secular, the communal and the individual, the inside and the outside.
This episode covers elements of blues harmony, melody, and form to demonstrate that our typical picture of the blues is far too simplistic and the blues itself is far more interesting than we assume. I then go on to discuss the early appearance of blues in sheet music and in recordings (including the beginning of the Blues Craze in 1920 with Mamie Smith's version of the Perry Bradford composition, "Crazy Blues").
This episode uses Highlife music of Ghana to investigate a Nietzschean take on aesthetic attunement (what he terms Rausch), aesthetic form, and the production of the self. I begin by outlining how Ghanians employed ahaha, konkoma, and dance highlife to create a new sense of self for young people after the colonialist disruption of traditional modes of life and hierarchy. I then to turn to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's ideas concerning aesthetic attunement which is disinterested and yet passionate in order to assess how music might be employed in the production of the self. In the last segment, I broach the issue of Nietzschean "bad conscience" as it pertains to the colonial situation. I end by imagining how highlife music might be construed as a reversal of bad conscience, a way of turning the suffering of the passions into joy.
This episode discusses syncretism (amalgamation of different religions, philosophies, cultures, or schools of thought) as it applies to music in the colonial situation of Ghana at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Syncretism is not simple amalgamation, however. It can involve accommodation but it can also be a subtle form of rebellion. Using this concept as a platform, I turn to various forms of Ghanian popular music that fed into highlife and then the early years of highlife itself. I take a close look at the song "Yaa Amponsah," first recorded by the Kumasi Trio (featuring Kwame Asare, also known as Jacob Sam, on guitar) in 1928.
This episode examines WEB DuBois's notion of "double consciousness," which he defines as a way in which Blacks have both the opportunity and the curse of seeing the world in a manner he suggests was unavailable to Whites. I read from the two essays in which DuBois employs the term and address some of the difficulties facing its interpretation. I then employ the term to examine the participation of Black performers in Blackface minstrelsy, specifically James Bland and Bert Williams. Our focus turns to Williams's signature character, the Jonah Man, which I construe as a subtle and sly critique of social indifference.
This episode explores the various issues surrounding musical improvisation. Is there such a thing as creatio ex nihilo? What is the role of the future and the past in improvisation? What is the role of tradition and freedom? I discuss some ideas on inspiration and improvisation in Nietzsche's Human, All-Too-Human, Adorno's objections to improvisation as it is generally practiced, improvisation in relation to the three modes (or syntheses) of time, and improvisation in relation to free will (employing the thought experiment of Buridan's Ass and some thinking by Adorno). Throughout the episode, I weave in observations on and quotations from the Grateful Dead on cliches, improvisation, and the choices involved in making something through improvisation.
Starting with the reversals of cultural borrowing or appropriation in the cakewalk, this episode examines ragtime and its various inversions or reversals. I discuss the emergence of ragtime out of the coon song with all of its problematic racial representations, the "problem" of Black music at the turn of the 20th century (and the lack of Black musical representation in the official program of the Columbian Exposition), the efforts of composers such as Scott Joplin to transform ragtime into a quasi-classical form of instrumental music, and the objections voiced by James Weldon Johnson to the "nationalism" of the ragtime craze versus the "racialism" of its origins. The episode concludes with a discussion of syncopation and its eerie corporeality.
This episode provides an overview of the remainder of The Birth of Tragedy with a focus on the emergence of the Socratic impulse and its connection to an overemphasis on logic and rationality at the expense of the instinctual drives of the Apollinian and the Dionysian. Then I discuss elements of the connection between the Apollinian and Dionysian as manifested in the "symbolic dream image." After introducing Herbert Marcuse's accusations against the conformity of modern society, I explore various notions surrounding the very popular conception of the Dionysian in the United States of 1960s: the resistance to the "madness" of instrumental rationality, the need for creative spontaneity, but also the threat of a possible fascist element within the Dionysian. I conclude with some thoughts about the Apollinian and the Dionysian as they relate to the Grateful Dead.
This is the third episode in our series on Nietzsche. It examines the controversial and oft-misunderstood doctrine of the eternal recurrence for what it might tell us about the structuring of time (here I draw on Deleuze) and about how repetition in music operates in popular music. I review some of Adorno's complaints about popular music and the distinction between progressive time and repetitive time. I then turn to a discussion of how the notions of the Apollinian and Dionysian are transformed in Nietzsche's The Gay Science, focusing on the idea that we ought to "become what we are." This leads to the examination of the eternal recurrence and a manner of reading the repetition in popular music as a liberating and redeeming quality, not, as Adorno would have it, a symbol of our unfreedom.
We continue our multi-episode exploration of the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche and its application to music. In this episode, we broach the generative antagonism Nietzsche believes is embodied in the interactions between what he terms the Apollinian and the Dionysian. These are not concepts; they are drives or instincts. They are as caught up in nature and the body as they are in philosophy and the mind. Indeed, for Nietzsche there is no easy distinction between mind and body. The Apollinian deals with beauty, clarity, individuation, bounded knowledge, and representation. The Dionysian addresses the sublime, ambiguity, self-forgetting, boundless feeling, and the Schopenhauerian Will. I conclude the episode by examining meter/rhythm and pitch/tone as manifestations of the relationship between the Apollinian and the Dionysian.
This is the first in a series of episodes examining the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and their possible applications to the understanding of popular music. In this episode, I prepare us for a discussion of Nietzsche's first book The Birth of Tragedy by examining three of Nietzsche's predecessors: Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Arthur Schopenhauer. We investigate some selected aspects of their aesthetic and metaphysical thought--aspects that I will try to demonstrate either influenced Nietzsche or stand in marked contrast to what he tries to accomplish in his writings.
This episode explores the rise to prominence of brass bands or marching bands after the U.S. Civil War. We discuss the shift in ideals of patriotism that follows the war, the emergence of the brass bands as an emblem of middlebrow nationalism, and the rejection of highbrow music at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. We then discuss John Phillip Sousa's contributions to the arguments surrounding copyright and his qualms about recorded music. We then examine Sousa's approach to march composition and the way in which it combines images of "barbaric splendor" and elements of the parlor song to give rise to a new vision of masculinity and its role in nationalism.
This episode examines the 19th-century parlor ballad as a genre that helped to define shifting notions of the family and womanhood in the United States. I start by reviewing the prerequisites for a robust music industry (necessary to support a prolific production of song) and then discuss changes the family underwent in the early 19th century with the shift from an agrarian lifestyle to a more modern, urbane mode of living. I then discuss the role of nostalgia and the idealization of women in the parlor ballad. Examples are drawn from Thomas Moore, Stephen Foster, and George Frederick Root.
This episode covers a difficult but central part of the history of American popular music: the rise of blackface minstrelsy in the late 1820s and early 1830s. In order to come to grips with the emergence of what was widely considered the first truly "American" form of music and theatrical entertainment, this episode explores the contradictory ways of understanding Blackness that suffused the practice of African transatlantic slavery, discusses the political and social situation of working-class Whites and free Blacks, the role of Irish immigration in early minstrelsy, and the formation of two American minstrel archetypes: Jim Crow and Zip Coon.
This episode discusses the musical culture of the North American colonies and the early United States culminating in the Copyright Act of 1790. We will suggest that this law was an important step on the way toward establishing mass art as the primary form of cultural expression in the United States. We will also see that this law is not nearly as straightforward philosophically and legally as it might, at first, seem.
This, the first episode of Sound Philosophy, discusses some of the objections to popular music by philosophers and critics such as Gilles Deleuze, Theodor Adorno, Dwight Macdonald, and Clement Greenberg. We then discuss the notion of popular music as mass art.