Research - Popular Music Theory

Popular Music Theory...

Popular Culture

Popular music culture is the understanding of ideas and attitudes of mainstream culture in society which has an influence upon us as an audience. A basic break down of Pop culture would be that social groups like the Bourgeoisie state that  popular music culture is made for the masses in order to keep them occupied. The 'masses' consisted of people like us, working class who seem to be not cared about. The Bourgeoisie were people of ruling and higher class in which their music taste being known as classical were considered to be 'true art'.

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Antonio Gramsci:

Antonio Gramsci was a leading Marxist thinker and politician who created the theory of Hegemony. Hegemony means to look down upon the predominance of someone's social class over others. An example of this would be that the ruling and upper class is controls and dominates the working class making our views and response passive.The upper class has their own views and ideologies which can be demanded in society because of their position in class and jobs e.g. politician, government etc. According to Gramsci, we actually can be an active society and judge ideology if it is able to be understood through the 'common sense' of people. This suggests that, the upper class produce mainstream music for the masses to be entertained and occupied.

Frankfurt School:

The Frankfurt school refers to a group of german-american theorists who developed powerful analyses of changes in the western society during the war.This group of German American theorists were concerned with the role of popular culture in exploiting the masses and maintaining the power of the Bourgeoisie. There were two main theorists in the Frankfurt school who also expressed their views and version of popular culture. Their names were Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Max Horkheimer encouraged change in society whereas Theodor Adorno stated that art provided an alternative vision of reality. 

Theador Adorno:

Theador Adorno developed the Hegemony triangle which portrays the division of ruling class and working class in popular culture. Adorno argues that capitalism fed people with the product of 'cultural industry' in which he expressed the idea that the opposite of 'true' art is popular culture and keeps people like us, the working class passively satisfied and politically apathetic. Adorno also suggested that culture industries would create a debased mass of 'unsophisticated' and slang form of 'music' which have replaced the more 'difficult' art forms which may lead to people questioning life. All popular music products are commodities to be sold to an audience who believe that they are consuming 'true' emotion. Popular music products are categorized in standardization, saying that all music are similar and basically the same. Adorn also expressed developed his ideologies on the psuedo individualization, which is the incidental differences that make music seem distinctive, but they're not.

Birmingham School:

The Birmingham school also bases its theory around Hegemony in which their was one in particular Theorist, named Stuart Hall who created his theory on ‘Encoding’ and Decoding’ from 1973 to 1980. Encoding was the process in which text was constructed by producers whereas Decoding was the process in which the audience reads, understands and interprets the text. 

Dick Hebdige:

Dick Hebdige mainly studied Subcultures and he said that although some people think sub cultures appear to be different, deep down they are the same. 'Sub cultures' are 'little cultures', as they are all doing the same thing of resistance. This contradicts Adorno's theory of 'the masses' being of one culture. Therefore he goes against Adorno’s triangle as he suggests that within the working class category there are different personalities and different groups of individuals in which interest differs from person to person which contradicts the idea of 'masses' being a passive audience. For example, not everyone in the lower class favours or even interests hip hip or R&B and so on and so on.

In conclusion; from looking at the different theorists, it has given me an insight to overall pop culture and with the addition of evaluating several theorists, it has developed my knowledge even more. Overall I would tend to agree more with Hebdige. This is because I still believe that although the masses are not the same(they are in 'little subcultures') and they still abide from the overall idea of 'masses' being one big passive audience.