Music to Hear on Here: Who Runs the World

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Who Runs the World

In our current musical situation the individual, likewise humanity, is liquidated. The distinction of producer and consumer has become irrelevant, there is only the exchange value of the product. “This explains why individual expressions of preference – or of course, dislike – converge in an area where object and subject alike make such reactions questionable. The fetish character of music produces its own camouflage through the identification of the listener with the fetish” (Adorno, 48). For the listener lost to the fetish there exists an unknown loss of agency and an illusion of choice.

The distinctions of culture/counterculture, and high/low music are illusory in that both partake of the superstructure that is the machine of culture. The superstructure is the circulation of commodities and music has been commodified, processed and packaged to the same extent as a pair of sneakers or fast food. Identity is commodified in the circulation where the individual constructs their identity through purchasing commodities.

The more you buy into the identity that you associate with a particular type of music the more you have to and you are always already going to buy the music. Choice becomes more limited the more familiar you are with music because listeners are continually drawn back to the familiar and comfortable.

This is yet another song telling girls what they are, defining their place in the world, what they do, and who they are. It simultaneously steals their power from them while constructing and positing an identity of power for them, achieved through sexual objectification ("Hope you still like me, fuck you pay me" Lyric). Beyonce claims that her "persuasion can build a nation" and reading her body as text, her gyrating vagina tells us that a woman's persuasive power lies not in her voice, but rather in her ability to seduce, thus completing the cycle of the human fully being realized as a commodity through musical performance.

Group 1: Chris Wong, Nate Smith, Miguel Palmer, Amy Ruland, Angela Torres de Amante

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Course Description

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Martin Mull (or Elvis Costello)

Thinking about the meaning and value, intellectual, affective and neurological experiences, and aesthetics of music has occupied an important position in modern and contemporary philosophical writings. Central to the philosophy of music is a questioning of what music is insofar as it is an art form and practice, akin to but different from other arts, such as drama, literature, painting, sculpture, to name but a few examples. Claims have been made, in fact, that music’s effect, when performed and listened to, surpasses those of the other arts because of its abstact purity, of its universality, and of its singular capacity to express, represent and incite emotions. This course will explore such issues in 19th-20th century philosophy. We will begin with introductory readings of what composes the field and discipline of the philosophy of music. We will read—among other philosophers, novelists, critics and musicologists—Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Barthes and Adorno’s writings on music. Finally, we will have the occasion to read about and listen to specific musicians, both high and low, and explore the contexts of their work, concentrating on the historical and political dimensions of the practice, performance and art of making music.