A strained and frequently patronizing evaluation of ideological,
rhetorical, and sociological elements in popular music. In this
study of the relationship of individuals to their favorite
performers and music, Frith (Sound Effects, 1982, etc.) takes a
relatively simple subject and smothers it with facts and theory.
Viewing the act of listening to popular music as a performance in
its own right ("we express ourselves through our deployment of
other people's music"), Frith identifies how music is categorized
for consumption and, in turn, associated - by artists, producers,
and, ultimately, by listeners - with larger social and cultural
distinctions. But his tone, by turns pedantic and flip (questioning
taste, he asks, "Is the music fight for this situation - the
Trammps' 'Disco Inferno' for a gay funeral? Whitney Houston's 'I
Will Always Love You' for everyone else's?") is bound to turn off
those readers who manage to keep up with the withering pace of his
study. Frith veers off course somewhat in presuming to establish
qualitatively and generically the "aptness of different sorts of
judgment." He observes: "We can only begin to make sense of popular
music when we understand, first, the language in which value
judgments are articulated and expressed and, second, the social
situations in which they are appropriate." While germane to the
dispassionate study of the phenomenon of popular music, this
suggestion, and this study as a whole, tells us little about what
makes a young fan declare, "Led Zep rules!" - and why that is in
itself a valid judgment. (Kirkus Reviews)
Who's better? Billie Holiday or P.J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan
or Keats? And how many friendships have ridden on the answer? Such
questions aren't merely the stuff of fanzines and idle talk; they
inform our most passionate arguments, distil our most deeply held
values, make meaning of our ever-changing culture. In Performing
Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks
what we talk about when we talk about music. What's good, what's
bad? What's high, what's low? Why do such distinctions matter?
Instead of dismissing emotional response and personal taste as
inaccessible to the academic critic, Simon Frith takes these forms
of engagement as his subject and discloses their place at the very
centre of the aesthetics that structure our culture and colour our
lives. Taking up hundreds of songs and writers, Frith insists on
acts of evaluation of popular music as music. Ranging through and
beyond the twentieth century, Performing Rites puts the Pet Shop
Boys and Puccini, rhythm and lyric, voice and technology, into a
dialogue about the undeniable impact of poplar aesthetics on our
lives. How we nod our heads or tap our feet, grin or grimace or
flip the dial; how we determine what's sublime and what's for real
- these are part of the way we construct our social identities, and
an essential response to the performance of all music. Frith argues
that listening itself is a performance, both social gesture and
bodily response. From how they are made to how they are received,
popular songs appear here as not only meriting aesthetic judgements
but also demanding them, and shaping our understanding of what all
music means.
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