Trivializing Music Studies

James Deaville, Carleton University

Put bluntly, we need to trivialize music studies in Canada. By the word "trivialize," I don't mean adopting a belittling attitude towards those studies, but rather changing their content to embrace music that has traditionally been determined to be below consideration in serious music programs: aesthetically unworthy, trivial, bad. In the recent book Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate, noted popular-music scholar Simon Frith identifies three critical arguments in defining "bad music": it isn't worthy of enjoyment; musicians involved in it are betraying their talent; and it corrupts music's original integrity.1 While whole genres like country music have been dismissed historically as bad or trivial, such designations can cut cross styles as well, so that a subgenre like bubblegum pop or an artist like Dido might be deemed unworthy of inclusion in a "canonic" popular music course. Even more problematic within such a course would be entertainers like Lawrence Welk (http://www.welkmusicalfamily.com) or Kenny G (http://www.kennyg.com), who occupy terrain so foreign to elite canons that justifying their study at a job interview will almost certainly not get you hired (I didn't get the job). Yet these are the very artists whose sounds form the "soundtrack" of our lives and the lives of our parents.

Consumers of "live" media are bombarded daily by music and its messages that fly below the radar of our "high art" colleagues, whether in television news (see http://www.southernmedia-nmsa.com/ for a complete listing of current and historical network news music) or video games (see http://www.vgmusic.com/ for a comprehensive sound archive), just to mention two examples. This is the music that surrounds us, envelopes us on a daily basis, even though we may not notice it. Often created by nameless composers working for music production companies, these powerful sounds in broadcast media remain all but unknown to us. In a recent article about music in time-based media in American Music, Claudia Gorbman argues that we need to develop an aesthetics of television music2 – how much more should we attempt to understand musical phenomena like Liberace (http://www.liberace.com/), soccer audience anthems (http://home.wanadoo.nl/maarten.geluk/), the music for film trailers (http://www.movie-list.com/), and yes, the music of ice cream trucks (http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/7284). Indeed, Nicholas Cook made a significant splash in the scholarly community with his groundbreaking study of commercial music in 1994.3

My own career has focused on music that has been considered trivial at one time or another, whether the virtuosic creations of Franz Liszt, the cakewalks of itinerant African-American entertainers in turn-of-the-century Vienna, or television news music of today. One benefit of dealing with such repertories is that you can't be accused of besmirching works of genius, as I was when I suggested that Liszt's Sonata in B Minor has the air of the carnevalesque about it. In my case, sensitivity to such music arose in part from my middle-class background, which didn't know better than to take seriously "bad" music – i.e., the music that surrounded a typical suburban family of the 1960s (and continues to do so in the first decade of the 21st century).

By advocating serious engagement with what has historically been called "trivial" or "bad" music, I am suggesting that we reconsider what is worthy of study and research. Let the genre's popularity, "reach," effectiveness, and impact determine its suitability for academic work, rather than the opinions of elitists. In terms of university and college music curricula, that might mean offering courses in television music (an undergraduate seminar I offered in the fall of 2003 was the first such course in Canada) and smooth jazz, just to mention two disparaged types of music. Another course might explore music in everyday life, past and present. Of course, such curricular offerings would go beyond introducing musical repertoires familiar to us from various contexts in our lives. They would probe deeply and broadly what and how the musics in question mean, and how they help construct personal and collective identity. For example, a general course on music in everyday life might explore Muzak ("bad music") and how it achieves its purposes, drawing upon scientific studies and empirical data as well as ethnographic research.4 For courses like these, we would need to introduce elements of sociology, psychology, and communication theory, since it is through such disciplines that we can determine the factors behind the effectiveness and importance of the music under consideration. The study of music in such courses would be as rigorous as that encountered in traditional music pedagogy, only the emphasis would shift from uncovering abstract manifestations of genius to establishing specific markers of impact and success. I hope that this direction of inquiry would enable us to arrive at a new, function-based aesthetics of music, one that might ultimately replace traditional measures of value.

I propose we take the "trivializing" one step further by working these musics into theory, music appreciation and ear-training courses, as part of the core curriculum. The individual selections would be generation-specific, so that students would be working with music they recognize from their personal "soundtracks," even as baby boomers would know the ballad from "Gilligan's Island" (http://home.comcast.net/~millenniumbiz3/tv/Gilligans_Island.mp3), the theme from "Mission Impossible" (http://www.televisiontunes.com/m-theme-songs.html), or the Armour hot dog (http://www.digitaltimes.com/kids/lyrics_for_kids/armourhotdog.html), for example.5 The more we engage with these repertoires, the better students can appreciate how they, like the classical canon, accomplish their goals. For example, in the case of Zamfir's "covers" of favourite songs (http://www.gheorghe-zamfir.com/), students might work with notions of transcription and timbre as affective devices.

This rethinking of musical valuation would assist the instructor in breaking out of the elitist classism that is so prevalent in the North American music classroom. Not that I am advocating replacing one canon with another in the search for the "great" television news music or for the "masterpieces" of carrousel music. No, I am suggesting that we look at the peripheries of music and try to determine why that music is or has been important. Instead of dismissing Mantovani (http://www.hallowquest.com/mantiindex.htm), Minnie Pearl (http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/pearl_minnie/bio.jhtml), or Neil Diamond (http://www.neildiamondhomepage.com/) as self-evidently trite or valueless, if we explore the past and present with open ears and minds, we will find music in a number of unexpected places, which will assist our efforts to understand a given culture and musical influences upon it. Take for example the music performed at sporting events, where millions of people participate in rituals that prominently feature musical anthems, chants, choruses, etc. Such music is clearly "trivial" according to the standards of musical canons (whether those of art or popular music); but it is a powerful force in shaping identity. By studying only "high" art, whether in classical or popular realms, we and our students fail to question what (and who) constitutes musical value, mistakenly concluding that the public's tastes are misguided and malformed (à la Theodor Adorno) by the agents of capitalism. Under a new, non-elitist regime, we may discover that the musical experience is bigger and richer than ever suspected.

Social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat...
—Pierre Bourdieu6