Research: Popular Music Theory

Popular Music Theory

Introduction:

 

A theory presents a systematic way of understanding events, behaviours and/or situations.

It is important to understand a theory because it allows people to acknowledge the reasons why things happen in society.

The theorists I will be drawing upon are:

• Popular Culture
• Antonio Gramsci - Hegemony
• Frankfurt School
• Theodor Adorno
• Birmingham School
• Dick Hebdige

1.Popular Culture

Popular culture is everywhere. You know it when you come to the Internet, listen to music, watch television or go to a movie, concert or stage show. You the know the artists, the actors and actresses, sports personalities and the games they play. Today, anything with a buzz is deemed pop culture.
The book definition says pop culture is a collection of thoughts, ideas, attitudes, perspectives and images preferred by the mass mainstream population. A sort of common denominator.

2. Antonio Gramsci - Hegemony

Hegemony is when the dominance of one social group over another such as the ruling class over all the over classes below them.
With this theory it claims is that the ideas of the ruling class come to be seen to the people as normal.
Hegemony occurs when class and ideas dominate the society and this effects every institution: including music. With Gramsci, he believes that they are able to do this due to the control they have over the influential institutions such as popular media like magazines, TV, Music, and different media platforms.

Cultural hegemony is the sociological concept that the culturally diverse society can be ruled or be dominated by one of it's social classes which is the ruling class.


 

3. Frankfurt School

Frankfurt school said that popular music is the end of a production line where everything sounds similar. An industry that exploits the mass population for profit and social control, in the hope that they accept a certain ideology about the world they are living in.

The mass industry promotes absorption, everything about these stars becomes a "commodity" ( a product ) such as; their clothes, image, likes and dislikes etc.







4. Theodor Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society. Adorno was one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II.
He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has come to be associated with thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, for whom the work of Freud, Marx and Hegel were essential to a critique of modern society.


Adorno believed that the culture industry allows people to become 'masses' and be easily manipulated by capitalist corporations an authoritarian governments.
And due to control of capitalist production: music becomes merely standardized, formulaic and repetitive. It has no value whatsoever and leads to a very specific type of consumption that is passive, obedient and easily manipulated for the initial purpose of propaganda or advertising.





5. Birmingham School

Known as the CCCS ( Centre of Contemporary Culture Studies)

This is school includes a modern group of social theorists who developed thoughts on social media, culture and critiqued older social media theorist. (Also stated by Frankfurt)





6. Hebdige (Richard)

Consumption is an active process in which different audiences have different readings into the same cultural products. Adorno's ideas are very pessimistic and dismissive of mass audiences as passive and easily manipulated. (challenges Adorno's theories)

Audiences are active and not passive. This means that the audience is actually interested and bothered about the music videos they watch. They are not blind to the ideologies present, they also critique on how they feel the video was. Through resistance of pop culture creates sub culture. 






Conclusion

In conclusion, I have learnt the ideologies of the 6 theorists we have studied and analysed. My beliefs on theory of 'Popular Culture' are that it is all to do with audience reaction. If the audience deem an artist to produce good music videos and audio songs then that artist is then automatically associated as Popular Culture. Artists such as: Chris Brown, Rihanna or Beyoncé. These artists are given the title of a 'Popular Music Artist' based on their audience's views on them. They can either develop a niche audience and not being Popular Culture or they can develop a worldwide audience and become a 'Popular Artist'.

I will present my artist/band in relation to Popular Culture by including the characteristics that allow the audience to connect with the artist such as: Star image, moral views etc.
I will make by artist/band in a way that appeals to the audience, my hope is that my audience will be active and not passive.