Thoughts on Popular Music
I’ve been asking myself a lot these days, why several cultural objects tend to be popular and several others are unpopular? Does it matter for us to have unpopular opinions, especially about popular culture? The most common abstract definition of “popular” is something that is acceptable to the masses. This means that the elements which embody popular culture could be found easily in everyday life and reflect the situation for most people. It would be easier for someone to like something because we can actually relate to it in certain ways.
If we look at the themes that most popular songs bring, they are mostly about love and other types of human emotions. That’s because of the thing that most people could relate to is none other than those two, in other words: deep human connection. Even an uneducated person who is illiterate and has no knowledge of the world would be able to understand what love is and could experience emotions when needed. And it’ll just take a few moments before they finally get the message from the music and the lyrics, then “voila!”, they could relate situations described by the songs to their own lives.
But the problem is how do we explain the rise of independent artists? If we see it simply from the demand and supply, we’ll see that popular music mostly is created to serve the market demand of how people normally think, therefore fulfilling its commercial purposes. However, we’ll have to look further into subaltern, the ones who hide very well within this hierarchy. In postcolonial studies, subaltern designates the colonial populations who are socially, politically and geographically outside the hierarchy of power in a colony. However, recently the term subaltern itself has been expanded beyond the spectrum of postcolonial studies. If we see it from the perspective of leftist Marxism, then the subaltern could be attributed to the proletariat, the working class or peasants who are repressed by the capitalists. The hierarchical relations between them could then be interpreted as a class struggle. And back to the picture again, who is the subaltern in this world where popular music dominates the market?
The answer which I propose would be the intellectuals, or in other words, the independent thinkers. As the main notion of popular music is to serve the mindset of most common people, there’ll be some resistance from small intellectual circles who would think that the definition of life as offered by the popular music could not fulfill their needs to think independently. It goes without a doubt that music, as well as its lyrical expression, is a product of human thoughts and at the same time it also influences the way we think and the way we see the world.
As popular music is produced according to the demand, there might be some resistance to move from one type of popular music to another for a considerable amount of time both from the producer and the consumer sides. Most people are reluctant to try new things, with the basic common trait of xenophobia tendency which we embody unconsciously. As humans, we fear the unknowns, including the new ideas or information which actually have the potentials to offer us new and fresher ideas about life itself.
And then the resistance from intellectual circles will come in the form of offering alternative independent music which does not always adhere to the common concept of what will sell in the market. There will be some production of independent music and there will always be some market for it. Only it will not look like the conventional market of popular music which could be quantified by numbers and profits earned by the recording company which earned the rights to publish those artists. The way it works for these independent artists would be like the slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 “Critique of the Gotha Program”: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
The market for independent artists might not be large like conventional music, but they have the power to interact directly with their small base of audience, to spread the influence directly to their audience, and to be free from the constraint of earning as much money as possible. The latter will have the benefit of them to be able to pursue their musical path to the truest sense and do the experiments in their artistic expression. While influence could also be used as a measurement of cultural expression.
The Velvet Underground for example only existed for a short period between 1965–1973 and sold only 30,000 copies in its early years. However, as Brian Eno of Rolling Stones magazine said in 1982, “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” Many later independent artists and even popular artists commonly cited The Velvet Underground as one of their earlier influences. Other than that, Václav Havel, the first post-communist President of the Czech Republic took the Velvet Underground as one of his inspirations during the time he got repressed under the communist regime. He got inspired to name the revolution which toppled the communist government of Czechoslovakia as “Velvet Revolution”, which also says about the nature of the revolution as a peaceful resistance movement.
Another question is: Will people who like popular music be able to take some interest in independent music and vice versa? The answer which I propose is that, it’s possible. It’s about crossing the boundaries, and recognising what works for us and what’s not. It’s harder to discover new things through trial-and-error, and that’s why most people will opt towards the popular options which are “guaranteed” to be good. But the problem is that the institutions which publish musical acts, the recording companies, are not always in favour of publishing the best artists. The main motive of publishing has always been about finding the intersection between what sells and what is good. Being faced with that compromise, sometimes companies are forced to opt for the former in order to stay in business.
So it will come up to the audience to break the ices and try something new. After all, we are the ones who attach meaning to things, to each song that we listen to. Both popular and independent music hold equally great artistic value, it’s the audience who will pass judgment and make them either likable or not according to the values that they hold onto at that moment.
