In the following sections, I highlight how the relationship between young people and popular music has been theorised. I also discuss some of the major theoretical trends that have been employed in popular music and cultural studies. This includes the work of Theodore Adorno, who pioneered an approach for understanding the role of music in society. Thereafter, I focus on theories that critiqued but also expanded on Adorno’s work by emphasising the socio-cultural context that music draws upon in order to communicate its messages. Lastly, a body of work that pays attention to the relationship between music and society as mutually constitutive and reciprocal is discussed.
3.1) Adorno and musical aesthetic
The work of Theodore Adorno has dominated much thought on the role that popular music plays in the lives of young people, particularly from a sociological perspective. Many of Adorno’s ideas were influenced by, and derived from, the Frankfurt School of critical social theory, whose central premise was to explore the ramifications of society’s increasing reliance on mass cultural commodities (Seidman, 2004). The rationale for this line of thought was that mass consumption strips away individuality and autonomy and works to produce passive adherents of consumer culture who cannot think for themselves (Adorno, 1991). Adorno, (2002), accordingly, saw popular music in a similar light; as an agent of mass production and a product of a culture of consumerism.
Adorno (1991; 2002) argues that understanding popular music as a product of mass culture and a commodity allows one to distinguish between authentic or serious and more commercial or popular forms of music. This pertains to what Adorno perceives as the manner in which the audience receives the music. In the case of popular music, Adorno argues (2002) that it is designed and constructed on a predetermined and pre-programmed formula to produce, and elicit, a uniform and singular set of responses amongst listeners. In other words, ‘listenership’ is defined in terms of what is popular, which produces a set of responses that converge into, or around, a single idea or theme. With regard to more
‘serious’ or ‘authentic’ forms of music its reception is not easily digested or deciphered as it requires a great deal of thought and reflection in order to be understood (Adorno, 2002).
According to Adorno, (2002) popular music is merely a function, or, rather, a vehicle, through which capitalist production is able to maintain particular types of social relations based on one’s class position. Adorno (1991) argues that popular music reinforces unequal social relations based primarily on one’s class in two ways. Firstly, it works in unison with other forms of mass-produced commodities that help to detract from the social forces of oppression that characterise capitalist modes of production. Secondly, popular music as a leisure activity colludes with capitalistic forms of work schedules to provide a form of relief and relaxation in which individuals can engage when they are not working.
It becomes apparent, then, that Adorno tends to conceptualise music in a dichotomous way, where he understands it primarily as either an aesthetic or a capitalistic tool (DeNora, 2000). Adorno stresses the dynamic nature of music which has the power to shape human thought and foster critical consciousness. Music, then, according to Adorno, should be seen as an “aesthetic” or an art form, and his concern is about preserving this aesthetic value rather than the production of predetermined and constrained meanings (Bennett, 2000). Music as an aesthetic refers to communicating authenticity, sincerity and individuality which forces the listener out of his or her comfort zone. Conversely, music that would not be classified as an aesthetic form would be popular forms of music that rely on artifice and commercialisation, such as pop music. The idea of music as an aesthetic refers to it becoming an entity, capable of producing itself and having certain intrinsic properties that transcend the materialism of everyday life (DeNora, 2000). Put simply, and rather idealistically, music and its relationship to society needs to be understood as an art form and an aesthetic that provokes thought and critical thinking.
However, Adorno’s theorising about the relationship between young people, society and popular music is not without its shortcomings. Whilst Adorno saw music as active in constructing social life, he deduced that the recipients of popular music were passive, and thus incapable of generating multiple and alternative meanings (Negus, 1997). The agency that Adorno accords listeners is minimal as they are socially defined by the music which they listen to. In essence, Adorno fails to consider how the social comes to be inscribed into the music as he imagines it the other way; that music is a social force (Bennett, 2000; Negus, 1997). Whilst music is indeed a social force, Adorno does simplify the complex interaction between listener and music.
In summary, according to Adorno, music exerts an influence on society because it is an aesthetic form with powerful and intrinsic properties; separate and independent from social life. In essence, music can do either one of two things; it can promote and foster profound thought and critical thinking, or it can inhibit critical thinking to produce passive adherents to music as a capitalist commodity. What emerges then, from Adorno’s thinking is that the relationship between music and society is unidirectional, where music is powerful in its ability to influence society in both positive and negative ways. However, Adorno fails to recognise that music derives its aesthetic quality from the context from which it is produced, as well as the power of audiences to reinterpret music in multiple ways, in order to rework and resist dominant meanings.
3.2) The socio-cultural context of musical aesthetic
Drawing on Adorno’s thought on the aesthetics of music and its ability to influence young people, in this section I discuss some theoretical views that emphasise the context in which music is produced. By reviewing the theoretical views on the relationship between young people and popular music, the aim is to highlight that this relationship is dynamic and complex.
The work of Walter Benjamin draws from, and expands on, Adorno’s view that the relationship between music and society is unidirectional. The central premise of Benjamin’s argument (2003; 2008) is that the very fluidity of meaning and autonomy that mass production and culture threatens to erode from music, is what enables individuals to fashion a meaningful aesthetic. In other words, Benjamin (2008) accords consumers or listeners of mass culture or popular music with more agency than does Adorno. Benjamin argues (2003) that listeners are capable of interpreting the text (music) in a myriad of ways. Listeners thus actively work to reconstruct and fashion individual meanings from music.
According to Benjamin, (2008) whilst music becomes wangled in capitalist production and mass culture, (as argued by Adorno) it is still capable of producing the kind of critical thinking that less commercialised and ‘authentic’ forms of music produce. This refers to the capacities of the listener to discern the messages that music produces in a way that is insightful and critical. However, what appears to be problematic in Benjamin’s work is the degree to which listeners are accorded the freedom of constructing their own meanings (Bennett, 2000). This is important, especially when Benjamin’s work is steeped in Adorno’s view that popular music is premised on a predetermined formula, assisted by capitalist production. The question then becomes, to what extent are listeners
capable of producing their own unique, individual and autonomous meanings when the meaning has already been fixed? (Bennett, 2000)
There has been a field of study devoted to audience reception that has focused solely on how the audience receives musical messages (Negus, 1992). These scholars have argued that the representation of music is largely determined by the audience (Negus, 1992). Therefore, less emphasis is placed on the factors and processes that underlie the production and dissemination of music; instead, the focus is on the cultural value that music holds for young people (Negus, 1992). Music, then, is thought of as a cultural resource at the moment of audience reception in that music appropriates various styles and aesthetics for its identity, especially collective forms of identity (Negus, 1992). There is much to be gained from such a perspective as music contains cultural resources for young people, which they incorporate into their lives in terms of their personal identity and interpersonal relationships. This perspective, however, is still subject to the music that audiences receive that is susceptible to particular structures and formulas that influence the reception of the music (Bennett, 2000).
Another field of study that dedicated itself to understanding the relationship between music and youth that gained much momentum was ‘subcultural theory’ (Hebdige, 1988). Subcultural theory, essentially, deals with the unique meanings that youth fashion out of popular music and how the accompanying stylistic and aesthetic properties are used to forge collective forms of identity (Hebdige, 1988). The central argument of subcultural theory is that popular music mobilises particular youth cultures into subcultures and bridges the gap between class positions (Negus, 1997; Shuker, 2008). In other words, subcultural expressions are understood as a response, or rather resistance, towards the social realities associated with one’s class position (Negus, 1997; Shuker, 2008). Popular music is, therefore, understood as articulating the proponents of class positions that legitimate youth subcultures and in turn reflect resistances to class inequalities.
Whilst subcultural theory aimed to illustrate how the social (class position) was inscribed into the musical – which gave rise to youth expression in the form of subcultures that fashioned unique identities – it was not without criticism. The main critique of subcultural theory was the idea that ‘subculture’ worked to create divisions and categories by legitimating and privileging the experiences of youth as valid and authentic expressions of their social realities (Negus, 1997). In other words, subcultures created a set of conditions that one needed to meet in order for an experience or expression to be labelled as youth culture. This split youthful expressions into authentic versus inauthentic ones. This only alienated whatever theoretical attempts were made to emphasise the reciprocity between
music and youth in that the cultural and social context was privileged over music’s ability to construct identity (Negus, 1997).
Therefore, theorists who ran counter to what Adorno argued similarly occupied one extreme in what can be described as a continuum between youth and popular music. These theoretical perspectives tend to favour, or rather privilege, the social and cultural context by ignoring music’s influence on the social and cultural context. While the social and cultural contexts of youth are emphasised for equipping them with the means to actively engage with music, the influence music has on youth is omitted.
3.3) The reciprocity between society and music
Thus far, the challenge of developing a theoretical account of the relationship between youth culture and music is to find a middle ground between how music articulates social life and vice versa. Therefore, the question one needs to ask is how music is constructed socially and culturally and how youth culture constructs people. In other words, how does music as a social and cultural practice construct its adherents, specifically young people?
Music can be understood as a production that occurs within a given social and cultural context, enabling it to be reworked and reintroduced into the social structures that give rise to it in the first place (McClary, 1991). DeNora (2000; 2010) argues that one must look at young people’s articulation of the cultural items within popular music which makes possible particular meanings, identities and values. Such an approach is cognisant of how music as an aesthetic comes to embody cultural and social value through its appropriation and consumption, which in turn produces social and cultural forms of life. This approach is considered to be steeped within an interactionist framework and an interpretive sociology (DeNora, 2000).
The focus of this interactionist approach is on the appropriation of cultural items or, in this instance, music, which in turn creates social action. This means that the focus needs to be on the things we do to music and in return the things we do with music. The emphasis here is on music as a cultural vehicle that produces cultural resources (DeNora, 2010). The relationship between society and popular music needs to be understood as a social process as this underscores how music is appropriated into everyday life. It is only then that one can understand how music as a socially- and culturally-structuring resource is imagined at the level of social experience (DeNora, 2010).
DeNora (2000) asks a series of questions that help trace the nuances of the process of how music as a cultural resource is appropriated into everyday life. The first question asked is, what are the means through which music is able to create affect within its subjects? The second question pertains to music as a ‘technology’ of the self (DeNora, 2000; 2010) and asks, how is music used by individuals in their daily lives? The third question asks, how does the body enter into forms of social and cultural life such as music and actively formulate and refashion socio-cultural realities? Lastly, how does music create social order in a manner where the expressive and aesthetic dimensions of people’s agencies are emphasised? These questions work together to conceptualise the social process that occur between music and the listener.
DeNora (2000) answers the first question by arguing that the power of music lies in its ability to create affect and evoke emotional responses within its listeners. This is done through semiotic codes or symbols by virtue of the interplay between listener and music. ‘Semiotic codes’ refer to expressive practices that mostly fall outside the confines of language and are steeped in visual imagery, sound and movement (Turino, 1999). These expressive practices are constructed and constituted by audience reception within temporal and spatial dimensions (DeNora, 2000; Turino, 1999). Semiotic codes derive their power from the temporal and spatial dimensions of reality, where social and cultural meanings are generated (Turino, 1999). Therefore, the power and effect of music’s semiotic codes are constituted by their recipients and the extent to which they take up such musical meanings that carry affect and emotion (Turino, 1999). In other words, music’s power to produce emotion derives not only from the semiotic codes of music, but also from the way in which listeners appropriate that music in terms of their context. This importantly points to music’s ability to activate potential forms of agency within its listeners.
The second question refers to individuals relying on ‘self-regulating’ or ‘policing’ strategies and socio- cultural practices, conveyed through music, for the construction of meaning and identity (DeNora, 2000). Simply put, it is through music that individuals become ‘social actors’ or ‘social agents’. One can, therefore, find one’s ‘self’ through music as it invokes, or rather, provides, the social and cultural resources, culminating in semiotic codes for elaborating one’s identity (DeNora, 2000). In this way, music helps to articulate identities that resonate with individuals by equipping them with aesthetic reflexivity, which in turn produces individuals as objects of knowledge (DeNora, 2000). In other words, individuals take images and knowledge from music and incorporate these into their identities.
The third question concerns the relationship between the body and music as a product of material life. According to DeNora, (2000) the body should not simply be reduced to a construction of material life. Rather, the body has a mutual and reciprocal influence on material life. In this light, one needs to look at the ways in which the body enters into mediums of social and cultural life, such as music, and how individuals actively formulate and fashion realities (DeNora, 2010). (This refers to the embodiment of music or social and cultural life as an agent.) DeNora (2000) goes on to say that music should be understood as a prosthetic technology of the body as it provides a resource that motivates the body to ‘do’ things with, and to, music. In other words, music is a resource that helps to organise emotional and embodied agency. A question then, that emerges, is how are the semiotic codes of music appropriated by institutions and other organisations so that they are able to reconfigure social and embodied action?
This leads to the final question, which pertains to music as a device for social ordering. It refers to social ordering as an effect of temporal action, which is a consequence of emotional and embodied action (DeNora, 2000). Music highlights the expressive and aesthetic dimension, which emphasises individual agency. The expressive and aesthetic dimension of agency showcases individual feelings and agency as a corporeal and stylistic entity (DeNora, 2000). The aesthetic dimension contained in music is what drives action, feeling and embodiment and constitutes social organisation. Therefore, music operates as a device that creates social order because it provides the mechanisms for aesthetic agency, and this produces and reinforces social and cultural spaces.
DeNora’s (2000) ideas on the role of music within society, drawing on an interactionist framework and interpretivist sociology, illustrates that the relationship between the two is not straightforward. Rather, the relationship between music and society is dynamic, continuous and constantly changing. Some of DeNora’s (2000) key ideas are that music produces powerful emotional responses by relying on semiotic codes. These semiotic codes work to activate agency within listeners as it enables them to find their sense of ‘self’, and this in turn works to produce embodied action, reaffirming the ordering of social and cultural spaces. DeNora’s work also talks to the multiple social processes involved in the relationship between music and young people. This resonates with the theoretical framework of this research on positioning, (Davies & Harré, 1990) a discursive process whereby the notion of selves or identities come to be produced by socially and culturally available discourses. Music draws on social discourses that construct subject positions, which are conceptual repertoires of representing oneself and/or others that young people take up and/or resist. In this way, positioning theory highlights the interactional space between music and young people where recognisable identities are constructed,
maintained or challenged. In other words, young people are positioned through and within social discourses that are found in music. In Chapter Five, I discuss positioning theory in more detail.
By outlining theoretical frameworks that conceptualise the relationship between young people and popular music, the central idea that emerges is that the messages communicated back and forth between music and its recipients are complex. This has implications for thinking about the social and cultural worlds inhabited by young people in terms of their gendered and sexual identities.