Volume 1, August 2004,
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03 ISSN 1552-5112
Gathering
Scattered Notes
Book Review: Eric Weisbard, Ed. This Is Pop. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004.
At
times very little ties together the essays of the prodigious anthology of music
criticism This Is Pop (Harvard UP,
2004). Thematically, the range of scholarly and journalistic pieces in the
book, edited by Eric Weisbard, seems to hit all over the spectrum of
contemporary criticism, without resonant concert. Surprisingly, this is a good
thing. The anthology is borne out of the inaugural inter-discourse Pop
Conference held at Seattle’s epicenter of music history and performance, the
Experience Music Project. As Weisbard fittingly points out in his introduction,
the EMP is a hybrid institution, and thus, a fitting incubation site for the
polyglot dialogue of essays on pop music. Academic, musical, literal, and
anthropological, the participating essayists have more to say to one another
than they ostensibly realize. Pop music, as is pointed out on a number of
occasions, is a protean categorization that revels in its shape shifting and
thrives on an ability to galvanize strange bedfellows. Only in an anthology as wonderfully
brazen and self-conscious as This Is Pop
can disparate approaches to a nebulous cultural institution like pop music be
both productive and estranged.
This Is
Pop opens with a provocative dialectic on American exceptionalism in rock
music, volleyed between noted media academic Simon Frith and leading journalist
Robert Christgau. The two essays establish an uneasy relationship between
academia and journalism. Though both writers make distinctly compelling cases
for the twilight of exceptional American rock, they do so while never losing
sight of the discourse with the other (scholar/medium). However, the
tête-à-tête between Frith and Christgau offers the most savory example of
unified subject matter, as all hell breaks loose in the essays that follow.
Topically, that is.
Gayle Wald offers a wonderfully informative
piece on “Sister” Rosetta Tharpe, situating the black gospel singer of the
1930s as the telos of women who shaped rock music. Given the trend in music
criticism of canonical revision that draws most of its new players from recent
memory, Wald’s discussion of Tharpe as a seminal figure in black music history
and challenger of women’s regulated social roles of the 1950s is refreshing.
Wald’s essay gives an excellent account of the importance Tharpe had in framing
gospel music as an alternative to traditional domestic and maternal roles,
while maintaining an essence of Christian womanhood that was crucial to African
American women of the middle of the century.
In a more speculative mode than Wald, Luc
Sante provides an interrogation into the origin of the Blues that is meant to
muddy the pool of scholarship that pins down the exact genesis of the musical
form. Sante’s offering is succinct, though satisfying in its provocations.
Similarly, Sarah Dougher’s personal reflection on the role of gendered voice in
pop music is contemplative yet spacious, leaving room for the reader to assert
a personal reaction to the function of the “authentic” speaker in pop lyrics.
The essay is a sterling example of the personal narratives that counter the
occasionally technical or didactic diatribes on popular music, as Dougher
expresses her intimate relationships with students and audiences alike.
Further highlights of the collection include
Daphne Brooks’ fabulous Cultural Studies examination of the commodification of
soul in such rock mainstays as the Rolling Stones, and the subversive
anti-“bling-bling” parodies of Chris Rock versus the reinforced trope lyrics of
R. Kelly. The Brooks effort is a searing and promising critique of the erasure
of memory in pop music that points to the vital job black rock satires have of
combating cultural appropriation. In perhaps the most optimistic essay of the
anthology, Stephen Burt examines the poetic refuge that indie rockers and
postpunk artists have erected in song lyrics. Lamenting the exiling of poetry
from the front of the countercultural stage to the back aisles, Burt makes a
perceptive claim that indie rock has taken up the DIY standard poetry
championed for years. The genre darling of critics “sought honesty and energy
in its freedom from capital imperatives, in its comparative obscurity, and in
its limited means,” prompting Burt to call indie the “JV of literary
modernism.” The look at intertextualism and referential obscurity allows Burt,
a poet himself, to parallel traits of indie with their poetic counterparts,
effectively facilitating future applications of literary criticism onto music.
Burt’s piece exemplifies the efforts of the anthology to commingle different
disciplines at the same eclectic mixer.
Very few of the contributions drag, though
Geoffrey O’Brien’s emotional rant on the beauty of music soundtracks is
tiresome. At times I would have wished for more contributions from musicians
(like the wonderful essay by Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein), but the
discernible academic atmosphere is not a major detraction. In fact, this is the
sort of critical anthology that is quite welcome at a time when so much
criticism seems coldly atomistic. In a Gramscian vein, this is a text
thoroughly rooted in the cultural impact of its subject matter, and interested
utmost in progressive dialogue.
The bridging project of the book allows for,
or perhaps necessitates, the disparate feel of the anthology. However, the
hybrid nature of pop music facilitates fascinating discussion between the
essays, provided one is willing to make connections. This Is Pop fulfills wonderfully its hope as a project: an
interdisciplinary pop discourse. Weisbard should be credited for assembling
compelling examples of pop criticism at its finest, and bouncing the
multifarious positions off one another. This
Is Pop is a confident text, as evidenced by its title. Rather than submit
to the vexing dilemma of a swirling category like pop music, whereby one would
be left to question, “What is Pop?” Weisbard and others bring to the table
sturdy discussions of important Pop ideologemes. The result is an anthology
that declares, “This Is Pop,” and allows the reader to codify the parts.
Volume 1, August 2004,
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03 ISSN 1552-5112