AAFF 11To21 N.2 ING 150711:01 15/07/11 19:18 Página 1 11 to 21 Song As a Force of Social Transformation
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AAFF nº2 cubierta 150711:01 15/07/11 19:08 Página 3 11 to11 21 11 to 21 Song as a Force of Social Transformation CAAC Issue 2 July–October 2011 AAFF nº2 cubierta 150711:01 15/07/11 19:08 Página 4 AAFF 11to21 n.2 ING_150711:01 15/07/11 19:18 Página 1 11 to 21 Song as a Force of Social Transformation Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo July-October 2011 Issue 2 AAFF 11to21 n.2 ING_150711:01 15/07/11 19:18 Página 2 11 AAFF 11to21 n.2 ING_200711:01 20/07/11 12:11 Página 3 11 to 21 04 Political Pop: An Introduction Peio Aguirre 16 Album Covers, Sleeves, Labels, Boxes, Packages and Cases Pedro G. Romero 40 Annika Ström: Personal Delivery Jonathan Griffin 48 Ruth Ewan: Smash Hits Chris Fite-Wassilak 56 Alonso Gil: Libertarian Artist Raj Kuter 64 Matt Stokes: No Way Back Matthew Collin 71 The Ballad of Britain: Folk Music and the Holy Grail of Authenticity Will Hodgkinson 76 La Chanson: Towards the Transformation of Ways of Life Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes 98 Nocturama 108 CAAC Exhibitions Floor Plan 110 Credits AAFF 11to21 n.2 ING_150711:01 15/07/11 19:18 Página 4 Political 11 Pop AAFF 11to21 n.2 ING_150711:01 15/07/11 19:18 Página 5 11 to 21 5 An Introduction Peio Aguirre The “Political Pop” section of my blog emerged The alternating vocals of Tennant and Oakey by chance.1 My first blurb about the Pet Shop are brilliantly accompanied by an authoritative Boys led to another and yet another, until I robotic backup voice. The chorus is perfect, and finally realized that writing about the music so is the song. Is Pet Shop Boys a militant band? I like was a real possibility. Music is unique in Undoubtedly. Pop music’s policy of evasion, the field of cultural production given its status pleasure and enjoyment has never been at odds as information, which has allowed it to become with social responsibility. Unlike other disco the object of financial speculation and bands, PSB has always known that its ultimately the paradigmatic expression of mass engagement is not so much rooted in its culture. However, the very definition of mass proclamations, but that its radicalism stems culture has changed dramatically and now from the band’s loyalty to electro-pop, a genre bears little resemblance to the description of capable of combining the most personal desires the culture industry outlined by Theodor W. with the most pressing problems. This critique Adorno and Max Horkheimer. What then might of the projections of a half-planned, half- have been defined as a homogenization of speculative future does not hide what should be consumption, due to an increasing amount of one of the missions of utopian thought: not to leisure time, now has its own specialized critics, imagine a perfect, idyllic future, the product of and of course we mustn’t overlook the multiple a recreational positivistic effort, but to think of ramifications of individual emancipation that the possibilities by exploring its dialectical (or mass culture has generated for half a century. negative) side – in other words, through a kind Whatever the proper definition of political pop of implosion of thought at its very root. Thus, might be, the real issue here is the need for a the engagement with utopia is as ordinary as an politics of pop – a directorate for the changing exercise routine: “But that future was exciting / forms of popular culture. At the heart of those Science fiction made fact / Now all we have to globalizing market forms, there has always look forward to / Is a sort of suicide pact / Was it been a transformative critical potential. The the dear old future / That created the problems ambivalence of pop music, like any other we face? / How do we deal with the fallout / Of market product, stems from the fact that its the age we used to call space?”2 fetishism simultaneously reinforces and We can also trace a historical arc through threatens the system. And if there is one this bonus track. It comes as no surprise that musical form that stands out as a shining there is a nexus between brutality, government example of peaceful coexistence with and housing policies and socialist labour politics in within the system, it is pop music. the English-speaking world, where poor urban Pet Shop Boys is a case of self- practices, the vicissitudes of class and consciousness that oscillates between mass subcultures are rewritten in a type of sociology culture and authorial singularity. But for now where boredom is merely the lull that precedes let us examine the social message they the forward thrust of change (as in PSB’s “Being enunciate. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe launch Boring”). As if that weren’t enough, the conflict- a frontal assault on Yes with the bonus track free future envisioned by neo-liberal consensus “This Used to Be the Future”, where the duo in the early 1990s, when socialism collapsed, criticizes the social and urban utopias that has proven to be profoundly ideological. But were apparently constructed at some the ambiguity of the song “This Used to Be the unspecified point in the past. The track features Future” lies in the fact that you can dance to it the voice of Philip Oakey from The Human at a club, listen to it through your headphones League, a powerful beat that gives it an while practicing psychogeography, or analyze it addictive quality, and lyrics with a message. as a cultural critique; this multiplicity is an AAFF 11to21 n.2 ING_150711:01 15/07/11 19:18 Página 6 11 to 21 July-October 2011 6 11 intrinsic quality of pop music. In the following determines the former (as any Marxist manual paragraphs I will outline some of the will tell us). But according to Attali, this characteristics of this music from the relationship can now be dialectically inverted, perspective of economics, ideology, style and suggesting the possibility that a superstructure form in order to highlight some of its inherent may actually anticipate historical developments policies. and predict new economic and social formations. He sustains that music, the organization of noise, is prophecy. Attali’s theory invites us to peer into the future, as if gazing into a crystal ball; the music of any Once they have been made aware period is several decades ahead of that society’s social forms. This would explain why the of the danger they pose to the political economy of music is premonitory. status quo, musicians should know Musicians are therefore heralds, messengers of that it is not the contents of their a future yet to come. And Attali says, “Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the songs that threaten to topple the rest of society because it explores, much faster established order but rather the than material reality can, the entire range of manner of distribution. possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of things; it is not only the image of Pop Economies things, but the transcending of the everyday, Jacques Attali, an economist and former adviser the herald of the future. For this reason to the Mitterrand administration, is credited musicians, even when officially recognized, are with developing a political and economic theory dangerous, disturbing and subversive; for this of music. His work Noise: The Political Economy reason it is impossible to separate their history of Music is a theoretical reference of the first from that of repression and surveillance.”4 order whose primary claim to fame is that it Music is therefore inextricably linked to the proposes a new theory of noise (bruit). appearance of what Althusser called “the According to this theory, the utopian nature of ideological state apparatus”– in other words, music acts as a sensor that detects future forms ideology. Attali offers us a fertile new terrain to of society which have yet to emerge. In other explore the subversive possibilities of music words, the music of one era heralds the which, as intangible data that can be broken economic system of the next.3 This notion down into informational units, poses a threat undoubtedly complicates the already tangled to the dominant social and economic powers- web of links between the economic base (a that-be, for the issue at stake is an industry that society’s productive mode) and the moves billions of dollars each year. superstructure – in other words, the sphere We have only to consider the novelties that where cultural and ideological products are have emerged in the area of music consummated. It has traditionally been believed distribution – radio, piped music, the transition that the music of an era reflects the dynamics of from vinyl to digital, Napster and Spotify – to its contemporary social system, acting like a realize that the fight against illegal Internet mirror that reproduces or replicates those downloads is actually a desperate struggle for dynamics. According to this logic, the the system’s survival, a war waged in the name superstructure “expresses” the base; the latter of capitalism. Once they have been made aware AAFF 11to21 n.2 ING_150711:01 15/07/11 19:18 Página 7 11 to 21 Peio Aguirre / Political Pop: An introduction 7 of the danger they pose to the status quo, It is no coincidence that pop music musicians should know that it is not the contents of their songs that threaten to topple is the genre that best lends itself to the established order but rather the manner of an analysis of its own economic distribution.