Stony Brook University

SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Bildung Culture: Elite Popular Music and the American University, 1960–2010 A Dissertation Presented by David Kenneth Blake to The Graduate School in Partial Fullfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music (Music History/Theory) Stony Brook University May 2014 Stony Brook University The Graduate School David Kenneth Blake We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Peter Winkler – Dissertation Advisor Professor, Music Judith Lochhead – Chairperson of Defense Professor, Music Stephen Decatur Smith – Committee Member Assistant Professor, Music Robert Fink – Outside Reader Professor, Department of Music, University of California-Los Angeles This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Asbtract of the Dissertation Bildung Culture: Elite Popular Music and the American University, 1960–2010 by David Kenneth Blake Doctor of Philosophy in Music History and Theory Stony Brook University 2014 Milton Babbitt’s 1958 article “The Composer as Specialist” (in)famously aligned the scientific aspirations of avant-garde art music with the university’s mission of disinterested research. More recently, musicologists have criticized the alleged resultant hermitage of modernist styles within academia by asserting universities’ separation from “public” musical culture. However, the growth of the American university in terms of population and social power since the mid-twentieth century has enlarged rather than mitigated the institution’s societal influence. While universities have traditionally been associated with art music rather than popular music scenes, changes in demography, curricula, and student life over the past half-century have connected university culture with non-mainstream popular musics. This dissertation examines the influence of American universities in the creation of elite forms of traditional and rock music. I use the term “elite popular music” to describe popular music genres that, through aesthetic criticism and social privilege, have been intellectually differentiated and culturally elevated from other popular musics instead associated with mass culture. I show how campus musicians and audiences found the university to house the appropriate intellectual tools to cultivate their ideas about how to critically discuss, create, and listen to popular music. In particular, iii the primary means of cultivating elite popular music derived from liberal arts education, especially cultural criticism and the ethics of self-development, or Bildung. This dissertation covers four case studies that discuss popular musics on American campuses as extensions and applications of liberal arts culture: 1960s folk music at the University of Illinois and Indiana University; 1970s ethnomusicology of Native American music at UCLA and Wesleyan; 1980s college rock at the University of Georgia; and 2000s indie rock at Yale and Columbia. By examining discourses and performances through the dispositions, privileges, and geographies of the American university, this dissertation demonstrates how the intellectual and cultural politics of elite popular music reflect the central ethics and tensions of liberal arts education: between universality and privilege, commercial and critical success, and individual development and social acquiescence. iv Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Case Studies .................................................................................................................................................. 13 Bildung, Criticism, and Nineteenth-Century American Higher Education .......................................... 20 University Culture in the Age of Mass Culture ....................................................................................... 29 Elite Popular Music and University Transformations since 1950 ........................................................ 35 Chapter 2: Bildung Traditions: Campus Folksong Clubs and Folk Music Criticism at the University of Illinois and Indiana University ........................................................................................ 42 Urbana-Champaign, Bloomington, and the Geography of Folk Music Study ................................... 44 Tradition as Minority Culture .................................................................................................................... 53 Performing Traditions: Folksong Club Concerts .................................................................................... 57 Printing Traditions: Autoharp and Blue Yodel ............................................................................................ 69 Recording Traditions: The University of Illinois Campus Folksong Club Record Label ................. 77 Conclusion: The Ethics of Overemphasis ............................................................................................... 87 Chapter 3: Bildung Indigeneity: Ethnomusicology and the Scholarly Representation of Native American Music, 1974–1980 ......................................................................................................... 91 Ethnomusicologists, Native Americans, and Colonialism ..................................................................... 95 “Anthropologists and Other Friends”: Red Power Critiques ............................................................. 101 New Music, New Ethnomusicology: Heth and McAllester ................................................................ 107 Performing Indigeneity: Jimersen at Wesleyan, Yazzie Sr. at UCLA ................................................. 112 Speaking for Itself: Songs of Earth, Fire, Water and Sky (1976) .............................................................. 123 McAllester’s “New Indian Music” (1976) .............................................................................................. 130 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 137 Chapter 4: Bildung Scenes: College Rock in Athens, Georgia ...................................................... 140 Theorizing the College Rock Scene ........................................................................................................ 143 Athens as Institutional and Dispositional Geography ......................................................................... 148 The Athens Scene and the Athens Sound .............................................................................................. 156 Broadcasting the Scene: WUOG ............................................................................................................. 167 Athens, GA: Inside Out ................................................................................................................................ 178 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 185 v Chapter 5: Bildung Omnivores: Inclusive Taste and Higher Education in Vampire Weekend and Dirty Projectors ................................................................................................................................... 188 From Bourgeois Highbrow to Petit Bourgeois Omnivore .................................................................. 191 Omnivory and Higher Education: Vampire Weekend and Dirty Projectors ................................... 198 Vampire Weekend, “A-Punk,” “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” and “M79” ....................................... 203 Omnivory as Critical Juxtaposition ......................................................................................................... 210 Dirty Projectors, “What I See” and “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie” ...................................................... 217 Omnivory as Remediated Incorporation................................................................................................ 224 Conclusion: The Omnivore’s Dilemma ................................................................................................. 232 Epilogue: The Rhetoric of Crisis and Elite Popular Music ............................................................ 235 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................. 247 vi List of Figures Figure 2.1: Kandee Trefil, “Ethnics vs. Folkniks,” first page .................................................................... 76 Figure 2.2: Green Fields of Illinois, front cover ................................................................................................ 84 Figure 3.1: Avery Jimersen, honoring song for Wesleyan University written for his residency at Wesleyan on February 22, 1974 ................................................................................................................... 115 Figure 3.2: Floyd Westerman, “Here

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