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Music & Class Combined

The relationship between social status and aesthetic sensitivities has long been observed, producing "highbrow" and "lowbrow" distinctions of tastes. Underly such designations, of course, is the implied superiority of the former over the latter. To be "highbrow" means having cultivated aesthetic sensitivities and appreciation which the "uncultured" masses don't have as they require considerable education, sophistication, and "class." In other words, it is another dimension by which the social elite can claim specialness and worthiness of others' deference. To be "high" means not being "low" in the social hierarchy, and it is those in power positions who so label their social lessers in order to protect their power and prestige.

How specific leisure pursuits and preferences--i.e., forms of sport (for instance, polo or fox hunting vs. boxing or bowling), dance (i.e., ballet vs. Western), reading (i.e., Thackeray vs. comic books) and movie (i.e., "Rambo" vs. "foreign films") preferences, and music -- become recognized as being either high or low pro provide many fascinating stories. For instance, Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow argues how Shakespeare was considered in the nineteen century U.S. to be of the realm of popular culture, only to be transformed by the "cultural elite" into an author of messages deemed incomprehensible by the masses.

Critical theorists typically argue that the elite have hegemony--defined by Antonio Gramsci (1971) as the way a "certain way of life and thought is dominant, in which one concept of reality is diffused thoughout public society in all its institutions and private manifestations"-- over aesthetic orders. Given the power of art--to maximize the meaning-carrying capacity of cultural symbols and mediums, to crystallize cultural anxieties or to push a culture's emotional hot buttons--its control should, from the elites' perspective, come from the top. Thus, the diffusion of cultural modes should be expected to flow from the upper to lower classes. However, the reverse has often occurred. Consider, for instance, the "low culture" roots of such music as jazz and blues.

When considering Americans' musical tastes, in addition to social class there are matters of race, generation and age--other dimensions shaping the social hierarchy. Consider, for instance, how music serves as a group totem, a unique emblem for one's self and one's association. High schools, colleges, businesses and nations all have their anthems. Rock- and-roll is the music of adolescence, it is "their" music. With time replacing space as a basis of social solidarities, music has also become a sort of generational totem, as a focus of age group identifications: common memories are stored with the songs of the era and the "in" sound for coming-of-age individuals may well be carried with them throughout their lifespan; the World War I tunes now heard in nursing homes will be replaced by the those of Beatles (what will "When I'm Sixty-Four" mean to aging Boomers?); and generations grow old with "their artists" (i.e., Diana Ross moving from "Puppy Love" to songs capturing the complexities of midlife; Frank Sinatra taking his audience from bobby- soxers to "It Was a Very Good Year").

study from http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/str-musc.html

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 12:19 PM