We the People
Study music history for a while, and you automatically divide music into two basic groups: cultivated and vernacular. It's not a division based on value, like "good and bad"; it's not based on the subject matter or the instruments. Basically, it's about access - who was writing the music and who was listening to it?
Cultivated music was the music of the courts and the church. It represents almost everything we know about the music that existed before recording technology, because it was the music that got written down. Vernacular music was the music of the people - or rather, music by the people. It's not that they didn't hear cultivated music, because most of them went to church and the best court music trickled down to vaudeville-esque theatres; they just didn't write cultivated music. The instruments they played tended to be those they could teach themselves, instruments that didn't require the delicate maintenance of a lot of mechanical valves or stops. Guitars, violins, drums, recorders. Songs were written to be easy to sing - unlike opera, they didn't require intense training or a knowlege of several languages. They didn't even require much of a vocal range. What we know of these songs has been passed down as drinking songs, children's songs, sea shanties, and folk music from the past couple hundred years that happened to get written down by enterprising scholars.
This doesn't really do vernacular music justice. Obviously, it varied a lot between cultures, but a lot of it is pretty much a cross between jam bands and slam poetry. Its strength came from its weakness; since the music wasn't written down, it was intensely flexible. It could be played on whatever instruments you had on hand, in whatever key you wanted. If you wanted to lambast a certain political figure, you could write a new verse off the cuff. (Incidentally, this is why you often run into several songs that use the same tune.) Moreover, imitation wasn't really a problem. Nobody worried about copyright law, because vernacular music wasn't commissioned and wasn't recorded. Money came from crowd donations after a good performance, and if you wanted a song to survive, you convinced as many musicians as you could to add it to their repetoire. Besides, chances were that you were a travelling musician, unlikely to pass through the same town twice, or you were a local boy who didn't make his living off music.
Anyway, ever since Rock'n'Roll's invention, it's been classed firmly in the vernacular camp. It rose out of jazz and African spirituals, both of which are characterized by improvisation, self-trained musicians, and no written record. More than that, Rock speaks to the same audience. It's always styled itself as working class and anti-establishment. It works hard to be accessible; although bands will always experiment with new sounds, and although some bands' image is founded on obscurity or sheer lack of listenability, bands mostly try not to challenge the listener too much. Songs tend to have verses, refrains, hooks, clear melodies - things you can latch onto, sing along with, and get stuck in your head. Sometimes a band will talk about "stretching the listener's mind," but most of the time, they're just trying to produce something catchy. A perfectly noble goal, and one that has helped millions of listeners get through rough days, or get down on the dance floor. Where you'll hear people come out of symponies saying, "it was an interesting concept, but I wouldn't want to hear it again," Rock audiences have it easier - either you like the band, or you don't. Either you like the song, or you don't. There's none of the same intellectualizing, nor the same restricted access.
Or at least, there didn't used to be. Within the past thirty years or so, that's changed. Rock music has become cultivated.
( Read more... )
Cultivated music was the music of the courts and the church. It represents almost everything we know about the music that existed before recording technology, because it was the music that got written down. Vernacular music was the music of the people - or rather, music by the people. It's not that they didn't hear cultivated music, because most of them went to church and the best court music trickled down to vaudeville-esque theatres; they just didn't write cultivated music. The instruments they played tended to be those they could teach themselves, instruments that didn't require the delicate maintenance of a lot of mechanical valves or stops. Guitars, violins, drums, recorders. Songs were written to be easy to sing - unlike opera, they didn't require intense training or a knowlege of several languages. They didn't even require much of a vocal range. What we know of these songs has been passed down as drinking songs, children's songs, sea shanties, and folk music from the past couple hundred years that happened to get written down by enterprising scholars.
This doesn't really do vernacular music justice. Obviously, it varied a lot between cultures, but a lot of it is pretty much a cross between jam bands and slam poetry. Its strength came from its weakness; since the music wasn't written down, it was intensely flexible. It could be played on whatever instruments you had on hand, in whatever key you wanted. If you wanted to lambast a certain political figure, you could write a new verse off the cuff. (Incidentally, this is why you often run into several songs that use the same tune.) Moreover, imitation wasn't really a problem. Nobody worried about copyright law, because vernacular music wasn't commissioned and wasn't recorded. Money came from crowd donations after a good performance, and if you wanted a song to survive, you convinced as many musicians as you could to add it to their repetoire. Besides, chances were that you were a travelling musician, unlikely to pass through the same town twice, or you were a local boy who didn't make his living off music.
Anyway, ever since Rock'n'Roll's invention, it's been classed firmly in the vernacular camp. It rose out of jazz and African spirituals, both of which are characterized by improvisation, self-trained musicians, and no written record. More than that, Rock speaks to the same audience. It's always styled itself as working class and anti-establishment. It works hard to be accessible; although bands will always experiment with new sounds, and although some bands' image is founded on obscurity or sheer lack of listenability, bands mostly try not to challenge the listener too much. Songs tend to have verses, refrains, hooks, clear melodies - things you can latch onto, sing along with, and get stuck in your head. Sometimes a band will talk about "stretching the listener's mind," but most of the time, they're just trying to produce something catchy. A perfectly noble goal, and one that has helped millions of listeners get through rough days, or get down on the dance floor. Where you'll hear people come out of symponies saying, "it was an interesting concept, but I wouldn't want to hear it again," Rock audiences have it easier - either you like the band, or you don't. Either you like the song, or you don't. There's none of the same intellectualizing, nor the same restricted access.
Or at least, there didn't used to be. Within the past thirty years or so, that's changed. Rock music has become cultivated.
( Read more... )