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sociology of popular
music
Andy Bennett
Griffith University
Abstract
This article provides a series of critical reflections on the development of sociological studies in relation to popular music and the development of a cultural
sociology of popular music. The piece begins by mapping the origins of popular music as a focus for academic study and the indebtedness of this body of
work to Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies-style cultural studies analyses of popular music audiences and their reception of popular music texts.
This is followed by a review of sociological work on popular music and the
emergence of what could be termed a proto-cultural sociological approach.
The final section of the article considers the cultural turn, its impact on cultural
approaches to sociology and the significance of this for the development of a
cultural sociology of popular music.
Keywords: audience, cultural sociology, cultural studies, everyday life,
lifestyle, popular music
Journal of Sociology 2008 The Australian Sociological Association, Volume 44(4): 419432
DOI:10.1177/1440783308097130 www.sagepublications.com
and genuine punks concentrated in the London area Hebdiges analysis of punk begins with a heat wave in Oxford Street and ends in a Kings
Road boutique (1990: 86).
Williss Profane Culture, published in 1978, constitutes a significant
departure from the work of Hebdige and other early cultural studies writers through its inclusion of those other voices that is, youth itself in the
text. Profane Culture combines a traditional sociological ethnographic
approach with a sophisticated theoretical reading of the relationship
between class, culture and musical taste using the conceptual framework of
homology. The ethnographic sections of Williss study centre around the
contrasting musical tastes of two class-defined youth cultural groups, the
bikers and the hippies. The transcripts included in the text illustrate a
preference among the bikers for musically straightforward 1950s rock and
roll songs, while the hippies musical preference is shown to be for the more
musically complex, album-orientated progressive rock groups of the early
1970s. According to Willis, the contrasting musical tastes of the bikers and
hippies directly relate to their differing class backgrounds. For the bikers,
the simplicity of rock and roll clearly resonates and develops the particular
interests and qualities of [their] life-style [possessing] an integrity of form
and atmosphere as well as an immediate, informal confidence (1978: 71).
By contrast, the more educated, middle-class hippies demand music that
challenges the listener and offers a more diverse listening experience. In
combination with the use of psychedelic drugs, the complex rhythms and
exotic soundscapes characteristic of progressive rock music became a way
of achieving altered states of perception and awareness: subverting conventional notions of time: Electronic techniques such as echo, feedback,
stereo [and] loudness itself [gave] the impression of space and lateral
extension, a sensation that was significantly enhanced when the music was
listened to under the influence of drugs (1978: 167).
Willis then proceeds to explain the musical preferences of the bikers and
hippies in terms of a homological fit between class background and taste.
According to Willis, homology represents the continuous play between the
group and a particular item which produces specific styles, meanings, contents and forms of consciousness (1978: 191). Arguably, however, Williss
attempt to meld ethnography and homology in this way exposes a fundamental flaw in his work. In effect, Willis is using music primarily as a means
of uncovering the social processes that he perceives as underpinning the formation of musical taste the former then being used to explain away the
latter. For Willis, what appear on the surface as spontaneous responses to
music, are, in fact pre-determined by the structural experience of class. Far
from being reflexive and creative agents, choosing music because of the way
in which its rhythm, tempo, melody, sound, lyrical content, production,
packaging and so on, appeals to them as individuals, the bikers and hippies
are depicted by Williss study as acting unconsciously and in accordance
At the same time, however, it is fair to point out that North American popular music scholarship has also offered a series of new directions in the interpretation and understanding of popular music as a cultural form and
practice. Straws (1991) compelling essay on music scenes provides a highly
sophisticated analysis of musics interplay with taste and identity through
introducing the concept of trans-localism and, with it, the notion that geographically dispersed clusters of musicians, promoters, studio producers,
audiences and others comprising music scenes may actively think themselves
There is no doubt that sociologists have tended to explain away pop music. In
my own academic work I have examined how rock is produced and consumed,
and have tried to place it ideologically, but there is no way that a reading of my
books (or those of other sociologists) could be used to explain why some pop
songs are good and others bad. [H]ow is it that people (myself included) can
say, quite confidently, that some popular music is better than others? (1987:
1334, 144)
For Frith, then, top-down analyses of musical texts, the political economy
of the music industry or the authenticity of particular popular music
artists may claim to explain for us how popular music works at a cultural
level, but equally important in this respect is an engagement with the aesthetic practices and value judgements of music audiences themselves. To
some extent, Friths concerns here have been echoed by theorists examining
other aspects of popular media and culture. Emerging during the 1980s, a
body of work that came to be collectively referred to as audience studies
critically engaged with the theoretical claims of more traditional cultural
studies-based research through focusing its attention more squarely on the
interpretive power and media literacy of audiences with reference to books,
film and particularly television (see, for example, Ang, 1982; Morley, 1980,
1986; Winship, 1987).
Critical engagement with the origins and function of musical meaning,
and the need to refocus this debate in a way that takes account of the interplay between texts and audiences, has been developed by a number of
other music sociologists. For example, in his seminal work La Passion
musicale (1993), French sociologist Antoine Hennion argues that, rather
than assuming musical texts to be a mirror of social and cultural meaning, the act of musical interpretation and the consequent meaning of music
is inseparable from the consumption of texts by audiences. The construction of musical meaning, argues Hennion, is an inter-textual and highly
subjective process in which the audience is inextricably positioned as a
reflexive and creative agency. The emotive energy that audiences invest in
musical texts is key to the latters function as conveyors of meaning in the
everyday social world.
A broadly similar view is espoused by Peter Martin (1995) in his Beckerinfluenced study Sounds and Society. Masterfully engaging with the social
determinism of founding sociologists such as Marx and Durkheim, whose
interpretations of class and class conflict in capitalist society provided a crucial underpinning for both critical theory and cultural studies, Martin
applies a social constructionist view of musical meaning, contesting the
widely held notion that music reflects in any straightforward way the social
circumstances under which it was produced. Again, in Martins work questions of inter-textuality and subjectivity as key proponents in the creation
and social reproduction of musical meanings are central to the interpretation of musics meaning and significance.
For Chaney, by contrast, rather than being in any way trapped by the fact
of class, individuals in late modern society have the capacity to exercise
reflexivity and critical detachment in relation to their social identity and its
day-to-day management. Indeed, there is in Chaneys observation a clear
implication that class itself is now a far less monolithic and essentialist category than is often portrayed in social theory and this has much to do
with the dominant referents drawn upon by individuals in late modernity.
Thus, according to Chaney, in the context of late modernity previous forms
of cultural authority those grounded in class, community and tradition
have been replaced by new forms of authority in the form of the media and
cultural industries, whose products and resources have become part of the
bedrock of everyday life. As Chaney argues:
if we have been forced into more personal choices about what to believe, there
is likely to be a greater demand for new sorts of expertise and guidance. And thus
a paradoxical intensification of the social process of reflexivity is a proliferation
of expertise and authority in fragmented culture. The reason why a more intense
reflexivity is associated with greater uniformity becomes clearer if it is appreciated that the processes of heightened reflexive consciousness are articulated
through textually mediated discourses more generally. (2002: 24)
Conclusion
This article has endeavoured to provide a series of signposts for the development of a cultural sociology of popular music. Beginning with an
overview of the development and trajectory of popular music studies, it was
noted how the field and particular discussions of culture in relation to popular music have traditionally been dominated by themes and perspectives
drawn from a CCCS-influenced cultural studies perspective. The following
section of the article began to consider the contributions of sociologists to
the study of popular music and how, in many cases, the findings of this work
constitute a form of proto cultural sociology. In the wake of the cultural
turn, it was then observed, discussions of culture and cultural process have
become more central to sociological debate. The new analytical territories
introduced into sociology through the cultural turn, it has been shown, have
opened up important new areas of concern relating to issues such as reflexivity, subjectivity and cultural fragmentation. Such debates, it has been
argued, are key to a cultural sociology of popular music in that they provide
the basis for an understanding of cultural production and participation in
relation to music, not merely as a top-down process, but rather as a dynamic
interactive process in which the everyday reception, appropriation and aestheticization of popular music texts, artefacts and associated resources are
integral to the production of musical meaning and significance.
Notes
1 A critical turning point in the emergence of popular music studies was the establishment of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music
(IASPM). Founded in 1981, IASPM is now a global association with a number
of different local branches serving members in many regions of the world. Over
almost three decades, IASPM, and with it popular music studies, has continued
to grow in popularity
2 At IASPM and other popular music conferences, it is not uncommon to see a
highly eclectic mix of disciplinary interests covering, for example, musicology,
ethnomusicology, cultural and media studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, folklore, history, economics, political science, education studies, language
studies, criminology and law.
References
Adorno, T. and M. Horkheimer (1969) The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London:
Allen Lane.
Biographical note
Andy Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology and Director of the Centre
for Public Culture and Ideas at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.
He has authored and edited numerous books including Popular Music and
Youth Culture, Cultures of Popular Music, Remembering Woodstock,
After Subculture and Music Scenes. He is a Faculty Associate of the Center
for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, an Associate of PopuLUs, the
Centre for the Study of the Worlds Popular Musics at Leeds University,
and a member of the Board for the European Sociological Association
Network for the Sociology of the Arts. Address: Centre for Public Culture
and Ideas, Nathan Campus, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland 4111,
Australia. [email: a.bennett@griffith.edu.au]