On Being Tasteless

Author(s): William Brooks

Source: Popular Music, Vol. 2, Theory and Method (1982), pp. 9-18
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852973 .
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On being tasteless
by WILLIAM BROOKS

It is hard to be tasteless.
It is not so hard to have badtaste, I grant, but that is anothermatter.
To have bad taste, one simply must consistently make choices which
offend those with goodtaste - an ability which is relativelycommonplace. For some, bad taste seems to appear naturally,as a birthright;
others must learn to cultivate it. But no matterhow acquired,or how
skilfully employed, bad taste is not tastelessness.
To be truly without taste, to be tasteless,requiresgreat dedication.
Our daily lives conspire against us. We live in a tastefulworld. We are
surrounded by people of taste. Worst of all, we ourselves must constantly choose from a wealth of options open to us; we are seduced by
our own preferences, our likes and dislikes. How can we possibly
aspire to tastelessness? And why, after all, should we?
Consider the advantages of taste, whether good or bad. When we
choose tastefully we usually know what we are getting and how it fits
in; we have some kind of frameworkwithin which our choices are
assigned values, both aesthetic and economic. Often the frameworkis
social, built primarilyfrom the judgements made by a group of our
tasteful peers. Using it assures us of a home among society's tribes;our
taste both reflects and shapes the circles in which we move. Or the
framework may be historical:our taste to a large extent depends on
what we have been taught, and enables us to view ourselves as partof
a continuity, a tradition. In either case, taste helps to place us - to
regulate the company we keep and to define our position. Aesthetically, economically, socially and historically,taste gives a certainpredictable consistency to our lives.
One virtue of tastelessness is that it undermines this consistency.
When we are scrupulously tasteless, we are forced into choices we
would not otherwise make, the value of which we have no way of
knowing. We find ourselves in company we might rathershun, or of
whose existence we were unaware. We are cast adrift,historically;our
concern shifts from placingourselves and our choices to simply comprehendingthem. Tastelessness can greatly help us to overcome our
habits and our histories.
9

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William Brooks

It ought, then, to be a boon to scholars,who profess to seek a certain

detachment from that which they study; yet its potential remains
largely untapped. In the arts, especially, tastelessness has been sedulously avoided. The fine arts, after all, are by definition finearts, and
discriminating the fine from the foolish has often been the most
important goal of art scholarship. Tastelessness would encourage a
different approach, in which the arts were quite literally de-fined.
A start towards such a de-finition has been made by students of
popular culture. But they too have exercised taste, and consequently
their work in many of the arts has been beset with problems. Popular
poetry and popular visual art are rarely studied, except in relation to
commodities and advertising. Dramaticand literarycriticism,though
extensive, is bedevilled by the obvious fact that language is meaningful; scholarship has tended to concern itself with that to which literature refers, ratherthan literatureitself. Only students of popularmusic
have been fortunate enough to choose a field in which meaning is
largely non-referential, the quantity enormous, and the products
somewhat independent of other commodities. What an opportunity
for tastelessness!
Yet most popularmusic scholars- most of us- at one time or another
have succumbed to the temptations of taste. We have argued that the
music of a certain performeror composer is 'better'than some other
person's music, or that a particulargenre or period is 'richer'than
another. We have identified the 'great'singers, or bluesmen, or songwriters, and tried to justify on aesthetic grounds the attention we pay
to particularpieces or performances.To be sure, from time to time we
have paused to explainwhat we mean by 'better',and perhaps even to
offer some historical or sociologicaljustificationfor our choices - but
far too often our explanations have been ruses to mask the essential
of the music we have
point: our centralconcernhas been with the value
been studying. We have been tasteful.
This condition especially plagues those of us whose training is
primarilymusicological.Historiansand social scientists seem to have a
slight advantage, trained as they are to observe phenomena with a
fairly dispassionate eye. But they have their own limitations:unless
they are also skilled musicians, they lack the technique to explore
details of musical structure.Those of us with extensive musical training have a chance to probe more deeply; what a pity, then, that we
bring to popular music all the baggage with which we were laden
when studying artmusic- especially a cumbersomeold sea chest filled
with weights, measures and all the other appurtenancesof judgement.
We have an excuse, of course: the study of Western art music has
been based for centuries on valuative distinctions. Confronted with

On beingtasteless

1l

music'sabundance, nearlyeveryone's firststep has been to assess and

categoriseworks accordingto theirimportance.Tobe sure, systems for
assessmenthave varied substantially- they have been hotly contested,
in fact- but each has served to filter from a large body of materialthe
personages or works deemed significant.And while historicalor social
considerationshave sometimes influenced the process of selection, the
rationalefor choosing to study particularworks most commonly has
been aesthetic. The starting-pointfor scholarshiphas been the exercise
of taste.
The judgemental characterof artmusic scholarshipfollows fromthe
nature of art music itself. Innumerableattempts have been made to
distinguish between art and popular musics (cultivatedand vernacular, serious and light) on the basis of strictly musical characteristics:
rhythmicprofile, melodic inflections, complexityand so forth. By now
it has become clear that such attempts cannot succeed; the distinction
rests ratherin the place each sort of music occupies as a commodity. In
a nutshell, I think, professionalartmusic generallyentails some sort of
economic subsidy, while professional popular music does not.
Categorising music economically rather than aesthetically has the
virtue of allowing individual pieces and performersto move from one
category to another as circumstanceschange. Liszt's piano music was
popular music when he played it, backin the 1840S; nowadays it is art
music. John McCormackperformed art music at the Metropolitan
Opera House; on the vaudeville circuit, singing many of the same
pieces, he was a popular performer.It is even possible for the same
piece apparently to occupy both categories at the same time: a few
years ago, although concertperformancesof Mozart'spiano concertos
were part of art music, the ThemefromElviraMadiganwas popular.
But though they avoid problemsof style analysis, economiccategories present other difficulties. The distinction between subsidised and
non-subsidised music is not always easily made, especially when the
notion of subsidy is extended to include private patronage as well as
governmental or institutionalsupport. And such an extension clearly
is appropriate: opera performed in a house which survives only
because of its benefactors is surely a subsidised art; so was Haydn's
music at the Eszterhazycourt. On the other hand, a person who buys a
recordby the RollingStones, or even one who pays scalper'sprices for
a ticket to one of their concerts, is obviously purchasinga commodity,
not subsidising the music. Yet in all these instances, whether concerned with artmusic or with popular,privatefunds have been used to
support a musical activity.
Other situations are even more problematic.Although a purchaser
might regarda recordingof an operaas equivalentto a recordingby the

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WilliamBrooks

Stones, an observer with a broader perspective might argue that the

opera remains art music because the company which has been recorded requires subsidy to continue. Even more curiously, compare
someone who spends $500 for a ticket to an opera-house benefit with
someone who spends $500 for a ticket to a Stones concert. Clearly it
would be nice to be able to claim that the formertransactionis (at least
in part) a kind of subsidy, and that the latter is not; but what is the
justification?
There may well be a grey area in which popular and art musics
cannot be distinguished, but in the cases above it seems to me that two
different things are actually being purchased: the experience of the
music, and the fact of the music's existence. To buy a ticketto a Stones
concert is not to contribute to bringing the music into existence; the
concert has producers independent of the audience, and what is
purchased is only the experience. At an opera-house benefit, on the
other hand, although a ticket admits the purchaserto the experience,
most of the expenditureis intended to enable the music simply to exist;
the purchaserof a benefit-nightticketis, in a smallway, a co-producer.
Unlike the Stones' producer,however, this co-producer's'investment'
is not made with the hope of making money; the purchase is quite
literally for the 'benefit' of the music.
Subsidies, then, entail expenditures made not simply to consume
music, but to produce it, without expectation of financial return. If
there is a rewardfor the patron,it is to be found in status or prestige, or
perhaps in the pleasure of bringing about something important that
would otherwise not happen. Patronage entails the production of
music that is not economically viable. And because patrons cannot
defend economicallythe value of the music they patronise, they must
justify their activities by affirming values which are not economic.
Thus art music- subsidised music- is inextricablyentangled with
aesthetic judgement. And students of art music are inevitably concerned with value systems which can distinguish between musical
sounds and noise, between greater and lesser composers, between
masterpieces and minor works. It is not their fault; such systems are
fundamental to the organisation of their scholarly domain.
But popular music is another matter. Unsubsidised music has a
value which is defendable and measurable in very straightforward
economic terms. It requiresno furtherrationale,and scholarsworking
with it are under no obligationto invent one. In working with popular
music, most of art music's aesthetic skeleton can be left behind.
Or it can be kept.It is perfectlypossible to transferbodily to popular
music the value systems createdfor art music, to select materialsto be
studied because of their aesthetic merit. Or the structureof the system

On beingtasteless

13

can be kept but the details altered;if conventional aesthetic values do

not apply to punk rock, for example, some other measure ('authenticity', perhaps) can be applied to evaluate individual pieces. Some
writers on popular music do this sort of thing all the time, and I
imagine that all of us do it some of the time.
Evaluationsof popular music are, of course, extremely useful. The
assessment of products by people of taste is a vital part of the popular
music industry, and effects greatlyboth productionand consumption.
But scholarship need not follow this path. It can instead turn away
from aesthetics altogether, pressing forwardinto unexplored terrain.
This opportunity, I say again, is not availableto those concernedwith
art music, because art music's very nature entails value judgements.
We who study popular music have a unique chance to move into the
vanguard of scholarship, to begin the process of de-fining the arts. We
need only learn to be tasteless.
What opportunities are offered by tasteless scholarship?Fora start,
to espouse tastelessness is to assert, essentially, that all music is
equally valuable (or, if you prefer, that all music is rubbish).It follows
that all music can be approached (and should be approached, sooner
or later) with interest and without prejudice. And 'all music' must
mean, in fact, exactly what it says: all music, from all cultures, at all
times. Even within the limits of our own culturaltradition, 'all music'
encompasses a vast domain: popular music, of course, but also classical, the avant-garde, hymnody, folk, easy listening, liturgicalchant,
Musak, and any other category one might name. Although the study
of art music requiresa tasteful exclusionof popularmusic, the study of
popular music requires tastelessly including art music. Our commitment must be to understand everythingin our musical domain- Beethoven and Boulez as well as Chuck Berryand banjos.
But life is short, alas, and so we inevitably focus our attention;we
choose to study only a few items from the enormous heap before us.
Though unfortunate, this compromise with mortality is consistent
with tastelessness so long as we ensure that our choices have nothing
to do with aesthetic value. The rationale for our selection can be
political, personal, statistical,coincidental,or whatever - but it cannot
entail an assertion that what we study is 'better'than what we neglect,
or 'more worthy' of attention.
We can even choose what we study by exercising our preferences,
our likes and dislikes, so long as we agreethat these have nothing to do
with value. After all, 'liking'a piece is not a propertyof that piece, but
ratherof the relationshipbetween it and a person; 'liking'has nothing
to do with the music per se and need have nothing to do with value.
Personal taste is perfectly consistent with tastelessness provided it is

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William Brooks

used only as an arbitraryway of choosing from the vast, undifferentiated universe that tastelessness makes available.
Such a use of taste is impossible in art music, of course. But in
studying popular music, taste could be conceived as an arbitrary
mechanism for selecting material;alas, it rarelyis. Instead, it is usually
invoked to mask a hidden system of values: materialchosen tastefully
is betterthan that rejected. Scholarstruly seeking tastelessness do well
to choose by means of other, more 'objective'techniques. But these,
too, often conceal obliquely tasteful assumptions.
Historians, for example, are inclined to assert that the materialthey
select is 'important'or 'historicallysignificant'.Theirargumentusually
rests on the assumption that history is a tangiblething, like a rug, and
that one need only look dispassionately at it to see where the bumps
and twists and patterns are. But there is no rug called history- only a
vast accumulationof bits of wool. All that we have is residue, yesterday's leavings; yesterday itself is altogetherinaccessible.The past has
been fleeced by the present, and we make history'srug ourselves from
the tufts that remain - tying together the strands, weaving and knotting and cutting and crumplinguntil we have some reasonablyacceptable construct to offer our public. Historicalimportanceis in no sense
self-evident; it is defined by the selections we make to suit a rug
half-woven. We compile artifactsto build the historywe want to build;
there is nothing 'objective'about our choices.
We can minimise our visibility, however. Surroundedas we are by
vast amounts of musical debris, we can invent rules, screening procedures, to help us choose what to study. And by exercisinga modicum
of ingenuity, we can invent rules that leave our opinions out, rules that
select and reject music automaticallyaccording to criteriawhich are
peripheralto musical 'value'. By means of such rules, I might select, for
instance, only those records that made Billboard'sTop Ten lists between 1945and 1955,or only the recordsowned by my grandfather,or
all those issued in 1960, 1970and 1980with pictures of women on the
cover, or all 4ss released last May whose titles begin with C, I or A. As
long as the rules are inclusive and unambiguous, they will operate
virtually autonomously; there will be no need for me tastefully to
assess the musical content of each recording.To this extent such rules
allow me to choose bits for my history 'objectively'- though 'arbitrarily'is probably a better word.
Rules of this sort offer me several practical advantages. For one
thing, since I need no longer evaluatein detail each item individually, I
can work my way through the rubbisharound me fairlyquickly;I can
cover more ground. Then, too, scholarlydisputes will no longer centre
on my taste; instead, they can concern themselves with my rules for

On beingtasteless

15

selection- a topic that is both more concreteand less personal. Best of

all, if I apply my rules conscientiously, I will probablybe led to items I
have never encountered before, so that the collectionwhich goes into
my history will be both largerand more diverse than if I simply chose
tastefully from the materialI already know.
But there are liabilitiesto this technique as well, and prime among
them is a tendency for my scholarly attention to shift away from the
music and toward the screeningprocedure.It is very likely, in fact, that
I will shape my study to suit the rules, or devise the rules to suit my
study- which, to be sure, is not a problemas long as I recognise that I
am now more concerned with the rules (or the relationships they
represent) than with the music per se. If, for instance, I select only
pieces that made the Top Ten, the chances are good that I will either
believe or be led to believe that there is some sort of connection
between a certainkind of music and 'TopTen-ness'- and it is probably
this that I will end up studying. If I start with my grandfather's
collection, I may find out a greatdeal aboutmy grandfatherand little, if
anything, about the music. If I work with a diachronic sample of
records whose covers contain portraits of women, I will be sorely
tempted to relate changes in the sort of music they contain to changes
in the role of women in society. No matterhow eccentricor arbitrary
the selection procedure, the temptation remains to 'use' it in some
ingenious way. From a whimsical decision to choose titles beginning
with C, I and A, I might be led to some intricate theory about the
transmission of secret messages by means of recordings.
Thereis nothing wrong, of course, with this sort of scholarship,and
many studies of popular music are devoted to it. Because popular
music is a product, it relates in complex ways to other products and to
social structures.Analyses concernedwith these relationshipsareboth
necessary and valuable, and many of them rely heavily on the use of
rules to obtain 'objective'samples. But, in general, such analyses are
concerned only superficiallywith the music itself;instead, the rules are
used to highlight some extramusicalfeature- 'Top Ten-ness', or Life
As Grampa Lived It- which becomes the actual focus of the study.
'Objective'selection enables scholarsto avoid the pitfallsof evaluating
music, but it also encourages them to avoid the music itself.
Because of this, art music scholars are inclined to dismiss the study
of popular music (when they take notice of it at all) as being more
concerned with sociology than with music. They are very often right,
in fact, and to reply that there is nothing wrong with sociology begs
the point. Popularmusic scholarshiphas to a largeextent left the study
of music per se to the art music world.
But what can this possibly mean: 'the study of music per se'? Music

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William Brooks

is a perceptual event, and studying it by itself, in isolation, is impossible. We cannot examine a piece of music as if no one were there
(we cannot even do that sort of thing in physics anymore);we have to
take the observer into account. Studying music per se must entail
studying the relationshipbetween the acousticevent and the observer;
and this relationshipdepends in parton the observer'shistory, personality and preferences. The study of music per se, it would seem,
entails the study of taste.
We need not succumbto subjectivism,however. Though proverbial
wisdom and daily life both insist upon taste's unaccountablediversity,
we can choose nevertheless to pursue taste's consistencies. We can
argue that, being human, all observers to some extent will display
uniform ways of interactingwith the world - and with the world of
sound in particular.And we can note that this uniformity, if it exists,
will also be part of 'the study of music per se' - better termed music
theory.In fact, the discovery of consistency is music theory's most
logical objective. A theory of music, like a theory of language, endeavours to account for a wide varietyof human behaviourswhich for
some reason have been grouped together; crucialto the theory is an
explanation of the grouping.
Likelinguistics, music theory can rest on eitherof two basic assumptions. The first asserts that musical interactionsare ruled by the same
principles that govern human interactions in general; in this case,
music theory becomes merely a particularapplicationof a more universal theory of psychology, such as behaviourism. The second, in
opposition, asserts that musicalinteractionsare to some extent distinctive, regulatedby innate principleswhich may not apply exactlyto any
other sort of activity;in this case, music theory will also be distinctive,
and will offer insights into human behaviour not attainable in any
other way.
In linguistics, Noam Chomskyhas long defended the latterposition,
and some of his argumentsapply equallywell to music. Likelanguage,
music appears in virtuallyall cultures, and usually can be recognised
even when its meaning is not understood. Likelanguage, music often
exists in both a written (notated) and a spoken (performed)form, and
the differences between the two are both systematic and revealing.
And like language, music appearsto consist of meaningfulunits structured according to syntactic principles, with both the units and the
syntax varying widely from culture to culture.
If this second assumption is adopted (and I of course preferit), then
one can argue that just as there are certainkey principles underlying
human languages which are independent of the tongue spoken and of
the speaker's idiosyncracies, so also there are certain key principles

On beingtasteless

17

underlying human musics which are independent of the idiom used

and of personal taste. There may not be very many of these, but those
which exist are innate; they constitute an hereditary part of the
human condition. Thatis, there is a kind of 'musicness' that automatically is part of 'humanness'; it is to the discovery of this 'musicness'
that music theory ought to be devoted.
But, of course, it is not. Instead, music theory has become a domain
to which only students of art music are encouragedto contribute.And
although art music theorists have learned much about certainmusical
systems, their work has been severely restrictedby their obligationto
proceed tastefully. The limitations of art music have left theorists
ploughing a small and stony field; they would find popular music's
ample pastures far more rewarding, for two very obvious reasons.
First, if music theory is to generalise convincingly about the 'musicness' of musical languages, it clearly must be able to explain the
musical dialects used by large numbers of people. Art music, subsidised by only a few, is only rarelyused by many;and even when it is, it
often quite self-consciously entails a distortionof the dialectit evokes.
To some extent, composers of art music are necessarilycommitted to
the individualisationof the languages they employ; their 'value', after
all, depends in part on their distinctiveness. Analysis of their music,
even at its most colloquial,almost always results in a skewed pictureof
the language with which they started. Building a theory of music on
the compositions of Beethoven or Schoenbergis like building a theory
of English on the writings of Wordsworthor Joyce;in neither case will
the principlesdiscoveredbe generallyapplicableto dailylife. Farbetter
to build a theory on the basis of what one hears people say on the street
- or hum, or whistle, or dance to.
Second, it is clear that music theory can have nothing to do with
aesthetic values, judgements or preferences. If a theory is to account
for a particularmusical language, it must account for all utterancesin
that language. It does no good to eliminate from considerationa large
collection of 'inferior'utterances;indeed, those rejectedare very often
the ones whose straightforwardnessmight be most helpful in getting
started. Taste gets theorists nowhere; in fact, taste gets in the way. In
the past, taste has distorted many music theories into theories of
aesthetics, weapons with which the 'value' of art music's competitors
could be attacked. Theory has become converted into yet another
defence of taste and the need for taste - but along the way it has
stopped being theory.
Popular music scholarship has a wonderful opportunity, then, to
bring music theory - the study of 'musicness', of music per se - into its
own. But once again, in attempting this, scholarshipcannot be exclu-

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William Brooks

sivist. Any music theory, strictlyspeaking, will apply only to the set of
pieces upon which it is built; the most general theories will be those
built upon the most diverse collections of music. Although music
theory ought not to rest on art music, it ultimately must be able to
account for it- just as a theory of evolution must be able to account for
dinosaurs, platypuses and horseshoe crabsas well as cats, dogs, cows
and people. A study which begins by tastelessly investigatingpopular
music is obliged eventually to accommodatemusic for taste; indeed, it
may be that an explanation of aesthetic 'value' will form a significant
part of the theory ultimately advanced.
Though somewhat whimsical, the analogy just drawn between
music and biology is curiously apt. Like biology, music requires a
theory which not only describes individual entities in isolation (as
taxonomy does for living things) but also accounts for their interrelationships, both diachronic(evolutionary)and synchronic(ecological).
And, in music as well as biology, the most obscure varieties are as
crucialto the theory as the most common ones; when a species is lost, a
network of relationships is lost as well. Fromthis perspective, it is no
more foolish to subsidise artmusic than it is to subsidise zoos; if we are
willing to preserve the snail darter, we ought to be equally willing to
preserve Sigismondo d'India.
But at the same time, in both fields, preserving the obscure is no
justificationfor neglecting the commonplace- cricketsand Christmas
carols, milkweed and Mantovani. Coexistence is the ultimate goal: a
world in which mosquitoes, Mozart, moose and Muddy Waters cohabit comfortably, in which the difference between the rare and the
ordinaryis a matter only of quantity, not of value. To be sure, such a
world would requirethe eroding of the economic base for music (and
for biology), and perhaps this is impossible; perhaps economics is
more fundamental to humanity than 'musicness'. But we can try.
As a start, we can turn our scholarlyattention away from the subsidised art and toward the non-subsidised. We can learn to ignore the
systems of value impressed on us by the studies of artmusic- or to use
them only selectively, self-consciously and critically.We can agree to
choose what we study without recourse to aesthetic judgements, to
build our histories by selecting systematicallybut arbitrarilyfrom the
detritus left by the past. And we can seek to build a truer theory of
human musical behaviour by starting with the ordinary - without,
however, rejecting for ever the exceptional.
We can, in brief, do something aboutour taste:we can acquirea taste
for tastelessness.