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December 09, 2007
Mark Steyn's fake musical sophistication Really, I'm pretty much of a fan of Mark Steyn, the conservative wag whom I know principally for his writing at National Review, but he published an article bashing popular music in The New Criterion a few weeks ago that stuck in my craw.
This article was framed as a 20th anniversary tribute to Allan Bloom's 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind. Not having read the whole book, I won't presume to critique it. But the most noted part of the book was Bloom pooh-poohing rock and roll as stupid, primitive and bestial. Some of that may be true in some parts, but the guy didn't begin to have the understanding to make any kind of informed statement on music.
Neither does Mark Steyn. Nowhere in his screed does he really make any substantive point, or show any musical understanding. His entire article is a completely unearned display of snobbish superiority to the supposedly dumb, primitive music that the great unwashed like. Oh, how distasteful it is that a sophisticate like Mr Steyn is forcibly subjected to the sounds of popular music when he goes to the deli.
President Clinton had "The Midnight Hour" playing as y2k rolled in. "Say what you like about JFK, but at least Mrs. Kennedy would have booked a cellist." Yeah, it would have been some boring crap that meant nothing to anyone, but you'd feel good about your supposed sophistication.
But as you might start picking up from that line, the sophistication that Steyn is talking about is not real sophistication, nor anything useful or worthwhile. He seems to be more concerned with Keeping Up Appearances than with actual art or what moves the soul.
One of the trends of the last forty years is not just the vanishing of "high culture" but of low-culture jokes about high culture—the variety-show sketches in which Schubert’s mates urge him to come down the pub with him and he says "No, I’ve got to stay in and finish my symphony." It assumes a residual familiarity—from some half-recalled school lesson—with a bloke called Schubert who wrote an "Unfinished Symphony."
What's the importance of that? Would getting that lame joke substantially enhance your mind or enrich your soul? Or would that just be an opportunity for the Comic Book Shop guy from The Simpsons to congratulate himself on his worthless college education?
All of this nonsense is based on broad, general statements. Many of Bloom's critics naturally and rightly called him out on this, demanding that he back up his statements with specific examples from popular artists. "But he’s not doing album reviews, he’s pondering the state of an entire society with a rock aesthetic."
So Bloom and now Steyn are just bashing away at a supposedly undemanding "rock aesthetic," seeing no significant point there in distinguishing between for example the Beatles versus 50 Cent. In other words, they're both just talking out their lower sphincter muscles.
I also specifically reject his and Bloom's presumptuous argument that the only defense of popular music would come from stupid cultural relativism.
A relative culture ends up ever shorter of any relatives to relate to. In educational theory, it's not about culture vs. 'counter-culture' but rather what I once called lunch-counterculture: It's all lined up for you and you pick what you want. It's the display case of rotating pies at the diner: one day the student might pick Milton, the next Bob Dylan. But, if Milton and Bob Dylan are equally 'valid,' equally worthy of study, then Bob Dylan will be studied and Milton will languish.
I've read Milton, and got some good out of it. But I've also heard Bob Dylan and gotten a lot more good out of that. What is so much more deep and profound about Milton than Dylan? Steyn's just presuming that Milton is more substantive than Dylan, and that any educated person would agree. Is the damning part that Dylan is more viscerally pleasing than Milton, or is his sin simply modernity? No, we don't need to choose from a menu of what interests us, Mark Steyn and Allan Bloomberg know what we really should study.
Steyn makes a big point (again offering absolutely no specific evidence) that European classical music is musically and particularly harmonically sophisticated, and that rock era music isn't - even the Beatles - and that therefore it is not really legitimate. That's bogus on so many levels.
For starters, I challenge the assumption that more complicated harmony automatically means better music. Likewise, I would challenge if someone similarly argued that using longer words in your writing makes your book better. If showing off your vocabulary becomes the main point of your book or music, then it's probably not going to be worth much. Chuck Berry's musically simple "Johnny B Goode" has more to offer aesthetically and spiritually than some crappy symphony from some college professor with nothing to say or the classically trained idiots from Yes and ELP.
But a lot of popular music has some pretty impressive sophistication and innovation, though perhaps more often in an explosion of orchestral colors rather than in quintuple complicated underlying harmonies. I don't know, but Mozart never conjured anything remotely like "Strawberry Fields Forever" in his wildest imagination.
This would naturally lead to an extended discussion of music and art. Why is music so important? How can you tell good from bad? Does liking a Robert Johnson song better than a big ol' symphony prove that you're a cretin?
I don't know that there are 100% objective answers to those questions, but music is more than the math of what's written on a page. It's a mysterious spiritual force that's difficult to fully scientifically quantify. Sometimes it takes a big ol' symphony orchestra to blast out a message of the holy spirit. But sometimes the Spook needs just one singer with an acoustic guitar - especially if it's Richard Frickin' Thompson.
There are limits to your artistic depth if you are illiterate in the basic technical underpinnings of your craft. Never Mind the Bollocks was a moving and memorable album, but the Sex Pistols lacked the vocabulary to go any further. But Paul Simon and Prince know something about harmony - and have conjured up rich worlds of sound and spirit that Schubert or Mahler could not have imagined.
Steyn quotes a ridiculous Newsweek story from 1964 from some stuffed shirt who describes the Beatles music as doing "away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody." Well, that's just dumb. The Beatles had all kinds of melody and rhythm and harmony. Now, he's basing this on 1964 Beatles, not the more sophisticated music of their mature work - but that's just a dumb thing to say even about "She Loves You."
Plus, Steyn notes without substance that some geek once did a comparison of the Beatles and Mahler. "I think it's harder to make the claim to harmonic sophistication in the Beatles, but William Mann, the music critic of The Times of London, gave it a go in 1963, comparing the Aeolian cadence in 'Not A Second Time' with the end of Mahler’s 'Song of the Earth.' But, as I said, to do that you have to know about Mahler."
This gave Steyn the opportunity to use the musical term "aeolian cadence," the dropping of which term with no explanation was the only place where he says anything even vaguely actually to do with music. The point of this would appear to be simply to show Steyn's supposed sophistication by using a technical musical term, as he wasn't saying anything about Mr Mann's analysis.
That there was a passing anti-Beatle joke in a 1964 James Bond movie is evidence that the Beatles aren't musically legitimate? For my money, they made far more aesthetically and spiritually substantive art than everything ever associated with James Bond. Oh yeah, and when they actually wanted a good theme song for one of these cheesy spy flicks, they got Paul McCartney to give them way the best one they ever had.
Beyond that, Steyn makes a whole buttload of generalized statements that have no justification. Consider all the impacted foolishness and stolen bases in his follow up "And once Mahler's gone and Schubert's gone, you can no longer make musical claims for rock and rap, so all you do is hail it for its authenticity and its energy and, as John Kerry did, its copious amounts of 'anger.'"
Basically there as in his whole argument, he presumes that fans of popular music are idiots who just don't know any real music against which to judge. That's just not a reflection of reality. Sure, there are lots of teenage idiots and casual fans who don't pay that much attention to music. But there are a lot of smart, thoughtful people who listen to punk rock and Mozart - and Porter Wagoner and Miles Davis as well. Are the millions of people who dig Bach and also the Beatles idiots who don't get real music, or is it Mark Steyn and Allan Bloomberg that are missing the boat?
Also, that's lumping all things popular in together, which is worthless and meaningless. Yes, most popular music is crapola of little lasting merit. 50 Cent is a thug, not a musician. Plus, the elevation of anger, indignation and hostility as high cultural values is bad. Britney Spears is a dumb slut, not a substantive musical artiste. But there's Britney Spears and then there's Sinead O'Connor.
Again, Steyn's article is as worthless as Bloom's arguments because they're just broadly lumping lots of things together with no connection. Smokey Robinson is not steeped in anger, nor is Paul Simon. Not that anger cannot be a legitimate emotion to express in art.
But most stuff in the European classical music tradition is crapola, too. Like anything else, the chafe is blown away by the winds of time and the great stuff becomes a soundtrack for the ages. Thus, out of how many millions of musicians over centuries, we remember a few dozen names from antiquity today. Likewise, a century from now no one will remember the existence of Garth Brooks or Mariah Carey. Then on the other hand, folks will be listening to Ray Charles for a very long time.
Know-nothings can get off on their own little sense of superiority to popular music, but generations yet unborn will no doubt be grooving to Sgt Pepper and Sign O the Times while traveling the stars 1000 years from now. Roll over Neptune, tell Uranus the news.
