Sound Philosophy

This episode examines form in popular music and especially Progressive Rock by first investigating the distinction between extensional and intensional form (as presented by Andrew Chester) and glossing that as the distinction between "trekking" and "dwelling." The second segment targets some specific issues in Immanuel Kant's understanding of aesthetic form. The third segment turns to the adaptation of classical music by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and what that reveals about Prog Rock's approach to form. 

The picture of Keith Emerson is by Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons See the original here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Emerson_Lake_and_Palmer_two.jpg

This episode examines Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic to reveal some of the strange properties of space and time. It then turns to the nada Brahma of Hindustani philosophical tradition and the writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan to discuss the creation of space and time from the unstruck sound and how that makes music a special conduit to the truth. The last segment turns to Hindustani music and how its formal and performative elements enact a path of transcendence beyond space and time (and our entrapment in the cycle of birth and death) in order to connect with the nada Brahma. 

This episode begins by examining the relationship between music and nature. It then explores the Chandogya Upanishad and Hindustani Classical Music for insights into nature, humankind, and music. The final segment turns to the U.S. reception of the music of Ravi Shankar and discusses how that reception over the course of the 50s and 60s reflected a growing concern with spirituality and the search for a shortcut to transcendence. 

This episode investigates the move from the communitarian spirit of the 1960s to the "Me Decade" of the 1970s. I explore some historical and cultural reasons for this shift, employing ideas from Tom Wolfe and Immanuel Kant. I then look at the dialectic between an intentionally inauthentic notion of the self (personae) and an authentic self as it unfolded in the music of the 1970s, particularly among the singer-songwriters. The last segment addresses the style of that music--caught between folk music (and its implicit authenticity, speaking with the voice of the authentic We) and light-jazz/lounge music (and its implicit inauthenticity). 

This is a companion episode to the previous discussion of Kant's Three Syntheses. Here I use the three syntheses as a means for exploring some intriguing elements of the nature of music. Music, I suggest, has a very special relationship to space and time; that is, music produces an Imaginary (in Kant's sense) of space and time (the first synthesis). Music also presents fascinating problems in coming to grips with our ability to forge continuity among representations (the second synthesis); this relates to Aristoxenus's theory of melody. Finally, music is a relatively strange object. It features quantitative relationships (intervals) that reveal themselves as qualitative; it is a quality of another object that becomes substantive; it depends upon but also establishes relations; it both exists and is fictive. This illustrates the four basic concepts of the third synthesis: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. 

This episode explores the three syntheses Immanuel Kant describes in his Critique of Pure Reason. The first synthesis designates locations within time and space; the second finds associations to draw perceptions together in order; the third applies concepts to percepts. The four basic concepts are number (the whole and its parts), quality (the features of an object), modality (its mode of existence--whether real or fictional and many other states in between), and relation (how the object fits in the world). These are the concepts in general, the bare minimum for something to register as a thing. I then apply that way of thinking to music. First, I consider musical space and time as idealizations, then the issue of association, then the concepts in general as they apply to music. Finally, all of this is brought to bear on the conception of the album (starting around 1945) as a unitary thing that is, in some ways, superordinate to the various songs contained within it. 

In this episode, I am joined by Matt Carter and Eric Taxier to discuss "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang, which historian Jeff Chang refers to as the "first death of hip hop." I begin by outlining the inevitability of narrative and interpretation to history--that there is no "just the facts" approach to history, no matter how hard we try. I then suggest that Jeff Chang tells a story of death and resurrection (and a shift from authenticity to increased inauthenticity) while someone like Dan Charnas tells a story of expansion and innovation (in business as much as art). Then Eric and Matt join me to discuss various elements of that "first" rap recording: the shift away from the DJ toward the MC, the use of a backing band and the continuation of a remix culture, the citing of names as tags, and other issues. 

This episode begins by asking the deceptively difficult question: what is the middle class? Moreover, what is the middle class's relationship to music? In the second segment, I discuss the rise of the middle class in Brazil alongside the increasing popularity of the samba, along with middle-class criticisms of the Afro-Brazilian genre and Brazilian representation abroad as embodied by Carmen Miranda. In the third segment, I delve into the musical characteristics of Bossa Nova and the manner in which they encourage, reflect, and model a middle-class sensibility. Might its success in this account for its relatively short lifespan as a truly popular genre?

The photograph of the Palacio do Planalto used for the episode art comes courtesy of Ministério da Cultura (Creative Commons license) and can be found HERE: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homologação_do_tombamento_de_obras_do_Niemeyer_(35035168191).jpg. 

In this episode, I am joined by Matt Carter and Eric Taxier to discuss DJ Kool Herc, his park parties, and his Merry-Go-Round technique--a method of extending the break of a song and linking it to other breaks. We discuss the issues of liveness (just what is "live" at a hip hop party using pre-recorded materials?), the art of DJing seen from the perspective of Jacques Derrida's deconstruction (that is, DJing as a series of reversals), and the break as a kind of synecdoche (a part that stands in for the whole and yet separates itself from that whole). For a quick example of the Merry-Go-Round Technique, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw4H2FZjfpo

The image art for this episode comes courtesy of  Mika Väisänen.

mika-photography.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons; The file can be found at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dj_Kool_Herc.jpg

This episode examines the Congressional hearings on payola at the end of 1959 and 1960. I explore the history of payola briefly as a major part of the radio broadcast landscape. I then compare payola to common promotional practices in the advertisement and marketing of other types of commercial products and ask why it is that people might feel that things are different when it comes to music. Is this a confusion of the parameters of music’s status as a mass art?