Making Artistic Popular Music: The Goal of True Folk

Author(s): John Blacking

Source: Popular Music, Vol. 1, Folk or Popular? Distinctions, Influences, Continuities (1981),
pp. 9-14
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853240
Accessed: 24/11/2010 18:11

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Makingartisticpopularmusic:
the goal of true folk
by JOHN BLACKING

There is good evidence that for over ninety-nine per cent of human
history, and for ninety-seven per cent of the time since the emergence
of our own species (homosapienssapiens)approximately70,000 years
ago, all music was popular, in so faras it was sharedand enjoyed by all
members of a society. If there were distinctions of style within a
society's music, they were accepted as signs of functional or social
differentiationratherthan as barriersto mutual communication.Dis-
tinctions between sacredand secularmusic, between music for young
and old or men and women, were generallydrawn within the style of
each music culture, and, at least in principle, a member of one group
could performand appreciatethe music of another group in the same
.

soclety.
There is, of course, no direct evidence of the antiquity of popular
music: we infer it from the musical practicesof non-literatesocieties
that have been studied by folklorists,anthropologistsand ethnomusi-
cologists. Moreover,it would be quite wrong to regardany contempor-
ary society of hunter-gatherers or horticulturalistsas a survival of
palaeolithicor early neolithic times: more than 10,000years of history
and constant social change separate the Aurignacians and Magda-
lenians of prehistoricEuropefromthe San of the Kalaharidesert or the
Aranda of CentralAustralia, even as they were described a hundred
years ago. Nevertheless the study of music-making in small-scale,
non-literate societies has made possible certaingeneralisationsabout
the musical process (see Blacking 1973) which can be applied to all
societies, past and present.
First, all members of the species are basicallyas capableof dancing,
singing and making music, as they are of speaking a naturallanguage.
There is even evidence that early human species were able to dance
and sing several thousand years before homosapienssapiensemerged
with the capacityfor speech as we now know it (see Livingstone 1973,
Blacking 1976).
Second, performingmusic, like speaking a verballanguage, is part
of the process of knowing and understandingit. Performancedoes not
requirea special set of capabilities,and active listening is essentially a

9
lo JohnBlacking
mental rehearsal of performance, in which a person re-invents 'the
text'. Thus distinctionsbetween creator,performerand listenerare the
consequence of assigned social roles.
Third, music and music-makingcan in principlebe assigned almost
any social, political or religious meaning, and treated like any other
social activities,but the symbols that areinvoked also involve the body
in such a way that they sometimes acquirea forceof theirown. Musical
performancecan express and evoke sensuous experiencesthat can be,
and often are, related to feelings. Thus music, as a categoryof action,*
need not always be a reflectiveepiphenomenon of the social:it can be a
primary modelling system of thought, and musical imagination can
trigger off action in social fields to which its sensuous code does not
directly refer, because of the effects that the bodily experiences may
have on consciousness, motivation,commitmentand decision-making
(see Blacking1981).
Fourth, although musical codes can express and evoke feelings as
well as new sound experiences, and human emotions are broadly
similar throughout the world, music is not a universal language.
Attempts to trace the evolution of the musical art from simple to
complex, from one-tone to twelve-tone scale, and to fit all the music of
the world into the scheme, have proved fruitless:for example, the San
of the Kalahariand the so-calledPygmies of the Ituriforesthave simple
technologies but also polyphony (see Bushman MusicandPygmyMusic),
whose invention was supposed to have been the prerogative of
advanced Europeansocieties. Musicalcodes are derived neither from
some universal emotionallanguage nor from stages in the evolution of
a musical art: they are socially accepted patterns of sound that have
been invented and developed by interactingindividualsin the context
of different social and cultural systems.
These and other generalisations about music-making can be
summed up and developed as follows: music is a social fact, and
discriminatinglistenersareas necessaryas performersfor its existence;
all normalhuman beings arecapableof makingmusic;role distinctions
between creator, performerand listener, variationsin musical styles,
and contrastsin the apparentmusical abilityof composers and perfor-
mers, are consequences of the division of labour in society, of the
functional interrelationshipof groups and of the commitmentof indi-
viduals to music-making as a social activity.
But music is also a special kind of symbolic activity, in which sen-
* Another issue raised by the study of musical systems in non-literatesocieties is that
many peoples lack a word for 'music'. I use the concepts of 'music'and 'musical'as
ideal types, or gloss terms, for a categoryof human actionthat is widely acceptedbut
not yet fully understood.
 Makingartisticpopularmusic:thegoal of truefolk
suous experienceand transformationsof consciousness are often more
highly valued than immediate practicalsocial consequences. When
people become involved in the performanceof music, they suspend
other kinds of decision-making. Thus the nature of the activity, and
the ways in which people relate to the organisationand perceptionof
tones, the essential symbols of a musicalsystem, are the most interest-
ing and problematicfeatures of music-making.
It is not, therefore, surprising that so much music writing and
musicological research have been concerned with values and with
effectiveness of musical symbols, and that styles of music have been
labelled and assigned categories of value. Art music was supposed to
be that which displayed exceptionalskill in creationand was generally
written down, as distinct from folk music, which was of popular
origin. Classicalmusic was a branch of art music, initiallyopposed to
romantic, folk, modern, or popular music; but as modern music
became contemporarymusic, so it became linked with romanticand
classical music, and labelled as serious music.
Popular music was music that did not seek 'to appeal to refined or
classicaltaste' (OxfordEnglishDictionary)and was generallythought to
include folk songs. But as researchinto and preservationof folk music
grew, so the elitism of the labellers was extended: just as addicts of
serious music had regardedpopularmusic with distaste or disgust, so
folk-music performersand scholars frequentlyviewed popular music
with disdain. There was 'good', 'pure' popular music, which was the
authentic music of the people, and could be called 'folk', or perhaps
'traditional',music;and there was 'bastardised','contaminated'music
of the people, which was dismissed by derogatory terms such as
'popular', 'commercial',or even 'urban'(see Blacking1978, pp. 7-9).
Such extreme attitudes are no longer common amongst writers and
researchers, but they persist in the attitudes of many organisers of
folklore festivals and performersof folk music. For example, I have
encountered several Irishtraditionalmusicianswho weaken theircase
against the elitism of Irish institutions and of individuals devoted to
'art' music, by taking a similarly elitist attitude towards what they
regard as 'unauthentic' performancesof Irish music, and indeed to-
wards the traditionalmusic of Africa, Asia, America and Oceania in
general.
Classificationsof music into 'folk', 'art'or 'popular'reflecta concern
with musical products, ratherthan with the dynamicprocess of music-
making. The labels have come to identify weapons in the battles of the
recordcompanies, whose ultimateaim is surely to substitutepackaged
recordings for the live, genuinely popular music-makingof ordinary
human beings, which still exists in some societies and was almost
12 JohnBlacking
certainlythe way that all music was made for ninety-seven per cent of
the history of the human species. As descriptionsof differentkinds of
music, or even of the musical cultures of different social groups, the
labels are meaningless and invariablymisleading. They are also value-
laden terms that are often used without specification of underlying
assumptions. For example, popular music and folk music have been
widely regarded as degenerations of art music: just as the popular
hymn-singing of BlackSouth AfricanIndependent Churcheswas said
to be a consequence of members' inability to sing European hymns
correctly(Blacking1981),so the ganga part-songsof peasants in Bosnia
and Herzegovina were said to be crude attempts to reproduceharmo-
nies that had been heard in the sophisticated music of the cities
(Petrovic 1977).
Ethnomusicologicalresearch has reminded us that music-making
must always be regarded as intentional action, and that the actors'
reasons for what they do must be taken into account. Art does not
consist of products, but of the processes by which people make sense
of certain kinds of activity and experience. Music is available-for-use
(see Jones 1971),and musical value resides not in any piece or style of
music, but in the ways that people address themselves to listening and
performance.Supposing that popular music were music that does not
seek 'to appeal to refined taste' (OED),this would not make art music
refined and popular music unrefined. Refinement is a quality that
people evoke through performing or listening to music; and just as
many people's attitudes to art music may lack refinement, so others'
attitudes and responses to popular music may be refined.
Similarly, musical skills are not required any less for 'folk' and
'popular' music than for 'art' music, just as William Byrd's choral
music is not easier than Handel's or Verdi'sor Britten's.Pop musicians
are no less meticulous about rehearsalthan symphony orchestras;and
if they may seem a little inarticulatein defining the sounds that they
want, one only has to listen to the language of orchestralconductorsto
appreciate how much they also are disadvantaged by working in a
non-verbal medium.
Although music is 'the result of certain attitudes, certain specific
ways of thinking about the world, and only ultimately about the
"ways" in which music can be made' (Jones1963,p. 153),the effective-
ness of music depends on people's relationships to the organisation
and perception of the musical symbols, rather than the non-musical
attitudes expressed towards them or in company with them. Thus
although musicalvalue is to be measuredby the ways in which people
make sense of music, the relevant terms in which the sense is made
must be musical. If people value music because it is political, or is
 Makingartisticpopularmusic:thegoal of truefolk 13

religious, or has a social message, they are not being affectedprimarily

by the musical symbols. Popularmusic,as distinct from popularsenti-
ment, is identified when people like a tune, a sonorityor a whole piece
of music, without emphasising its non-musical attributes,and try to
relate themselves to the organisation of rhythms, tones and timbres
that they perceive.
In this sense, 'popular music' is a category of value that can be
applied to all styles of music:*it is music that is liked or admired by
people in general, and it includes Bach, Beethoven, the Beatles, Ravi
Shankar,Sousa's marchesand the 'LondonderryAir'. Farfrombeing a
patronising or derogatoryterm, it describes positively music that has
succeeded in its basic aim to communicate as music.The music that
most people value most is popularmusic;but what thatmusic is, varies
accordingto the social class and experienceof composers, performers
and listeners.
Since I argue that labels such as 'folk', 'art' and 'popular' tell us
nothing substantive about different styles of music; that as categories
of value they can be applied to any music; and that the most pressing
tasks are to understandthe musicalprocess and ensure that no human
beings are deprived of their right to make music, it may well be asked
how I can serve on the EditorialBoardand contributeto a publication
that is called PopularMusic.
First,I am not speciallyinterestedin popularmusic as defined by the
Editorsabove (p. 1), but I am very much interestedin popularmusic as
a category of value. I regard music-making(or at least some 'artistic'
activity)as an essential qualificationof becoming fully human, so that
failure to practice it means leaving some innate capabilitiesand re-
sources untapped. Music-makingmust be an essential activityfor all in
a healthy, developing society; practice of music, and of the arts in
general, must be part of the process of educating the feelings and the
intellect. The lesson of ethnomusicologicalresearch is that, far from
being a pious hope for the future in industrialsocieties, this situation
has existed in the majorityof human societies for the greater part of
human history. As EricGill said, 'it isn't that artistsare specialkinds of
people. It's that people are special kinds of artists.'
Second, the emergence of popularmusic, in the sense defined by the
Editors, as a phenomenon of industrialised and industrialising
societies, is one of the most strikingexamples of the power of musical
symbols, and of people's general musical creativity and search for
quality in life. Just as it was necessary to define and analyse class in
order to dissolve it, so it is perhaps necessary to define and analyse a
* 'Folkmusic' and 'artmusic' can also be treatedas categoriesof value ratherthan as
types of music, but the argumentneed not be taken furtherhere.
 JohnBlacking
new type of music, and give it a name that expresses a pious hope if not
an accuratefact, in order to restore musical consciousness andpractice
to their central place in human life.
KarlMarxlooked forwardto a society in which 'theartist'as a special
category of person would be redundant, and in which all men and
women could cultivate their artisticcapabilities,so that the distinction
between producer and consumer of art would abolish itself and Art
and Lifewould become one. Similarly,distinctionsbetween 'art','folk'
and 'popular' music should dissolve, as human beings achieve the
most important goal of ownership of the senses.
The serious study of popular music will serve a useful purpose if it
helps to extend the practice of music and eliminate elitism as quite
contrary to the spirit of music-making.

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