Professor Early ended his overview of the course syllabus today with an interesting remark, one that I have been mulling over. He was talking about taste communities—groups of people joined by a common appreciation, whether of music or film or fashion or (presumably) any number of human endeavors. Professor Early sees taste as an essential part of our cultural DNA, and it is not something he takes lightly. “Don’t let anybody tell you popular music is not important. It’s extremely important,” Early said, near the end of his remarks.
But why are taste communities so important? Why is popular music so important?
As I thought about this a little more tonight, certain examples occurred to me. I thought of the ways that popular music has been used by political campaigns to appeal to taste communities and, in a sense, draw them into the fold. The Clinton campaign used Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” in 1992 to appeal, one imagines, to all the baby boomers who had cut their teeth on Rumours in the seventies. More recently, Barack Obama turned the tables on the Clintons when he alluded to Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” while making a speech in the primary season. Obama was making light of the Clintons’ attacks on him, positioning himself as someone who could rise above petty political tricks. His Jay-Z reference—legible only to the taste community that was aware of this well-known hip-hop tune—also positioned him as someone worthy of that community’s respect. We have also seen various popular musicians who have objected to the use of their music by politicians with whom they disagree. In essence, these musicians are resisting the co-optation of the taste community with which they are associated. Even more recently, many commentators have noted the influence and importance of hip-hop in the events and uprisings of the so-called Arab Spring. In this case, again, it seems as if taste communities correspond to some degree with political movements—or, perhaps, that taste communities and political movements can feed off each other.
Professor Early seems to suggest something akin to this process in the introduction to One Nation Under a Groove when he writes about how “Motown, an extraordinary success in the realm of mass culture or popular culture, actually helped to bring into clear definition the taste and urges of a middle-brow black audience whose existence helped to create such middle-brow black conceptions as Afrocentrism, the name African-American, and the mythology of the black community” (5). This passage is rather tricky to parse, though—and the more I look at it, the more I think Early’s point should not be reduced to the idea that taste communities can be activated politically. Instead, the larger point is that taste communities and popular music can be used as exceptionally sharp lenses that can help us understand the ways that people think of themselves politically, culturally, demographically; and the ideas people have about themselves and the world in which they live. Studying popular music and the taste communities associated with it, according to Early, can “bring into clear definition” aspects of our lives and our national history that might otherwise remain opaque.
—Frank Kovarik
Comments
At the end of One Nation Under a Groove, Professor Early makes some interesting remarks that may help me clarify my final thoughts in the post above.
“We have had over thirty-five years of recognized integrated national experience in this country, and in that period the success of Motown stands as the shining hour of the American black in popular culture,” Early writes. “I am struck by the extent to which the memory of Motown, and more generally of its era, may be holding American blacks together, as we are torn apart by centrifugal social and political forces that frighten us even as they may, in the long run, bless us with greater freedom” (134-35).
Motown, Early suggests, forged a taste community that encompassed all (or most?) of black America, from the homeowners to the housing project residents, the middle-aged to the teenagers, the NAACP members to the SNCC activists. (It’s interesting to me that Early’s “one nation under a groove” can be seen as the black nation as well as the integrated nation that Motown’s phenomenal crossover success also represents.) That taste community had a political aspect as well—the extraordinary and at times fragile unity of the Civil Rights movement in the first half of the 1960s.
Since then, as Early suggests (and as Eugene Robinson discusses at length in his book Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America), that African American taste community has to some extent broken apart along economic, political, social, cultural, and other lines. Think of hip-hop, for instance—and the ambivalent attitudes towards it that have been expressed by some African American participants in this Institute. Not only does hip-hop provide a lens on the fault lines within the black public; from my own experience I know that it also reveals significant divisions between whites and blacks, and within the white public as well.
What I’m looking forward to thinking more about as the Institute progresses is how, as Early asserts, “the memory of Motown” holds people together—and how the story of Motown provides useful examples for a consideration of the continued deep meaning of music and taste communities in American life. How was Motown different from hip-hop? At the same time, how does the story of Motown (and the story of jazz during our period) engage the same types of issues as the story of hip-hop?
We have reached a point in time when it may be possible to step back and see the case studies of jazz and Motown (from ’59 to ’75) with some clarity. I’m interested in how that clarity of vision may help us see our confusing present more clearly as well.
Frank,
I agree with your point that music can be used to help understand how people view themselves. I know that I used music to help express my feelings or to further my emotions. I used music in my thematic teaching to help my students "hear" and "feel" peoples opinions. Many of my students expressed that music and musical choice was a way for them to express themselves and thier independence. As an English teacher I have always viewed music as I have viewed poetry, that its a form of self expression. Given that music and musical taste it tied to self and self indentity I see how it can be manipulated by some to convey as sense of inclusivness to a person, group, or ideal. Once music is out in the world it is no longer a singl person's, but becomes societies and its aim, itent, or usage then changes. I am not yet sure where this ideal will lead me in my thinking, but I certainly will be more aware of what my students select to listen to, simply to see if I can better understand them throught thier choices. Of course I as an educator will also want to lead them to more sophisticated choices at times.
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