Peek-a-boo! Fetish Character in Music and Regression of Listening!

Springtime!  Buds on trees, the first flowers of the season beginning to show color.  Let's see if we can't re-grey the fields and send those shoots of promise back into the ground with a little negative dialectics from the essay On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening by our old friend Adorno!

The concept of taste is itself outmoded.  Responsible art adjusts itself to criteria which approximate judgements: the harmonious and the inharmonious, the correct and the incorrect.  But otherwise, no more choices are made; the question is no longer put, and no one demands the subjective justification of the conventions.  The very existence of the subject who could verify such taste has become as questionable as has, at the opposite pole, the right to a freedom of choice which empirically, in any case, no one any longer exercises.  If one seeks to find out who "likes" a commercial piece, one cannot avoid the suspicion that liking and disliking are inappropriate to the situation, even if the person questioned clothes his reactions in those words.  The familiarity of the piece is a surrogate for the quality ascribed to it.  To like it is almost the same thing as to recognize it.  An approach in terms of value judgments has become a fiction for the person who finds himself hemmed in by standardized musical goods.  He can neither escape impotence nor decide between the offerings where everything is so completely identical that preference in fact depends merely on biographical details or on the situation in which things are heard.  The categories of autonomously oriented art have no applicability to the contemporary reception of music; not even for that of the serious music, domesticated under the barbarous name of classical, so as to enable one to turn away from it again in comfort.  If it is objected that specifically light music and everything intended for consumption have in any case never been experienced in terms of those categories, that must certainly be conceded.  Nevertheless, such music is also affected by the change in that the entertainment, the pleasure, the enjoyment it promises, is given only to be simultaneously denied.  In one of his essays, Aldous Huxley has raised the question of who, in a place of amusement, is really being amused.  With the same justice, it can be asked whom music for entertainment still entertains.  Rather, it seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all.  It inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people moulded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility. 

Theodore Adorno, On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening

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Responsible art adjusts itself to criteria which approximate judgements.

How does that make everyone feel?  Judgements on what subjects...or is that part of the judgement?  Judging the appropriate width for pants? Judging the appropriate behaviour in IraqAfganistanLibya?  Is judging what to judge part of the judgement of responsible art?  How is that expressed in non vocal music?  Consonance/dissonance?  Tempo?  Volume?  Does that really do it with any precision?  Is doing it with precision really music's job?

Should music made under repressive regimes sound different than music made on floating puffs of spun sugar?  Forget should, does music made under repressive regimes sound different than music made on floating puffs of spun sugar?  Is music the way people living under repressive regimes escape to their own personal private floating puff of spun sugar?

The very existence of the subject who could verify such taste has become as questionable as has, at the opposite pole, the right to a freedom of choice which empirically, in any case, no one any longer exercises.

One of the things I most love about Adorno is when he whips out the ol' "on the one hand/on the other hand" trick.  On the one hand, people capable of verifying taste are few and far between, if they exist at all, and on the other hand, there isn't a lot of "choosing" going on out there anyway (which is to say, why bother verifying the taste of their non judgements?)  


Do people really read music criticism and use it to "inform" their taste?  Can something someone says change the way you receive a piece of music?  Can someone be cured from liking the music of Die Antwoord or Dave Douglas or Ravel through words on a page?  Can someone be made to like it through words?


Has anyone else have that recurring dream where all music criticism and music promotion disappears?  You know, no more Downbeat, nor more Cadence, no more Signal To Noise, no more Wire, no more glossy posters, no more flash animated web pages...none of that crap.  

In that dream, the reason why there was none of that nonsense was because of the super fertility of the music scene and music's treasured place in our culture.  No need to criticise it one way or the other, as all musics are given and enjoy equal voice.  No need to promote it for that same reason.  

And then I wake up, go to work, and spend my day standing next to a machine that makes loud noises.


The familiarity of the piece is a surrogate for the quality ascribed to it.  To like it is almost the same thing as to recognize it.

and later

value judgements has become a fiction for the person who finds himself hemmed in by standardized musical goods


Isn't that fun?  So, if I play you this song again and again and again and again to where you can actually tell it apart from the rest of the crap, you might confuse that with "liking" it?  Isn't that the whole idea behind commercial radio?  Value judgements as fiction in a world of standardized musical goods makes me think of Rolling Stone Magazine.  I hear those guys who write about those records actually get paid.  Is that true?  I suppose having to do that day in and day out year after year probably takes its toll.  How much would you have to get paid to write 500-2000 words about Justin Bieber or whoever?  Holy crap does that ever sound like some dreary existentialist nonsense.

It also makes me think if I wanted to erode a people's judgement, I would hem them in with standardized musical goods.  Once they realize the fiction of their judgment, and, by extension, their impotence in the face of it, in most cases the will to judge will be extinguished and capitulated to the people who own the means of production anyway.  But that's crazy talk.

Speaking of crazy talk, how does the above relate to our beloved Crazy Experimental Freedom Music?  Is it liked because it is recognized?  Come on, be honest...  Hands up, who doesn't love when they can recognize a Crazy Experimental Freedom artist when listening to a piece you've never heard before?  Who doesn't feel like the time and the effort and alienation and under-employment was worth it when you say "is that Laurence Cook on drums?" and you're right?

Are "we" makers and consumers of CEF aka "This Music" hemmed in by our own standardized musical goods? 


With the same justice, it can be asked whom music for entertainment still entertains.  Rather, it seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all.

yeah...uh...yeah.

Anyone out there been entertained by music for entertainment recently?  If it doesn't matter what was entertaining, then I think I can say I have been entertained quite recently.  I was at party and Les Miserables on the plasma screen and who did I see but one of the The Jonas Brothers. It entertained me in the same way I'm entertained when I see a toddler accidentally hits their father in the genitals, doubling daddy over in agony (I'm laughing just typing that)...maybe not the intended, engineered "entertainment" but entertaining just the same.  

That particular entertainment by music for entertainment lasted about 18 seconds and was entirely optional.  Had I paid for tickets and had to watch the entire spectacle from beginning to end, it might not have been as entertaining.

Not less, but more Adorno to come!