‘The title of this book suggests that a universal rule of judgment between heterogeneous genres is lacking in general.’
Jean-François Lyotard: The Differend: Phrases in Dispute
No Limit Hold’em: pluralism
The concepts of postmodernism and pluralism are slippery. Thus far, we have assumed that we are currently living in an age characterized by pluralism, also referred to as ‘the postmodern’: terms bandied about a great deal but whose understanding is often obfuscated. I do not want this assumption to pre-empt--to use a contemporary term--the possibility of a discussion concerning whether or not our current situation is indeed plural. In a future text here, I would like to turn our attention to the contours of pluralism and the significance that recent societal and technological shifts have had on music.
Along with Douglas Boyce in his first text here ‘Resistance and Pluralism’, it is also my view that it is essential that we explore and attempt to gain a more flexible understanding of our current situation. An understanding of contemporary culture, its creative environment(s), of the power structures within which cultural production unfolds, of the various ways in which art, music, and ideas interrelate within the broader cultural constellation is vital for shaping the ways in which we act within and relate to our environments and to each other. Issues, quite frankly, that extend to the core of human endeavor and rub against fundamental existential questions. In our particular case, these ideas will be explored and discussed within a musical and critical framework, which is itself one possible response to the challenges posed by contemporary music.
Speed Chess: postmodern challenges
It appears that we have found ourselves in what is referred to as a postmodern condition characterized by extreme pluralism. Lawrence Kramer, in his Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, explains that postmodernism:
The shift to postmodernism has brought new sets of possibilities, challenges, problems, and risks. In an age in which the foundations of human knowledge have withered away, in which anything is potentially valid as a work of art, in which simulacra abound, in which everything happens simultaneously in the perpetual present, the contours of our pluralistic situation require a serious reconsideration of what we are doing. Without recourse to universal truth, one perspective is potentially just as valid as the next. It is my view that one of the fundamental questions in this context is: how can we make critical value-judgments at a time when relativism is one slip away. If anything is just as good as anything else then what is the point? Attached to this discussion is the necessity of looking at our responsibilities within a plural musical world and at how we can organize ourselves as composers, performers, improvisers, presenters, listeners in order to confront the challenges of contemporary music(s). As Douglas pointed out, the constellation of ideas surrounding Richard Bernstein’s engaged fallibilistic pluralism as a critical ethos in response to the dangers of ‘fragmenting pluralism’ deserves close attention. What is it? And, most importantly, what must we do to cultivate engaged fallibilistic pluralism?
Soccer Hooligans: salvaging resistance
While we float in a decentralized, plural world, the ideological and economic forces of the culture industry have tightened the reins, through the commodification of almost every corner of our world, on the way in which music is produced and consumed. Even those artists who reject the forces of the culture industry or who critically and subversively act within its power structures are forced into some relation with bottom-line driven, hyper-capitalist consumer culture. It is pervasive. Musicians who create and perform outside of the demands of appealing to a wide audience, outside of marketability, of mass taste and conventions find themselves just there: outside, marginal.
It is my view that creativity and ideas percolate in the margins of consumer culture. In fact, the composed and improvised music presented in ‘Big Mouths’ and the artistic cultures from which these musics have developed derive their very strength from their positions outside of mainstream culture. Indeed, I have attempted to salvage the idea of music as an act of resistance. I would like to point out, however, that this resistance to mass culture is somewhat of a secondary effect of the primary act of creating and exploring a space in which sound and ideas can be shared without being harnessed by the demands of the culture industry and of processes of commodification and desire. In effect, this music does resist mass culture, but it does so by creating the possibility of alternative visions, more engaged intellectual discourse, opening collective, creative space…
Understanding Cricket: the expanded work
In his Resistance and Pluralism, Douglas Boyce writes: ‘But rather than focusing on our critical positions as listeners to and/or consumers of music, I would be interested in considering with some detail the critical implications of our actions as makers of music, and the ways in which presenting organizations can provide an infrastructure of and for resistance.’
My previous concern with the postmodern listener was somewhat of a political gambit. I focused on the listener and the responsibility of the receiver because of a suspicion, if not conviction, that musical production was more vibrant than ever and that many of the problems with which we are faced stem from a desparate attempt to preserve and cling to the withering vestiges of 19th century concert-going conventions, roles, and power relations. McLuhan’s ‘rear-view mirror’. Audiences yawn.
I would also be interested in considering the critical implications of the actions of makers of music. I am wondering, however, whether or not we can still separate musical production from reception. It is my view that they are inextricably linked within the aesthetic, political, and philosophical environments. The listener is an integral participant within the creative act of music making.
In his Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music, Jean-Jacques Nattiez writes that:
‘the musical work is not merely what we used to call the ‘text’; it is not merely a whole composed of ‘structures’ (I prefer, in any case, to write of ‘configurations’). Rather, the work is also constituted by the procedures that have engendered it (acts of composition) and the procedures to which it gives rise: acts of interpretation and perception.’
This view of the musical work expands the notion of the work to include the broader context within which the work is created, performed, and experienced. It acknowledges that we can no longer compartmentalize the various moments of the work and intimates that the musical work is constituted by an entire constellation of relations: a view that attempts to unmask and dissolve the ideological commitments of views that hold the musical in a universal state impervious to historical and contingent considerations. We might do well to begin with Nattiez’s notion of the expanded work in our exploration of ‘engaged fallibilistic pluralism’.