Popular Music in America
Introductory Perspectives
Goals
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Think creatively and critically about
popular music
Listen to popular music and learn
something about its history and the
people and institutions behind it
Cover a wide range of music from
nineteenth century to the turn of the
21st century
Popular Music—Definitions
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Music created with commercial success in mind
 Popularity measured in numbers—how many albums sold, how
many Number One hits
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Can be compared with other styles that differ in intent as
well as musical result
– Popular
– Classical
– Folk
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This definition is problematic because some music
crosses the boundaries of genre.
 “Garage bands,” which are similar to folk music
 Piano rags by Scott Joplin: “art” or “popular” music?
 The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Popular Music—Definitions
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In broad terms, popular music can be
used to indicate
– music that is mass-produced and
disseminated via the mass media,
– at various times has been listened to by large
numbers of Americans, and
– typically draws on a variety of preexisting
musical traditions.
Theme One: Listening
Critical listening
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Listening that consciously seeks out meaning in
music
How music is put together
Its cultural significance
Its historical development
Even nonmusicians have much more knowledge
about music than they may realize:
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A chord that sounds “wrong”
A note that is “out of tune”
Or a singer who is “off key”
Theme One: Listening
In everyday life, people often do not think
carefully about the music they hear.
 Much popular music is designed not to call
critical attention to itself.
 Other types of popular music—big band
swing, funk, punk rock, hard rap, thrash
metal—seek to grab attention but do not,
by and large, encourage close analysis.
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Theme One: Listening
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The point of analyzing popular music is
not to ruin your enjoyment of it.
– You are encouraged to
 expand your tastes,
 hear the roots of today’s music in earlier styles,
and
 be a more critically aware “consumer” of popular
music.
Theme One: Listening
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Formal analysis
– The musical structure of the music
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Much popular music draws on a limited
number of basic formal structures.
– Twelve-bar blues
– AABA melodic structure
Musical Process
How is a song interpreted?
 Listening and studying popular music is
not simply analyzing a song but also
studying interpretations by particular
performers.
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Terms Specific to Popular Music and
This Course
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Riff—repeated pattern designed to
generate rhythmic momentum
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Hook—catchy musical phrase or riff
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Groove—channeled flow of “swinging” or
“funky” or “phat” rhythms
Terms Specific to Popular Music and
This Course
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Timbre—characteristic sound of an
instrument or voice
– Sometimes called “tone color”
– Plays an important role in establishing the
“soundprint” of a performer
Lyrics—The Words of a Song
In many cases, words are designed to be
one of the most immediately accessible
parts of a song.
 In other cases, the lyrics seem to demand
interpretation.
 Dialect
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– Some musical genres are strongly associated
with particular dialects.
Theme Two: Music and Identity
We use popular music to find and express our
identity
 Popular music is closely tied to stereotypes.
 People value music for many reasons
 To understand the cultural significance of
popular music, we must examine
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– the music—its tones and textures, rhythms and
forms—and
– the broader patterns of social identity that have
shaped Americans’ tastes and values.
Theme Three: Music and
Technology
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Technology has shaped popular music
and has helped disseminate it.
Older technologies often take on
important value as tokens of an earlier,
often claimed better, time.
People frequently seek to exert creative
control over the role of musical
machines in their own lives.
Theme Four: The Music Business
The production of popular music typically
involves the work of many individuals
performing different roles.
Sheet music
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From the nineteenth century until the 1920s, it
was the principal means of disseminating popular
songs
The music business relies on predicting
popular musical tastes and trends.
Relationship between “majors” and “indies”
Theme Five: Centers and
Peripheries
Center-periphery model
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“Center”—several geographically distinct
centers where power, capital, and control
over mass media are concentrated
“Periphery”—smaller institutions and people
historically excluded from the political and
economic mainstream