Popular Music Studies
A brief introduction
Philip Tagg
Montréal, March-July 2003, September 2004
Original version entitled Popular Music Studies: Progress or Falsification,
The Rayson Huang Lecture, Music Department, University of Hong Kong, March 2003.
www.tagg.org
Presentation overview
1. Popular Music — what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic prejudices
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Tendency to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
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‘Art’, ‘folk’ & ‘popular’: historical flowchart
MUSIC
(society with minimal division of labour)
slavery,
feudalism
ART MUSIC
FOLK MUSIC
(courts, official religion)
(slaves & proletariat)
industrial
capitalism
ART MUSIC
(publicly funded institutions)
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FOLK MUSIC
(rural proletariat)
POPULAR MUSIC
(industrial proletariat, middle couches)
Art, Folk, Popular music:
distinguishing traits
Main current mode of
storage and
distribution in West
Main current modes
of financing
production and
distribution in West
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oral transmission
folk
staff notation
art
audio(visual) recording
popular
independent of
monetary economy
folk
public funding, patronage
art
‘free’ market
popular
Summary of popular music’s
distinguishing traits
• a phenomenon of industrialised society
• no formal training required to make or use
• until recently excluded from officially
sanctioned institutions of learning
• most commonly stored and transmitted via
audio(visual) recording
• production and distribution most commonly
financed acc. to rules of the ‘free’ market
• cannot be defined in terms of musical
structure
• music that is neither ‘art’ nor ‘folk’ music
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Presentation overview
1. Popular Music —what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic prejudices
• When and how did it enter the academy?
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Tendency to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
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Music’s Ubiquity & Omnipresence
almost ¼ of our waking life
for example (estimates in mins. per day)
• 70’ music on TV, DVD, VHS or at movies
• 35’ music in shops, restaurants, bars, public places,
at religious or sporting events, etc.
• 30’ music on radio
• 30’ music at work
• 30’ music by conscious choice
(home stereo, personal stereo, concerts, clubs, etc.)
• 10’ music in video games
• 5’ music on mobile phones; telephone ‘hold’ music, etc.
= 210 minutes = 3½ hours per day
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Music less important now?
RIAA & IFPI say recorded music sales down 6% 1999-2001
• Inventory & artist investment cut by 25% (12,000 fewer
releases to choose from), i.e more money made per release
• Sales did not start declining until AFTER Napster was shut;
freely uploaded ‘independent’ music excluded from figures
• CD prices increased while average disposible income for all but
top 5% decreased markedly in Europe & N. America
• [1] Games sales $8.9 bn., movies $7.4 bn., music $13.7 bn.
(USA, 1999); [2] Mario has made twice as much money as all
5 Star Wars movies combined (Wired magazine, 2003);
[3] ave. US child: video games 49 mins/day; [4] UK: game
sales 60% > box office sales, 80% > VHS + DVD rentals;
[5] cellphone ring-tone download rights turnover $1 bn (2002)
• Veronis Schuler Stevenson (Aug. 2002) predict 6.5% annual
rise in consumer spending on media 2001-2006 (6.3% 19962001), mainly due to proliferation of cable/satellite TV and to
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increase in cable rates 3 times > rate of inflation (USA & UK)
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Presentation overview
1. Popular Music —what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic and social prejudices
• When and how did popular music enter the academy?
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Tendency to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
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Social and aesthetic prejudices
about popular music in the academy
• It’s not serious and it’s not art
“Fun is never serious and serious art is never fun.”
• It’s too simple to be studied seriously
“Some parameters and forms of musical expression are
intrinsically more important than others.”
• Including it in university curricula would
lower the standard and status of musical
academe
“The majority of people and their musical habits are not
worth serious consideration: only the ‘chosen few’ and
their musical habits should be studied at university
level”.
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Institutional inertia of nomenclature
New areas of study must be named and identified, for example:
1. Women (51% of humanity), whose lives and activities were
largely excluded from conventional accounts of history and
culture in the West, had to call studies of that excluded
majority “Women’s Studies”, while the areas of study which
excluded them needed no qualification as “history” or “culture”.
2. The music of the popular majority (much >51%), until
recently excluded from (and still relatively marginalised in)
institutionalised music studies in the West, had to be identified
with a special qualifier — “popular” when it entered the
academy, as if it were the exception, not the rule.
• Question. Under the apartheid régime it was the Asian and
African majority who had to carry identity cards, not the white
minority. Why do studies that include women or the popular
majority still need to be identified with a special qualifier
(“women”, “popular”)?
Presentation overview
1. Popular Music —what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic and social prejudices
• When and how did popular music enter the academy?
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Tendency to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
P Tagg
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Popular Music Studies: dates 1877-1931
1877
1888
1892
1898
1903
1914
1918
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1927
Edison invents phonograph
Berliner invents flat disc grammophone
1st million seller (sheet music – After the Ball)
HMV and DGG start mass production
Caruso’s recording of Vesti la giubba sells 1 million
ASCAP founded
Original Dixieland Jazz Band sell 1 million of Tiger Rag
1st electro-acoustic recording (London)
Moving coil microphones invented
BBC formed; 3 million radio sets in USA
Bessie Smith: 1st million seller recorded by a black woman
Western Electric patent electro-magnetic recording
1st sound film (Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer) released
1931 127 sound films made (only 8 in 1929);
Rickenbacker develops A model electric guitars
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Popular Music Studies: dates 1934-1960
1934 275,000 juke boxes installed in USA over next 5 years;
Bing Crosby most popular; Muzak corporation founded
1935 75% of BBC air time is music
1936 1st tape-recorded concert (BASF/AEG)
1937 50% of record releases in USA are swing band recordings
1941 1st electric blues broadcast in USA
1947 Transistors invented; Fender start producing amplifiers
1949 RCA introduce vinyl 45 rpm records
1950 ‘Hillbilly’ (C&W) accounts for 1/3 of record sales in USA
1951 1st electric bass produced by Fender
1952 1st reel-to-reel recorded stereo tapes produced by RCA
1955 Bill Haley: Rock Around The Clock; LP sales > singles
Top 40 programming format introduced
1958 Mass production breakthrough for stereo
1960 200 million units of Crosby singing White Christmas
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(Irving Berlin) sold since 1942
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Popular Music Studies: dates 1963-1984
1963 Philips demonstrate 1st compact audiocassette
The Beatles: She Loves You and 1st LP
1965 Rolling Stones: Satisfaction; Who: My Generation
1966 Moog synth., Marshall amp., Fender Rhodes piano
1967 Beatles: Sergeant Pepper; Hendrix: Are You Experienced?
1968 Woodstock Festival (300,000 participants)
1971 Popular music starts in higher education at University of
Göteborg (Sweden) and Berklee (Boston, USA)
1977 Philips show CDs at Tokyo audio fair
1980 Commercial breakthrough for video; Sony Walkman sells
5 million units in 1st year (USA)
1981 MTV starts in USA; International Association for the Study
of Popular Music (IASPM); 1st issue of Popular Music (CUP)
1983 CDs launched in USA and UK
1984 Cassette sales overtake vinyl LP sales; Forschungszentrum
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populäre Musik (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin) founded
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Popular Music Studies: dates 1985-2000
mid 1980s: CD ROMs, samplers, MIDI, digital synthesizers
1988 DAT recorders; CD sales overtake vinyl sales;
Institute of Popular Music (Liverpool University) founded
1989 recordable CDs available
1990 More people recognise Mario than Mickey Mouse from music
1992 AoL stock listed on NASDAQ; Sony corp. announce 1st loss;
1st professor of Popular Music Studies (Berlin);
DCCs & MDs marketed; Michael Jackson’s Thriller 40 mill.
units in 10 yrs; Madonna signs 7-yr $700 mill. contract
1994 Viacom buy Paramount (incl. MTV) for $10 billion;
Pavarotti’s audio & video sales top 50 million units
1995-… Mergers, ‘restructuring’: thousands lose jobs in music
industry; internet distribution increasingly important
music business courses (Edinburgh, Liverpool, etc.)
1998 Specifications for DVD agreed
2000 AoL buys Time-Warner (incl. CNN, CompuServe, etc.)
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Entrance of popular music studies
into the academy: dates (1)
1930-32 Musik und Gesellschaft: music educators,
ethnomusicologists, composers express social concern about
culture in daily life of popular majority in pre-fascist Germany
1940s ‘Motivation research’ (USA): subsequently used to
relate target groups to musical taste
1960s [1] Frankfurt school: Adorno, Marcuse, notions of
authenticity in counter-culture (Rolling Stone, USA).
[2] Cultural Studies: (a) conceptual broadening of ‘culture’;
media scholars with background in literary theory, political
science, sociology, etc.; (b) realisation of PMus music’s importance
in constructing social identity of groups of young people 
subcultural theory (Birmingham, UK).
[3] The Times: music critic suggests Lennon & McCartney as
‘composers of the year’ (London, 1964).
[4] PMus on school curriculum (Sweden, 1969).
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Entrance of popular music studies
into the academy: dates (2)
1970s [1] Teacher-training & university programmes
start to include PMus (1st Sweden, Austria, Germany; later in
many other nations). [2] Colleges of Music start to include
PMus (USA, Germany, UK, etc.).
1980s [1] IASPM formed (International Association for the
Study of Popular Music) (Amsterdam, 1981);
[2] 1st issue of Popular Music (C.U.P.) published.
Popular Music Studies identified as interdisciplinary
(and interprofessional) area of inquiry.
1980s-90s [1] Increased presence of PMus in tertiary
education (cultural/media studies, music(ology), perf. arts
colleges); [2] music business courses established.
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Presentation overview
1. Popular Music —what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic prejudices
• When and how did it enter the academy?
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Temptation to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
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General types of musical knowledge
1. Music as knowledge (knowledge in music)
2. Metamusical knowledge (about music)
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1. Music as knowledge (knowledge in music)
1a. Constructional competence
involves: creating, originating, producing,
composing, arranging, performing, etc.
institutionalised in: conservatories,
colleges of music, etc.
1b. Receptional competence
involves: recalling & recognising musical
sounds, distinguishing between them and
between their culturally specific connotations
and functions
institutionalised in: ……?
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2. Metamusical knowledge
(knowledge about music)
2a. Metatextual discourse
involves: ‘music theory’, conventional music
analysis, identification and naming elements
and patterns of musical structure, etc.
institutionalised in: departments of music(ology),
colleges of music, etc.
2b. Metacontextual discourse
involves: explaining how musical practices
relate to culture and society, incl. approaches
from semiotics, acoustics, business studies,
sociology, anthropology, etc.
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institutionalised in: departments of social
science; literature, media, cultural studies.
Presentation overview
1. Popular Music —what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic prejudices
• When and how did it enter the academy?
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Tendency to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
P Tagg
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Scribal/oral,
notation/recording
1. Hegemony of number and written word in
academe, of the scribal, of the scopocentric
(=fixated on vision) and relative neglect of
non-verbal sound (oral/aural).
2. Tendency to privilege parameters of musical
expression storeable in Western staff
notation, developed to encode complexities
intrinsic to various forms of Western art
music, not those of other music cultures
(timbre, micro-inflexion, cross-rhythm, etc.).
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Presentation overview
1. Popular Music —what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic prejudices
• When and how did it enter the academy?
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Tendency to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
P Tagg
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‘Finished’ and ‘Unfinished’
Demands of established institutions:
•Recyclable study packages
•Canonic repertoire (e.g. classical, jazz…)
Why?
Facilitate ‘consistent assessment criteria’ over time
Facilitate ‘league table’ comparison between institutions
•Facilitate management control and quantification exercises
PMus is subject to ongoing change in terms of
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•Technology
•Musical style
•Sociopolitical factors
•Meanings
•Economic factors
•Fashions & fads
Presentation overview
1. Popular Music —what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic prejudices
• When and how did it enter the academy?
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Tendency to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
P Tagg
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‘Popular Music’: which music is studied? Examples
In July 2000 I played ten short extracts of different sorts of music to about 100
participants at a conference of the UK branch of IASPM (International Association for
the Study of Popular Music). I asked them to rate, on a scale from 0-5, their opinion on
how suitable each extract would be considered as the object of ‘popular music
studies’.
The extracts were played in the order listed below.
1. Johann Strauss (Jr.) (1867): An der schönen blauen Donau
2. The Beatles (1967): A Day In The Life
3. Les Baxter (1957): Jungalero
4. Zara (2000): Plenitsa (Bulgarian chalga music)
5. Madonna (1991): Justify My Love [12”] (prod. W Orbit)
6. Bernard Herrmann (1960): Psycho - The Shower
7. Sam Hui: Cheers!/Yum Sing (Cantopop)
8. The Brecker Brothers (1975) Some Skunk Funk
9. The SexPistols (1977): God Save The Queen
10. Snog (1992): Corporate Slave
Results of this musical questionnaire are in the next slide which shows the
extracts re-arranged in order of ‘suitability’, % values indicating how likely
conference participants considered each extract to be the object of ‘popular
music studies’.
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Examples in order of ‘suitability’ to be studied
1. The SexPistols (1977): God Save The Queen — 92%
2. The Beatles (1967): A Day In The Life — 91%
3. Madonna (1991): Justify My Love [12”] (prod. W Orbit) — 86%
4. Snog (1992): Corporate Slave — 71%
5. The Brecker Brothers (1975) Some Skunk Funk — 61%
6. Zara (2000): Plenitsa (Bulgarian chalga music) — 57%
7. Les Baxter (1957): Jungalero — 40%
8. Sam Hui: Cheers! (Yum Sing) — 36%?
9. Bernard Herrmann (1960): Psycho - The Shower — 30%
10. Johann Strauss (Jr.) (1867): An der schönen blauen Donau — 27%
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Canonic quotes
‘Passions must be powerful,
the musician’s feelings [must
be] unfettered — no mind
control,… no clever ideas…
(Diderot: Le neveu de Rameau, 1762)
[Listening to music the right way
means] ‘fully surrendering the
spirit to the welling torrent of
sensations and disregarding
every disturbing thought’…
(Wackenroder, 1792)
‘[T]he power of pop lies not in its
meaning but in its noise,… the
non-signifying, extra-linguistic
elements that defy “content
analysis”: the grain of the voice,
the materiality of the sound, the
biological effect of the rhythm, the
fascination of the star’s body’
(Reynolds 1990).
Music excites the body to
automatic movement, an
exhilaration that defeats boredom
and inspires insight… Music
gives the body control over itself,
granting personal freedom and
revealing sexual potential’
(Lull 1992)
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Institutionalisation processes (1)
classical music
popular music
started
mid C19 -
1970s-
education
institutions
created
conservatories,
music(ology) depts.
media/cultural studies,
performing arts colleges
canonic
heritage
European ‘classical’ from
C18 & C19 (esp. instr.)
first jazz, then Anglophone rock/pop
conservation old music increasingly
dominates repertoire
tendencies
1960s: v few re-issues;
1999: 60% of sales
back catalogue
international Central European
mus. Idiom (mainly Germanic)
Anglo-N.American
global
hegemony
US corporate capitalism
European colonialism
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Institutionalisation processes (2)
classical music
popular music
liberties,
attitude to
pleasure
liberation of the ego,
liberation of the id,
emotionality, postponed corporeality, immediate
gratification
gratification
hegemonic
class
movement
merchant class v.
feudal aristocracy & 4th
estate
buzzwords of
‘excellence’
high, sublime, superior, cool, fun, moving,
great, art, masterpiece, entertaining, hip, sexy,
striking
genius
examples of
state
appropriation
Händel (mass appeal)
 Handel, represents
UK state power
Queen’s Jubilee (2002):
Brian May, Eric Clapton,
Brian Wilson, etc.
UK
knighthoods
bestowed
Charles Stanford, Hubert
Parry, Edward Elgar, Ralph
Vaughan-Williams, Arthur
Bliss, William Walton,
Michael Tippett
Cliff Richard, George
Martin, Paul McCartney,
Bob Geldof, Elton John,
Michael Jagger (+ Dame
financial/managerial
élite v. old capitalism &
new lumpenproletariat
Shirley Bassey + Van
Morrison, etc., OBE)
Presentation overview
1. Popular Music —what is it?
2. Popular Music — why study it?
3. Popular music: problems of institutionalisation
• Aesthetic prejudices
• When and how did it enter the academy?
• Pre-existing modes of institutionalising knowledge and
the imperative of interdisciplinarity
• Scribal and oral traditions, notation and recording
• Historically defined and ongoing (‘unfinished’) traditions
• Tendency to replace old canons with new ones
4. Suggestions for the future
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Future — General Measures
1. Increase awareness about the importance of non-verbal
sound (incl. music) in modern society.
2. Raise the status of music in education and research to a
level commensurate with its proven social and economic
importance.
3. Make constructional competence in music (and visual arts)
an essential part of general education in the same way as
linguistic competence.
4. Demystify the role of music as a means of communication.
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Future — Some measures for
consideration in higher education (1)
1. Ongoing stylistic & social change: teaching constructional
competence through apprenticeship as well as through basic
skills programmes.
2. Core knowledge (all 4 types) of PMus required of every
music(ology) student (incl interdisciplinarity).
3. Ethnomusicological method applied to study of musical
practices of own (local) ‘ethnos’, not just to those of people in
far-off places.
4. Time for staff to keep up with ongoing changes of style,
technology, social formations, e.g. current need for music in
new audiovisual media (incl. games, cable TV, etc.).
5. Encourage young researchers to choose topics in PMus
sphere, otherwise no-one to teach the subject!
6. Provide opportunities for ‘musicologists of the popular’ to
publish findings without fear of copyright prosecution.
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Future — Some measures for
consideration in higher education (2)
7. Provide opportunities for general educational materials in
PMus (incl. repertoire) to be produced and disseminated on a
not-for-profit basis without fear of copyright infringement.
8. Encourage innovative research into Western classical
music, e.g. how classical became ‘classical’, corporeal and
popular aspects of classical music, crossovers between
popular and avant-garde, etc.
9. Ongoing review of canonic repertoire in local and
international PMus traditions
10. Develop new and existing forms of international,
interdisciplinary and interprofessional cooperation; important
role for non-Anglo and/or non-’first-world’ nations.
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End slide
Special thanks to:
Anthony Cheng
Karen Collins
Wendy Leung
Manolete Mora
Anders Nelsson
Jimi Wong
and the staff of
the HKU Music
Department
For further information,
see www.tagg.org
Thank you for your kind attention.
All good wishes!