How autonomous is relative: popular music, the social formation and cultural struggle

Abstract

Writing about popular music in 1977 from what I would describe as a ‘classical’ Marxist perspective, Steve Chapple and I proclaimed unequivocally that:The position of the music as an increasingly important cultural commodity within a consumer economy weakened any of the explicit anti-materialist content of the music.… Musicians and the creative personnel within the industry were integrated into an entertainment business now firmly part of the American corporate structure. (Chapple and Garofalo 1977, p. 300)In 1981, four short years later, British sociologist and music critic Simon Frith described the structure and functioning of the music industry in much the same terms that Chappie and I had put forth, but his analysis shifted the emphasis considerably. Declared Frith:Cultural commodities may support the contemporary power of capital, but they have their civilising moments, and even as the most effortless background music, rock is a source of vigour and exhilaration and of good feelings that are as necessary for the next morning's political struggle as for the next day's work. My argument is that rock fun is as much a quality of the music's use as of its form. (Frith 1981, pp. 264–5)Attempting to avoid what he saw as an economically reductive position, Frith de-emphasised the role of monopoly corporations in controlling the marketplace and shaping popular culture. In the tradition of ‘cultural’ Marxism, he focused instead, and somewhat optimistically, on the power of the consumer to reappropriate the music in unintended ways, to ‘resignify’ its meaning, if you will.