1. Frankfurt School and Adorno on Music
Lecture 2: Virinder S Kalra

2. ‘Art’, ‘folk’ & ‘popular’ in West
MUSIC (society with minimal division of labour)
slavery, feudalism
ART MUSIC (courts, official religion)
FOLK MUSIC (slaves & proletariat)
industrial capitalism
ART MUSIC (publicly funded institutions)
FOLK MUSIC (rural proletariat)
POPULAR MUSIC (industrial proletariat, consumers)

3. Today’s Lecture
Ideology :Relationship between ideas and institutions/ social forms
Ideas and revolution (lack of) Frankfurt School
Adorno essay on music: “On the Fetish-character in music and the Regression of Listening” 1938

4. Marxist Ideas are the production of social class and institutions
Ideas reflect the economic position of the promoters and developers of these ideas
Karl Marx
Frederick Engels

5. Marx Thoughts on Art
Marx did not believe that spiritual contradictions led to historical changes; rather, Marx believed that economic contradictions led to historic change and conflict
"art is an aspect of religion (and vice versa) rather than a separate spiritual mode, and the collective expression of a society rather than of an individual voice” – Hegel
“Society’s economic structure (and the dominant socioeconomic class of that structure) determined the creation of art and literature. This belief evolved into what Marx called economic determinism.”
"getting and keeping [of] economic power is the motive behind all social and political activities, including education, philosophy, religion, government, the arts, science, technology, the media, etc."
[Art and Marxism]

6. Base and Superstructure
Karl Marx proposed a base/superstructure model of society
The base refers to the means of production of society
The superstructure is formed on top of the base, and comprises that society's ideology, as well as its legal system, political system, and religions etc.
[Art and Marxism]

7. After Marx No real mass media
Revolution takes place in Soviet Union but not as predicted by Marx
Workers welfare increases
New kind of social arrangements
So different responses to why the revolution does not take place
Frankfurt School

8. Background to the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (German Critical theory):
Key figures – Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse
Marginal figure – Walter Benjamin

9. Historical context significant:
German-Jewish, left writers
Rise of Nazis and Fascism in Europe 1930s
World War II – exile to USA
USA ‘democracy’, capitalist consumer culture

10. Problem
Against economic determinism of Marxism: Materialism → Culture & Ideology
What you have economically determines your social views, your consumption and your beliefs
So each class has different set of beliefs
One dominant ideology that of the bourgeoisie
Different ideology of the masses should lead to conflict and revolution

11. Big Problem Capitalism created relative stability
Less (class) conflicts and no sign of proletarian revolution
Why?
For Frankfurt School thinkers
Role of mass media

12. Mass culture = mass production of standardised cultural goods for mass consumption
Culture Industry produces mass culture imposed on people through media. Art, TV, film, music etc commercialised / industrialised

13. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944)
‘Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries; and when their directors’ incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished product is removed’
(Adorno and Horkheimer 1944)

14. Adorno’s basic idea about music
Music – both popular and the classical music played in concert halls and on the radio – is driven primarily by commercial interests. “Music, with all the attributes of the ethereal and sublime which are generously accorded it, serves in America today as an advertisement for commodities which one must acquire in order to be able to hear music.”

15. Commodity fetishism
A fetish is a substitute object of desire. So, in the most familiar kind of case, sexual desire might be displaced onto garments worn by the individual whom one cannot, for whatever reason, directly desire or have.
Karl Marx said that commodities can be fetishes. In this case, the displaced desire is the desire for freedom, and for the fruits of your labor. Here’s what happens.
You are alienated (estranged, separated) from the fruits of your labor. The products you help make are too far from your control for you to recognize them as your own. In return for your labor, you get dollars, which are only a small percentage of the value you have added to the product.

16. Commodity fetishism (cont.)
So instead of a relationship between you and some musicians, who would play for you in exchange for some service you would render to them, there is now a relationship between your dollars and their CD.
But the dollars and the CD are part of a capitalist system that is driven by the need to make money, not the need to make and hear good music.

17. Commodity fetishism (3)
But this is actually an illusion, say Marx and Adorno. Underneath the surface of the transaction, commercial interests are taking even more of the fruits of your labor from you. And what they are giving you in exchange is fake music. It is bland, repetitive, and formulaic. It disappears quickly, to be replaced by more of the same, because that is what makes money. It is not free.

18. Popular (and classical) music as “fetish”
Rather, it’s the (illusory) feeling
of your own wealth (when you buy the concert ticket);
the feeling of belonging, of being “cool”, when you like what is popular,
or of being “individual” when you like “alternative” music or “non-commercial” rap.
The entertainment system, and the money you give it, contain the fruits of your labor, which you want. But the freedom and satisfaction you want won’t be found by giving the system money. It won’t be found, says Adorno, by listening to commercial music.

19. Regressive Listening
The commodity system of music requires regressive (i.e., childish) listeners. “Their (our) primitivism is not that of the undeveloped, but of the forcibly retarded. Whenever they have a chance, they display the pinched hatred of those who really sense the other but exclude it in order to live in peace….”

20. Adorno Summary:
Classical / avant-garde music v popular music
‘Pseudo-individualisation’ – makes popular songs appear different, but actually the same formula, same melodies, riffs etc
Easy to listen to – repetitive, standardised - just like our working lives, so automatic audience affiliation

21. Critique Elitism : H/A as defenders of modernism against mass culture
Ignorance of actual popular culture: Adorno as jazz hater
Reception: H/A tend to consider the audience as an “adjunct to the machinery”
Focus on production
Centrality of culture: materiality?

22. Alternative Theories
Complexities of aesthetic meaning, expression, objecthood and attachment
Janet Wolff: a “sociological aesthetics” based on a non-essentialist theory of aesthetic experience; respect for the object
Georgina Born: “post-positivist empiricism” sensitive to expressive practices, authorial subjectivities and creative agency
Tia DeNora: the “inner sonorous life” of selves and subjectivities
Antoine Hennion: neo-phenomenolgical resurrection of the work and the aesthetic encounter as singular not instrumental